The Rag Blog

War tax resistance is far from a new idea. But there is a bold initiative brewing that has an elegantly simple new angle: There is safety in numbers. The idea is to get people to sign a pledge that they will engage in civil disobedience by withholding a percentage of their taxes, but only if a critical mass of 100,000 signers is reached by April 15, 2008.

Activists have spent long hours pushing for election reform, marching in the streets, and engaging in other forms of civil disobedience against the Iraq war with seemingly no effect, so clearly a different tack is needed. The “I’ll jump if you will” approach to war tax resistance just might work.

My friend Jodie Evans, cofounder of Code Pink, is one of those people who live on the barricades, sleep little, and dedicate most every waking moment to social change. Her material desires take a backseat to her convictions, and the ragged pink mules she has worn for years as part of her Code Pink identity are the laughingstock of her friends. She has been arrested more times than she can count and has been at the epicenter of many of the most effective and mediagenic progressive campaigns of the past several decades.

But Jodie is also at home in the most rarefied strata of power. Thanks in no small part to her, the pledge list will be seeded with participants from business, Hollywood, and other influential enclaves, and the initiative will be backed by a strong communications strategy.

War tax resistance dates back to the early 13th century, when King John of England raised taxes to pay for a war against France and offended many barons who objected to the war. Their fury led to the birth, in 1215, of the Magna Carta, which underpins U.S. constitutional law. Henry David Thoreau was the most famous U.S. war tax resister, and his essay “On the Duty of Civil Disobedience” influenced Mahatma Gandhi, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and many others. During the Vietnam War, tens of thousands of citizens withheld payment of the 10 percent phone service excise tax that was instituted to pay for that war. Organizations like the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee have ongoing campaigns and considerable expertise in the how-tos of withholding taxes.

I know a man who has a passion for slashing taxes but a political agenda very different from mine, and I wanted to know what he thought of withholding income tax as an act of civil disobedience. He initially said that he was opposed to breaking even unjust laws and that his approach is to work the system. In his view, the income tax is unconstitutional and therefore an unjust law because it should have been ratified state by state, rather than introduced as the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. When I explained the critical mass approach to tax withholding, he cautioned me to beware of the law of unintended consequences. If this war tax resistance initiative is successful, he said, people like him could take the same approach to withholding taxes for social spending. I told him that it seems to me that spending on human needs and environmental protection is already eviscerated. “Well, then you have nothing to be afraid of,” he said.

Salt Lake City mayor Ross “Rocky” Anderson recently made an impassioned speech in which he said, “I implore you: Draw a line. Figure out exactly where your own moral breaking point is. How much will you put up with before you say ‘No more’ and mean it?”

What do you say, Rocky? I’ll sign on if you will.

Meanwhile, tonight Jodie Evans has, Cinderella-like, put on a gown and jewels for a gala gathering of high-tech titans. I have no doubt that when her glass slippers revert to pink mules, she will be clutching some high-octane names for the war tax resisters pledge list.

Stay tuned and sign on at www.dontbuybushswar.org.

SAN FRANCISCO (Dec. 23) – Americans are falling behind on their credit card payments at an alarming rate, sending delinquencies and defaults surging by double-digit percentages in the last year and prompting warnings of worse to come.

An Associated Press analysis of financial data from the country’s largest card issuers also found that the greatest rise was among accounts more than 90 days in arrears.

Experts say these signs of the deterioration of finances of many households are partly a byproduct of the subprime mortgage crisis and could spell more trouble ahead for an already sputtering economy.

“Debt eventually leaks into other areas, whether it starts with the mortgage and goes to the credit card or vice versa,” said Cliff Tan, a visiting scholar at Stanford University and an expert on credit risk. “We’re starting to see leaks now.”

The value of credit card accounts at least 30 days late jumped 26 percent to $17.3 billion in October from a year earlier at 17 large credit card trusts examined by the AP. That represented more than 4 percent of the total outstanding principal balances owed to the trusts on credit cards that were issued by banks such as Bank of America and Capital One and for retailers like Home Depot and Wal-Mart .

At the same time, defaults – when lenders essentially give up hope of ever being repaid and write off the debt – rose 18 percent to almost $961 million in October, according to filings made by the trusts with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Serious delinquencies also are up sharply: Some of the nation’s biggest lenders – including Advanta, GE Money Bank and HSBC – reported increases of 50 percent or more in the value of accounts that were at least 90 days delinquent when compared with the same period a year ago.

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the White House
Not a creature was stirring, not even my spouse,
The stockings were hung up by the chimney with care,
And the shredders were humming in the chilly night air

Our spinners and fixers all snug in their beds
While visions of water boarding danced in their heads.
Now Laura in ‘kerchief, and me in a nightcap,
Had settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
Agents sprang from their bunks to see what was the matter.
Away to the windows they flew with guns pointed,
Tore open the shutters and were not disappointed.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to a bloodbath below.
When, what to our wondering eyes did unfold,
A nativity play of events rarely told.

First the old torturer, so lively and quick,
Vice President Cheney dressed up as St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his helpers they came,
Carrying gags, hot pokers, sundry handtools of pain.

A replica dungeon sprang up on the grass,
Writhing with suspects, sticks up their ass.
Twas a moving rendition of the CIA’s Mission
A sacred tableau: The American Inquisition!

Habeas corpus we burned at the stake,
Air strikes on Arabs are ducks on a plate.
Five million orphans adrift in Iraq
But the oil still flows, the plan is on track.

And then, in a twinkling, it was heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof,
As three men on camels leapt into the garden;
One was none other than Osama bin Laden.

“Welcome my brother” came Dick’s merry greeting,
“I know we are soul mates and your visit is fleeting”.
The pair danced a jig and bowed to the crowd
Sweet Laura asked, “Should this be allowed”?

Now Cheney is sweating from his head to his foot,
And his fat face is tarnished with ashes and soot.
Electrodes and thumb screws he’s flung on his back,
And he looks like a psychopath, poised to attack.

But a wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Assured all those present they had nothing to dread.
We’ve erased all evidence, he said with delight,
While our tortures continue, late into the night.

The stump of an infant he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
And I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”

It comes as no surprise when a major U.S. newspaper backs real estate developers over the rights and interests of the poor they have a long track record of doing so, while the poor are lectured in patronizing language to emulate the people the papers celebrate. This week the New Orleans Times-Picayune has an article on their website titled “Protests ignore realities.” This article is a response to the struggle local residents have been waging against the planned demolition of their homes–protests which made national headlines this week. The “realities” these people supposedly ignore is that the government and wealthy real estate developers know what’s best for them.

But the poor just don’t seem to be getting it. Over the past week, as residents of New Orleans public housing complexes and activist allies have been resisting the demolition of four public housing complexes, comprising of 4,500 units, the city council–now racially skewed to the white end of the spectrum–voted to bulldoze those complexes to make way for new “mixed income” developments that purportedly would provide homes to some of those being displaced. The reality of similar programs around the country is that they seldom provide even a fraction of the affordable units promised by officials when older housing complexes were demolished.

Housing activists are not against programs that create more and better affordable housing, but they correctly point out that people should have a say in what happens to their current homes. In the case of New Orleans, it is outrageous that the city should demolish so much public housing when there are tens of thousands of displaced residents still looking for a place to live.

The Washington Post, too, weighs in on the side of real estate developers with an unsigned editorial (“A Better Life in New Orleans” December 20, 2007) calling for the demolition of public housing in New Orleans. The Post dismisses the fight by local residents for their homes as being mistakenly based on a “conspiracy.” The Post repeats standard myths about the housing complexes being havens for crime and poverty. These myths ignore the fact that these complexes have been closed since Katrina, that residents worked hard to keep crime out, and that crime is high all across New Orleans. Residents of these complexes are working people and this housing was affordable. History suggests this will not be the case with the developments proposed to replace them.

The Post also recycles the claim that most of these complexes were seriously damaged by the hurricanes. This is simply untrue.

What the Post doesn’t get is that New Orleans residents should first and foremost have the power to decide what is best for their interests. The Post would never editorialize that a group of white residents living in, say, Arlington, Virginia shouldn’t have input on the future of their homes if they were being threatened by a government-backed redevelopment project. When housing in New Orleans is so scarce and rents so high, the right of people to have access to their existing housing should take priority over any project to demolish housing–and certainly over any project so clearly aimed at fattening the wallets of developers and construction companies.

The Post tries to cast the New Orleans housing struggle as being fomented by a few people who just don’t want to get rid of poverty: “What makes no sense is perpetuating a housing policy that trapped people in poverty.” What makes no sense is a policy that would tear down thousands of habitable units when tens of thousands of people are looking for homes. The current policy only replicates failed national programs such as Hope VI, which purports to turn housing complexes into mixed-income developments with affordable units, but which are really just a form of ethnic cleansing, gentrification, and welfare for the rich. It’s hard to believe that the New Orleans government is well-intentioned when it is replicating housing policies that elsewhere have turned out so unfavorably for the urban working poor. It’s also clear that the New Orleans ruling class is using the dislocation caused by the hurricanes to enact policies that haven’t gone through a democratic process. To cite just one rather important detail, the current plan lacks any details about where people are supposed to live during the years that these new projects are under construction.

It’s ironic that the Washington Post should dismiss the New Orleans housing struggle as some kind of “romantic” lost cause, a day after the New York Times’ architectural critic wrote that the demolitions are “one of the greatest crimes in American urban planning.” One of the reasons why so many people enjoy visiting New Orleans is because it is one of the few American cities left with a truly unique gumbo of architecture, culture, environment, and diversity of people. If the Post feels that the interests of New Orleans should be swept aside in the name of modernization, why stop with the demolition of these four housing complexes? Why doesn’t the city bulldoze the French Quarter and replace it with an upscale mixed-use development? Such a project would create new jobs and more income for the city. Tourists wouldn’t miss a beat if the new and modernized French Quarter had a Panera that sells beignets, a Hard Rock Cafe and all of our favorite sports bar chains lining Bourbon Street.

Why, the tourists would feel right at home!

The chances are slim that you saw much news coverage of Human Rights Day when it blew past the media radar — as usual — on Dec. 10. Human rights may be touted as a treasured principle in the United States, but the assessed value in medialand is apt to fluctuate widely on the basis of double standards and narrow definitions.

Every political system, no matter how repressive or democratic, is able to amp up public outrage over real or imagined violations of human rights. News media can easily fixate on stories of faraway injustice and cruelty. But the lofty stances end up as posturing to the extent that a single standard is not applied.

When U.S.-allied governments torture political prisoners, the likelihood of U.S. media scrutiny is much lower than the probability of media righteousness against governments reviled by official Washington.

But what are “human rights” anyway? In the USA, we mostly think of them as freedom to speak, assemble, worship and express opinions. Of course those are crucial rights. Yet they hardly span the broad scope that’s spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

That document — adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on Dec. 10, 1948 — affirms “human rights” in the ways that U.S. media outlets commonly illuminate the meaning of the term. But the Declaration of Human Rights also defines the rights of all human beings to include “freedom from fear and want” — and not only as generalities.

For instance, the first clause of Article 23 states: “Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.”

And: “Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work”; the right “to form and to join trade unions”; and, overall, “an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.”

Perhaps the farthest afield from the customary U.S. media parameters is Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which insists: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

Measured with such yardsticks for human rights, the United States falls far short of many countries. If American news media did a better job of reporting on human rights in all their dimensions, we’d be less self-satisfied as a nation — and more outraged about the widespread violations of human rights that persist in our midst every day.

The human consequences of those violations are incalculable, but they’re largely removed from the center stage of dramas that fill news pages and newscasts. This downplaying of economic human rights is not mere happenstance. The violations are systemic — within a system that thrives on extreme inequities, creating enormous profits for corporations and enriching some individuals along the way.

Within the boundaries of dominant news media and mainline political discourse, the “issue” of human rights is in a narrow box. It severely limits the humanity of our social order.

Worldwide food prices have risen sharply and supplies have dropped this year, according to the latest food outlook of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. The agency warned December 17 that the changes represent an “unforeseen and unprecedented” shift in the global food system, threatening billions with hunger and decreased access to food.

The FAO’s food price index rose by 40 percent this year, on top of the already high 9 percent increase the year before, and the poorest countries spent 25 percent more this year on imported food. The prices for staple crops, including wheat, rice, corn and soybeans, all rose drastically in 2007, pushing up prices for grain-fed meat, eggs and dairy products and spurring inflation throughout the consumer food market.

Driving these increases are a complex range of developments, including rapid urbanization of populations and growing demand for food stuffs in key developing countries such as China and India, speculation in the commodities markets, increased diversion of feedstock crops into the production of biofuels, and extreme weather conditions and other natural disasters associated with climate change.

Because of the long-term and compounding nature of all of these factors, the problems of rising prices and decreasing supplies in the food system are not temporary or one-time occurrences, and cannot be understood as cyclical fluctuations in supply and demand.

The world reserves of cereals are dwindling. In the past year, wheat stores declined 11 percent. The FAO notes that this is the lowest level since the UN began keeping records in 1980, while the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has reported that world wheat stocks may have fallen to 47-year lows. By FAO figures, the falloff in wheat stores equals about 12 weeks worth of global consumption.

The USDA has cautioned that wheat exporters in the US have already sold more than 90 percent of what the department had expected to be exported during the fiscal year ending June 2008. This has dire consequences for the world’s poor, whose diets consist largely of cereal grains imported from the United States and other major producers.

More than 850 million people around the world suffer from chronic hunger and other associated miseries of extreme poverty. According to the FAO, 37 countries—20 in Africa, 9 in Asia, 6 in Latin America, and 2 in Eastern Europe—currently face exceptional shortfalls in food production and supplies.

Those most affected live in countries dependent on imports. The poorest people, whose diets consist heavily of cereal grains, are most vulnerable. Already the poor spend the majority of their income on staple foods—up to 80 percent in some regions, according to the FAO. Ever-rising prices will lead to a distinct deterioration in the diets of these sections of the population.

The food crisis is intensifying social discontent and raising the likelihood of social upheavals. The FAO notes that political unrest “directly linked to food markets” has developed in Morocco, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Guinea, Mauritania and Senegal. In the past year, cereal prices have triggered riots in several other countries, including Mexico, where tortilla prices were pushed up 60 percent. In Italy, the rising cost of pasta prompted nationwide protests. Unrest in China has also been linked to cooking oil shortages.

In addition to the cost of imports, war and civil strife, multiple years of drought and other disasters, and the impact of HIV/AIDS have crippled countries’ food supply mechanisms.

Iraq and Afghanistan both suffer severe shortfalls because of the US invasion and ongoing occupation. North African countries are hard hit by the soaring wheat prices because many staple foods require imported wheat.

Countries of the former Soviet Union are facing wheat shortages. People there spend upwards of 70 percent of their incomes on food; the price of bread in Kyrgyzstan has risen by 50 percent this year and the government released emergency reserves of wheat in the poorest areas to temporarily ease the crisis.

In Bangladesh, food prices have spiraled up 11 percent every month since July; rice prices have risen by nearly 50 percent in the past year.

Central American countries saw a 50 percent increase in the price of that region’s staple grain, corn. Several countries in South America have also been impacted by the high international wheat prices, compelling national governments to dispense with import taxes. The government in Bolivia, for example, has dispatched the military to operate industrial-scale bread bakeries.

All national governments are keenly aware of the possibility of civil unrest in the event of severe food shortages or famine, and many have taken minimal steps to ease the crisis in the short term, such as reducing import tariffs and erecting export restrictions. On December 20, China did away with food export rebates in an effort to stave off domestic shortfalls. Russia, Kazakhstan, and Argentina have also implemented export controls.

But such policies cannot adequately cope with the crisis in the food system because they do not address the causes, only the immediate symptoms. Behind the inflation are the complex inter-linkages of global markets and the fundamental incompatibility of the capitalist system with the needs of billions of poor and working people.

The volatility of the financial markets, driven by speculation and trading in equity and debt, intersects with the futures and options markets that have a direct bearing on agricultural commodity markets. As the housing market in the United States collapsed, compounding problems in the credit market and threatening recession, speculation shifted to the commodities markets, exacerbating inflation in basic goods and materials. The international food market is particularly prone to volatility because current prices are greatly influenced by speculation over future commodity prices. This speculation can then trigger more volatility, encouraging more speculation.

Future grain prices are a striking example of this disastrous cycle. On December 17, speculation on wheat and rice for delivery in March 2008 forced prices to historic highs on the Chicago Board of Trade. Wheat jumped to more than $10 a bushel on projections of worsening shortages and inflation. This level is double the $5-a-bushel price of wheat at the beginning of 2007.

Japan, the largest wheat importer in Asia, announced December 19 that it may raise wheat prices by 30 percent. The same day, Indian government officials warned of impending food security problems. These were due, according to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to “clouds on global financial markets following the sub-prime lending crisis.”

Soybean and corn prices have also been pushed up to 34-year and 11-year highs, respectively, on the projected shortages and demand for biofuel. These new trading levels become the agricultural benchmarks for subsequent trading, and, as the Financial Times put it December 17, have the consequence of “raising inflationary pressure and constraining the ability of central banks to mitigate economic slowdown.”

Higher fuel costs ultimately lead to higher food prices, via higher shipping charges, particularly for nations that import a large proportion of their staple foods. Shipping costs for bulk commodities have increased by more than 80 percent in the past year and 57 percent since June, according to the Baltic Exchange Dry Index.

The FAO report noted that the enormous increase in freight costs has had the effect of dis-integrating the world market in certain regions because many import-heavy countries have opted to purchase from closer suppliers, resulting in “prices at regional or localized levels falling out of line with world levels.”

The rising oil price not only affects the costs of transportation and importation. It also has a direct impact on the costs of farm operation in the working of agricultural and industrial processing machinery. Moreover, fertilizer, which takes its key component, nitrogen, from natural gas, is also spiking in price because of the impact of rising oil prices on the demand and costs of other fuels. By the same token, as oil prices rise, the demand for biofuel sources such as corn, sugarcane, and soybeans also rises, resulting in more and more feedstock crops being devoted to fuel and additives production.

In the US, the use of corn for ethanol production has doubled since 2003, and is projected by the FAO to increase from 55 million metric tons to 110 million metric tons by 2016. The US government is more ambitious. On December 19, President Bush signed a new energy bill into law which contains a mandate for expanding domestic biofuel production five-fold over the next 15 years, to more than 36 billion gallons a year. Already a third of the US corn harvest is devoted to ethanol production, surpassing the amount of corn bound for the world food markets.

As more US cropland is devoted to ethanol-bound corn, other major agricultural regions are struggling with weather disasters associated with climate change. Australia and the Ukraine, both significant exporters of wheat, have suffered extreme weather that damaged crops. A prolonged drought in southern Australia has curtailed farming to such a degree that many farmers have sold their land.

Current research suggests that as temperatures rise over the next fifty years by 1 to 2 degrees Celsius, poor countries may lose 135 million hectares (334 million acres) of arable land because of lost rainfall. In new studies published earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have cautioned that this estimate may be conservative, and that the impact of climate change on food production has been over-simplified.

According to NASA/Goddard Institute of Space Studies researcher Francesco Tubiello, complications of climate change on the world food supply may be far worse than previously predicted: “The projections show a smooth curve, but a smooth curve has never happened in history. Things happen suddenly, and then you can’t respond to them.”

Tubiello’s research focuses on extreme weather events that have devastated entire crops when they coincided with germination and blossoming periods, as was the case with Italy’s corn crop in 2003. Tubiello noted that corn yield in the Po valley growing region fell to 36 percent following a heat wave that raised Italy’s temperatures 6 degrees over the long-term average.

In addition to the survival thresholds of plants, researchers have begun studying the effects of higher temperatures on the physiology and diseases of livestock, as well as the spread of pests, molds and viruses native to tropical zones. Goddard Institute research has suggested that bluetongue, a viral disease of cattle and sheep, will move outward from the tropics into regions including southern Australia. According to the Earth Institute at Columbia University, higher temperatures will lead to higher infertility in livestock and lower dairy yields.

Peace campaigners expressed shock yesterday at revelations of a massive escalation in US air attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A report by Anthony H Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies found a massive increase in the number of air attacks on the two countries from 2006 to 2007.

The centre was founded by veteran US warmonger Zbigniew Brzezinski, the mastermind of the US-funded 1979-1989 Afghan war.

Mr Cordesman’s report found 1,119 “close air support/precision” (CAS) bombing raids in Iraq in 2007, an incredible fivefold increase on 2006.

In Afghanistan, the number of CAS raids rose from an already massive 1,770 in 2006 to 2,926 this year, a 65 per cent increase over the year and 34 times as many as in 2004.

Mr Cordesman attributed the rising use of air power in Iraq and Afghanistan to the “surge” or escalation in Iraq and to an increase in “Taliban activity,” coupled with a lack of NATO and Afghan army forces, in Afghanistan.

He pointed out that most aircraft sorties do not result in the dropping of bombs but he admitted: “This does not mean that there were not civilian casualties or collateral damage to civil facilities.”

A Stop the War Coalition spokesman said that the increasing reliance of NATO on air strikes demonstrates “the poverty of its military strategy and only results in large numbers of civilian deaths.”

More than 6,000 Afghan civilians have been killed in the fighting this year alone, almost twice as many as died during the US-led invasion in 2001.

However, the figures in the report do not paint the whole picture, as they exclude attacks where only machine guns, 20mm and 30mm cannon or rockets were used.

This would exclude most attacks by helicopter gunships and the A-10 close air support aircraft.

It is unclear whether high-level raids by heavy bombers are included and no mention is made of ground-based artillery bombardments.

In addition, the figures for Afghanistan only include air forces attached to the US so-called Operation Enduring Freedom mission and not the NATO International Security Assistance Force.

The figures also show that the quantity of supplies air-dropped to troops has almost doubled, as it has become too dangerous to deliver by road in Afghanistan.

Media Workers Against the War spokesman David Crouch said: “Andrew Gilligan was right when he said that Iraq is underreported.

“As a result, we have a very limited understanding of the surge and what it means for Iraqis on the ground.

“Afghanistan really is Britain’s forgotten war,” said Mr Crouch.

“Almost all we read about it in the newspapers are Ministry of Defence press releases.

“It’s hardly surprising, then, that shocking figures like these come seemingly out of the blue.”

Labour MP John McDonnell added: “These figures give the lie to the image portrayed by the government that Iraq is being pacified and demonstrate the intensity of the conflict in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The reality is that the coalition forces have been defeated.

“They’re using air strikes rather than risk troops on the ground,” said the MP.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman refused to discuss US tactics.

THE CIA chief who ordered the destruction of secret videotapes recording the harsh interrogation of two top Al-Qaeda suspects has indicated he may seek immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying before the House intelligence committee.

Jose Rodriguez, former head of the CIA’s clandestine service, is determined not to become the fall guy in the controversy over the CIA’s use of torture, according to intelligence sources.

It has emerged that at least four White House staff were approached for advice about the tapes, including David Addington, a senior aide to Dick Cheney, the vice-president, but none has admitted to recommending their destruction.

Vincent Cannistraro, former head of counterterrorism at the CIA, said it was impossible for Rodriguez to have acted on his own: “If everybody was against the decision, why in the world would Jose Rodriguez – one of the most cautious men I have ever met – have gone ahead and destroyed them?”

The tapes recorded the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, two suspected Al-Qaeda leaders, over hundreds of hours while they were held in secret “ghost” prisons. According to testimony from a former CIA officer, Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding, a form of torture that simulates drowning, and “broke” after 35 seconds. He is believed to have been interrogated in Thailand. The tapes were destroyed in 2005. Both men are now held in Guantanamo Bay.

The House intelligence committee has subpoenaed Rodriguez to appear for a hearing on January 16. Last week the CIA began opening its files to congressional investigators. Silvestre Reyes, a Democrat who is chairing the committee, has said he was “not looking for scapegoats” – a hint to Rodriguez that he would like him to talk.

Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer, believes the scandal could reach deep into the White House. “The CIA and Jose Rodriguez look bad, but he’s probably the least culpable person in the process. He didn’t wake up one day and decide, ‘I’m going to destroy these tapes.’ He checked with a lot of people and eventually he is going to get his say.”

Johnson says Rodriguez got his fingers burnt during the Iran-contra scandal while working for the CIA in Latin America in the 1980s. Even then he sought authorisation from senior officials. But when summoned to the FBI for questioning, he was told Iran-contra was “political – get your own lawyer”.

He learnt his lesson and recently appointed Robert Bennett, one of Washington’s most skilled lawyers, to handle the case of the destroyed interrogation tapes. “He has been starting to get his story out and was smart to get Bennett,” said Johnson.

The Justice Department has launched its own inquiry into the destruction of the tapes. It emerged yesterday that the CIA had misled members of the 9-11 Commission by not disclosing the existence of the tapes, in potential violation of the law. President George W Bush said last week he could not recall learning about the tapes before being briefed about them on December 6 by Michael Hayden, the CIA director.

“It looks increasingly as though the decision was made by the White House,” said Johnson. He believes it is “highly likely” that Bush saw one of the videos, as he was interested in Zubaydah’s case and received frequent updates on his interrogation from George Tenet, the CIA director at the time.

It has emerged that the CIA did preserve two videotapes and an audiotape of detainee interrogations conducted by a foreign government, which may have been relevant to the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the Al-Qaeda conspirator.

Neo-con supporters of the U.S. government’s war of aggression against Iraq are undoubtedly holding their collective breath in the hope that U.S. military forces have finally smashed any further violent opposition to their conquest of Iraq. The attitude would then be, “You see, this shows that we were right after all to invade and occupy Iraq and kill and maim hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people.”

Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that U.S. soldiers have found mass graves next to a torture center north of Baghdad. In the torture center, chains were attached to blood-spattered walls while a metal bed was attached to an electrical shock system.

Hey, who knows? Maybe the torture center prevented a ticking time bomb from going off? And who’s to say that chains, blood-spattered walls, metal beds, and an electrical shock system really constitute torture? Doesn’t torture depend on each person’s subjective determination of the term?

By the way, wasn’t there torture in Iraq under Saddam Hussein? I wonder if his justifications for torture were different from those employed by those torturing in Iraq today. I wonder if they were different than those employed by current U.S. torturers.

As Rosa Brooks writes in the Los Angeles Times today, Baghdad has now been divided into “cleansed” neighborhoods, in which Sunnis occupy some areas and Shiites occupy others. The U.S. military is helping to keep the neighborhoods free of violence by constructing walls that separate the respective neighborhoods. What an interesting way for the Pentagon to rebuild a peaceful society that it has destroyed with its invasion.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have fled the country, mostly to neighboring countries given that the U.S. government refuses to let them emigrate to the United States, despite one of the U.S. government’s claims (in addition to the WMD one) that it invaded Iraq out of love for the Iraqi people. Hey, what better way to reduce the death toll than by reducing the country’s population?

And if things weren’t crazy enough, we now learn that the U.S. government is helping Turkey to attack Iraqi Kurds in the northern part of the country. Can’t you just hear U.S. officials exclaim when some Iraqi survivor of those attacks retaliates with a terrorist attack against the U.S.: “We’re innocent! We’re innocent! We haven’t done anything to provoke this! They hate us for our freedom and values! God bless America!”

No rational person can deny that Iraq never had any connection whatsoever to the 9/11 attacks, especially given that none of the 9/11 attackers were even from Iraq. Yet, countless Iraqi people are now dead or maimed and their entire country is destroyed. One might easily say that Iraq is the federal massacre of Waco magnified a million-fold. The whole situation in Iraq brings to mind the famous dictum of Tacitus: “They made a desert and called it peace.”

Nothing, not even “peace” in Iraq, will ever be able to morally justify a war of aggression against a nation whose people were totally innocent of the 9/11 attacks. Nothing, not even some warped definition of “terrorist,” will ever be able to morally justify killing Iraqis who were doing nothing more than trying to oust their country of an illegal invader who had invaded with a thirst for vengeance and regime change relying on fake and false rationales for its invasion. Nothing will ever be able to morally justify the killing of even one single Iraqi, much less hundreds of thousands of them, given that neither the Iraqi people nor their government ever attacked the United States.

Celebrations by the families, friends and supporters of the three British men who returned from Guantánamo on Wednesday – Omar Deghayes, Jamil El-Banna and Abdulnour Sameur – were abruptly cut short when the Spanish government immediately requested the extradition of El-Banna and Deghayes for alleged ties with terrorists, even though the supposed evidence in Deghayes’ case was comprehensively demolished nearly three years ago, and, in El-Banna’s case, is strenuously denied by his lawyers. In March 2005, image recognition experts, commissioned by the BBC’s Newsnight, concluded that the figure in a grainy video of a Chechen training camp, which was supposed to be Deghayes, was in fact a militant named Abu Walid, who had later been killed.

As the men landed on British soil, there was no reason to suspect that their return would involve anything more than a cursory police investigation. El-Banna had been cleared for release from Guantánamo by a military review board in May this year – as close to an admission of innocence as the notoriously unapologetic US administration ever gets – and the US authorities had also agreed to the return of Deghayes and Sameur, as requested by the British government in August, while refusing to release another British resident, Binyam Mohamed.

Lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, who represented the men and met with them at Guantánamo during their long imprisonment without charge or trial, pointed out that they had all agreed to unspecified voluntary security arrangements required by the UK authorities, and, on arrival, as Sean O’Neill described it in the Times, El-Banna “was detained under port and border controls – a signal that Britain does not regard him as posing any serious security threat.” Deghayes and Sameur, meanwhile, were arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000 and were held for questioning at Paddington Green police station in west London, a move that served only to indicate that Scotland Yard’s Counter-Terrorist commanders wanted to be certain that they posed no threat to Britain before releasing them. O’Neill added, “Most of the previous returnees from Camp Delta have been through the same process and none have been involved in any trouble since they came back.”

Even more significant were comments made by William Nye, director of counter-terrorism and intelligence at the Home Office, following discussions with the US government about the return of the British residents, which had first taken place in June 2006, and which were revealed in the Guardian last October. At the time, the British government, which, until that point, had refused to press for the release of any of the British residents, was reluctantly discussing the return of just one of the British residents, Bisher al-Rawi (who was released in March this year). Both al-Rawi and El-Banna had been kidnapped by CIA agents in the Gambia, where they had travelled to set up a mobile peanut-processing plant, after an inexplicable tip-off from MI5, and had been transferred to Guantánamo via a secret CIA-run prison. Scandalously, the discussions about the repatriation of al-Rawi – but not of El-Banna – were based solely on the fact that al-Rawi’s lawyers had embarrassed the government by pointing out that he had actually been working for MI5, keeping tabs on the radical cleric Abu Qatada.

Describing what had happened during the meeting with Americans, William Nye explained that the Americans had requested that the British take back all the residents – not just al-Rawi – but that the British representatives had balked at the conditions that the US government had attempted to impose, which included an insistence that they “cannot legally leave the UK, engage with known extremists or engage in, support, promote, plan or advocate extremist or violent activity,” and that the British government would put surveillance in place “to know immediately of any attempt to engage in any such activity.” Nye declared, “I am not satisfied it would be proportionate to impose … the kind of obligations which might be necessary to satisfy the US administration,” explaining that the measures demanded by the Americans would have to be enforced by MI5 and would divert vital resources away from countering more dangerous terrorist suspects. “The use of such resources … could not be justified and would damage the protection of the UK’s national security,” he wrote, adding, in the most crucial passage, that the detainees “do not pose a sufficient threat to justify the devotion of the high level of resources” the US would require.

It was genuinely shocking, therefore, when the Spanish government lodged its extradition request on the men’s return. As Sean O’Neill described it, the Spanish alleged that El-Banna had links with a Madrid al-Qaeda cell, which was purportedly responsible for recruiting young men and sending them for jihad training, and which was also “said to have had ties to the German-based al-Qaeda unit that plotted the September 11 atrocities.” He added, “What has motivated Spain to act now is something of a mystery. America has had Mr. El-Banna in custody for five years and interrogated him repeatedly in brutal conditions. It laid no charges against him and deemed him fit to be freed. Spain made no attempt to extradite him from or question him while he was in US custody.” He concluded that the Spanish government’s action “seems inhumane and its evidence rather thin.”

Clive Stafford Smith added more detail, explaining that he had tried to encourage a Spanish extradition request as a means of getting the men out of Guantánamo, but that the authorities in Madrid had never showed any interest. “It is very dismaying,” he told the BBC’s Newsnight. “For quite a long time, we tried to get the Spanish to demand their release because we thought it was an elegant way to get them out of Guantánamo. The Spanish weren’t interested … The idea now that they want to use this evidence we have proved to be false to take them for further detention is very worrying.”

Under the terms of the European Arrest Warrant, an EU-wide agreement introduced in 2004 and intended to simplify extradition procedures between member states by removing potential political interference and ensuring “faster and simpler surrender procedures,” the British government had no choice but to comply with the Spanish request, even though William Nye had made it clear that none of the men were regarded as a “sufficient threat” to warrant 24/7 surveillance, and, as Sean O’Neill pointed out, the British “had no intention of putting [El-Banna] on trial as a terrorist when he returned here.”

On the morning of December 20, while the Metropolitan Police were preparing to release Abdulnour Sameur without charge, Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes were duly transported to Westminster Magistrates’ Court – just a few hundred yards from Parliament – where Melanie Cumberland, representing the Spanish government, resurrected the claims against the men, first formulated by the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón in December 2003, when he also requested the extradition of two other Guantánamo detainees, a Moroccan and a Spaniard – that El-Banna had been a member of a Madrid-based organization known as the Islamic Alliance, and that he was an associate of Imad Yarkas, who is serving 12 years in a Spanish prison for terrorism offences. Cumberland relayed the Spanish authorities’ claim that both El-Banna and Deghayes belonged to a cell that provided recruits for military training in Afghanistan and Indonesia, which was also alleged to have raised funds for terrorism and to have spread al-Qaeda propaganda.

In response, Ed Fitzgerald QC, who represented both men, cited the discredited video as “the centrepiece” of the Spanish allegations, and accused the prosecutor of making wild accusations “for which there was no evidence,” adding that there was, instead, solid evidence that neither the US nor UK authorities considered the men to pose a significant danger.

Granting bail to both men – set at £50,000 (much of which was paid by actress and human rights campaigner Vanessa Redgrave) – the judge, Timothy Workman, dismissed prosecution claims that they would flee abroad or engage in terrorist acts, and declared, in El-Banna’s case, “The prosecution concerns about offences being committed are outweighed by the detailed review being carried out in the US.” He did, however, insist on tough bail conditions, including the imposition of a curfew, the use of electronic tagging and a prohibition on travelling abroad.

Outside the court, El-Banna, who appeared to have aged considerably during the five years of his imprisonment, made only a brief statement. “Thank you very much everybody, my solicitor, the British people, the British government for your help,” he said, adding, “I am tired, I want to go home and see my children,” before leaving in a car to be reunited with his wife and his five children. He has never seen his youngest child, who was born after his capture. His MP, Sarah Teather, who has campaigned assiduously for his release, said that “immense cruelty” had been inflicted on the family, who were only told at 8.30pm on Wednesday that he had been arrested and would not be coming home. “The children could not understand why he was not back and Sabah [his wife] was devastated,” she added. After meeting Mrs. El-Banna briefly outside the courtroom on Thursday morning, I can confirm that this was indeed the case.

Several hours later, Omar Deghayes also emerged from the court to be reunited with his family. Speaking later from his home in Brighton, he said, “I am very, very happy to be home. I am very grateful to everybody who has helped me. I would have been happier if everybody in Guantánamo were released and that ugly, bad place was closed down if not demolished.” He added, “I need some rest but I will be very happy to speak to everybody in the media to help other people to be released.”

Missing from the extradition discussions – in the media, if not amongst the lawyers – was the demonstrable weakness of the intelligence relating to the two other Guantánamo detainees whose extradition was requested by Judge Garzón in December 2003. Garzón’s motives were not in doubt. In an interview for Mother Jones in 2004, he explained to Tim Golden why he was opposed to the Americans’ approach to the “War on Terror,” and why he favoured “a multinational, legal approach over what he describe[d] as a ‘militaristic’ strategy of intelligence gathering, extrajudicial arrests, and military detention.” “What frightens me is when people start going beyond the limits of the law,” he said. “Taking the right to a defense away from those who are detained at Guantánamo. Establishing a license to kill terrorists. In this country, we know what it means to use this heavy hand. We know that when the fight against terrorism moves outside the law, it becomes very dangerous.”

As an example of Garzón’s legal approach to the post-9/11 world, Tim Golden observed that an indictment of Osama bin Laden that was issued by Garzón in autumn 2003, which was the first such document to charge bin Laden in connection with the 9/11 attack, “echoed his insistence that even the most terrible criminals on earth should be dealt with in courts of law.” Garzón also defended his extradition request for the four Guantánamo detainees – Jamil El-Banna, Omar Deghayes, Moroccan-born Lahcen Ikassrien, and Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, from the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, in north Africa – “arguing pointedly that the only standing charges against them were those he had filed in Spain.”

Despite Garzón’s enthusiasm for the law, however, when Lahcen Ikassrien and Hamed Ahmed were extradited from Guantánamo to Spain, at his request, the cases against them collapsed.

Ahmed, transferred in February 2004, had the dubious distinction of being the first Guantánamo detainee to be handed over to a foreign country for prosecution. Released on bail in July 2004, he was later put on trial and was sentenced to six years in prison in October 2005, although Garzón’s claims did not even figure in his trial. Instead, he was convicted based on allegations by the prosecution that he had travelled to Afghanistan in August 2001 to fight for the Taliban government, and had received religious and military training. However, in a momentous decision by the Spanish Supreme Court in July 2006, his sentence was dismissed. The Supreme Court ordered his immediate release, and said that the High Court had not considered him “innocent until proven guilty,” and had used evidence collected at Guantánamo that “should be declared totally void and, as such, non-existent,” adding that the High Court was “entirely remiss in its role of providing evidence.”

Ikassrien, transferred in July 2005, was released on his return, but was ordered to report daily to the police, and was prohibited from leaving the country without permission. When his trial came around, he, like Hamed Ahmed, had his case dismissed by the Supreme Court, which concluded, in October 2006, that there was no evidence to back up charges he was a member of al-Qaeda, stating, “It has not been proved that the accused Lahcen Ikassrien was part of a terrorist organization of Islamic fundamentalist nature, and more specifically, the al-Qaeda network created by [Osama] bin Laden.” Significantly, the Supreme Court’s judgment followed another momentous decision, four months before, to quash the conviction of Imad Yarkas, the lynchpin of the whole case against Hamed Ahmed, Lahcen Ikassrien, Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes, for conspiracy to commit murder in the 9/11 attacks, although his conviction for belonging to a terrorist organization was upheld.

With only these examples of failed prosecutions to draw upon, the position taken by the Spanish government is, frankly, incomprehensible. As Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes attempt to rebuild their shattered lives in the bosom of their families, it is to be hoped that their lawyers can draw compelling arguments from these cases – and from other examples of Spanish intelligence failures – before the extradition hearings begin on January 9, 2008.

Since 2005, a Philadelphia based cheese-steak bistro owner has been defending a signpost in his shop that said: “This is America, please order in English.” Not surprisingly, he was taken to court on grounds of discrimination, equating it to derogatory signs like “Whites Only”. No ruling has been given yet.

I wrote a post earlier about how surprising I found it that people barely speak English in a big, cosmopolitan capital city like Madrid. It triggered a debate over whether it’s necessary for big cities (where English isn’t the first language) to have basic knowledge of English, or not.

I think it is relative. In non-English speaking metropolises, as long as the tourists put in some effort, lack of basic English may not be an important day-to-day communication hindrance, but it is definitely a disadvantage in the larger scope of things. For example: Madrid is bidding to host the 2016 Olympics — surely the knowledge of English would play an important role there. How is China tackling that issue for next year’s games? Anyway, I digress.

What do you do in an English-speaking country when your customers don’t speak English? Do you put up a sign like our friend did? Hmmm, I don’t think so — it’s quite an insult. The sign reminded me of when the English ruled India and the “No Indians or Dogs” sign was not uncommon. Couldn’t they just be offered picture menus where they could point out what they wanted? Or what about bilingual menus?

Along with political challenges, the past year offered some hopeful advances– many of which came just in last few weeks.

Understanding what is wrong in our society; speaking out against injustice; denouncing abuses by the powerful. All of these are crucial tasks. Many of us devote a large part of the year to them, and they are certainly necessary if we are to create a better world.

At the same time, it is highly doubtful that these acts are sufficient. Creating positive social change takes more. It takes the knowledge that people can organize to win justice and an awareness that, even in inhospitable times, some things can go right. The holiday season provides an important moment to reflect on a few of those advances that offered hope in 2007-many of which came about just in the past few weeks.

In early December the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the NSA, released a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. The document may have single-handedly undermined the White House’s push to start yet another war in the Middle East. The report declared that Iran dropped its clandestine nuclear weapons program in 2003 and has not renewed it since. The NIE has greatly strengthened the hand of those in Washington-including many high-ranking military officials-who believe that a preemptive attack on Iran would be both unnecessary and disastrous. The NIE also solidified public opinion against military escalation and spawned a wide range of commentary denouncing the most recent round of Bush-Cheney war-mongering. The Washington Post, for one, editorialized that the report “strengthens the view, which we have previously endorsed, that this administration should not have to resort to military action to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities.”

Of course, efforts to stop a new war must continue. The NIE notwithstanding, U.S. relations with Iran remain tense, and the neoconservatives have recently been trying to regroup and articulate reasons why an attack would still be warranted. But their opponents can proceed from a much better position than before. So distraught are the far-right militarists that some have resorted to conspiracy theory: Neocon godfather and Giuliani advisor Norman Podhoretz recently voiced “dark suspicions” that the intelligence community was “leaking information calculated to undermine” President Bush.

Beyond Iran, 2007 witnessed a number of other critical shifts in policy debate. Whereas just a few years ago many public officials denied that global warming was even taking place, climate change is now almost universally regarded as one of humanity’s gravest challenges. The Nobel Committee trained a spotlight on this idea by awarding the Peace Prize to Al Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Upon formally receiving the award on December 10, Gore passionately decried global warming as a “threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential.” Just a week later, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, he went further by explicitly charging that “My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress” on climate policy–an unusually blunt acknowledgement which the conference attendees applauded energetically.

In their most serious drive in at least a decade to address this crisis and end U.S. dependency on foreign oil, Democrats have pushed a promising energy bill in Congress. The bill, which passed through the House on December 6, included what the New York Times calls “the first meaningful increase in fuel efficiency standards in three decades,” mandating that auto makers move from a standard of 25 miles per gallon (mpg) to 35 mpg by 2020. Due to a shameful filibuster by Senate Republicans and a threatened veto from the White House, two provisions from the original bill were removed from later versions: one would have required that at least 15 percent of the country’s electricity come from renewable alternative energy sources by 2020, while the other would have paid for this initiative by eliminating tax subsidies for oil companies. Despite these changes, the legislation marks a significant defeat for the big oil corporations and for the auto lobby. The rising public demand for action on clean energy suggests that this may be the first of many.

In another overdue but nevertheless important move, Congress passed a bill in May mandating a graduated increase in the federal minimum wage, raising it from $5.15 to $7.25–the first increase in 10 years. There were also some victories for working people on the grassroots level this year. In April, building on their 2005 victory against Taco Bell, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers won a campaign calling for McDonalds to demand that tomato growers it buys from increase wages for their farm workers. This increase will almost double wages for the workers, raising their pay from 40 cents to 72 cents per bucket of tomatoes picked. The agreement will also create a new code of conduct for labor relations and safeguard workers’ rights in future disputes. With their series of wins the Coalition of Immokalee Workers – made up of immigrant laborers who are traditionally among the most exploited in America – have provided some brilliant examples of the power of collective action.

There has also been a notable shift this year in the debate over the death penalty. On the national level, the movement to restrict capital punishment has been reinforced by actions at the Supreme Court. The Court has implemented a de facto moratorium since late September, ordering the halt of five scheduled executions while it deliberates on a case that will determine whether lethal injection constitutes a form of cruel and unusual punishment. Subsequently, on December 13, the New Jersey State legislature passed a bill outlawing capital punishment in the state, which Governor Jon Corzine signed into law the following week. New Jersey thus became the first state to abolish the death penalty since Iowa and West Virginia did so in 1965. David Fathi of Human Rights Watch argued that the move is “a very significant event for a state that has had the death penalty on its books for decades. It’s one more indication that the death penalty is on its way out in the United States.”

Advances in the global South also bode well. The rebellion in Latin America against the economics of corporate globalization continued in 2007, with governments in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela leading the march toward more progressive policies. In what ended up being a very positive development, Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez lost a public referendum on December 3 in a narrow 51-to-49 percent vote. Among other things, the constitutional amendments at issue would have abolished presidential term limits and centralized state power. Chávez graciously admitted defeat. Contrary to the hysterical voices in the mainstream press asserting that Venezuela had become a dictatorship, the referendum showed that the country’s democracy is robust and its public debate vigorous. From a progressive perspective, the referendum’s failure will encourage Chávez to broaden the leadership of his “Bolivarian revolution” and potentially pave the way for a new generation of activists to succeed him.

For Latin America as a whole, one of the most significant gains of the year was the creation of the Bank of the South. On December 6 representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela met in Buenos Aires to inaugurate the new bank, which will compete directly with Washington-controlled institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. In the past, these institutions were leaders in enforcing a fundamentalist brand of “free trade” neoliberalism-an economic model that has had terrible results in the region. Not only will the Bank of the South represent a critical step in the battle for regional self-determination, it will be free to support approaches to development that can effectively combat inequality and address the needs of the poor.

For those who have grown disheartened living under the reign of George W. Bush, such victories abroad are genuine markers of hope. We can cheer them just as heartily as we celebrate the signs of progress within the United States-and resolve to work for even greater gains in the New Year.