Since, there's so much written about torture / "enhanced interrogation" techniques at Guantanamo Bay, there's nothing much left to comment on it. However, I would like to point out one thing this article mentions about these "enhanced interrogation" techniques.
As the article mentions that some of these torture techniques have been borrowed from the "torture book" of Nazi Germany.
So, it's all good & ok to vilify Nazis and describe Adolf Hitler as the most despicable human who ever lived, but it's all good and ok to copy the torture tactics from Nazis & apply them extensively on people who are still waiting for the lawful punishments for their alleged crimes.
Think of it like this; you hate that coworker at your workplace who bullies everyone & everyone is afraid of him/her. Would you, a nice person, copy & act like that bully & still think that you are not only a nice person, but people are respecting you because you are still being a considered a nice person by others?
Or what if your husband or boyfriend start copying tactics & methods of a rapist? Would you still think that he is a nice person with whom you are or willing to have a family?
Furthermore, perhaps, Nazis were using these "enhanced interrogation" techniques to extract info from Jews. They wanted to eliminate all Jews from lands they had occupied. Perhaps, they labelled "Jews" as "terrorists" & considered themselves & their nations / occupied lands to be threatened by Jews, & hence, wanted to extract info from captured Jews in any way they can, so they can exterminate all of them. Now, what if, we replace "Nazis" with "American military" & "Jews" with "Muslims". Lo and behold, we got Gitmo !!!
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The most senior CIA officer on record yet has said he’s “comfortable with saying” that waterboarding & related interrogation methods were “torture.” He was commenting on the post-9/11 “enhanced interrogation” tactics used by the Bush Administration.
The remarks by former executive director of the CIA, Alvin ‘Buzzy’ Krongard (2001-2004), were made to BBC’s Panorama. The third most senior former official at the agency was asked if he thought waterboarding & related tools amounted to torture.
“Well, let's put it this way, it is meant to make him (the suspect) as uncomfortable as possible. So I assume, without getting into semantics, that's torture. I'm comfortable with saying that."
The torture debate has never let up. President Barack Obama famously put an end to torture in 2009, but failed to prosecute senior Bush-era officials for running such programs.
In the past, the position of all Bush-era officials was overwhelmingly that the euphemistically-called “enhanced interrogation” is not torture, as it was approved by the White House at the time. Those techniques included, aside from waterboarding, sleep deprivation, forcing detainees into uncomfortable physical positions, slamming them into flexible walls, as well as cramming them into small spaces, beating them physically & subjecting them to ice-cold baths.
Guantanamo Bay, which Obama has several times promised to shut down, is still operating. Panorama writes how one detainee, Abu Zubayadh, accused of being a key Al-Qaeda recruiter, has been in detention there since 2002. During these 14 years, he has regularly been stuffed into a box barely larger than a square meter, sometimes for 29 hours at a time. The person is forced to sit in a crouched position, with no room to breathe or do anything else.
Another, upright, coffin-shaped box was also used. Abu spent more than 11 days confined in that.
All the methods were taken from the CIA’s SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance & Escape) handbook on resisting interrogation. Some of the torture methods date back to Nazi Germany.
SERE military instructor Malcolm Nance talked to Panorama, explaining how “these close confinement boxes were used by the SS… They would stuff these British and American agents into them and drive them mad.”
The practice was banned by the Geneva Conventions, but this ban didn’t prevent its use on Guantanamo Bay inmates.
A host of other methods thought to have been banned were uncovered in last December’s Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, which dealt with the interrogation of terror suspects in secret CIA prison facilities.
According to Krongard, any intelligence extracted that the Brits found interesting & “particularly represented a threat” was shared with them by the Americans. "I can't think of two intelligence services working in a more harmonious or closer [way] and that I think, had a lot to do with the relationship at the top," he added.
When asked if he thought the British knew or approved of the interrogation methods, Krongard said: “It’s hard for me to think that they didn’t, they’re professional intelligence people, I mean obviously.”
However, when the BBC approached the Foreign Office to ask whether accepting information gathered through torture was fine, it received an adamant reply: “We do not condone it, nor do we ask others to do it on our behalf."
The results of the Senate Intelligence Committee probe were published last December. Though much of the report was redacted, it contained shocking findings about what was euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including the admission that they were ultimately ineffective.
Although, the article is a few months old, the only reason I liked it, is because it shows how social & economic inequality among the public is dangerous to us all.
Governments, especially Western ones, keep saying for the past couple decades that they are working hard to root out "terrorism". Whenever there are violent incidents, government officials issue statements with words like "unnecessary" & "senseless", & outline how they will root out the terrorism problem from their societies & the world. But the violence has only increased.
So, the common sense says that the root cause analyses done by these government officials' advisors are useless. One of the major root cause of modern terrorism is social & economic inequality, & hidden & open discrimination.
In one of my prior blog posts from last year (2015), the article mentioned was a Daily Mail article mentioning how Charlie Hebdo attackers were born-&-bred French citizens. Those attackers / "terrorists" grew up in Parisian suburbs, which are full of immigrants or even "foreign" citizens, & who are excluded from the economic development of France, Paris, & its general public. They have been left out in the metaphorical cold outside, while the Caucasian French natives are enjoying the fruits of immigrants' hard labour.
Now, those "foreign" citizens are from former French colonies & have been living in France for generations. But they are still considered as "foreigners". This similar problem has permeated other countries in EU; from Spain to UK to Belgium to Sweden. The root problem is still same, though; immigrants are welcomed wholeheartedly because they are discriminated against in the upper echelons of the labour market & they are only given hard labour jobs, at minimum wages & benefits, if any, while the natives of the country enjoy becoming rich on the backs of those immigrants.
As the professor of social science clearly explains in the article that these violent incidents in Sweden are not senseless but have major social problems like discrimination & high unemployment among immigrant families are their root causes. The unemployment rate for youths is about 25%, & most of those unemployed are “not Swedes.” He further affirms my points that “in the last 15 years the gap between the rich & the poor has grown enormously & ... you find very rich people that are white people & the poor people are non-white people.”
Problem is that Western governments & other non-Western governments will not solve the root cause of these violent incidents. Solving root causes will involve stop interfering with the internal sovereign matters of other developing countries, stop selling arms & weapons to developing countries, putting in policies in their own countries to judge every job applicant on merit & not on personal & professional networks, & end discrimination in labour market & education. Some of these are much easier to do but unachievable because it will hurt them economically. Some others are much harder to do, perhaps impossible, because human nature cannot be changed (we like people who are like us & hence, we readily will help them).
But if Western governments want these violent incidents to stop, then they have to take the first steps to carefully examine themselves & correct their own actions first. We can't blame others for their actions until we take a hard look at ourselves & correct our own actions first. Why give an excuse to others to harm us?
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On Sunday, the southern Swedish city of Malmo saw the fourth grenade attack in under a week as the a hand grenade was detonated in a car park in the district of Värnhem in the morning, local media reported.
The attack came after a blast on Friday in the Solbacken neighborhood, which occurred less than 12 hours after another explosion in the residential area of Limhamn in the west, & 2 days after a car bomb attack that injured a man outside a community center in the south.
“It is the thirtieth explosive attack since the New Year. We have a situation that is serious,” said the Malmö police chief, Stefan Sintéus, about the explosion on Friday, as quoted by the Local.se on Saturday.
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This week’s unrest continues a series of numerous shootings, explosions & arsons that have occurred since the beginning of the year in Malmo, infamous for high crime rates, multi-ethnic & gang-related violence.
Since the beginning of 2015, 18 explosions rocked the city prompting the Swedish police's national bomb squad (NSB) to be called in. Over the whole 2014 a total of 25 explosions took place which shows a significant increase, Goran Mansson, head of NSB Malmo, told regional newspaper Sydsvenskan on Friday.
Police said they believe this week’s explosions are linked with the court sentencing of 3 young men on July 10 for their roles in the Christmas Eve bombing in Rosengard – the city district which has been dubbed by media as Sweden’s “most notorious refugee ghetto.” The Financial Times reported that 9 out of 10 in Rosengard have a foreign background.
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Rosengard, a district in Malmo, was built in the 1960s & has long been associated with immigrants. Over 80% of residents there are immigrants, hailing from the Middle East, Africa & Eastern Europe. Only 38% of residents in the district are employed, according to the Economist, prompting restive youth to take to rioting & crime.
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Forstell told RT that there are 30 to 40 people with criminal background & weapons in the city. He explained that criminal activity is connected with internal conflicts between different gangs or ethnic groups.
“Some of these people are involved in selling drugs and some of them are in other kinds of economic relations with each other and are not happy with the way things work out. It’s more of a business-like conflict,” he said.
According to statistics provided by local authorities, 31% of the city’s 300,000 population were born abroad & nearly 41% of the residents have a foreign background. The main countries from which immigration takes place are ones which have been recently plagued by conflicts – migrant groups from Iraq, Syria, the former Yugoslavia & Somalia are among them. The data also says that the Muslim population constitutes about 20% of Malmo’s population; this is one of the most significant percentages in Scandinavian cities.
Adrian Groglopo, professor of social science at the University of Gothenburg said that the conflicts are fueled by racial & economic tensions.
“People growing up in different areas segregated racially and economically are trying to keep their own business, protect their own areas and sometimes create a very violent climate,” he told RT.
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Groglopo believes that the young population is being hit the hardest by the “racism and segregation in Sweden.”
“We have living conditions which are not good for the youth, that’s one of the problems,” he explains.
He also pointed to the problem of unemployment in Sweden which is “about 8-9 percent and for young people it’s about 25 percent.” He stressed that one of the main problems is ethnic discrimination in the labor market as most of the unemployed are “not Swedes.”
“In the last 15 years the gap between the rich & the poor has grown enormously & of course it has racial connotations – you find very rich people that are white people & the poor people are non-white people,” he added.
He urged the Swedish government to implement political measures for non-discrimination. There have been controversial incidents involving security forces & refugees ... .
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“Sweden is going through political period very complex and bad,” Groglopo said. “We [are witnessing] a raise of fascism and Nazism in Sweden…they are getting political power.”
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"Muslim Culture" - Ramzy Taweel, Beirut, Lebanon
A great opinion piece on how American troops once enter a country never actually leave; be it Germany & Japan (after WWII), South Korea (after Korean War), Vietnam (after Vietnam war), & now, Afghanistan & Iraq. Other than these well-publicized conflicts, American troops entered, & wrecked havoc, in several other countries around the world; in Africa & Latin America.
Regardless of how much American leadership says to their naïve, & ignorant, American public that American troops will be out of a country at some point in the future; in reality, they never do. Those troops become the expense, financial & social, of the host country. The military operations continue on for decades on end. Heck, nowadays, American military hand the military operations to "military contractors" (former military personnel) to offload operational costs to a third party & reduce its own liability in case something goes awry.
Furthermore, America needs a war(s) to keep its own populace in fear, which in turn, helps the government to keep control of the public. These wars are / will always be started & fought over false pretenses & the military-industrial complex needs wars like an addict need its addiction. After all, all those billion-dollar budgets won't be passed by the Congress for the military in absence of a war(s).
One more point the opinion piece makes is that these wars, & their continuation, are done without any input whatsoever from the general public. Isn't that against the basic concept of "democracy"? So, can the American public please enlighten me then what's the difference between a Saudi prince waging a war against a poor country, Yemen, without any input from its general public (since, it's an authoritarian regime) & an American government starting wars against poor countries like Afghanistan, Libya, & Iraq, without any input from its general public (especially since, it's a "democratic" country)?
One last point the opinion piece makes, & which hit home, is that billions are spent, & essentially, are being wasted, in these wars. American troops suffer heavy losses in terms of death (almost 10,000 troops have died in Afghanistan & Iraq in the past decade) & life-long physical & mental disabilities. These recent wars against Afghanistan & Iraq have also pretty much bankrupted one of the richest countries in the world. Its general public work hard & still, millions are merely surviving on meagre incomes. Homelessness has substantially increased in the past decade. Poverty keep increasing & shows no signs of abating in the foreseeable future. But billions are wasted on "foreign fighters" who have no allegiance to America, its ideals, & its people.
But, then, America needs wars like a drug addict needs its drugs.
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In all three of the countries where the Obama administration declared US wars “over” in the past few years - Afghanistan, Iraq & Libya - the US military is expanding its presence or dropping bombs at an ever-increasing rate. And the government seems to be keeping the American public in the dark on the matter more than ever.
Pentagon leaders suggested ... that the US military wants to keep remaining 9,800 troops in Afghanistan from withdrawing in 2016, despite the fact that the Obama administration declared combat operations in the country “over” ... months ago. The gradual extension of the Afghanistan War hasn’t been a secret to anyone who’s been paying close attention, but sadly it has happened far away from the pomp & circumstance of Obama’s now embarrassingly false State of the Union announcement that the Afghanistan War had ended.
Shortly after his January speech, the president signed a secret order that would keep the military fighting & killing in the region through 2015, then delayed any troop pull-out through 2016. ...
As the Council on Foreign Relation’s Micah Zenko remarked: “First it was al Qaeda, then the Taliban, now ISIS will be reason US military remains in Afghanistan.” There’s always going to be someone. What unnamed group will be holding our attention in 2020 when we still have troops fighting & dying there for nebulous reasons?
Away from the headlines, Libya continues to deteriorate since the US & NATO allies bombed the region & deposed dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. ...
As a result, the US military to desperately look to build another drone base near Libya that they can start launching regular drone strikes from - targeting both Libya & “elsewhere in North Africa.” This news comes around the same time as yet another retired US general, former director of the Pentagon’s intelligence unit Michael Flynn, indicated ... that drone strikes are actually creating more terrorists than they’re killing. Flynn’s comments echo the same point that has been made over & over by former generals & many other smart people recently, yet has evoked no change in policy or even public debate.
This potential expansion of the Isis war to a third country has all happened without congressional approval. Hardly anyone seems to care that we’re engaged in a generational war spanning multiple continents that we haven’t legally declared, almost a year after it was started.
Meanwhile in Syria, after months of delay, the first US-trained rebels finally entered the Isis-controlled regions and the process is already being accused of “mission creep” by defense experts, given its further entrenching US into the war there (again, without so much as a formal announcement by the government).
The rebels also come at an astronomical price-tag for the US of $4 million for each rebel, & there is no indication that it will have any effect on the chaos that now engulfs Syria, besides potentially causing more of it. Zenko called the program “one of the more poorly conceived and implausible foreign policy schemes in modern history.”
The Obama administration & CIA knew full well that funding rebel armies in foreign countries almost always ends in disaster, yet did it anyways - & hid the conclusions of a CIA study saying as much from Congress along the way.
What’s troubling about all of this is that it is happening with little debate in Congress & almost no input from public. The US is ramping up its war efforts across the Middle East & now North Africa. They want to increase drone strikes, continue to spend billions to train Afghanistan & Iraqi troops, despite the fact that the last decade of “training” has been a disaster where whole armies have deserted & billions of dollars in US weapons are now in the hands of Isis. And of course, the specter of adding more US ground troops always lurks in the background.
There is growing realization from experts that we’re not going to be able to bomb our way out of this. Is there no one in charge in Washington who is willing to admit that doubling down yet again on military force is only going to keep making matters worse?
Loved this opinion piece on Cuba & US reconciling their differences after decades. It essentially explains, in a short summary, how Cuba will end up being a loser, once again, with the thawing of its relationship with business-minded imperialist America.
Couple of paragraphs beautifully summarize American control, direct & indirect, of other so-called sovereign nations, & how American foreign policy is geared towards causing internal strife, if & when, a particular country tries to not toe the American line.
First of these paragraphs is the 4th one in the article below that how Cuba's gangster past & violent history were a product of US government policies, to help make sure that Cuba was continually beset by violence. This feature of American foreign policy can easily be attributed to it when considering violence in Middle Eastern, African, South Asian, South East Asian, & Latin American countries. As I have pointed out in my blog posts multiple times that this violence helps Western developed countries (North American & European) with getting cheap labour (immigration), exorbitant debt loads on developing countries (hence, no investment in education, infrastructure, technology, healthcare etc.), arms & weapons exports (also helps in increasing debt load on developing countries), & of course, keeping the western developed countries as the patrons with whom developing countries will always look towards for any help.
On top of all that, foreign American, Canadian, & European companies get access to the inordinate amounts of riches developing countries have under them; namely, precious metals (diamonds, copper, gold etc.) & fossil fuels (oil & gas). Since, the developing countries are constantly involved in internal & external strife (as explained above & in the 4th paragraph in the article below), they are unable to invest in the development of infrastructure to fully exploit their own riches for their national advantage, & hence, these foreign companies come in & strike deals, which deprive the host nation of its riches for mere pennies in return. Human rights abuses by these companies in their host nations are another matter, which I won't discuss here, but a mere mention should be sufficient for now.
Another paragraph (last one in the article below) is essentially the summary of the opinion piece. It very nicely summarizes that the system of neoliberal plunder that has become the American trademark all over the world could easily be described as organised crime. The aggressive military policies of America ensures that this "system of neoliberal plunder" or "wealth" remains in the hands of a few elites at the top, who in turn, not only listen & follow their American masters, but keep their citizens in line, with the help of strict internal controls.
Countries, which decide to take the route of non-compliance with American demands are relegated to the Stone Age, with the help of American might (political, military, or media) & American friend, the UN. The recent history of past few decades is littered with countries which tried to defy America & how American media (which is pretty much all over the world) successfully did a smear campaign against those countries; Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Soviet Union, North Korea, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile & of course, Cuba. One after another, each of these countries either fell to American might or will in the near future, & when the dust settled, the civilian population of each of these countries, suffered the most. Millions died or have been displaced in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Chile, Vietnam, North Korea, & even in Cuba. So, as the opinion piece correctly surmises that Cuba, & its people, will end up being the loser after it becomes another conquest of America.
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In a recent blog post for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a prominent American membership organisation & think-tank, research associate Valerie Wirtschafter assesses the course of the "Cuban Renaissance" that is apparently now under way thanks to domestic reforms & the diplomatic thaw with the US.
Based on her own mid-Renaissance visit to Cuba earlier this year, Wirtschafter remarks on some counterintuitive aspects of the expanding tourism industry on the born-again island.
"The hotel industry in particular - including the State run Hotel Nacional in Havana - seems to glorify the country's gangster past, a violent history that partially spurred popular support for Fidel Castro's Revolution."
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Nowhere does the article mention a certain - perhaps far more bewildering - fact: that Cuba's "gangster past" & "violent history" were largely a product of US government policies & machinations by the American Mafia. In the wake of Castro's triumph, both entities continued to help ensure that Cuba was continually beset by counter-revolutionary violence.
Gambling colony, gangster state
Historian Jack Colhoun documented the evolution of the nexus between the American state & organised crime in his exhaustively researched book "Gangsterismo: The United States, Cuba and the Mafia, 1933 to 1966".
Cuba's debut as what Colhoun called a "neocolony" of the US took place at the end of the 19th century when the latter intervened in the Cuban war of independence from Spain, effectively nipping the whole "independence" option in the bud & appointing itself Cuba's new master.
The arrangement led to the US appropriation of Cuban territory for a naval base-cum-future-torture-centre at Guantanamo Bay, along with other goodies. By the mid-20th century, Colhoun wrote, Cuba had become "a virtual economic appendage" of the US, with Americans controlling many of its sugar mills, railways, & utilities, & inundating the island with US brands.
The author detailed how the establishment of a "mafia gambling colony" in Cuba starting in the 1930s was facilitated by a special relationship between North American mobsters & Fulgencio Batista, two-time Cuban ruler & one-time dictator. Batista received a cut of the profits from mafia operations & oversaw the conversion of Cuba into a "full-fledged gangster state".
The casinos provided money-laundering opportunities for other lucrative businesses, as well. In 1946, the mafia-run Hotel Nacional hosted a summit of US underworld leaders to lay the foundations for converting the island into a heroin trafficking hub.
No beard, no revolution
When the Cuban revolution brought down the curtain on the gangster state, Colhoun explained, the mobsters regrouped with their corrupt political allies in the Cuban exile movement in the US, where they "squared the circle of gangsterismo" by plotting with the CIA to assassinate Castro.
The CIA also considered less terminal methods for dealing with the Cuban leader ... .
Both the CIA & the mafia sponsored commando raids & sabotage operations in Cuba, the 1961 CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion being merely one of the better known efforts on account of its grandiose failure.
As Colhoun demonstrated, the US joint chiefs of staff even pondered the option of shooting down a civilian airliner & blaming Cuba to serve as a pretext for military intervention. Another proposal entailed staging a "terror campaign" against Cuban exiles, for the same purpose.
Who needs conspiracy theorists when you've got the US government?
Of course, the US could not come right out & say what the real problem with Cuba was: that the revolution had killed the cash cow.
In order to justify its hostile approach to the island, the US instead cast it as an existential threat - over which it was apparently worth risking nuclear armageddon.
Towards a reconquest?
When the two nations finally began patching things up in December of last year, the BBC News observed that, "in Cuba, limited economic reforms carried out by [President] Raul Castro have begun to relax the tight grip of the state and pique the interest of American business".
But while the neoliberals salivate away about business prospects in Cuba, what are the prospects for the average Cuban?
For starters, as Wirtschafter acknowledged in her CFR post, Cuba's current healthcare system "actually provides for the people". That's one thing that can only go downhill in the event of a US economic reconquest of the island. After all, there are loads of profits to be made off of sick people. Ditto for education.
And while the White House claims that its efforts in Cuba are "aimed at promoting the independence of the Cuban people so they do not need to rely on the Cuban state", it is difficult to see how popular independence might be achieved via imperial meddling in a country that already offers universal access to food, shelter, medicine, & other basic rights.
Wirtschafter also noted that opening up the private sector in Cuba "has increased inequality" & that "as Cuban Americans begin to buy properties in Havana and elsewhere in the coming years, they will further exacerbate [socioeconomic] divisions." In other words, we'll be back to where we started.
All of this would no doubt be music to the ears of the American Mafia bosses who connived for years to terminate the Cuban revolution & its leaders.
But the gangsters aren't the only ones deserving flak. The system of neoliberal plunder that has become the US trademark worldwide - requiring aggressive military policies to ensure that the wealth remains in the hands of a few at the expense of the rest - could just as easily be described as organised crime.
Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine.
