Obama reply

Senator Obama's reply to an email I sent regarding news last week about keeping the Guantanamo prisoners in small boxes/cells for extended lengths of time.


Dear L__:

Thank you for contacting me regarding this Administration's use of inhumane interrogation practices. I appreciate knowing of your concerns.

This issue has been the subject of heated legal debate for quite some time now. The United States is a nation born out of a struggle against tyranny, and our Constitution asserts that the rule of law applies to all men and women, and all branches and agencies of government. Time and again, America has triumphed because of the sharp contrast we draw to tyranny. In those battles, our allegiance to our values and the rule of law has been our greatest weapon.

Today, we are engaged in a new kind of battle. And the debate in which we have been engaged since September 11, 2001, is how we are going to respond to the shadowy, stateless, terrorist enemies of the 21st century. Tragically, the Bush Administration has too often chosen to respond to this enemy by abandoning our greatest weapon, by ignoring the values and laws that it deems inconvenient. Violating international treaties we ratified and U.S. laws that protect us, the Bush Administration has used excessive secrecy, indefinite detention, warrantless wiretapping, and "enhanced interrogation techniques" like simulated drowning that qualify as torture under any reasonable reading of the law. For a nation with a history marked by the torture of hundreds of American soldiers in Vietnamese prisons, it is troubling to think that any lawmaker views the practice of torture as effective or justified.

When the Senate conducted debate on the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for FY 2006, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who endured years of torture as a POW during the Vietnam War, offered an amendment to the bill that requires all military interrogations to abide by the U.S. Army Field Manual’s standards for humane treatment and prohibits “cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of any prisoner detained by the U.S. You may be interested to know that the Army Field Manual 34-52, Chapter 1, explicitly states:

The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind is prohibited by law and is neither authorized nor condoned by the U.S. Government. Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation . . . as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear. . . . it also may place U.S. and allied personnel in enemy hands at greater risk.

We know that torture does not work. We know that torture violates our laws. And we know that when we detain suspects without trial or ship them off in the dead of night to countries where we know they’ll be tortured, we compromise our own security and weaken our ability to press for human rights and the rule of law in despotic regimes. On this issue, former Secretary of State Colin Powell concluded: “Torture is torture is torture. It is unacceptable. It is not the way you treat human beings.”

I was proud to vote for Senator McCain’s amendment, which passed by a vote of 90-9 with clear support from both political parties. I am also a proud co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill to restore habeas corpus rights, the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007 (S. 185). In light of the CIA’s confirmation that videotapes depicting brutal interrogation techniques were destroyed, I was heartened that the House and Senate passed the FY 2008 Intelligence Authorization bill and included a requirement that subjects CIA interrogators to the same guidelines included in the Army Field Manual. However, the President vetoed this legislation on March 8, and unfortunately the House failed to gather enough votes for a two-thirds majority to override the veto.

As you may know, on June 12, 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the habeas rights of the remaining detainees at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This recent decision is an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus. I commend the Court's decision, and will continue to advocate for oversight and inquiry into the Administration's detainee policy to ensure that the very values we are fighting to defend are protected and upheld.

L__, thank you again for writing. I hope you will stay in touch.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

United States Senator

Why not an airlift for Burma?

This article was interesting and helped answer a question I had about it myself... why not just drop food in an airlift?

" Oxfam and other agencies have well-trained disaster specialists ready and waiting to go. The Burmese authorities must allow them in to do their job. However until that happens, calls for air drops must be resisted. They will make good television and fulfil the need to do something - anything - to help relieve the suffering in Burma.
But air drops are expensive, inefficient and not the best way to help desperate people on the ground. "

But the comments at the bottom of the link offer a lot of good contrarian reasons to do SOMETHING.

Myanmar / Burma: disaster x disaster

Help is needed! and it appears its not getting through. Just sent this Amnesty form email and also printed out a letter to mail there... but by the time they get it -it will probably be TOO late.
This "junta" government or whatever you want to call it is EVIL.

While Snr-Gen Than Shwe and the top generals selectively pick and choose what aid to accept from foreign nations, they are stalling on issuing visas to the UN and other international aid workers.

The UN said the junta’s refusal to allow foreign aid workers into the country was "unprecedented" in the history of humanitarian work, even as survivors of a devastating cyclone waited for food, shelter and medicine. Observers said Than Shwe is making all the major decisions about foreign aid workers. Eric John, the US ambassador to Thailand, said that if the junta delays visa application to aid workers one more day, more people will die.

I sent an email also earlier today to my former colleague Allan M. who is Burmese. He lives in San Francisco. I hope his family is OK. What a tragedy!

neocons and Iran

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com
scary,... note to self:" pay attention this time "

"The neoconservative war-lovers behind this effort have not changed, nor have their tactics. They realize, as many of them acknowledge, that they will have four more years in power if John McCain is elected. But they also realize that he may not be, and that their last hope for their long-desired attack on Iran lies in convincing the current administration to provoke one before its tenure ends. As much as one wishes it weren't true, as much as the fixation on petty election issues might obscure it, the truly depraved extremist group that brought us the invasion of Iraq still exerts substantial influence and is quite busy trying to exert it."
.....
"And now, magically up pops these new reports from Israel warning that the deadline to stop Iran's nuclear bomb is the end of the year -- right before George Bush leaves office. Bush has less than eight months left to fulfill his history-mandated mission "to prevent another holocaust" by attacking Iran, or else "be in the historical dock if he allows Iran to get the bomb." They're as transparent as they are dishonest and bloodthirsty."

Geneva Conventions

Andrew Sullivan has a great post on the continuing Torture Watch

" Moreover, even after attempts by the Court and the Congress to rein in these methods - which were once prosecuted by the US as war-crimes - the president continued to defend, use and advance violations of Common Article Three in violation of the law and the Constitution. In the last week, we have also learned the following: that some Gitmo inmates have testified to being injected with some kind of substance
....
We have also discovered that the president is still insisting that he has the power to violate Geneva at will on a case-by-case basis, rendering the rule of law moot and the Constitution toothless.
....
We also know that the torture and interrogation camp at Guantanamo Bay has become for many of its inmates the functional equivalent of a lunatic asylum"

RTWT for links and examples.

update on military contractor abuses

Update on Previous Post:

I received this reply today from Senator Durbin:

April 25, 2008


Ms. L___Z____
_____

Dear Ms. Z___:

Thank you for contacting me regarding alleged sexual assaults by military contractors working in Iraq. I appreciate hearing from you and share your concerns.

Private military contractors, including roughly 180,000 in Iraq, are involved in U.S. military operations ranging from security and logistics to transportation and the feeding of our troops. As you know, there have been reports of sexual violence by some employees of these contractors. Other reckless behavior also has been reported, including military contractor involvement in a large number of civilian deaths and injuries.

In the course of the war in Iraq, it has been difficult to bring
contractors who may have committed crimes to trial. The laws that govern contractors are not clear, and they are not bound by the United States Military's Code of Conduct. If our military is to rely so heavily on private companies, a much more credible system of oversight must be put in place. The U.S. government must be able to hold accountable any military contractor who commits a sexual assault or any other brutal crime, no matter where it occurs.

I am a cosponsor of S. 674, the Transparency and Accountability in
Military and Security Contracting Act of 2007, which was introduced by Senator Barack Obama. This measure would make it easier to bring contractor employees to justice if they are involved in wrongdoing. It also would direct the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to issue rules of engagement regarding the use of force by contractor personnel and require the FBI to establish Theater Investigative Units to investigate allegations of misconduct by contractor personnel. In addition, the bill would require much stricter reporting about federal military and security contracts being performed in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and it would set standards for the hiring, training and equipping of
contractors.

The Transparency and Accountability in Military and Security Contracting Act has been referred to the Senate Armed Services
Committee. Although I am not a member of this committee, I will keep your thoughts in minds as steps are taken to bring this legislation to the floor of the Senate for a vote.

Thank you for taking the time to contact me. Please feel free to stay in touch.

Sincerely,


Richard J. Durbin
United States Senator

RJD/ds

No Justice for Crimes in Iraq by contractors

(Update 4/11: Here's a link to put a face to a name.
More links here, here and here )

AArrgh. This is painful to read. Another KBR contractor (this one from Illinois) is raped in Iraq by a soldier and another contractor.

Prosecutorial jurisdiction for crimes like the alleged rape of Jones is easily established under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act and the Patriot Act's special maritime and territorial jurisdiction provisions. But somebody has to want to prosecute the cases.

Horton wonders what the 200 Justice Department employees and contractors stationed in Iraq do all day, noting that there has not been a single completed criminal conviction against a US contractor implicated in a violent crime anywhere in Iraq since the invasion.


(h/t dailykos)

I just wrote an email to my senators, Durbin and Obama:

Dear Senator Durbin:

Can you please help this lady, Dawn Leamon? Long story short, she is an Illinoisian, a paramedic, who was raped in January by a KBR defense contractor and US soldier while in Iraq working for KBR. I read this whole article with tears in my eyes

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080421/houppert

Because she carries the health insurance, and her husband has had a stroke and needs the health insurance, and she is languishing in a netherworld of NO ACTION by THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT on any abuse cases that have occurred in Iraq by contractors, she actually has to contemplate returning to this lawless hell-hole in Iraq. What a horrible choice! (BTW, her son is also serving in Iraq)

You need to press the Justice Department to start prosecuting these cases!!!!

We need affordable and PORTABLE health care so people don’t have to make these horrible choices!!

Best Regards,
L__Z___

Kennedy family historic endorsement x 2

interesting historical context (in The Guardian, by Elana Schor) between the Kennedy's and Obama's:

The bond began with Kenyan labour leader Tom Mboya, an advocate for African nationalism who helped his country gain independence in 1963. In the late 1950s, Mboya was seeking support for a scholarship program that would send Kenyan students to US colleges - similar to other exchanges the US backed in developing nations during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Mboya appealed to the state department. When that trail went cold, he turned to then-senator Kennedy.

Kennedy, who chaired the senate subcommittee on Africa, arranged a $100,000 grant through his family's foundation to help Mboya keep the program running.

"It was not a matter in which we sought to be involved," Kennedy said in an August 1960 senate speech. "Nevertheless, Mr Mboya came to see us and asked for help, when none of the other foundations could give it, when the federal government had turned it down quite precisely. We felt something ought to be done."

One of the first students airlifted to America was Barack Obama Sr, who married a white Kansas native named Ann Dunham during his US studies. Their son, born in 1961 and named for his father, has only once mentioned his Kennedy connection on the campaign trail.

"[T]he Kennedys decided: 'We're going to do an airlift,'" senator Obama said during a March speech in Selma, Alabama. "We're going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is. This young man named Barack Obama [Sr] got one of those tickets and came over to this country."

Very cool. "Full circle" as they say.... Yesterday Ted and Caroline Kennedy endorsed him.

George Piro

I saw this interview on 60 minutes last night, an interview with the FBI agent who interviewed Saddam Hussein after he was captured - for 7 months!

For a man who drew America into two wars and countless military engagements, we never knew what Saddam Hussein was thinking. But you are going to hear more than has ever been revealed before.

After his capture, Saddam met every day with one man, an American he knew as "Mr. George." George is FBI agent George Piro, who was the front man for a team of FBI and CIA analysts who were trying to answer some of the great mysteries of recent history. What happened to the weapons of mass destruction? Was Saddam in league with al Qaeda? Why did he choose war with the United States?

As they say, hindsight is 20/20, but gee I really wish we knew more of what Saddam was thinking and doing before we invaded.

Watch it!

This part is so striking:

He told me that most of the WMD had been destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the '90s. And those that hadn't been destroyed by the inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq," Piro says.

"So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk, why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade?" Pelley asks.

"It was very important for him to project that because that was what kept him, in his mind, in power. That capability kept the Iranians away. It kept them from reinvading Iraq," Piro says.

So it boils down to who Saddam was most afraid of, Iran or the US. Apparently Iran. Go figure. Also... the video says that Saddam's own reason to invade Kuwait was because of an insult the Emir of Kuwait (al- sabah?) made to the Iraqi Prime Minister that he wouldn't stop taking their disputed oil "until he turned every Iraqi woman into a $10 prostitute" (!!) Way to go guys! Must respond to stupid provocations by starting a war whereby hundreds of 1000's of those women will eventually die. Ugh. Machismo did not die with Saddam unfortunately. (sound familiar Mr. Bush?)

I have my own personal theories about how this relates to middle-eastern men in particular having a genetic defect/inability to "lose face" -even if it means the loss of the lives of their countrymen ( or in my Tunisian ex-husband's case - -losing his family by divorce). Grand over-generalization I know, every culture has this to some degree, but since its my blog and no one reads it anyway, there you go!

That said, since my weakness was revealed two sentences ago for the exotic mediterranean type, boy was I glad to see Arab-Americans in a positive light in such a high profile role. And yes indeed I found Mr. Piro to be one very handsome G-Man. Hubada Hubada ;~) Yum....with a great smile. If I could, I would invite him over to say "thank you" with some baklava and mint tea with pine nuts ;~)

Wombs for rent - really!

Creepy Crawlies ... I just had one of those "I had NO idea THIS was happening" moments reading this.... so sad. I think Judith Warner is a really good writer. I loved her last book (Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety) and recommended it to all my friends and bookclub group several years ago. I'll add her to my favorites.

" Because what’s going on in India – where surrogacy is estimated now to be a $445-million-a-year business — feels like a step toward the kind of insane dehumanization that filled the dystopic fantasies of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and Margaret Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale.” (One “medical tourism” website, PlanetHospital.com, refers to the Indian surrogate mother as a mere “host.”) Images of pregnant women lying in rows, or sitting lined up, belly after belly, for medical exams look like industrial outsourcing pushed to a nightmarish extreme.

I say “feels like” and “look like” because I can’t quite bring myself to the point of saying “is.” And in this, I think, I am right in the mainstream of American thought on the topic of surrogate motherhood"

Read the Marie Claire article too by Abigail Haworth! I find my predjudice raising against busy mom's-to-be who either forgot or were too busy when they were younger. I think that is different situation than say a woman who has had a hysterectomy early-on because of some medical condition or genetic situation. I think I could understand the overwhelming desire for a child of one's own, but not in the same desperate way I would if for example it was a life-and-death issue, like if you needed a heart or kidney transplant or you are going to die. There are a lot of issues here that relate to BioMedical Ethics. But its also a matter of educating young women ( the premise I think of Judith's book) that you really cannot have everything you want when you want it -especially here in America, Motherhood is just not supported socially by the government -early OR late. So people wait, until they are better off financially. If you want something badly enough, you might have to settle for Mr. Average in your late 20's instead of waiting 15 years for George Clooney to be available when YOU think you are ready in your mid-30's. Or don't have kids at all. Or Adopt when you feel like you'd be "read-ier", but don't wait too long there either or the birth mom's will think you're too old.

On the other hand, those women surrogates in India are really in a bad situation too. Some worse than others. One surrogate in the article was doing this so she could provide a dowry for her daughters to have a good marriage- even though dowries are supposed to be illegal in India! I think women are doing this for both good and bad reasons on both sides -desperation on both sides - to fulfill an economic necessity or a biological desire, or even an expectation of "completeness" of family size.

I can't imagine that I'd ever be that desperate to have my "own" baby. Maybe I would have been... I don't know. That said, from the little I know about adoption, it sounds like there is so much paperwork, money, and time needed for that too. I should ask my neighbor L. about this. She went through in vitro a lot of times. I'm so glad they ended up with S. 13 yrs ago! She's J's best friend. They are the best parents too- I'm so lucky to have them as neighbors!

Prof McCoy- War on Drugs + War on Terror

Today when I ran out for lunch, I heard most of a previous interview on the WBEZ Worldview. Jerome McDonnel was talking to a Prof. Alfred McCoy from the Univ Wisconsin about the heroin trade, and specifically how the CIA's actions to get warlord help in Laos during Vietnam helped set up the process whereby ~30% of the US soldiers ended up being hooked on heroin. He also spoke about how the same geopolitics in Afganistan (set up while the Russians were fighting the Taliban, and then after we started bombing in 2001- ) set it up so now they supply 90% of the world's supply- they have no other agricluture or cash crop.

FUBAR!! - The War against Drugs and War against Terror are at odds with each other it seems. The Prof was also advocating decriminalization of drugs to remove the higher-priced demand. That would change economics of the supply, and not make it so lucrative to grow drugs in the first place.

I did some googling and it he has also recently wrote a book on the History of CIA interrogation and torture practices. Here is a really interesting video interview with him from back in Feb 06 with DemocracyNow.Org. I wish I would have seen this earlier. I'm going to add his book to my reading list.

Extra reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Commissions_Act_of_2006
So now I'm not sure if the US Consitution guarantees habeus corpus or not?????

Good news -update on "Girl from al-Qatif"

Regarding an earlier post about the rape victim in Saudi Arabia. Good news: The king has pardonned her.

So I think its safe to say that international outcry works! I hope my letters had some small part to help in this:

The case sparked international outcry, especially after the court more than doubled the sentence last month to 200 lashes and six months prison in response to her appeal.

Or at least it did in this case. I think this is a major advantage of the ability of news to spread far and wide so quickly. Injustice like this just can't be hidden in a closet ( or jail cell - to be less figurative). There is a video link on that page with journalist Lisa Myer's report, that features two women human rights activists, including one from AI. If the "rulers" in a backward country have even ONE shred of decency, there is always hope that you can appeal to that one shred, and keep them from thinking of themselves as outside the court of public opinion.

Yeah!

Amnesty Global Write-A-Thon - 7 Letters

December 10, 1948

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights


Written and stamped today, regarding 5 issues and cc'd to the Embassies.

Sami al Hajj, USA/Guantánamo

Fathi el-Jahmi, Libya

Ma Khin Khin Leh, Myanmar

Shi Tao, China

Peacekeepers for Darfur

Burma

Email from Avaaz.org today:

French oil giant Total (which also owns ELF and FINA) and U.S.-based Chevron (which also owns Texaco, Caltex an Unocal) have been operating the Yadana natural gas pipeline in southern Burma since the early '90s.The junta takes in an estimated $450 million a year from the Yadana project alone--and uses that money to maintain its brutal control, while most people in Burma live in dire poverty. To keep their profits flowing, Chevron and Total lobby hard in the U.S. and Europe against government measures to support a democratic transition in Burma.For companies like this, it's all about the bottom line. We must show them that if they keep backing the Burmese dictatorship, they will lose their customers--by the tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands, even by the millions.

Here's Total's response from their website.

Ugh, I wish we didn't have to buy gas At ALL

"The Coup at Home"

Frank Rich NYT
" We are a people in clinical depression. Americans know that the ideals that once set our nation apart from the world have been vandalized, and no matter which party they belong to, they do not see a restoration anytime soon. "

Re Pakistan: I was feeling exactly this last week. Depression. I decided to join Amnesty International's letter writing campaign (Urgent Action network). This was on their list for last week. I went to the post office on 11/6 and bought $48 worth of 90 cent international stamps so I will have all the supplies to send letters to dictators to voice my displeasure at their actions whenever the mood strikes me. (So there!!) So I copied their suggestions for letters, made a template and sent them to President Pervez Musharraf, the Minister for the Interior, the Minister of Law, Justice and Human Rights, and copies of these 3 to the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington DC. I don't really have any dillusion of grandeur about the effectiveness of ONE letter from me asking them to not harm the HR actvisits they have put under house arrest, but I do believe that there is a really small chance thousands of letters from across the world may make a difference. I hope so... anyway it makes me feel better.