Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%.

Recent statistics of Wealth Distribution in The United States

The recent essay by Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz’s that appeared in the April/MayVanity Fair, the acidly titled “Of the 1%, By the 1%, for the 1%”,  encapsulates the most grim reality facing the United States.  It is the exact same reality that my parents took me aside to explain  one night so long ago: that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer every year in America.  This social ill has simply gone on for too long and has now reached a crisis point for which there must be a reckoning, and this reckoning must come and come soon in America.  I am gratified to know that no less a figure than Stiglitz shares my view. In his essay he quickly unfolds the case that the relentless co-opting of the U.S. government by the wealthiest 1%, who have vacuumed up 40 % of the nation’s wealth at the expense of the vast majority, will lead to a day that “even the wealthy will come to regret”.  Mark those words.  If Stiglitz is bold enough to say them from his outlook, I feel safer than ever saying them from mine.

It strikes me as extremely poignant that a man of Stiglitz’s position would valiantly trumpet this opinion. Stiglitz, as recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Economics, resides at a high altitude within his priestly field and is no stranger to the recondite workings of the financial top 1%.  He received his first major government position in ’93 during the Clinton Administration, where he eventually rose to be the chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors (1995 – 1997). His next position at the World Bank saw him serve as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist (1997 – 2000). These positions, plus his Nobel, endow him with no small amount of prestige and credibility on the subject of economic management and forecasting.

His stay at the World Bank was, however, short circuited. He was fired in 2000 for expressing dissent with its policies. He is a strong opponent of free-market philosophy, much preferring a system where government intervention is a system norm. Thus, he holds some views that might, dare I say it, be called "socialistic". Since then he has come to be regarded as the “rebel within”, a reputation that the title of his most recent book, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy(2010),  would seem to justify.  In scanning a few of his most recent essays it strikes me that Stiglitz has grown increasingly rebellious and dissatisfied with things since the time of his firing.  Now he seems to actually have a foreboding of revolution.  

It’s more than a little telling that the opening sentence to his latest essay is, “Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few”.  That he chose this as his embarcation point strikes me as a dire alert to those  “1 percent of the people (who) take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income”.  Cassandra warned of the Trojan Horse.  Stiglitz warns of the enemy within the gates too.  Will they wake up in time to recognize their mistake and make restitution for it?  It's still not too late for the elite to respect their duty to the rest of us.  However, I doubt they will and I sense Stiglitz doubts it too.  That's why he speaks of actual revolution. This would be the death of Agamemnon, indeed.

We well know now that those first protests evolved into actual revolutions and to date have successfully brought down two Middle Eastern dictatorships and are working on at least three others as I write, amidst great bloodshed.  With this as his chosen backdrop, Stiglitz, though he doesn’t come out and directly say it, the echo inside the seashell of this essay is this: the wealth concentrated in the hands of the top 1% needs to be redistributed and revolution is always the ultimate recourse for an angry populace to do so.  Revolution is always an option.  Revolution is always a possibility. Revolution is always, always a high risk matter, one that common folk would much prefer to avoid, but if their hands are forced to the extent that they have been in the Middle East and to the extent that are being forced in America, then its probability greatly rises. And if full-blown armed revolution in the streets can occur in a place as highly repressive as the Middle East, where much of the policing had been culturally internalized, it can occur elsewhere, even America.

The gross economic inequality that led to the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions exists at or is rapidly approaching the same level in America, and it is no stretch to imagine tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands of protesters out in the streets of America if the working class continues to be pummeled by the upper stratum of society.  America got its first eyeful of this last March in Madison.  Granted that Americans aren’t living in the same magnitude of poverty as the Egyptians, who were estimated recently to have more than 50% of their population living on two dollars a day or less, but at the same time you have a situation in America where most Americans (58.5%) will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point between ages 25 and 75.  Currently, 1 out of every 7 Americans is living in poverty with another one very close by and a couple more just a paycheck or so away from that abyss. In short, at least 4 out of every 7 Americans are getting squeezed and squeezed hard. That constitutes a tipping point, I would say.  Add to this the current attacks on labor and entitlements and you have the ingredients for foment.  If you add working class blood to it you get more marching, chanting bodies in the street and more blood.  This is the curdle of revolution.  Blood reifies it.

Since the night that my parents first informed me as a little boy of this spreading gap between rich and poor, economic inequality has risen by no less than 8%, wherein now1% of the population owns as much as 45% of the nation’s wealth. When I asked at the age of 8, “but why?”, my parents just shook their heads and said they didn’t know why. However, Stiglitz has an answer: “one big part of the reason we have so much inequality is that the top 1 percent want it that way”.

But that’s not the way you and I want it. During the last 30 years I have seen all of the ills that Stiglitz recites: decreased opportunities and a decline in income for the majority of the population with a concomitant increase in monopolization of wealth and power in the hands of the few, which has generated the innumerable waves of social distortion that Stiglitz variously mentions. The only things that have kept that social distortion even remotely in check are the government social programs that have assisted the middle and lower classes. But now these programs are in a fight for their lives and the shills for the top 1%, the Republican Party, most of whom are members of that top 1%, or close, are more and more aggressively coming out and saying what they’ve wanted to do all along—rollback these New Deal social programs. Paul Ryan’s budget was the first shot

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said, very bluntly, on Fox two Sundays ago "We're going to have to come to grips with the fact that these programs cannot exist if we want America to be what we want America to be.” Destitute? The thing is, America isn't really broke as the Repugnicants and too many of their Demeanocrat fellows would lead us to believe with all the false choices that they present us that all lead to austerity.  What the current Republican leadership really wants America to be is one not only where the rich dominate. They also want an America where there is no support or protection for the rest of us. They don’t believe government ought to “promote the general welfare” -- only the specific welfare of the top 1 percent. No one else matters. However, it is greatly in their self-interest, that vaunted principle of Capitalism, for them to care otherwise. As Stiglitz concludes:

In recent weeks we have watched people taking to the streets by the millions to protest political, economic, and social conditions in the oppressive societies they inhabit. Governments have been toppled in Egypt and Tunisia. Protests have erupted in Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain. The ruling families elsewhere in the region look on nervously from their air-conditioned penthouses—will they be next? They are right to worry. These are societies where a minuscule fraction of the population—less than 1 percent—controls the lion’s share of the wealth; where wealth is a main determinant of power; where entrenched corruption of one sort or another is a way of life; and where the wealthiest often stand actively in the way of policies that would improve life for people in general.

As we gaze out at the popular fervor in the streets, one question to ask ourselves is this: When will it come to America? In important ways, our own country has become like one of these distant, troubled places.

Indeed, it has and I tremble.   

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JAL

Smoking gun: The convenient death of Ibn al-sheikh al-Libi

The English language edition of the Libyan newspaper Ennahar reported on May 10, 2009, that Ibn al-sheikh al-Libi, a high ranking Al Qaeda operative, was found dead in his Libyan jail cell. Libyan prison authorities claim that his death was suicide. The Libyan government, however, has not confirmed the death, and the Libyan Embassy in Washington said it had no information. The CIA has also declined to comment. Yet the death of Al-Libi is extremely suspect. It raises the immediate and compelling question of whether, driven by human desperation, he actually took his own life or whether he was murdered for very covert political reasons. Given that committing suicide in a prison cell, though not impossible, is problematical, and that further, Al Libi was a former imam and a devout Muslim for whom suicide would have been a grievous sin, and that moreover, his friends are said to doubt his suicide, murder becomes the most likely cause of his death. Yet, the final compelling question is who was Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, and why would someone want him dead? 

The background available on him states that al-Libi, whose real name was Ali Mohamed Al-Fakheri, was 46 years old and had led the Al Khaldan training camp (one of more than a hundred such Al Qaeda camps) in Afghanistan. This camp just so happened to be the one where several notable Al-Qaeda figures, including three of the 9-11 hijackers, had trained. Al-Libi was also an associate of Abu Zubaydah (regarded as second in command of Al Qaeda) and had been placed on the September 26, 2002 list of terrorists released by the U.S. government following September 11th, at which time any personal assets he may have had were frozen. 

He was captured by Pakistani officials at the end of 2001 or beginning of 2002, along with hundreds of other Al Qaeda suspects, as he attempted to flee Afghanistan following the ensuing collapse of the Taliban during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Shortly thereafter, he vanished into the secret detention system run by the Bush administration. He was perhaps the most famous of the “disappeared” U.S. prisoners seized in the “War on Terror,” who were “extraordinarily rendered” to the custody of governments in third countries where, it was presumed, they would never be seen or heard from again. In his case, he had been secretly transferred by the Bush administration to a prison in Libya after having been held by the CIA both in secret “black hole prisons”, probably in Afghanistan, and later in Egypt. It was during this detainment that he was tortured using the “enhanced interrogation methods” ordered by the Bush administration, and it is at this juncture in which al-Libi becomes a major historical figure.

Waterboarding and mock burial methods were used to "tune him up" and with a few skilled touches he produced a very sweet sound to his captors’ ears, singing just the song that they wanted to hear. In exchange for an end to the torture, he agreed to tell them whatever they wanted to know, and what this bird sang is now part of the central history of our times: Al-Libi has been identified as the primary source of faulty prewar intelligence regarding chemical weapons training between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it was this confession drawn forth from counter-productive interrogation methods that was used by the Bush Administration as one of its main justifications for the invasion of Iraq. 

But it was all a lie. On February 5, 2003, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, utilizing this lie that came straight from Al-Libi, claimed in his notorious speech to the UN Security Council, “I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these [chemical and biological] weapons to Al Qaeda,” In Cincinnati in October 2002, Bush informed the public: "Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases”. It was, of course, all a smoke screen that the Bush administration used to cover its real reasons for its invasion of Iraq; oil and neo-conservative New World Order aims. Further, Powell's speech came less than a month after a then-classified CIA report had concluded that the information provided by al-Libi was unreliable and about a year after a Defense Intelligence Agency report concluded the same thing. The DIA concluded in February 2002 that Al Libi deliberately misled interrogators.

In September of 2006, the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released "Phase II" of its report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. Conclusion 3 of the report states the following: 

Postwar findings support the CIA February 2002 assessment that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was likely intentionally misleading his debriefers when he said that Iraq provided two al-Qa'ida associates with chemical and biological weapons (CBW) training in 2000… Postwar findings do not support the CIA's assessment that his reporting was credible… No postwar information has been found that indicates CBW training occurred and the detainee who provided the key prewar reporting about this training recanted his claims after the war… CIA's January 2003 version of Iraqi Support for Terrorism described al-Libi's reporting for CBW training "credible", but noted that the individuals who traveled to Iraq for CBW training had not returned, so al-Libi was not in position to know if the training had taken place… In January 2004, al-Libi recanted his allegations about CBW training and many of his other claims about Iraq's links to al Qa'ida. He told debriefers that, to the best of his knowledge, al-Qa'ida never sent any individuals into Iraq for any kind of support in chemical or biological weapons. Al-libi told debriefers that he fabricated information while in U.S. custody to receive better treatment and in response to threats of being transferred to a foreign intelligence service, which he believed would torture him… He said that later, while he was being debriefed by a (REDACTED) foreign intelligence service, he fabricated more information in response to physical abuse and threats of torture. The foreign government service denies using any pressure during al-Libi's interrogation. In February 2004, the CIA reissued the debriefing reports from al-Libi to note that he had recanted information. A CIA officer explained that while CIA believes al-Libi fabricated information, the CIA cannot determine whether, or what portions of, the original statements or the later recants are true of false.[15] 

Some speculate that his reason for giving disinformation was in order to draw the U.S. into an attack on Iraq, which al Qaeda hoped would lead to a global jihad. According to a book written in November 2006, “a Moroccan using the pseudonym Omar Nasiri, having infiltrated al-Qaeda in the 1990s, authored the book, "Inside the Jihad: My Life with al Qaeda, a Spy's story". In the book, Nasiri claims that al-Libi deliberately planted information to encourage the U.S. to invade Iraq. Nasiri said al Libi "needed the conflict in Iraq because months before I heard him telling us when a question was asked in the mosque after the prayer in the evening, where is the best country to fight the jihad?" al Libi said Iraq was chosen because it was the "weakest" Muslim country, according to Nasiri. Nasiri suggested in an interview with a British television station that al-Libi wanted to overthrow Saddam and use Iraq as a jihadist base. In the book, Nasiri describes al-Libi as one of the leaders at the Afghan camp and characterizes him as "brilliant in every way." Nasiri explains that learning how to withstand interrogations and supply false information once captured was a key part of the training in the camps. Nasiri claims that al-Libi "knew what his interrogators wanted, and he was happy to give it to them. He wanted to see Saddam toppled even more than the Americans did.".

So, Al-Libi knowingly provided the CIA and DIA with a red herring in the hope that it would result in exactly the way in which it did: the invasion of Iraq. After this ruse succeeded, he recanted his story upon being returned to CIA custody in 2004. But what is worse, everyone in the Bush administration knew it was a red herring. The invasion went forth anyway. Hmm? 

Ibn al-sheikh al-Libi’s whereabouts had been a mystery for several years. However, the first independent confirmation of Libi's whereabouts came just two weeks prior to his death. Heba Morayef, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said she and a colleague met him briefly in a courtyard at the Abu Salim prison on April 27. The two were there to examine the treatment of prisoners in Libya, including other detainees once held by the United States. Libi angrily rejected speaking to the researchers, saying, "Where were you when I was being tortured in American prisons?" according to Morayef, who described the encounter in a phone interview. Human rights groups had long suspected that Al Libi had been transferred to Libya, but the CIA had never confirmed where he was sent. Oddly, his rediscovery coincided with the release of the Torture Memos. 

Personally, I find it strange that his location would be once more publicly determined and then shortly thereafter, amidst the uproar surrounding the release of the memos, he would be found suddenly dead in a Tripoli jail cell due to “suicide”. Given what this fellow knew, his death seems much too convenient. Human Rights Watch has called for an investigation into his death. They pointed out that the closed nature of prisons means that all prisoner deaths warrant investigation, but that given the special nature of al-Libi’s case, his death merits special scrutiny. “The Libyan authorities should authorize an investigation into al-Libi’s death that is transparent, thorough, and impartial,” a spokesperson said. The head of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski, recently said, "I would speculate that he was missing because he was such an embarrassment to the Bush administration. He was Exhibit A in the narrative that tortured confessions contributed to the massive intelligence failure that preceded the Iraq war." 

Now that Exhibit A has been permanently removed, it seems certain that this is because he was bound to show up before a court or commission charged with the investigation of the Bush administration’s use of torture, either in Spain or America. One deeply wonders what song this bird would have sung had he been given the chance. His testimony would have unquestionably been the smoking gun that would have revealed that the torture he received was not for “national security” but for the personal political aims of Bush and Cheney and the rest of the neo-con New World Order and its oligarchical tyranny. That is why he is now dead. 

And so, the entire pretense of the Bush administration’s “national security” agenda is washed away. Cheney, who has recently presented himself publicly in the last few weeks probably more than at any time during his eight years in office, which seems very strange, has been spewing on any American talk show that will have him bullshit about how certain he is that the interrogation methods that were ordered by his office were effective (it’s becoming clear that his office, not Bush’s, was the epicenter for the torture program). He recently said on Face the Nation, “two memos that I personally know of, written by the CIA, that lay out the successes of those policies and point out in considerable detail all of -- all that we were able to achieve by virtue of those policies, …should be released, be made public”.

First of all, the "two memos... that lay out the successes of those policies," couldn't possibly discount that torturing detainees enhanced the ability of terrorists to recruit new supporters nor, needless to say, the obtaining of false information a la Al Libi. So, even if the memos in question reveal productive results, those results were, at best, a push when considering the policy's impact on US national security. Second, and more importantly, how can two memos vindicate policies that were in clear violation of prescriptions within the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture? This is a matter of law and US obligations to its international treaties, which the Constitution explicitly states the US will respect and enforce. The memos, even if they support what Cheney suggests, are illustrative of a policy that was blatantly illegal. What has become crystal clear, more than ever, is the illegality of the Bush regime, and as I consider the extent which its still entrenched New World Order forces will go to maintain power, evidenced now with the murder of Al Libi, I am getting angrier and angrier. 

Listen clearly as I tell you that the foremost basis for the “War on Terror”, the 9/11 attacks, were Made to Happen on Purpose. It was an inside job manufactured and carried out by sinister forces within the American government, of which the Bush regime was the spearhead at the time, in order to spread New World Order totalitarianism. Proof of this is voluminous and easily accessible. All those who deny it are either staked to the neo-con New World Order or are not able to handle the truth. "'Go, go', said the bird. Humankind can't bear much reality". Further, though much harder to prove, the current international economic crisis has also been Made to Happen on Purpose. It also was an inside job manufactured and carried out by sinister forces within the American government, namely by the Federal Reserve and the shadow cabal of international Banker elites that it serves, and its aim is to destroy the middle class, particularly in America; a program that has been successfully running for several decades now, but elsewhere too. Its purpose is to drive the world into poverty, making everyone equally as poor as a Chinese peasant, and thus so much easier to control.

My whole interest in seeing the Bush regime taken to court is not because I feel that torture was its most abhorrent crime, but that all of its crimes, particularly the 9/ll conspiracy and the subsequent deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and tens of thousands of U.S. service members either killed or badly wounded in a war that was based on lies, lies and more lies and fortified and promoted by the most sadistic torture, needs to be punished - severely. This matter with torture just happens to be the most solid case that we have against them. May it be prosecuted successfully and to the fullest.

Dusted off and ready to ride: Judge Baltasar Garzon's decision to prosecute the Bush Administration

The Farm applauds the office of Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon for courageously opening an investigation regarding the Bush administration’s torture of alleged terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Graib, and elsewhere. His noble decision to forge ahead last week (April 29th) with the high calling of this international legal mission is truly exemplary. It is good to see that quixotice chivalry still exists in this world. The significance of Garzon suiting up for this joust and single-handedly taking on the black magicians of the Bush administration through the power of universal jurisdiction is profound: it places on notice the entire modus operandi of the American New World Order and all its neo-con hawks, and presents before the world the powerful notion that no one, no one, is above the law, including a notorious American presidency or any further to come. The citizens of this world supremely deserve that the Bush administration be tried in an international court of law for its crimes against humanity and this decision to do so by Judge Garzon marks an extraordinarily positive and extremely encouraging direction, if not an altogether inspiring one.

What I find most striking is that Garzon is acting on his own initiative in this affair. Spanish prosecutors said on April 17 that any such probe should be carried out by the U.S. and recommended against it being launched in Spain, an opinion that had been endorsed by the Spanish Attorney General. Garzon, however, due to the fact that Spanish law recognizes the principle of universal jurisdiction, is able to personally undertake this matter simply by holding the magistrate seat of Juzgado Central de Instrucción, Numero 5. A law passed in Spain in 1985 established that Spanish courts have jurisdiction over crimes outside Spain when those crimes can be typified as genocide and terrorism, as well as any other crime that violates international treaties or conventions. Several other countries, such as Canada and France, also possess constitutional provisions that enable their courts to enforce the U.N. Convention against Torture, but none of them have stepped up to do so. Thus, Garzon, as one of six Spanish judges empowered to investigate such crimes, has made an enormously gutsy decision to take this on.

In a 10-page writ, Garzon said documents and various memos on Bush-era treatment of prisoners "reveal what had been just an intuition: an authorized and systematic plan of torture and mistreatment of persons denied freedom without any charge whatsoever and without the rights enjoyed by any detainee” and suggest "the existence of a concerted plan to carry out a multiplicity of crimes of torture." He said this plan took on "almost an official nature and therefore entails criminal liability in the different structures of execution, command, design and authorization of this systematic plan of torture." He said he also is acting on the basis of accounts by four former Guantanamo inmates who have alleged in Spanish courts that they were tortured at that U.S. prison in eastern Cuba. All four were once accused of belonging to a Spanish al-Qaida cell but eventually cleared of the accusations. One is a Spanish citizen, another is a Moroccan citizen who has lived in Spain for more than a decade, and the other two are residents of Britain. This latter fact greatly legitimizes Spain’s involvement in opening its court to the prosecution of Bush era defendants.

As I had mentioned in a previous post, it is my strong feeling that an international prosecution of those individuals behind this systemic plan of torture would possess much more bite than any result that a U.S. investigation might produce because, all things considered, American internal politics would darkly cloud the light that needs to be objectively shined on this matter. I'll provide some clear examples.

First, it is highly likely that what is called a “special prosecutor” would be assigned to proceed with this investigation, in which case it would immediately become clear that a special prosecutor, while digging up facts, does so only in order to prosecute a possible crime. As revealed in a recent article in Mother Jones magazine, author David Corn related the pathetic weaknesses of such an investigation: "a special prosecutor’s mission is not to shine light on misdeeds, unless it is part of a prosecution. In many cases, a prosecutor's investigation does not produce any prosecutions. Sometimes, it leads only to a limited prosecution". In short, a special prosecutor is ultimately a criminal detective and much less of a litigating attorney.

The most recently assigned special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, spent months upon years investigating the CIA leak case trying to determine who in the Bush administration had done what relating to the disclosure of the agent’s classified CIA identity. “He investigated forcefully and thoroughly, and he ultimately prosecuted Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, for having lied to the FBI and a grand jury about his actions in this affair. Fitzgerald mounted a strong case against Libby and won a conviction and a tough prison sentence--which President George W. Bush subsequently commuted”. Further, “he could not share with the public all that he had discovered about the involvement of Bush, Cheney, Karl Rove, and other officials in the CIA leak case. Under the rules governing federal criminal investigations, he was permitted to disclose only information and evidence that was directly related and needed for the indictment and prosecution of Libby. Everything else he had unearthed via subpoenas and grand jury interviews had to remain secret. Repeatedly, Fitzgerald said that his hands were tied on this point”. Clearly, there’s little point in this. In fact, there’s no point in this.

The article, however, goes on to say that other vehicles for a U.S. government investigation exist, mainly, Congress and/or an independent commission. The Senate intelligence committee, under the leadership of Senator Dianne Feinstein, is already conducting a probe. “But there is no telling what information it will make public via hearings or a final report. Traditionally, the congressional intelligence committees have been overly sensitive--or far too deferential--to the secrecy demands of the intelligence agencies they are supposed to oversee. And congressional investigations of hot-button topics, as Obama has recently noted, do tend to become political mud-wrestling matches. (The Senate intelligence committee's examination of the Bush administration's use of the prewar intelligence about WMDs in Iraq turned into a mess.)”. He concludes, “a well-managed and thorough congressional investigation that placed a premium on public disclosure could (my italics) serve the public need for accountability. So could an independent commission. Several human rights groups--including Amnesty International, Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, and the Center for Victims of Torture--have asked Obama to establish an independent nonpartisan commission that would examine the torture and abuse of detainees and issue a public report”.

Yet, the President is not keen on this for eminently practical reasons: the White House has enough problems and crises right in front of it without needing to look for any behind it. As regards Obama's involvement in this matter I am willing to concede that he has contributed enough already by releasing the memos and rolling back Guantanamo. Though it is true that he has kept his hands off of this political hot potato as much as he can, it's not like he doesn't have anything better to worry about.

Lastly, there is yesterday’s article in the New York Times about a just concluded internal Justice Department inquiry by the Office of Professional Responsibility, an internal ethics unit within the Justice Department, that further spells out the inefficacy of any punishment that could be meted out to these miscreant lawyers who authorized the “enhanced interrogation methods”. It found that “Bush administration lawyers committed serious lapses of judgment in writing secret memorandums authorizing brutal interrogations, but that they should not be prosecuted”. In summation of the article, it is likely that the ethics unit will ask state bar associations to consider possible disciplinary action, which could include reprimands or even disbarment, for some of the lawyers involved in writing the legal opinions. Yet, the Washington Post said in a related article that according to the queried opinions of experts on legal ethics “efforts to impose professional sanctions on Bush administration lawyers who drafted memos supporting harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects face steep hurdles. Law professors and legal practitioners who have handled such cases said the difficulty of gathering witnesses and evidence could present ‘nearly insurmountable challenges’ for state investigators who may wish to pursue a case against the lawyers, John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee. The core question, one such expert said, is whether state lawyers could prove that Yoo and Bybee ran afoul of professional rules. ‘The only theory on which [a case] could proceed would be if lawyers violated their duty to a client . . . by giving the White House an opinion in which they did not actually believe’. Veterans of state bar offices said the organizations tend to move slowly because they are strapped for resources and are overwhelmed by cases in which lawyers failed to appear in court or absconded with clients' funds.” So the ethics unit determines that they should not be prosecuted, experts say it couldn't be done anyway. End of the day: not only will these guys not do criminal time, they won’t even lose their professional credentials as lawyers, thus allowing them to continue on their merry, little criminal way as lawyers.

My point in discussing the above is to show just how necessary Garzon’s investigation is -- regardless of critics who claim, such as former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton did in a Washington Post editorial yesterday, being the good neo-con hawk that he is, that “President Obama's passivity before the threatened foreign prosecution of Bush administration officials achieves by inaction what he fears doing directly” and that by allowing the Spanish to take care of this matter for America “by proxy” that “it risks grave long-term damage to the United States…that could also come back to bite future Obama administration alumni, including the president, for their current policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere”. What Bolton is really complaining about is that it would set the political precedent for placing an American administration smack dab in the middle of an international court were it to behave in the same benighted way as the very recent neo-con hawk New World Nightmare regime had for the last eight years, which is the whole reason for Judge Garzon’s investigation in the first place.

The evidence that exists in the body of declassified memos between the CIA and the U.S Department of Justice that were released by the Obama administration, plus the International Red Cross’ interviews with those detained and tortured at Guantanamo will almost certainly prove sufficient to bring a guilty verdict against those charged. The only question is how far up the ladder the prosecution will successfully scale. It is my guess that the honorable judge ultimately has his sights set on the Oval Office, where "the existence of a concerted plan to carry out a multiplicity of crimes of torture...in the different structures of execution, command, design and authorization"began. The truth is, justice won’t be served in any other way. I’ll be waiting.

They might have been giants: Spain's apparent retirement from indicting the Bush Six

It appears at this time that the Spanish Court is going to retire from its pursuit of indictments against the Bush Six as a result of the Obama Administration’s tentative steps towards clearing the way for a congressional investigation. So much for knight errantry. It is lamentable that Spain is dismounting and leaving this investigation up to the United States because American political soft-pedaling is bound to taint the affair, and there is the great likelihood that it will not deliver a decisive verdict containing substantial punishments for all of those responsible. The results of an American investigation are highly predictable: a lengthy period of congressional hearings culminating in a massive report that will find the Department of Justice heads who authorized the torture culpable, based on already damning evidence. In the course of the investigation it will also uncover evidence clearly implicating Bush and Cheney, but will stop quite short of delivering a sentence of any magnitude upon the latter for breaking international treaty law. That Bush and Cheney will receive their walking papers in the form of a symbolic condemnation and exit history with merely poor citizenship grades on their report card is a foregone conclusion. The Spanish court’s action would, undoubtedly, have had a great deal more bite.

However, it needs to be made very clear that it is not Spain’s responsibility to hold America’s leaders accountable either to their constitutional vows or America’s commitments to international treaties that it has ratified. That is something Americans need to perform for themselves, and at this point, is just a matter of time before they do. Nonetheless, something tells me that the results coming from a Spanish court would be a lot more satisfying than anything that an American commission will render. The Spanish court’s inevitable guilty verdicts would exact a severe penalty upon the defendants. At the very least, they would never be able to travel abroad - and that is not a small punishment. Further, they would suffer a great deal of international humiliation. The precedent would also energize the international community toward inhibiting future shady American foreign policy, a prospect that the neo-con American right would choke on. Given that all an American commission will conclude is that Bush and Cheney, et al., are guilty qua guilty, and that the verdict itself will be serving as the punishment renders the whole affair virtually pointless. Yet, now that Spain has spurred the Obama Administration to take an action that it clearly would prefer not to have to perform, I’m afraid that this is the best that we can look forward to.

A hot air ballon: China's National Human Rghts Action Plan

On Monday the Chinese State Council, chaired by Premier Wen Jibao, released what it termed "a human rights action plan". The lengthy 27 page document, as posted on China Daily and reported in the NYT, was announced as the government's "first working plan on human rights protection". The document pledges, in less than two years, to correct just about every conceivable wrong in China.

The National Human Rights Action Plan, 2009-10 comes less than two months before the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen, and as I see it, that's its sole raisson d'etre: to preemptively take the steam out of any disturbances that are bound to arise at that time. However, it's just an emergency valve that the Party has placed on the machine of the Party State for what's bound to be a hot summer in a few places in China, but it's a facade knob. It's something straight out of Willy Wonka's Chocolate factory. However, I give Wen Jibao and gang a hand for their hurry up attitude in drafting the Party's "first working plan on human rights protection". (That in itself reveals the sad condition of human rights in the PRC). And all of this accomplished in less than two years! Bravo! I'm rolling. Who do these clowns think they are fooling?

This rights paper is only the latest in a long series of white papers and policy pronouncements dating back to '49 that have all been intended to show that Party orficials take human rights seriously in China. However, it's the first "action plan". None of the previous ones were. Here is the list of all the wonderful things they say they are going to do for the nice, downtrodden people of China, finally. Read at your pleasure...

Introduction
I. Guarantee of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
(1) Right to work
(2) Right to basic living conditions
(3) Right to social security
(4) Right to health
(5) Right to education
(6) Cultural rights
(7) Environmental rights
(8) Safeguarding farmers' rights and interests
(9) Guarantee of human rights in the reconstruction of areas hit by the devastating earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan Province
II. Guarantee of Civil and Political Rights
(1) Rights of the person
(2) Rights of detainees
(3) The right to a fair trial
(4) Freedom of religious belief
(5) The right to be informed
(6) The right to participate
(7) The right to be heard
(8) The right to oversee
III. Guarantee of the Rights and Interests of Ethnic Minorities, Women, Children, Elderly People and the Disabled
(1) The rights of ethnic minorities
(2) Women's rights
(3) Children's rights
(4) Senior citizens' rights
(5) The rights of the disabled
IV. Education in Human Rights
V. Performing International Human Rights Duties, and Conducting Exchanges and Cooperation in the Field of International Human Rights
(1) Fulfillment of international human rights obligations
(2) Exchanges and cooperation in the field of international human rights

Whew! Got all that? The Ant has heard that they were going to add a 28th page to the document, but they decided that they didn't want to waste any more paper. One wonders what the point is of all of the above if, as legal experts say, the civil liberties mentioned in the action plan are already guaranteed by Chinese laws or the Constitution? However, international human rights advocates, trying to look on the bright side, say that "it focuses on trying to advance respect for human rights within the existing bureaucracies and that the release of the action plan could help abused citizens by providing clearer guidance to local and provincial governments of the long-term direction of national policy". (One suspects that they intend to bring in the foreign experts of Stuart Smalley Seminars, Inc. to provide them with the "sensitivity training" to enable all of this). Further, "they cautioned that any implementation would require many years of work by local, provincial and national government agencies, many of which have shown little interest in initiatives that may limit their power." I guess that rules out getting all of this done in less than two years. Bummer...

As the NYT writer stated, this is "a lengthy document promising to improve the protection of civil liberties, which are often neglected and sometimes systematically violated in China". The abysmal history of civil rights in "modern China" (there's nothing really modern about China in terms of its internal dynamics) is a long story about how Chinese citizens are systematically and routinely violated by the authorities, leaving citizens who find themselves jacked up by the Party without any practicable grounds for appeal through the Communist Party-controlled courts. Further, the document "does not propose any fundamental reforms of the country’s one-party system, such as making the courts independent of party control or allowing other parties or political groups to hold power. Nor does it propose phasing out the system of administrative detention, which gives broad powers to local law enforcement officials, including the ability to send people to prison camps for “re-education through labor” without a trial. There is also no promise to close the unregistered jails that municipal and provincial governments have set up in Beijing and elsewhere to detain petitioners who want to present their grievances". (NYT). Until the Chinese get a clearer sense of what habeas corpus means and put an end to local PSB officials acting like a regional militia in their own private fiefdom, not much is going to change in China. But that's why those things aren't slated in the document. There is no good faith here, nor could there ever be.

This whole document is a bogus hot air balloon. Simply reading the very first pledge of the document immediately reveals how massively suspect it is. "By the year 2010, the registered urban unemployment rate will be kept below 5 percent. In 2009 and 2010, an additional 18 million urban workers will be employed and 18 million rural laborers will move to cities or towns and find jobs there, and the state will take proactive and effective measures to offset the negative impacts of international financial crisis, and ensure the economic, social and cultural rights of all members of society." It doesn't take a genius to realize that this very specific promise, without question, depends more on the health of the global economy than on the efforts of the government by itself. It reads more like a sorcery than a practicable plan, from beginning to end. Again, I presume the aforementioned foreign experts intend to provide training in positive thinking technologies to assist the Chinese with making this probable delusion a reality. "China, just say, 'I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!' (and will buy the things I make that I can't afford to buy myself), and we'll all be a 'harmonious society!'". Dream on.

The official Xinhua news agency cleared its throat and in conclusion said, “The government admitted that ‘China has a long road ahead in its efforts to improve its human rights situation.’ ”

Spanish Indictments of Bush Cabal : Ariba!

The Spanish Supreme Court appears imminently set to indict former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Federal Appeals Court Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff David Addington, and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith. All are accused of having sanctioned the torture and mistreatment of prisoners held in U.S. detention in “the war on terror.” The latest news is that indictments could be handed down in the next 24 hours. A brief but comprehensive account of the matter is reported here. Of particular interest is the background on the investigating judge and the status of recent U.S. and Spanish relations.

Once the Spanish central criminal court in Madrid, the Audencia Nacional, issues warrants for their arrests, Spain will be known in America for more than just its windmills. What is of great value to understand is that this is not a question of "if". Madrid is clearly set to do this, and once done, 24 countries in Europe are obligated to enforce them. Dinner, I mean justice, is just inches away from being served. I'd especially like to see Addington's arrogant head on a platter. In my mind, he is the evil genius behind much of what went on in Cheney's office. Gonzales, the porky little pig that he is, the one who uttered the phrase, "ehbedeeb, ehbedeeb, ehdeebeh, I don't remember" approximately once every five minutes (64 times in 3 hours) in one of his most important testimonies before congress, would look great with an apple in his mouth. The rest of them can be raped into sangria. Of course, this banquet won't be complete with out El Jefe Bush flambeed and served for desert, some sort of good ol' Texas strawberry shortcake with his kidneys in the place of berries would be good. And let's not forget his good amigo, Dick Cheney. (Cheney strikes me as an after dinner cigar one would like smoke slowly and savoringly). Once court proceedings are under way, the popular wave of support for indictment of Bush officials will inevitably lead to Bush himself. I'm salivating already.

Lest I appear a tad bit bloodthirsty, I only want to say that I am hungry for justice and redemption and have been since Bush won a rigged Presidential election in 2000. I was eager to see Bush and cabal impeached for constitutional crimes, and followed that movement closely for over 2 years. The aforementioned having fallen through, I am now eager to see them tried in an international court of law. Bush is a war criminal responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of lives. He is responsible for the vast devastation of both the Iraqi and American societies in the name of a bogus war on terror. But this trial is potentially more than just about an international criminal verdict of the Bush administration. It is also places on high notice the entire American right wing that marched like good Germans in lock-step with him, either wittingly or unwittingly. And what has now become clear to almost everyone is a matter that I and my friends and family have known for years: the American right wing is comprised in its base of uneducated, rural rednecks who couldn't spell Afghanistan even if you spotted them all the vowels or Iraq if you left out the Q. It's surburban/urban support comes from meek, little technocrats who only want a nice, safe, hygenic and conservative world in which they can drive from a gated community to a glass tower everyday in order that they might be able to take a cruise ship every once in a while so they can think that they are alive. Their game is weak. Those in positions of power within the American right, the so-called "masters of the universe", have taken advantage of these poor, unwitting slobs for years. We've seen how they've run Wall St and the Fortune 500. It's time to end the Bush "legacy" and all those that have been complicit with it. Ariba!

Enough is enough, PRC goons.

The New York times reported on the 7th of April that Sun Wenguang, a 75-year-old retired professor from the University of Shandong, while observing Qing Ming Jie (tomb sweeping day) on April 4th was attacked by a group of four to five men and beaten severely. This beating resulted in three broken ribs and injuries to his spine, head, back, arms and legs. He is now in a Jinan hospital, the capitol of Shandong province.

What brought about this sudden ill fate, you ask? Are there roaming bands of brigands in China's cemeteries? No, there aren't. But there are plain-clothes cops who will pound on you if you chose the wrong tomb to sweep. Sun came to remember Zhao Ziyang, a former prime minister and Communist Party general secretary who lost his party position and his freedom after sympathizing with student-led, pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Mr. Zhao, who died in 2005, is a martyr to some democracy advocates.

The attack on Prof. Sun was part of a concerted effort by the Chinese government to head off any efforts to memorialize the deaths of hundreds of Tiananmen Square protesters on June 4, the 20th anniversary of the government’s crackdown. China Human Rights Defenders, a Hong Kong-based group that has publicized this matter stated, “Chinese authorities are staging a campaign of terror to intimidate and suppress expressions of commemoration for the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.” The attack on Mr. Sun “is part of the overall campaign,” it said. Public security officials in Jinan referred calls about the attack to the propaganda office of the city’s Communist Party. No one answered phone calls to that office on Tuesday night, the NYT reported. (How curious).

The article goes on to say, "Mr. Sun said he had previously visited the cemetery on Qingming Day to honor Mr. Zhao’s death without serious incident. But this year, he said, he announced his forthcoming visit on the Internet. As he left the teacher’s dormitory at Shandong University, a public security officer and about 20(!) plainclothes officers tried to stop him. Quoting the former professor from a telephone interview from his hospital bed, “they said, ‘don’t go there today. So many people are going there. It is dangerous". When he got into a taxi, a car followed him. He said he had started down a cemetery path, carrying a banner that read “Condolences for the heroes who died for freedom,” when four or five men jumped him from behind, threw him into a ditch and beat him for more than 10 minutes. "It is important for China to restore the memory of its history. Zhao Ziyang is such an important person in Chinese history, and students today have no idea who he is. That is outrageous.”

Uh, that would be an understatement. To put in perspective Zhao's fall from grace one needs to understand that the General Secretary is the highest ranking official of the party and heads the Politburo Standing Committee. The General Secretary is usually the Paramount leader in China. Previous party worthies who have held this post, and whose names are better known than Zhou's, would be Deng Xioping, Jiang Zemin, and its current holder, Hu Jintao. Zhao's purgation was a watershed event in China. Since being removed from that post after having sided with the students and the intellectuals for the enactment of democratic reforms, his name has all but been erased from the history books in today's China. There has been no further nonsense talk amongst high rankers that economic progress is inextricably linked to democratization since his purge.

In the four days he has been in the hospital, the police have not shown up to investigate. (That's curious, too). Prof. Sun said, “I still feel very weak. And I think probably my days are numbered. But I don’t feel regret. I am 75 years old and I would be very happy to sacrifice my life for my ideals." Mr. Sun has a long history of activism. He was imprisoned for seven years in the 1970s for criticizing Mao and his successor, Hua Guofeng, and was among the first to sign Charter 08, a manifesto issued in December that calls for democratic reforms. Still, he said: “I didn’t expect this. I was not trying to organize any group of people. It was just a personal visit to a cemetery. In order to fight for democracy, we need to make personal efforts.”

The writer of this blog has to admit that in the course of the last 6 months that he has been stupefied by the events that have unfolded. The sheer volume of information and opinions regarding our current straits has left The Ant panting inside a tiny little air bubble, trying to intellectually dig out of this collapse, not to mention financially, and find some light. No doubt, this is the case for many at this time. However, for this type of villainy that just occurred in Shandong, I don't need a PhD in Economics in order to understand. This blog has existed from its beginning to speak up about this manner of thing in China. Beating a 75-year-old man in a cemetery for carrying out a religious observance is just pathetic and cowardly. Once again, PRC, you don't fail to arouse disgust with your gross human rights abuse.