‘Good people’ don’t torture

Only monsters torture others. Americans are 'good people.' They are not monsters. Therefore Americans "don't torture," as President Bush made clear. Yet the historical record is now plain and unassailable: America did use torture as an interrogation-disciplinary technique. Moreover, as Frank Rich points out,

…we still shrink from the hardest truths and the bigger picture: that torture was a premeditated policy approved at our government's highest levels; that it was carried out in scenarios that had no resemblance to "24"; that psychologists and physicians were enlisted as collaborators in inflicting pain; and that, in the assessment of reliable sources like the F.B.I. director Robert Mueller, it did not help disrupt any terrorist attacks.

And:

Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to "protect" us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from "another 9/11," torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House's illegality.

Briefly put, the United States committed crimes against humanity (torture) in order to justify one fundamental war crime (the Iraq invasion) it committed in pursuit of its imperial ends. It did not commit these crimes against humanity in defense of the Republic or American democratic institutions, such as they are. They were not acts of self-defense. Rather they were just one specific tactic used to achieve imperial ends.

But are common Americans guilty of this crime? Yes they are, in some indistinct measure. They acquire their guilt because this criminal enterprise was put into effect by a democratic government; by definition the citizens of a democratic country are implicated in the crimes committed by their government since they have the institution powers needed to install the government that committed the crimes and the powers required to remove it before or after it commits the crimes.

Phillip Zimbardo, Stanley Milgram, Martin Niemöller and Hannah Arendt would not find this possibility — that normal folk commit or are complicit with these kinds of crimes — surprising. Neither malice nor indifference to suffering are uncommon properties among human beings. They are universally distributed.

The new pariah

Meet John Murtha (D-PA). He recently thought it wise to oppose President Bush's Iraq adventure. Now, though, his own party is clipping his wings and claws. There is a clearly visible object lesson in Murtha's tale for the rest of Congress.

WTO rejects protectionist policies

Surprise, surprise, surprise…

This was the position taken by World Trade Organization Director-General Pascal Lamy during a recent speech given at the Peterson Institute. Lamy was emphatic on the issue:

My point is that retreating from market opening is not a solution to the economic crisis. For countries that depend on trade and have specialized according to comparative advantage, a reversal of openness will impose significant costs on the economy. What is more, setting up new barriers to trade will be seen as protectionism and will risk retaliation from trade partners. One country's exports are another country's imports. Rather than reviving economies, the effect of this will be to worsen the global crisis.

Obama banned torture?

It appears he did not, according to Randolph Brickey writing for CampusProgress:

In fact, the President has not "banned" torture. Torture was illegal before President Bush came to office, through our incorporation of the Geneva Convention into domestic law. (This is to say nothing of centuries of American custom and tradition holding that torture is unconscionable and morally abhorrent.) Members of the Bush administration did not somehow "unban" torture; they simply chose to ignore the law. Torture has not become any more or less legal since Obama took office. Rather, he has chosen not to pretend it is legal, and his indication that he is open to prosecutions or investigations against the architects of the Bush administration's torture policies is a sign that all is not lost for those who want the law to be followed. But however he proceeds, the idea that he has "banned" it, and we can thus moves on, ignores both the severity of the crimes committed by those who tortured, and the grotesque abuses perpetrated upon terrorism detainees — both those who are innocent and those who are not.

Torture, it seems, is a matter of law, and not a policy choice a President may take when it suits him. In fact, as Marjorie Cohn makes clear, "Obama's intent to immunize those who violated our laws banning torture and cruel treatment violates the President's constitutional duty to 'take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.'" Thus investigating and prosecuting torturers would not violate the sacrosanct principle of avoiding the criminalizing policy differences. It would instead affirm the allegedly unassailable principle which requires the investigation, prosecution and punishment of criminal acts when it is right to do so. Brickey continues:

Obama and members of the press pretend that a step in the right direction is sufficient to fully address years of systematic human rights violations, or at least preferable to an actual public inquiry or criminal prosecution. The illusory ban is set up to take the place of actual enforcement and accountability, as though agreeing to follow the laws means the president has actually worked to changed them. This decision is couched in vague aphorisms of moving forward and stresses the importance avoiding division. But there is very little actual progress here, and it is difficult to imagine how this decision unifies the country when the majority of American support some form of investigation. Furthermore, enforcing our laws is not discretionary but a duty of the office. The President has the opportunity to protect these CIA agents and contractors through presidential pardon if he feels it just or necessary for the national well-being. Obstruction of justice is not a legitimate means towards that end.

A step forward is no accomplishment when it falls so far from reaching the mark required by the law of the land. The upshot: So far, President Obama has merely agreed to follow existing law, as Brickey rightly asserts, something the President was required to do as a matter of course. But that is not all of it. Till this point Obama's actions with respect to the Bush torture regime have only protected past lawbreakers while providing a bit of legal-political coverage for their crimes. With these dubious methods the President has actually conserved the Bush torture regime by securing the liberty of the torturers, by pushing against a legal investigation of their crimes and even by keeping torture available as a practical tool any administration may use when it deems it necessary. Conserving torture as a policy option is one malignant effect of Obama's unwillingness to investigate and prosecute Bush-era crimes. Only the vigorous investigation and prosecution of America's torturers will reverse this situation.

Chrysler heading towards bankruptcy court

This according to a New York Times article. The bankruptcy filing would protect the UAW and its pensions, according to the Times, and would prepare Chrysler for purchase by Fiat.

Naomi Klein on pest control

There's something about Larry

Sizing up the present moment along with one of its causes, Naomi Klein wants "…to banish Larry Summers…from public life." She would not go so far as to launch Summers into space or toss him into a nuclear reactor because doing either "…wouldn't be nice." Yet she does wish to deprive him of the power he often enjoys.

Her reasoning:

The criticisms of President Obama's chief economic adviser are well known. He's too close to Wall Street. And he's a frightful bully, of both people and countries. Still, we're told we shouldn't care about such minor infractions. Why? Because Summers is brilliant, and the world needs his big brain.

And this brings us to a central and often overlooked cause of the global financial crisis: Brain Bubbles. This is the process wherein the intelligence of an inarguably intelligent person is inflated and valued beyond all reason, creating a dangerous accumulation of unhedged risk. Larry Summers is the biggest Brain Bubble we've got.

Klein here identifies another instance of the misplaced adoration we moderns tend to have of mere technique and the powers contained therein. I say this because being smart like Larry Summers means having the capacities needed to ace tests and to make one's way up and through America's bureaucratized educational system; it surely does not mean the person identified as smart speaks the truth about anything at all. And it certainly does not indicate the smart person's willingness to speak truthfully when he or she does chat with the less able. More importantly, thoughts, no matter how well-formed, eloquently expressed and rationally grounded, are not identical to the matter they address. They are, even when they are at their best, representations of something they are not, something different, something non-identical. Consequently their truth content, assuming for the sake of the argument that they contain such content, may always be contested, and this possibility remains in effect even when they issue from qualified professionals with access to the best information and techniques.

Unfortunately post-war American history is dotted with the catastrophes generated by the "best and the brightest," "wise men," "masters of the universe," brilliant advisors of Presidents and others considered excellent and entitled to wield power. What this recent history, which has been decisively marked by a criminality born of America's messianic conceit, ought to teach us is this: Although a few among us are incredibly smart, their mere existence does not relieve us lesser souls of the responsibility to think and judge for ourselves, to make up our minds about what is the case and what ought to be the case. Giving these smart individuals power merely intensifies this burdensome responsibility on those who authorize this power. It does not unburden the comparatively powerless.

The economic crisis normalizes poverty

With the term normalize I wish to suggest that the current economic crisis is now transforming an enduring but largely disavowed phenomenon (homelessness) into something people can rightly anticipate, accept as inevitable and even fear as a possible fate they may suffer. The media have a role to play in this transformation, according to Rose Aguilar:

Over the past few months, reporters from around the world have flocked to the now-famous tent city in Sacramento, Calif. When they find out that 55-year-old John Kraintz has been living in a tent for almost seven years, they turn around and walk away.

"They don't want to talk to me," he says. "They're searching for people who just lost their homes. It's kinda tough to lose a home when you've never owned one. Sorry, but most of the people here have been homeless for a long time."

…

Kraintz and so many other homeless people like him have been living in scattered Sacramento encampments for years, but they've been largely ignored and hidden from public view. That is, until Lisa Ling, a reporter with the Oprah show, came to town in late February to focus on what Oprah Winfrey called the "new faces" of homelessness.

Myopia such as can be seen here is just one consequence that issues from the common distinction drawn between the "deserving" and "undeserving poor." Poverty — and thus homelessness — is but one of the essential features which characterize the American political economy. It was never acceptable because it was never unavoidable.

Another Chicago crime boss

Obama's neomercantilist moment in American history

This is my creative interpretation of Steven Lendman's recent judgment of Barack Obama:

Since taking office, Obama, wittingly or otherwise, has headed the largest criminal enterprise in history — the mass looting of national wealth to enrich his Wall Street benefactors. He assembled a rogue economic team of Clinton/Robert Rubin retreads — to fix the current crisis they engineered.

Send us your radioactive waste…

The United States poised to become Italy's nuclear waste dump

How is this possible? Who in the United States would import Italy's nuclear waste? Why would they do so? As for the how, according to an Associated Press report:

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it doesn't have the authority to prevent foreign radioactive waste from being imported into the United States.

So:

The NRC says that as long as the material can be imported safely and someone is willing to accept it, the commission can't keep the waste out.

The article provides the who: EnergySolutions. The why is obvious.

Americans, one may hope, are surely learning that globalization (worldwide economic and political integration) does not always work in their favor, as they were led to believe by the market fundamentalists who have lately dominated public discourse over these matters.

Obama stands with Israel

The requirements of empire prevail

The Washington Post tells us that:

The Obama administration appears to be standing by its decision to boycott the World Conference Against Racism next week in Geneva, despite efforts to focus and tone down language in a draft conference document viewed as hostile toward Israel.

The preliminary conference document ran 45 pages and called for reparations for slavery, condemned the "validation of Islamophobia," and asserted that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is grounded in racism.

In response to objections raised by negotiators from the Obama administration, the document has since been dramatically shortened and many of its sharp statements have been removed. Still, the administration seems uninterested in attending, stoking frustration among activist groups who have said that it is ironic that the nation's first black president would choose that course. [link added]

Apparently the United States could not tolerate even an empire-friendly version of this anti-racism document!

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said that although progress has been made in revising the draft text, concerns remain. "We hope that these remaining concerns will be addressed, so that the United States can reengage the conference negotiations in the hopes of arriving at a conference document that we can support," he said.

Clearly the United States opposes racism without qualification except in those instances where it benefits from racist attitudes and practices. Given this iron commitment, Obama's defense of Israel appears ironic only if the observer ignores America's long-standing commitment to Israel and Obama's sturdy dedication to the American political system. The President is, after all, a product of that system, and it would be imprudent to expect him to undermine a key element of that system, such as thoughtless support for Israel's imperial and genocidal policies.