Amanda Kluveld van de Volkskrant 9

'Niet de islam maar de westerse cultuur [is] superieur,' schrijft een zekere Amanda Kluveld in de Volkskrant.

Taguba Saw "Video of Male Soldier Sodomizing Female Detainee"

Friday 29 May 2009

In 2007, shortly after he was forced into retirement, Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba made a startling admission. During the course of his investigation into the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Taguba said he saw "a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee."

Taguba told New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh that he saw other graphic photos and videos as well, including one depicting the "sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees."

That video, as well as photographs Taguba saw of US soldiers raping and torturing Iraqi prisoners, remains in the possession of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division (CID).

Taguba said he did not discuss details of the photographs and videos in his voluminous report on abuses at Abu Ghraib because of the Army's ongoing criminal probe and the photographs' "extremely sensitive nature."

Taguba's report on the widespread abuse of prisoners did say that he found credible a report that a soldier had sodomized "a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick."

The rape video, or photographs like it, "was not made public in any of the subsequent court proceedings, nor has there been any public government mention of it," Hersh wrote. "Such images would have added an even more inflammatory element to the outcry over Abu Ghraib."

Now, a report in Britain's Daily Telegraph this week stating that the photographs and video Taguba first described to Hersh two years ago were the ones the Obama administration has decided against releasing to the American Civil Liberties Union in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit has done just that.

But the photographs described by the Telegraph are not those at the center of the five-year-old lawsuit between the Bush administration and the ACLU that Obama had agreed earlier this year to release.

Two weeks ago, after Obama decided against releasing the photographs, the Telegraph published a report along with several pictures depicting Iraqi prisoners being abused, implying that they were the ones Obama was withholding. That report was also incorrect, as the photographs the Telegraph published two weeks ago had first surfaced in 2006.

Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/052909R

Heleen Mees van de NRC 9

In zijn essaybundel 'Hidden History. Exploring our secret past' schreef de grote Amerikaanse historicus en voormalig directeur van de Library of Congress, Daniel J. Boorstin: 'Advertising, of course, has been part of the mainstream of American civilization, although you might not know it if you read the most respectable surveys of American history... Never was there a more outrageous  or more unscrupulous or more ill-informed advertising campaign than that by which the promoters for the American colonies brought settlers here. Brochures published in England in the seventeenth century, some even earlier, were full of hopeful overstatements, half truths, and downright lies... How has American civilization been shaped by the fact that there was a kind of natural selection here of those people who were willing to believe advertising? ... One of the tendencies of democracy... is the danger that rhetoric would displace or at least overshadow epistemology; that is, the temptation to allow the problem of persuasion to overshadow the problem of knowledge. Democratic societies tend to become more concerned with what people believe than with what is true, to become more concerned with credibility than with truth.' 

Credibility versus truth. Hoogste tijd nu om  'zelfstandig ondernemer' en PVDA-lid Heleen Mees te introduceren. In haar column in de NRC lezen we vandaag de volgende conclusie: 'Als de crisis iets bewijst dan is het dat de Amerikaanser economie veerkrachtiger is dan die van Europa en Japan bij elkaar.'  Zo, die conclusie is niet gering, vooral niet omdat geen enkele serieuze analist echt kan garanderen dat we het dieptepunt van de crisis zijn gepasseerd. We hebben hier duidelijk te maken met het fenomeen zoals die zo kernachtig door Boorstin werd beschreven: het adverteren, het aan de man/vrouw brengen van een ideologie, propaganda voor een bepaald mens- en wereldbeeld. Uit de woorden van mevrouw Mees blijkt hoe weinig ze van de geschiedenis van de VS kent. Kenmerkend voor het Amerikaanse systeem is dat het vanaf zijn allereerste begin het geografisch en economisch expansionisme alleen maar kon veilig stellen door permanent emigranten te werven. Die moesten het nog niet van de Indianen gestolen land bezetten, en nadat deze roof in de tweede helft van de negentiende eeuw was voltooid, moest de aanvoer van emigranten ervoor zorgen dat de lonen laag konden worden gehouden. Het zich snel ontwikkelende laissez faire kapitalisme noodzaakte een onuitputtelijke poel van goedkope arbeidskrachten, zodat de robberbarons zich optimaal konden verrijken. Dit proces is gedocumenteerd beschreven door Yale-hoogleraar Matthew Frye Jacobson in 'Barbarian Virtues. The United States encounters foreign peoples at home and abroad', waarin helder wordt aangetoond hoe 'capitalism's imperative for cheap and abundant labour'  onvermijdelijk een permanente aanvoer van emigranten onontbeerlijk maakte. Alleen op die manier kon het imperium worden veroverd en kon het naakte kapitalisme onbelemmerd blijven groeien. 

En dit proces gaat nog steeds ongestoord door, nu onder het mom van de vrije markt, met als gevolg dat Heleen Mees tevreden kan constateren dat een 'zelfstandige ondernemer' zoals zij toegang heeft tot  'een hoge service maatschappij' die 24 uur per dag tot haar beschikking staat. Ze vertelt alleen niet de keerzijde van dit systeem. Die kent ze niet, of ze verzwijgt dit. Hoe dan ook, in 2002 reisde ik met mijn gezin duizenden kilometers door de VS en kwam ergens in Zuid Dakota in the middle of nowhere in een motel terecht waar twee Indiers ons in het ernaast gelegen restaurant bedienden. Ik vroeg ze hoe ze daar terecht waren gekomen. Het antwoord was simpel, ze hadden een arbeidscontract van drie jaar. Na die drie jaar moesten ze de VS verlaten. Toen ik vroeg hoeveel ze verdienden antwoordden ze: 1 dollar per uur. 1 dollar??? Ja, en de rest moest van tips komen. Waar sliepen ze? Ze namen me 's avonds mee naar een houten kot waar een hele groep Indiers leefde. Ze werkten in ploegendiensten, en zo konden ze elkaar afwisselen.

 Op die manier blijft de VS een -- in de woorden van Mees--  'hoge service maatschappij'. Maar dat weet deze sociaaldemocrate niet, of ze verzwijgt het. En dat is opmerkelijk, want ook in New York werkt het restaurantpersoneel tegen een absoluut minimumloon en moet men het hebben van de 18 procent fooi. Toen ik een van de obers vroeg waarom hij dat accepteerde, zei hij dat als ze protesteerden ze onmiddellijk eruit gegooid werden. Het punt is namelijk dat de 'hoge service maatchappij' alleen mogelijk is door de lage lonen zo laag mogelijk te houden. En dat kan dankzij het feit dat de vakbonden geen vuist meer kunnen maken, en dat is weer het resultaat van het feit dat goedkope derde wereldbewoners die naar de VS gelokt worden, elk sociaal verzet kunnen breken. Voor jou, tien Aziaten. En zo is de cirkel rond. Op die manier kan Heleen Mees vanavond triomfantelijk in de 'slijpsteen voor de geest' melden dat 'vooralsnog het Amerikaanse systeem -- met een aanpassing hier en daar -- opnieuw 's werelds volgende supermodel' zal zijn. Hoera voor de door de burgers hier en in de derde wereld overeind gehouden 'vrije markt'. Uiteindelijk moet iemand dit failliete systeem redden. Opzij, op zij, opzij voor de ideologie van de powerfeministe. 

'Hopeful overstatements, half truths, and downright lies...' 

Noord Korea

Deze logica zult u niet snel in de Nederlandse commerciele massamedia aantreffen, terwijl deze logica toch zo voor de hand liggend is, tenminste voor onafhankelijke journalisten.

Maybe We Should Take the North Koreans at Their Word

Shortly after North Korea exploded its second nuclear device in three years on Monday morning, it released a statement explaining why. "The republic has conducted another underground nuclear testing successfully in order to strengthen our defensive nuclear deterrence."(1) If the Obama Administration hopes to dissuade Pyongyang from the nuclear course it seems so hell bent on pursuing, Washington must understand just how adroitly nuclear arms do appear to serve North Korea's national security. In other words, perhaps we should recognize that they mean what they say.

From the dawn of history until the dawn of the nuclear age, it seemed rather self-evident that for virtually any state in virtually any strategic situation, the more military power one could wield relative to one's adversaries, the more security one gained. That all changed, however, with Alamogordo and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During the Cold War's long atomic arms race, it slowly dawned on "nuclear use theorists" - whom one can hardly resist acronyming as NUTS - that in the nuclear age, security did not necessarily require superiority. Security required simply an ability to retaliate after an adversary had struck, to inflict upon that opponent "unacceptable damage" in reply. If an adversary knew, no matter how much devastation it might inflict in a first strike, that the chances were good that it would receive massive damage as a consequence (even far less damage than it had inflicted as long as that damage was "unacceptable"), then, according to the logic of nuclear deterrence, that adversary would be dissuaded from striking first. What possible political benefit could outweigh the cost of the possible obliteration of, oh, a state's capital city, and the leaders of that state themselves, and perhaps more than a million lives therein?

Admittedly, the unassailable logic of this "unacceptable damage" model of nuclear deterrence - which we might as well call UD - failed to put the brakes on a spiraling Soviet/American nuclear arms competition that began almost immediately after the USSR acquired nuclear weapons of its own in 1949. Instead, a different model of nuclear deterrence emerged, deterrence exercised by the capability completely to wipe out the opponent's society, "mutually assured destruction," which soon came to be known to all as MAD. There were other scenarios of aggression - nuclear attacks on an adversary's nuclear weapons, nuclear or conventional attacks on an adversary's closest allies (in Western and Eastern Europe) - that nuclear weapons were supposed to deter as well. However, the Big Job of nuclear weapons was to dissuade the other side from using their nuclear weapons against one's own cities and society, by threatening to deliver massive nuclear devastation on the opponent's cities and society in reply. "The Department of Defense," said an Ohio congressman in the early 1960s, with some exasperation, "has become the Department of Retaliation."(2)
Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/052909K

Iran 268

Clinton Against Imposing New Iran Sanctions For Now

Written by NIAC   

Friday, 22 May 2009

Image Washington DC - "How we proceed with sanctions depends upon on how the engagement works," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Congress Wednesday.

"Until we have tested, within the time period set forth by the president, where we think this engagement is going, I am not sure that adding new unilateral sanctions is really that helpful," Clinton told lawmakers.  She added, "At some point it might very well be."

Congress is currently considering legislation that would expand unilateral sanctions and target companies exporting refined petroleum to Iran.  The Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act has 122 cosponsors in the House and 51 in the Senate.

Clinton called sanctions a "powerful tool" but cautioned that if new sanctions are deemed necessary by the administration, a multilateral approach would likely be more effective.

"We already have a lot of sanctions on the books but the most effective ones are the ones that we have been able to persuade a lot of our partners to pursue as well," she said.

Clinton told lawmakers that engaging Iran will make other countries like China and Russia more willing to agree to sanctions if those talks fail. 

President Obama has ruled out deadlines for diplomacy but said he would like U.S.-Iran talks to show progress by the end of the year.

***

Editor's Note:  The National Iranian American Council is opposed to new sanctions against Iran, arguing in part that imposing sanctions at this time would undermine diplomacy. In testimony to the House Financial Services Subcommittee, NIAC President Trita Parsi told lawmakers "After a decade-and-a-half of failed economic pressure and three decades of hostility, it is not sanctions or divestments that deserve another chance. It's diplomacy and the opportunity to use the leverage that existing sanctions provide in the context of a negotiation that should be given the space and time to succeed."

Zie: http://www.niacouncil.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1426&Itemid=2

I.F. Stone

Mark Dowie on I.F. Stone

Posted on May 29, 2009

bookcover

By Mark Dowie

Every writer, of whatever genre, recalls one or two momentous encounters with a professional hero or mentor that either shaped their career, or gave them courage to continue. My most memorable such experience occurred in 1986 in Amsterdam, where a small group of leftish European and North American journalists gathered for dinner after a conference. As the evening unwound, I.F. Stone, known to almost everyone as “Izzy,” whose eyesight was failing, asked if I would walk him back to his hotel. How could I decline that request?

Through the narrow streets and over the canals of Amsterdam we walked in silence, Izzy no doubt pondering Socrates, whose biography he was completing; I, more nervous than a kid on his first date, trying to think of a conversation starter. The week before I had left for Europe, a right-wing database called Western Goals had made a file on me available to its corporate clients. A detective friend, able to hack into just about any data anywhere, found and gave me the file. Among other things, it described me as a “radical.” I was upset about that, fearing that such a characterization might limit, even ruin, my budding career.

“That’s a badge of honor,” Izzy growled. “You should wear it with pride.” What followed was a short dissertation on Edmund Burke, a conservative philosopher who, among other memorable things, said that “for every thousand people examining the branches of the tree of evil, you’ll find one examining the roots.”

“That’s radical,” said Izzy. “The Latin for root is radix … same derivative as radical. That’s what we do, isn’t it? We examine the roots of things … so we’re radicals. Let them call you what you are, and get on with your work.”

I have since that moment been comfortable calling myself a radical. So imagine my delight, as a fading investigative reporter, upon being asked to review a book about I.F. Stone, who, despite a controversial life and career, was clearly one of the most influential investigative reporters of our time … a book entitled “American Radical.” I will do my best to be objective, although I can already hear Izzy advising me to eschew the charade of objectivity, a worthy idea that in a world of war, injustice and mendacious government, is simply impossible to attain.

D.D. Guttenplan’s vivid and introspective biography contains far more delightful vignettes and unexpected intersections with true left luminaries and other global celebrities of the era. “American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone” recounts, in amusing detail, the long and productive life of a shy but clearly brilliant Jewish boy from rural New Jersey who began his writing career as a cub reporter, worked harder than most of his peers, penned heated polemics under various pseudonyms and eventually changed his total identity to I.F. Stone, the name under which, for two critical postwar decades, he wrote and published his legendary I.F. Stone’s Weekly newsletter, which became a teething ring for a whole generation of aspiring left-wing journalists, myself among them. 

Lees verder: http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/20090528_mark_dowie_on_if_stone/

Amanda Kluveld van de Volkskrant 8

'Niet de islam maar de westerse cultuur [is] superieur,' schrijft een zekere Amanda Kluveld in de Volkskrant. 

Niets is meer heilig in de westerse cultuur, alles is ondergeschikt gemaakt aan de wetten van de markt, niets is meer onaanraakbaar. 

Gary Snyder: 'if even some small bits of land are considered sacred, then they are forever not for sale and not for taxing. This is a deep threat to the assumptions of an endlessly expansive materialist economy.' 

'Superieur'?

Amanda Kluveld van de Volkskrant 7

'Niet de islam maar de westerse cultuur [is] superieur,' schrijft een zekere Amanda Kluveld in de Volkskrant.