The true goal of torture by the United States government is not the acquisition of intelligence which can save lives. That is an established fact. From its inception, the CIA has been conducting experiments (under programs such as BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, and MKULTRA) to see if it can create a "Manchurian Candidate". Such programs used methods amounting to torture to reduce people to a state of infantile dependence so that a new identity and memory could be implanted in them by means of narco-hypnosis. The techniques they used, such as electroconvulsive treatment or ECT, severe sensory deprivation, and mind control drugs including LSD, have no conceivable use in genuine interrogation, that is to say, the quest for truth. They were used instead to create falsehood: a false identity, false memories, false confessions. The argument that during the Cold War, they served a legitimate purpose in creating the "perfect spy", are easily answered by the rhetorical question, "Would any self-respecting CIA officer voluntarily submit himself to such a regime in order to conduct more effective espionage?" Of course not. As I have argued in preceding blogs, and as is clear from Alfred McCoy's A Question of Torture and Colin Ross' The CIA Doctors, these methods were designed to be used against unwilling victims in order to make them into whatever our government wanted them to be. Recent evidence that Mohammed Al Qahtani, a member of the Guantánamo Six and client of the Center for Constitutional Rights, was subjected to this regime emerges from the fact that, according to a CCR factsheet, IV injections were forcibly administered to him during interrogation, a clear indication that he had been drugged and probably hypnotized. Of course he would not remember what he felt or experienced as a result of those injections, for the creation of amnesia surrounding the implantation of false memories is one of the goals of the CIA's PSYWAR program. The Guantánamo Six and their fellow-prisoners are probably the modern equivalent of "Manchurian candidates": CIA-manufactured terrorists.
Why is it then that the anti-torture movement persists in maintaining that torture "doesn't work"? For indeed that is the constant refrain of organizations such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. Quite obviously torture works if one's goal is an evil one. And if the goal of torture by our government is not the acquisition of intelligence, then the argument that "torture doesn't work" for that purpose is quite irrelevant. Not only that, it gives our opponents far too much credit in assuming that they are simply overzealous interrogators angry about the events of 9/11 and desperate to ferret out facts which will prevent another such catastrophe. In fact, they are far more sinister than that, as evil as Hitler and vastly more powerful and cunning. Why will anti-torture activists not face this reality? I think because of their background in the tradition of pacifism and civil disobedience. Ingrained in many people of my generation is the notion that if they themselves behave morally, they can somehow shame their opponents into doing the same. This requires opponents which have a conscience and a basic sense of decency. To recognize that the opponents we are facing today have neither is to realize that whether we are sincere or insincere, whether we approach them in a nonviolent manner or with Molotov cocktails, whether we aim at the restoration of the U.S. Constitution or the erection of some secular or religious utopia, they will be equally likely to target us as they have anyone who opposes them. And that is a frightening possibility.
The U.S. executive branch as it exists today is the most powerful government which has ever existed. In addition to the most sophisticated methods of drawing forth false confessions, it also possesses the most lethal arsenal of weapons of mass destruction-- nuclear, space, and other weapons (such as scalar) which most people have never heard of. Thus it represents the most dangerous force with which the mankind has ever had to contend. Every conscientious individual in the world, and every nation which has any self-respect, has to live with the fact that it is faced with a terrible choice. It can kowtow to this force and lose all its freedom and dignity, in the process permitting the outrageous abuses to continue. Or it can oppose it, at the risk of essentially committing suicide. That is to say, the nation which fights back against the United States will most likely be destroyed, and the individual-- American or foreign, who opposes its government will be killed or forced to take his own life lest he be subject to its tortures. This is a prospect that most human rights activists today evidently cannot face. And if they do not face it, they will inevitably lose. In order to win, they must face the fact that they may have to give up their lives. For in our fight against the face of the perfect totalitarianism which is taking shape in this country-- more effective than that of the Nazis or the Stalinists-- death can be a victory. As O'Brien says in Orwell's 1984: "We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we can never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. Even in the instant of death we cannot permit any deviation." When I first read this as a teenager in the nineteen-sixties (I have read it many times since), I vowed that if I were ever faced with such a situation I would essentially stage a kamikaze attack upon Big Brother, fighting back in a manner which would ensure my instant death, so that the forces of repression could not transform me into a turncoat of their own making. And I still think that is the best solution.
This is not that we necessarily have to die. But we must be prepared to do so because our enemy is utterly vicious, ruthless and without scruple. This is war, and as much as one wishes to live, in a war one must be prepared to die. Pollyannish and pacifistic notions of "shaming" one's opponents into reform will only earn their laughter. They could not be happier when their opponents stick to the tired old argument that "torture does not work" because then they know that they have succeeded in deceiving them as to their true purpose. They also know that it works very well if the goal is to produce an empty shell of a human being into which they can pour their own filth. Let us make it clear that we are wise to them, and intend to fight the real enemy with every means at our disposal, not set up some innocuous "straw man" in order to reassure ourselves. If the choice is between arguing ineffectually against torture and thus ensuring our continued survival, and waging an effective battle against the Monster in Washington DC at the risk of our lives, let us choose to fight and die free!!!
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
HOW TO CREATE A TERRORIST: A Review of Colin Ross, M.D., The CIA Doctors
The stated aim of The CIA Doctors by Colin Ross, M.D. is an excellent and much-needed one: "to prove that the Manchurian Candidate is fact, not fiction, ...and that "the creation of controlled disassociation was a major goal of mind control research." (p. 10) As he says, he is not a conspiracy theorist and has no axe to grind against the CIA: his concern is that his fellow psychiatrists, including some of the most prestigious individuals and medical schools in the country, have violated and are violating their Hippcratic Oath by their participation in the unethical programs of the CIA and other intelligence agencies. A case in point is the eminent psychiatrist G.H. Estabrooks, the only participant who actually admitted-- indeed boasted-- that he was able to create totally new and programmed personalities: as he said, "The key to creating an effective spy or assassin rests in splitting a man's personality, or creating multipersonality, with the aid of hypnotism... This is not science fiction. This has and is being done. I have done it." (p. 151). There is however one major problem with this book. It was orginally written in 2000, and when Dr. Ross revised it in 2006, he did not add any new material to speak of. Thus the connection between the experiments carried out by the CIA during the Cold War and the treatment of detainees in the so-called "War on Terror" is not made explicit, as it is in Alfred McCoy's A Question of Torture: CIA Methods of Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Yet the similarity between the way that "Manchurian candidates" were created during the Cold War and terrorist suspects are being treated today is striking.
Take for example, Mohammed Al Qahtani, one of the "Guantánamo Six" on trial for his life under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Mr. Al Qahtani is one of the few terrorist suspects who have been permitted to have civilian lawyers, in his case from the progressive Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). A CCR information paper on Al Qahtani lists the abuses to which he has been subjected, in a manner which is at times a bit confusing. For instance, he is described as having been subjected to "forced administration of numerous IVs during interrogation." Is it really possible that his captors thought that Al Qahtani would be severely affected by merely being poked repeatedly with hypodermic needles? Having myself been a victim of forced drugging and drug-induced torture, I could not help but wonder when I read this, "What was in those hypodermic needles?" One passage in The CIA Doctors was invaluable in answering that question. It concerns "interrogations" (I shall put this word in quotes whenever the aim does not appear to be the acquisition of intelligence) of various individuals, under the CIA program ARTICHOKE. During these so-called "interrogations", subjects were given unspecified chemicals intravenously. Then, to quote a CIA document, "1. A false memory was introduced into the subject's mind without his conscious control of the process, which took 15 to 20 minutes. 2. The procedure was repeated, this time taking 40 to 45 minutes. 3. The procedure was repeated again with interrogation added." (p. 39)
The possibility that Al Qahtani may have been subjected to the same regime is reinforced by the fact that both the ARTICHOKE victims and Al Qahtani were subjected to repeated strip searches, extreme solitary confinement, sleep and food deprivation, and exposure to severe cold. Abuses up to and including torture have a definite role to play in the creation of a new identity, whether that of a "Manchurian Candidate" or terrorist. That is to say, they are part of the process of depatterning. As Ross says, in the first phase of the creation of a new personality, the subject is depatterned, which means they are reduced to a vegetable state through a combination of massive amounts of electroconvulsive shocks, drug-induced sleep and sensory isolation and deprivation. When fully depatterned, patients are incontinent of urine and feces, unable to feed themselves, and unable to state their name, age, location, or the current date (p. 124) As O'Brien says to Winston in 1984, "We will empty you and fill you with ourselves." It is after this depatterning that the narco-hypnotic process begins, and the subject acquires a new identity and memory. The new identity could make subjects commit violent crimes which they had no natural inclination for, as well as confessing to ones they did not commit. For instance, one woman subject of CIA experimentation who was afraid of firearms was induced to shoot another subject with a gun she believed was loaded. Others were able to set off time-bombs at the mere mention of a particular code-word. (pp. 46-47)
Of course, the fact that the subject has acquired a new identity has to be hidden from the subject himself or herself. One of the most puzzling things to anyone who has done research on CIA abuses is why an agency charged with the acquisition of intelligence would take an interest in procedures, such as electroconvulsive treatment (ECT), which are notorious for producing amnesia. The explanation is to be found in the following CIA document, quoted by Ross: "Quite often amnesia occurs for events just prior to the convulsion, during the convulsion and during the post-seizure period. It is possible that hypnosis or hypnotic activity induced during the post-seizure state might be lost in amnesia. This would be very valuable." Interrogation, including torture, was often conducted after the experiments, simply to determine if the amnesia surrounding the implanted memory could be breached. (p. 49) In other words, our government might be taking completely innocent individuals, reducing them to a vegetable state through torture, giving them a new identity as a terrorist by means of narco-hypnosis, and then torturing them again in order to see if they believe in this new identity enough to confess, not just to their torturers, but when they are trotted out before the public. Someone like Al Qahtani would have no recollection of the introduction of a false memory through chemicals and hypnosis any more than the subjects of ARTICHOKE did. Victims of ARTICHOKE methods believed the memories implanted in their minds were real to the extent that they could even pass lie-detector tests regarding them. (pp. 38-42)
As Alfred McCoy has stated in A Question of Torture, these CIA methods have "metastasized" to other segments of our government, for instance the military which runs Guantánamo. Given this fact, and the similarity of the treatment meted out to suspects in the "War on Terror" to those subjected to CIA experiments, it is easy to see why the Guantánamo Six are to be tried by military commissions which ignore all established rules of due process. If they were to be tried by a normal civilian court, their testimony would have to be dismissed as unreliable, not simply because they have been tortured, but because they have been subjected to what the CIA calls PSYWAR. Whereas traditional methods of interrogation, whether they employ torture or not, aim at the discovery of truth, PSYWAR aims at the creation of falsehood-- false confessions, false identities, false attribution of violent crimes (such as 9/11). To the inhumanity of torture it adds the supreme indignity of robbing an individual of his or her own free will. Men like Al Qahtani are victims of trauma beyond what most of us can imagine and completely unfit to stand trial before any court. If they were guilty, they could have been tried years ago and, even if they had been roughed up a bit, convicted to the applause of nearly everyone. As it is they have been psychologically maimed to the point that we will never know the truth. And these six have undoubtedly been chosen because they are the ones with whom PSYWAR has been the most successful-- what indescribable horrors are being inflicted upon those who are still holding out against it?
The trial of the Guantánamo Six is a travesty of justice, not simply because the military commissions violate constitutional safeguards of due process, but because the minds of the accused have been tampered with. Certainly they have been victims of torture, and one can see in the types of tortures to which they have been subjected all the earmarks of PSYWAR. Given the widespread involvement of politicians, military men, intelligence specialists, medical personnel and pharmacists enjoying the utmost power and prestige in this outrage, one can only conclude that the real agent of terrorism in this world lies not in the Muslim world-- even that of Muslim extremists-- but in our own society.
Take for example, Mohammed Al Qahtani, one of the "Guantánamo Six" on trial for his life under the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Mr. Al Qahtani is one of the few terrorist suspects who have been permitted to have civilian lawyers, in his case from the progressive Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). A CCR information paper on Al Qahtani lists the abuses to which he has been subjected, in a manner which is at times a bit confusing. For instance, he is described as having been subjected to "forced administration of numerous IVs during interrogation." Is it really possible that his captors thought that Al Qahtani would be severely affected by merely being poked repeatedly with hypodermic needles? Having myself been a victim of forced drugging and drug-induced torture, I could not help but wonder when I read this, "What was in those hypodermic needles?" One passage in The CIA Doctors was invaluable in answering that question. It concerns "interrogations" (I shall put this word in quotes whenever the aim does not appear to be the acquisition of intelligence) of various individuals, under the CIA program ARTICHOKE. During these so-called "interrogations", subjects were given unspecified chemicals intravenously. Then, to quote a CIA document, "1. A false memory was introduced into the subject's mind without his conscious control of the process, which took 15 to 20 minutes. 2. The procedure was repeated, this time taking 40 to 45 minutes. 3. The procedure was repeated again with interrogation added." (p. 39)
The possibility that Al Qahtani may have been subjected to the same regime is reinforced by the fact that both the ARTICHOKE victims and Al Qahtani were subjected to repeated strip searches, extreme solitary confinement, sleep and food deprivation, and exposure to severe cold. Abuses up to and including torture have a definite role to play in the creation of a new identity, whether that of a "Manchurian Candidate" or terrorist. That is to say, they are part of the process of depatterning. As Ross says, in the first phase of the creation of a new personality, the subject is depatterned, which means they are reduced to a vegetable state through a combination of massive amounts of electroconvulsive shocks, drug-induced sleep and sensory isolation and deprivation. When fully depatterned, patients are incontinent of urine and feces, unable to feed themselves, and unable to state their name, age, location, or the current date (p. 124) As O'Brien says to Winston in 1984, "We will empty you and fill you with ourselves." It is after this depatterning that the narco-hypnotic process begins, and the subject acquires a new identity and memory. The new identity could make subjects commit violent crimes which they had no natural inclination for, as well as confessing to ones they did not commit. For instance, one woman subject of CIA experimentation who was afraid of firearms was induced to shoot another subject with a gun she believed was loaded. Others were able to set off time-bombs at the mere mention of a particular code-word. (pp. 46-47)
Of course, the fact that the subject has acquired a new identity has to be hidden from the subject himself or herself. One of the most puzzling things to anyone who has done research on CIA abuses is why an agency charged with the acquisition of intelligence would take an interest in procedures, such as electroconvulsive treatment (ECT), which are notorious for producing amnesia. The explanation is to be found in the following CIA document, quoted by Ross: "Quite often amnesia occurs for events just prior to the convulsion, during the convulsion and during the post-seizure period. It is possible that hypnosis or hypnotic activity induced during the post-seizure state might be lost in amnesia. This would be very valuable." Interrogation, including torture, was often conducted after the experiments, simply to determine if the amnesia surrounding the implanted memory could be breached. (p. 49) In other words, our government might be taking completely innocent individuals, reducing them to a vegetable state through torture, giving them a new identity as a terrorist by means of narco-hypnosis, and then torturing them again in order to see if they believe in this new identity enough to confess, not just to their torturers, but when they are trotted out before the public. Someone like Al Qahtani would have no recollection of the introduction of a false memory through chemicals and hypnosis any more than the subjects of ARTICHOKE did. Victims of ARTICHOKE methods believed the memories implanted in their minds were real to the extent that they could even pass lie-detector tests regarding them. (pp. 38-42)
As Alfred McCoy has stated in A Question of Torture, these CIA methods have "metastasized" to other segments of our government, for instance the military which runs Guantánamo. Given this fact, and the similarity of the treatment meted out to suspects in the "War on Terror" to those subjected to CIA experiments, it is easy to see why the Guantánamo Six are to be tried by military commissions which ignore all established rules of due process. If they were to be tried by a normal civilian court, their testimony would have to be dismissed as unreliable, not simply because they have been tortured, but because they have been subjected to what the CIA calls PSYWAR. Whereas traditional methods of interrogation, whether they employ torture or not, aim at the discovery of truth, PSYWAR aims at the creation of falsehood-- false confessions, false identities, false attribution of violent crimes (such as 9/11). To the inhumanity of torture it adds the supreme indignity of robbing an individual of his or her own free will. Men like Al Qahtani are victims of trauma beyond what most of us can imagine and completely unfit to stand trial before any court. If they were guilty, they could have been tried years ago and, even if they had been roughed up a bit, convicted to the applause of nearly everyone. As it is they have been psychologically maimed to the point that we will never know the truth. And these six have undoubtedly been chosen because they are the ones with whom PSYWAR has been the most successful-- what indescribable horrors are being inflicted upon those who are still holding out against it?
The trial of the Guantánamo Six is a travesty of justice, not simply because the military commissions violate constitutional safeguards of due process, but because the minds of the accused have been tampered with. Certainly they have been victims of torture, and one can see in the types of tortures to which they have been subjected all the earmarks of PSYWAR. Given the widespread involvement of politicians, military men, intelligence specialists, medical personnel and pharmacists enjoying the utmost power and prestige in this outrage, one can only conclude that the real agent of terrorism in this world lies not in the Muslim world-- even that of Muslim extremists-- but in our own society.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
CIA EXEMPTION FROM TORTURE BAN
I am ashamed to say that, having little faith in the news media, I only learned yesterday about the failure of the attempt of Congress to finally make the McCain Amendment outlawing cruel and degrading treatment of detainees in the so-called "War on Terror" apply to the CIA as well. The agency was exempted from the original ban, but it appears that last month, our Democratic Congress finally got up enough votes to force the CIA to comply with the ban. Predictably, President Bush vetoed this legislation, and Congress was unable to override his veto. The Administration has come out publicly in favor of torture. As my own local newspaper, the San José Mercury-News, said in an editorial on March 13, "Had lawmakers succeeded, they would have raised America's standing among civlized nations." And that standing badly needs to be raised, for America is fast sliding into ignominy as one of the most notorious abusers of human rights in history, not excepting the Nazis and the Soviets under Stalin. I am surprised that Congress finally (if belatedly)found the moral backbone to take a stand on this issue, but not surprised that John McCain, who originally authored the amendment banning cruel and degrading treatment and is now running for president, has refused to stand by his original position. After all, the Powers that Be have to be appeased if one wants the figurehead position of President, and those Powers include above all the very agency which has been exempted.
Now the big question is, with our government giving its approval to such barbarism, is it right for six inmates of Guantánamo to be put on trial for their lives using evidence obtained this way? And if we are to try them, should we not also try the leaders of an Agency which the Center for Constitutional Rights says has acted "criminally, shamefully and dangerously"? Since December 5, the US Supreme Court has been considering an appeal which would enable it to strike down the Military Commissions Act of 2006 as unconstitutional. As CCR says, "the verdict is expected this spring." Today is the first day of spring. Let us hope that the Court will act to prevent this show trial before six men lose their lives as a result of phony "confessions" which have been tortured out of them. If it does not, then despite the efforts of Congress to do something to make the ban on torture absolute, our entire government will have put itself beyond the pale of civilization.
Now the big question is, with our government giving its approval to such barbarism, is it right for six inmates of Guantánamo to be put on trial for their lives using evidence obtained this way? And if we are to try them, should we not also try the leaders of an Agency which the Center for Constitutional Rights says has acted "criminally, shamefully and dangerously"? Since December 5, the US Supreme Court has been considering an appeal which would enable it to strike down the Military Commissions Act of 2006 as unconstitutional. As CCR says, "the verdict is expected this spring." Today is the first day of spring. Let us hope that the Court will act to prevent this show trial before six men lose their lives as a result of phony "confessions" which have been tortured out of them. If it does not, then despite the efforts of Congress to do something to make the ban on torture absolute, our entire government will have put itself beyond the pale of civilization.
Monday, March 10, 2008
TWO OMINOUS DANGER SIGNS
I have long warned that our government-- by which I do not mean simply the Bush Administration-- is moving toward totalitarianism. Recently there have been two ominous danger signs that that the final step toward fascism is about to be taken. The first concerns the break-down of our two-party system, one of the unwritten "checks and balances" which has worked very well to keep any one political group from amassing too much power. Of course that break-down has been on-going for some time now, but it has recently reached new heights-- or one might better say new depths-- in the marked preference that Hilary Clinton has shown for the probable Republican nominee, John McCain, over her opponent for the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama. I wrote in my last blog that the presidential elections offer us little choice, but I confess that I am beginning to feel sorry for Obama, whom Clinton has treated viciously. And I am beginning to think that he might indeed be willing to restore the Constitution if elected, although he won't come out and say so openly as did former Candidate Senator Chris Dodd, who has now thrown his support to him. After all, that strategy did not work for Dodd, and Obama cannot be blamed for concluding that it won't work for him. But unfortunately we will never know if he would have restored the constitutional liberties that the Military Commissions Act has taken away, for Obama has no chance of obtaining the Democratic nomination. Gary Hart has written that by saying that only she and McCain are capable of being Commander-in-Chief, Clinton has broken the "last rule in politics" by betraying her own party. That is true, but she has done more than that. She has signaled, in her abominable contempt for her fellow Democrat, that whatever the people think, whomever we want to be president, she has absolute confidence that she will win the Democratic nomination because the VIPs who really control this country-- the intelligence establishment and STRATCOM above all-- have decided that the only people they would accept as Commander-in-Chief are McCain and Clinton, and thus Obama has been ruled out. Along with the total spinelessness of Congress in failing to repeal the Military Commissions Act, and (so far) the unwillingness of the Supreme Court to strike it down as unconstitutional, this removes one of the few barriers to the concentration of power which the Founders feared, and thus to tyranny.
The other danger sign is the increasing number of hints the Bush Administration is offering that it opposes the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As a avid conservationst, I of course know of the numerous ways that it is giving increased license to hunters. This is certainly bad news for endangered species such as the Yellowstone wolves, but it has even more ominous implications for the American people. Being knee-jerk opponents of gun rights, most liberals cannot see the obvious implications. The National Rifle Association is a powerful lobby, which has often protected those rights in the past. But I know, having been a member, that it is composed primarily of hunters. Its main concern is not self-defense or defense against tyrannical government, but the preservation of the right to hunt. Having heard of these pro-hunting measures I wondered, could the Administration (and hence the real rulers, for whom it is a mere mouthpiece) be "throwing a bone" to the NRA in preparation for the introduction of legislation banning handguns? I did a net search. And sure enough, it turns out that the Bush Administration is taking a stand on gun control which is unprecedented for a Republican Administration. According to the Second Amendment rights group Gun Owners of America, it has filed a brief before the Supreme Court in the case of D.C v. Heller, arguing that any gun ban-- no matter how sweeping-- could be constitutional if some court determines that it is "reasonable". To quote Larry Pratt, president of GOA, "What the Bush Administration has done is to, on the one hand, say the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms, but on the other hand, courts can make of it what they will... they can use 'lawyerese'-- they can call it 'reasonable security'-- which means they can play with the constitution any which way they want." (http://www.onenewsnow/Legal/Default.aspx?id=65462).
What does all this mean? It means that the right-wing hunters who dominate the NRA will still be able to hunt-- even endangered species-- which will defang the the most powerful opponent of gun prohibition. Knowing the NRA as well as I do, I suspect that it may raise a feeble voice when the Administration introduces a measure to ban handguns alone, but since such a ban would not touch the rifles and shotguns that most of its members care most about, its ability to block the measure will be greatly reduced. The real victims will be the people who need handguns for self-defense against criminals-- for instance women who for any reason must live alone-- especially mothers-- and those who oppose our government's policies in other areas. And why is the Administration taking this stance? Because it has such a commitment to the protection of human life? Can one possibly believe that of a government that is pursuing policies of genocide around the world? Of course not. It is because it is aiming to do exactly what the Second Amendment was enacted to prevent-- remove any possibility of its opponents being able to defend themselves against incursions upon their liberties. Unfortunately the mindless anti-gun mentality of the otherwise progressive forces in this country will leave it helpless to do anything to retain this last bastion of liberty, as the Administration well knows. And with the NRA essentially mollified, there will be no barrier against the banning of handguns, which has always accompanied the rise of dictators everywhere.
Thomas Jefferson, who was passionately pro-gun, must be wracked with torment in his grave at this latest step toward tyranny.
The other danger sign is the increasing number of hints the Bush Administration is offering that it opposes the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. As a avid conservationst, I of course know of the numerous ways that it is giving increased license to hunters. This is certainly bad news for endangered species such as the Yellowstone wolves, but it has even more ominous implications for the American people. Being knee-jerk opponents of gun rights, most liberals cannot see the obvious implications. The National Rifle Association is a powerful lobby, which has often protected those rights in the past. But I know, having been a member, that it is composed primarily of hunters. Its main concern is not self-defense or defense against tyrannical government, but the preservation of the right to hunt. Having heard of these pro-hunting measures I wondered, could the Administration (and hence the real rulers, for whom it is a mere mouthpiece) be "throwing a bone" to the NRA in preparation for the introduction of legislation banning handguns? I did a net search. And sure enough, it turns out that the Bush Administration is taking a stand on gun control which is unprecedented for a Republican Administration. According to the Second Amendment rights group Gun Owners of America, it has filed a brief before the Supreme Court in the case of D.C v. Heller, arguing that any gun ban-- no matter how sweeping-- could be constitutional if some court determines that it is "reasonable". To quote Larry Pratt, president of GOA, "What the Bush Administration has done is to, on the one hand, say the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms, but on the other hand, courts can make of it what they will... they can use 'lawyerese'-- they can call it 'reasonable security'-- which means they can play with the constitution any which way they want." (http://www.onenewsnow/Legal/Default.aspx?id=65462).
What does all this mean? It means that the right-wing hunters who dominate the NRA will still be able to hunt-- even endangered species-- which will defang the the most powerful opponent of gun prohibition. Knowing the NRA as well as I do, I suspect that it may raise a feeble voice when the Administration introduces a measure to ban handguns alone, but since such a ban would not touch the rifles and shotguns that most of its members care most about, its ability to block the measure will be greatly reduced. The real victims will be the people who need handguns for self-defense against criminals-- for instance women who for any reason must live alone-- especially mothers-- and those who oppose our government's policies in other areas. And why is the Administration taking this stance? Because it has such a commitment to the protection of human life? Can one possibly believe that of a government that is pursuing policies of genocide around the world? Of course not. It is because it is aiming to do exactly what the Second Amendment was enacted to prevent-- remove any possibility of its opponents being able to defend themselves against incursions upon their liberties. Unfortunately the mindless anti-gun mentality of the otherwise progressive forces in this country will leave it helpless to do anything to retain this last bastion of liberty, as the Administration well knows. And with the NRA essentially mollified, there will be no barrier against the banning of handguns, which has always accompanied the rise of dictators everywhere.
Thomas Jefferson, who was passionately pro-gun, must be wracked with torment in his grave at this latest step toward tyranny.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS LEAVE US NO CHOICE
I have long maintained that this country is no longer governed by it elected officials but by non-elected bureaucrats, in particular the intelligence establishment, above all the CIA, and certain elements in the military (with the support of course of big money). The ongoing campaign for president, which is pushing the far more serious issue of the trial of the Guantánamo Six off center stage, rather proves my point. For about a year I had supported Chris Dodd, as he seemed to be the only person in the public eye who was seriously concerned about the Military Commissions Act under which the Guantánamo Six are to be tried, for Democratic nominee. As it became clear that he was falling behind in the race, I lost interest. But just the other day I saw him in a segment of the News Hour standing next to Barack Obama, and sure enough, the following day I received an e-mail circular from the Dodd campaign urging me to vote for Obama. But interestingly enough, when I read the arguments which Senator Dodd put forward as to why voters should support Obama, the primary reason I had originally supported the Senator himself was missing. That is to say, there was nothing about restoring the Constitution or repealing the Military Commissions Act. We are in the worst constitutional crisis in U.S. history, yet neither of the Democratic front-runners will say anything about the most pressing issue of the moment: the manner in which our government is fighting the so-called "War on Terror", which involves violations of the civil liberties of Americans and the human rights of foreigners. When I look at what is happening in this country now, in Guantánamo and around the world in the secret CIA prisons, when I witness our government's quest for absolute dominance in space and the erection of a shield which will protect it from retaliation, thus facilitating a first strike, I see events more dangerous than those which led up to the Nazi holocaust and World War II. Yet one would never know this from listening to the candidates. For the U.S. presidential race now has about as much political importance as the World Series.
Why will the Democratic candidates say nothing about the most important issue of all? Some will answer, that subject is taboo. The American people are afraid of a terrorist attack, and to question the measures our government has been taking in the so-called "War on Terror" is to risk sounding "soft on terror". But who has planted that fear in the minds of Americans? And why, in the seven years which have elapsed since the events of 9/11, has our government not brought forward one individual who was involved in those events (with the exception of Zacarias Moussaoui, a bit player at best), for a fair and public trial? No matter how heinous the crimes such individuals may have committed, they deserve that-- indeed, they must have it if we are to know the truth. After all, we gave fair and open trials even to the Nazi War Criminals, who had killed millions. Some say that the terrorist suspects cannot tried because they have been "interrogated aggressively" (i.e., tortured) and that would make their testimony inadmissable in court. But so many of our federal judges are now mere "rubber stamp" placemen that such testimony would probably be accepted, and let's face it, if the defendant(s) could be proven to truly have played a role in 9/11, the American people would applaud. If the case was thrown out of court because the defendants had been tortured, there would be massive demonstrations against the court's decision, and the defendants would undoubtedly be placed back in the custody of the military or CIA. In either case, there would be no possibility of a truly dangerous terrorist being released and the Republicans would look like heroes for just trying to bring these people to account. So why have there been no such trials? Why is the trial which is finally about to be held, of the Guantánamo Six, being conducted in such secrecy and in violation of all hallowed rules of due process, to the extent that many career military men who could have served as counsel for the defendants have resigned in protest? There can be only two reasons: either the defendants are innocent or they know that our own government was complicit in the attacks of 9/11.
Evidence of that complicity is to be found in the manner in which detainees in the "War on Terror" have been "questioned". For the methods used to "interrogate" them, known collectively as PSYWAR, are not designed to elicit intelligence but rather to spread terror and produce false confessions. I have referred again and again in these blogs to Alfred W. McCoy's excellent book, A Question of Torture: CIA Methods of Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror, which demonstrates this. The thing that stands out most about these methods, inspired by the Stalinist show trials and Chinese and North Korean "brainwashing", is how inappropriate they are to the CIA's stated mission. Utilizing a combination of physical brutality and psychological pressures, they aim to sever a person's contact with reality and destroy his sense of identity so that he will become whatever the so-called "interrogator" wants him to be. In this they resemble more than anything the methods used in Orwell's classic 1984. As O'Brien says to Winston as he is torturing him, "We will empty you and fill you with ourselves." The implication is that the CIA is not seeking "actionable intelligence" but attempting to produce broken zomby-like individuals who can be trotted out before a court and "confess" whatever crimes they are accused of, a process which is facilitated by the irregular nature of the military commissions. And where the truth really lies is something that the public will never be allowed to know. This adds nothing to the security of Americans, but provides very effective cover for the misdeeds of our government, misdeed which may well include the murder of thousands of its own citizens.
So what if the presidential candidates did emphasize the threat to our liberty and the travesty of justice that these show-trials represent? I naturally think of what happened to John F. Kennedy after he handed down National Security Memoranda 55, 56 and 57, which would have splintered the CIA. And I think as well of a less well-known figure from my own Bay Area. Representative Leo Ryan Jr. was an outspoken critic of the CIA in Congress. He co-authored a Hughes-Ryan Amendment, which aimed to limit the funding of covert actions and increase congressional oversight of them. In 1978, he traveled to Guyana to investigate reported abuses at the settlement of the People's Temple there. Although Ryan had been concerned about the growing influence of cults, it was probably his concern about the ongoing lawlessness of the CIA which prompted him to make this investigation, particularly after investigative reporter Jack Anderson published a syndicated column suggesting that the Jonestown colony was really being run by the CIA. Just as Ryan was investigating, and finding that a number of the residents of Jonestown actually wanted to leave, he was murdered along with four journalists. One People's Temple member, Larry Layton, was convicted of the murder. But soon after Ryan was murdered, nine hundred men, women and children belonging to the Jonestown colony were found dead. Could Layton have been responsible for all these deaths or was he a mere scapegoat? The question acquires further weight when one discovers that not many of the deaths-- widely believed to be suicides-- were clearly murders, with the fatal injections in places the deceased individual could not possibly have reached. What is of still more significance is the large quantity of mind-altering drugs of a certain type which were found at Jonestown.
According to John Judge, author of "The Black Hole of Guyana: The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre" (http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/Jonestown.html) "Guyanese troops discovered a large cache of drugs, enough to drug the entire population of Georgetown, Guyana for more than a year. According to survivors, these drugs were being used regularly to "control" a population of only 1,100 people." The drugs all belonged to a group with which this author has had personal experience, the major tranquilizers or neuroleptics. Neuroleptics can have a variety of effects, none of them therapeutic. Some induce a state of mental torture known as tardive akathisia, in which the victim cannot sit or lie still, and is afflicted with extreme anxiety. The effects of this type are similar to a "bad trip" on another drug unleashed on American society by the CIA, LSD. Others leave the person in a zombie-like state, unable to think coherently or protest his/her treatment. Having experienced both these reactions from prescribed neuroleptic drugs myself, I was not surprised to learn that the CIA, which had been experimenting with mind-controlling drugs from the nineteen-fifties through its programs MK-ULTRA, was using them on inmates of the psychiatric prison at Vacaville, California. And why not the poor and Black people who predominated at Jonestown? More than 20 months after Leo Ryan was killed, his five adult children filed a lawsuit based on extensive investigation charging that "the Jonestown Colony was infilitrated with agents of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States," and that they were working as part of the CIA's MK-ULTRA program. It essentially accused agents of the CIA of being responsible for Ryan's death. The suit was dropped for reasons which have never been fully disclosed, but which have been linked to threats delivered by the CIA (see http://www.freedommag.org/english/vol2914/page08.htm. The Hughes-Ryan Amendment, which would have imposed controls on the CIA, was dropped soon after Ryan's death (see the Wikipedia article on Ryan).
So what would happen if we for once had elected officials who were willing to not only speak out against CIA tyranny, but also take action against it? The answer is clear: we have had such elected officials, and they have been murdered, one can guess by whom. No wonder the presidential elections leave us no choice. And the double meaning is intentional: perhaps it is no longer possible to remedy this problem by working peacefully through the system.
Why will the Democratic candidates say nothing about the most important issue of all? Some will answer, that subject is taboo. The American people are afraid of a terrorist attack, and to question the measures our government has been taking in the so-called "War on Terror" is to risk sounding "soft on terror". But who has planted that fear in the minds of Americans? And why, in the seven years which have elapsed since the events of 9/11, has our government not brought forward one individual who was involved in those events (with the exception of Zacarias Moussaoui, a bit player at best), for a fair and public trial? No matter how heinous the crimes such individuals may have committed, they deserve that-- indeed, they must have it if we are to know the truth. After all, we gave fair and open trials even to the Nazi War Criminals, who had killed millions. Some say that the terrorist suspects cannot tried because they have been "interrogated aggressively" (i.e., tortured) and that would make their testimony inadmissable in court. But so many of our federal judges are now mere "rubber stamp" placemen that such testimony would probably be accepted, and let's face it, if the defendant(s) could be proven to truly have played a role in 9/11, the American people would applaud. If the case was thrown out of court because the defendants had been tortured, there would be massive demonstrations against the court's decision, and the defendants would undoubtedly be placed back in the custody of the military or CIA. In either case, there would be no possibility of a truly dangerous terrorist being released and the Republicans would look like heroes for just trying to bring these people to account. So why have there been no such trials? Why is the trial which is finally about to be held, of the Guantánamo Six, being conducted in such secrecy and in violation of all hallowed rules of due process, to the extent that many career military men who could have served as counsel for the defendants have resigned in protest? There can be only two reasons: either the defendants are innocent or they know that our own government was complicit in the attacks of 9/11.
Evidence of that complicity is to be found in the manner in which detainees in the "War on Terror" have been "questioned". For the methods used to "interrogate" them, known collectively as PSYWAR, are not designed to elicit intelligence but rather to spread terror and produce false confessions. I have referred again and again in these blogs to Alfred W. McCoy's excellent book, A Question of Torture: CIA Methods of Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror, which demonstrates this. The thing that stands out most about these methods, inspired by the Stalinist show trials and Chinese and North Korean "brainwashing", is how inappropriate they are to the CIA's stated mission. Utilizing a combination of physical brutality and psychological pressures, they aim to sever a person's contact with reality and destroy his sense of identity so that he will become whatever the so-called "interrogator" wants him to be. In this they resemble more than anything the methods used in Orwell's classic 1984. As O'Brien says to Winston as he is torturing him, "We will empty you and fill you with ourselves." The implication is that the CIA is not seeking "actionable intelligence" but attempting to produce broken zomby-like individuals who can be trotted out before a court and "confess" whatever crimes they are accused of, a process which is facilitated by the irregular nature of the military commissions. And where the truth really lies is something that the public will never be allowed to know. This adds nothing to the security of Americans, but provides very effective cover for the misdeeds of our government, misdeed which may well include the murder of thousands of its own citizens.
So what if the presidential candidates did emphasize the threat to our liberty and the travesty of justice that these show-trials represent? I naturally think of what happened to John F. Kennedy after he handed down National Security Memoranda 55, 56 and 57, which would have splintered the CIA. And I think as well of a less well-known figure from my own Bay Area. Representative Leo Ryan Jr. was an outspoken critic of the CIA in Congress. He co-authored a Hughes-Ryan Amendment, which aimed to limit the funding of covert actions and increase congressional oversight of them. In 1978, he traveled to Guyana to investigate reported abuses at the settlement of the People's Temple there. Although Ryan had been concerned about the growing influence of cults, it was probably his concern about the ongoing lawlessness of the CIA which prompted him to make this investigation, particularly after investigative reporter Jack Anderson published a syndicated column suggesting that the Jonestown colony was really being run by the CIA. Just as Ryan was investigating, and finding that a number of the residents of Jonestown actually wanted to leave, he was murdered along with four journalists. One People's Temple member, Larry Layton, was convicted of the murder. But soon after Ryan was murdered, nine hundred men, women and children belonging to the Jonestown colony were found dead. Could Layton have been responsible for all these deaths or was he a mere scapegoat? The question acquires further weight when one discovers that not many of the deaths-- widely believed to be suicides-- were clearly murders, with the fatal injections in places the deceased individual could not possibly have reached. What is of still more significance is the large quantity of mind-altering drugs of a certain type which were found at Jonestown.
According to John Judge, author of "The Black Hole of Guyana: The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre" (http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/Jonestown.html) "Guyanese troops discovered a large cache of drugs, enough to drug the entire population of Georgetown, Guyana for more than a year. According to survivors, these drugs were being used regularly to "control" a population of only 1,100 people." The drugs all belonged to a group with which this author has had personal experience, the major tranquilizers or neuroleptics. Neuroleptics can have a variety of effects, none of them therapeutic. Some induce a state of mental torture known as tardive akathisia, in which the victim cannot sit or lie still, and is afflicted with extreme anxiety. The effects of this type are similar to a "bad trip" on another drug unleashed on American society by the CIA, LSD. Others leave the person in a zombie-like state, unable to think coherently or protest his/her treatment. Having experienced both these reactions from prescribed neuroleptic drugs myself, I was not surprised to learn that the CIA, which had been experimenting with mind-controlling drugs from the nineteen-fifties through its programs MK-ULTRA, was using them on inmates of the psychiatric prison at Vacaville, California. And why not the poor and Black people who predominated at Jonestown? More than 20 months after Leo Ryan was killed, his five adult children filed a lawsuit based on extensive investigation charging that "the Jonestown Colony was infilitrated with agents of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States," and that they were working as part of the CIA's MK-ULTRA program. It essentially accused agents of the CIA of being responsible for Ryan's death. The suit was dropped for reasons which have never been fully disclosed, but which have been linked to threats delivered by the CIA (see http://www.freedommag.org/english/vol2914/page08.htm. The Hughes-Ryan Amendment, which would have imposed controls on the CIA, was dropped soon after Ryan's death (see the Wikipedia article on Ryan).
So what would happen if we for once had elected officials who were willing to not only speak out against CIA tyranny, but also take action against it? The answer is clear: we have had such elected officials, and they have been murdered, one can guess by whom. No wonder the presidential elections leave us no choice. And the double meaning is intentional: perhaps it is no longer possible to remedy this problem by working peacefully through the system.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
THE DEATH PENALTY IS NOT THE ISSUE!
It is probably well known by now to anyone who keeps up with the news that six detainees in the War on Terror are about to be put on trial for their alleged role in the attacks of 9/11. They will be tried by one of the notorious military commissions established by the Military Commissions Act of 2006. They are facing death, which is disturbing because if the judgement of this kangaroo court is ever overturned and the men are found innocent, we won't be able to give them back their lives. But what is equally disturbing is the way that some critics of this trial are focusing excessively upon the so-called "penalty". For instance, Clive Stafford Smith, a British lawyer who has worked with inmates at Guantánamo, says, "Anyone can see the hypocrisy of espousing human rights, and then trampling on them. We will infuriate our allies who firmly oppose the death penalty." ("US Accused of Using Kangaroo Court to Try Men Accused of Role in 9/11 Attacks," Truthout, February 12, 2008). It is hard to believe that anyone who is familiar with the hellish conditions under which detainees at Guantanámo live could be so callous as to wish to deny them relief. Death will surely be welcomed by men who have been put through such tortures. But if giving them relief from their sufferings were the only possibility, it would be better for legal precedent in this country if Al Quaeda were to bomb Guantánamo. From an American court, one would expect not just relief but justice. The trial in question does indeed trample on human rights. But that is not because the men are threatened with death. It is because, given the conditions under which they are to be tried, which violate every norm of due process, they cannot possibly obtain a fair trial, and therefore justice. If the so-called "penalty" is carried out, it will not be a "death penalty" but murder.
We must be careful not to hamstring ourselves here. After all, whether or not the accused in this trial are terrorists or not, there are terrorists among us. And unlike the accused, the real nature of whose crimes is not known and cannot be known given the conditons under which they have lived and under which they are to be tried, the crimes of the worst terrorists in the world are plain for all to see. They are the people who have organized this kangaroo court, and include the most powerful individuals in our government. The list would certainly include the entire Bush Administration and the entire leadership of the Central Intelligence Agency. If the American people ever get up enough courage to replace this thoroughly rotten government with one which respects the United States Constitution, we must be prepared to try them. And we cannot do so by Smith's standards. According to A.J. Langguth's Hidden Terrors, a Navy captain who had acted as a torturer for the U.S.-backed Brazilian dictatorship in the early nineteen-seventies, told Fernando Gabiera, a young journalism student and his victim, "I'm a torturer, but you are not. If the socialists ever come to power, I'll be in a good position, because you're a coward, and you won't torture me." (p. 201) It pains me to know that Gabeira did not have the presence of mind to reply, "You're right-- we won't torture you-- but you won't be in a good position, because you'll be dead. We will try you and you will most likely be executed for your crimes."
Whatever government replaces this one, which is badly in need of replacement (a replacement which cannot come about through this presidential elections farce, which is by now no more politically meaningful than the World Series), it must not stoop to using torture on a routine basis as this government does. Nor must it inflict any penalty without giving the accused the benefit of due process, including access to a writ of habeas corpus, a lawyer, and a fair trial. After all, we gave all that even to the Nazis. But the death penalty is a perfectly appropriate punishment for those found guilty of practicing political terrorism through PSYWAR, death squads, staged "terrorist attacks" etc. After all, if a person is really guilty, what is the alternative? So long as prisons remain the abusive places they are-- and given human nature, for which power is usually an irresistable license to abuse, they most likely will-- there is little difference between death and life imprisonment. Indeed, death may be the more humane alternative. And do we really want to support the Bush Administration and the leaders of the CIA at public expense for the rest of their lives? Don't we have better ways of spending public monies?
Let's make no bones about it-- terrorists convicted by a fair and public trial deserve death. That would be true of the men accused in the present case if they could be proven to have been the agents responsible for 9/11, which will not be possible because their trial will not be fair and public. But it seems very likely that the real responsibility for that tragedy lies elsewhere, in the very people who have tortured them in order to terrorize them into silence and are now proposing to murder them so that the the American people will never know the truth. And one can only hope that these criminals-- Bush, Cheney, the present and former Secretaries of Defense, the present and former Attorneys General, and General Michael Hayden, the Director of the CIA, among others, will someday receive the penalty they so richly deserve: death.
We must be careful not to hamstring ourselves here. After all, whether or not the accused in this trial are terrorists or not, there are terrorists among us. And unlike the accused, the real nature of whose crimes is not known and cannot be known given the conditons under which they have lived and under which they are to be tried, the crimes of the worst terrorists in the world are plain for all to see. They are the people who have organized this kangaroo court, and include the most powerful individuals in our government. The list would certainly include the entire Bush Administration and the entire leadership of the Central Intelligence Agency. If the American people ever get up enough courage to replace this thoroughly rotten government with one which respects the United States Constitution, we must be prepared to try them. And we cannot do so by Smith's standards. According to A.J. Langguth's Hidden Terrors, a Navy captain who had acted as a torturer for the U.S.-backed Brazilian dictatorship in the early nineteen-seventies, told Fernando Gabiera, a young journalism student and his victim, "I'm a torturer, but you are not. If the socialists ever come to power, I'll be in a good position, because you're a coward, and you won't torture me." (p. 201) It pains me to know that Gabeira did not have the presence of mind to reply, "You're right-- we won't torture you-- but you won't be in a good position, because you'll be dead. We will try you and you will most likely be executed for your crimes."
Whatever government replaces this one, which is badly in need of replacement (a replacement which cannot come about through this presidential elections farce, which is by now no more politically meaningful than the World Series), it must not stoop to using torture on a routine basis as this government does. Nor must it inflict any penalty without giving the accused the benefit of due process, including access to a writ of habeas corpus, a lawyer, and a fair trial. After all, we gave all that even to the Nazis. But the death penalty is a perfectly appropriate punishment for those found guilty of practicing political terrorism through PSYWAR, death squads, staged "terrorist attacks" etc. After all, if a person is really guilty, what is the alternative? So long as prisons remain the abusive places they are-- and given human nature, for which power is usually an irresistable license to abuse, they most likely will-- there is little difference between death and life imprisonment. Indeed, death may be the more humane alternative. And do we really want to support the Bush Administration and the leaders of the CIA at public expense for the rest of their lives? Don't we have better ways of spending public monies?
Let's make no bones about it-- terrorists convicted by a fair and public trial deserve death. That would be true of the men accused in the present case if they could be proven to have been the agents responsible for 9/11, which will not be possible because their trial will not be fair and public. But it seems very likely that the real responsibility for that tragedy lies elsewhere, in the very people who have tortured them in order to terrorize them into silence and are now proposing to murder them so that the the American people will never know the truth. And one can only hope that these criminals-- Bush, Cheney, the present and former Secretaries of Defense, the present and former Attorneys General, and General Michael Hayden, the Director of the CIA, among others, will someday receive the penalty they so richly deserve: death.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
