October 31, 2005

U.S. issues

Link: blackprof.com.

Posted by Anupam Chander on October 31, 2005 at 05:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

More Accusations of U.S. Torture in Iraq

Link: Truth About Torture - Newsweek World News - MSNBC.com.

Fishback's courage in taking a lonely stand may be paying off. Inspired by his example, "a growing critical mass of soldiers is coming forward with allegations of abuse," says Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch, the New York-based activist group that first revealed Fishback's story. One of them is Anthony Lagouranis, a Chicago-based Army specialist who recently left the military. He supports Fishback's contention that abuses in Iraq were systematic%u2014and were authorized by officers in an effort to pressure detainees into talking. "I think our policies required abuse," says Lagouranis. "There were freaking horrible things people were doing. I saw [detainees] who had feet smashed with hammers. One detainee told me he had been forced by Marines to sit on an exhaust pipe, and he had a softball-sized blister to prove it. The stuff I did was mainly torture lite: sleep deprivation, isolation, stress positions, hypothermia. We used dogs."

Posted by Anupam Chander on October 31, 2005 at 03:12 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pentagon Won't Let UN Officials Meet with Guantanamo Detainees

Link: International News Article | Reuters.com.

Three U.N. human rights investigators said on Monday they would turn down a long-awaited U.S. invitation to visit Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba unless they were permitted to interview the detainees.

Nearly four years after the visits were first requested, Washington said on Friday the three envoys, including the U.N. expert on torture, could visit foreign terrorism suspects because it had "nothing to hide."

But although they could question U.S. military officials, the envoys would not be allowed to speak to any of the more than 500 detainees because that is the role of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Pentagon said.
...

They also said the one day granted them by the Pentagon for the visit was insufficient.

Posted by Anupam Chander on October 31, 2005 at 03:04 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Berlusconi: 'I tried to get Bush to stop war'

Link: Berlusconi: 'I tried to get Bush to stop war' | csmonitor.com.

In an interview to be broadcast today in Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, one of George Bush's closest allies, said he tried repeatedly to persuade the president not to go to war. The Guardian reports that, in a "behind the scenes effort" he even asked Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi to help him.

"I have never been convinced war was the best way to succeed in making a country democratic and extract it from [a] ... bloody dictatorship," [Berlusconi] says. "I tried on several occasions to convince the American president not to wage war."

His version of events, recounted in an interview with the La7 private TV station, with excerpts reported by the Apcom and Ansa news agencies at the weekend, was backed by his deputy, Gianfranco Fini, leader of the former neo-fascist party, who said: "We tried right up to the end to persuade Bush and Blair not to launch a military attack."

Posted by Anupam Chander on October 31, 2005 at 10:38 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Assessing Alito: Early Views

Link: The Progress Report - American Progress Action Fund.

The Report of the Center for American Progress is distressing:

ALITO WOULD OVERTURN ROE V. WADE: In his dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Alito concurred with the majority in supporting the restrictive abortion-related measures passed by the Pennsylvania legislature in the late 1980s. Alito went further, however, saying the majority was wrong to strike down a requirement that women notify their spouses before having an abortion. The Supreme Court later rejected Alito’s view and also voted to reaffirm Roe v. Wade. [Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 1991]

ALITO WOULD ALLOW RACE-BASED DISCRIMINATION: Alito dissented from a decision in favor of a Marriott Hotel manager who said she had been discriminated against on the basis of race. The majority explained that Alito would have protected racist employers by “immuniz[ing] an employer from the reach of Title VII if the employer’s belief that it had selected the ‘best’ candidate was the result of conscious racial bias.” [Bray v. Marriott Hotels, 1997]

ALITO WOULD ALLOW DISABILITY-BASED DISCRIMINATION: In Nathanson v. Medical College of Pennsylvania, the majority said the standard for proving disability-based discrimination articulated in Alito’s dissent was so restrictive that “few if any…cases would survive summary judgment.” Summary judgment allows a case to be dismissed before it goes to trial. [Nathanson v.Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1991]

ALITO WOULD STRIKE DOWN THE FAMILY AND MEDICAL LEAVE ACT: The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) "guarantees most workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a loved one." The 2003 Supreme Court ruling upholding FMLA [Nevada v. Hibbs, 2003] essentially reversed a 2000 decision by Alito which found that Congress exceeded its power in passing the law. [Chittister v. Department of Community and Economic Development, 2000]

ALITO SUPPORTS UNAUTHORIZED STRIP SEARCHES: In Doe v. Groody, Alito argued that police officers had not violated constitutional rights when they strip-searched a mother and her ten-year-old daughter while carrying out a search warrant that authorized only the search of a man and his home. [Doe v. Groody, 2004]

ALITO HOSTILE TOWARD IMMIGRANTS: In two cases involving the deportation of immigrants, the majority twice noted Alito’s disregard of settled law. In Dia v. Ashcroft, the majority opinion states that Alito’s dissent “guts the statutory standard” and “ignores our precedent.” In Ki Se Lee v. Ashcroft, the majority stated Alito’s opinion contradicted “well-recognized rules of statutory construction.” [Dia v. Ashcroft, 2003; Ki Se Lee v. Ashcroft, 2004]

Posted by Anupam Chander on October 31, 2005 at 10:11 AM in Law School | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Long History of a Bus Ride

Juan Williams points out that Rosa Parks' singular act of defiance came after long study and careful deliberation.  Link: The Long History of a Bus Ride - New York Times.

Before that one moment of defiance on the bus she was a civil rights activist who had long fought to get voting rights for black people in Alabama. Apparently it is too confusing to mention that as far back as 1943 she had refused to follow the rules requiring black people to enter city buses through the back door. And it invites too much complexity to mention that in the late 40's, as an official of the local branch of the N.A.A.C.P., she was forming a coalition with a group of black and white women in Montgomery to fight segregated seating on city buses.

Her education in rural Pine Level, Ala., came at Jim Crow schools that taught her only enough to work for white people as a washerwoman, maid or seamstress. In Montgomery, she worked mending dresses. One of her employers was Virginia Durr, the wife of a powerful white lawyer. Mrs. Durr, a member of the interracial Women's Political Council, became Mrs. Parks's ally in a long-term effort to use political pressure to end the daily indignity of riding segregated buses.

Mrs. Durr introduced Mrs. Parks to the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. The school taught strategies to empower white and black people to get better wages, to register to vote and organize as a political force. Even before Highlander, Mrs. Parks had championed the rights of a teenager, Claudette Colvin, who was arrested in March 1955 for refusing to give up her seat to white people on a Montgomery bus.

All of this preceded the moment when Rosa Parks refused to give up her own seat on the bus. Even after her arrest she had to agree to fight the charges of violating segregation laws, and risk angering the white establishment in town and losing her job. Her husband and her mother told her she was going to be lynched for becoming the named plaintiff in a challenge to segregation. She made a deliberate decision to take up the fight. There was nothing spontaneous about this. And she knew that she would not be fighting alone.

Posted by Anupam Chander on October 31, 2005 at 08:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 30, 2005

India 2.0: Tradition Redefined -- A Blog by Washington Post Staff Writer S. Mitra Kalita

Link: India 2.0: Tradition Redefined -- A Blog by Washington Post Staff Writer S. Mitra Kalita - (washingtonpost.com).

Posted by Anupam Chander on October 30, 2005 at 08:29 PM in Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 28, 2005

Happy Days Are Here Again... for Some

Link: WSJ.com - Backlash Spreads As Profits Surge At Oil Companies.

As high fuel prices roil consumers and Congress considers a variety of measures to ease the impact, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, the world's No. 1 and No. 3 oil companies, weighed in with record third-quarter earnings that totaled almost $19 billion.

Riding a wave of high prices for oil, gasoline and natural gas, Exxon reported third-quarter net income of $9.92 billion, up 75% from the year-ago period, on revenue of $100.72 billion. It was among the biggest quarterly profits of any company in history, and amounted to a per-minute profit of $74,879.23 during the quarter. A handful of other companies have posted higher quarterly earnings in the past, but only with the help of big accounting adjustments, while Exxon's results came mostly from operations.

Shell, the third largest oil company by market value behind Exxon and Britain's BP PLC, said its third-quarter net income rose 68% to $9.03 billion, on $76.44 billion in revenue. Like Exxon, its profit came mostly from operations.

The companies' combined quarterly revenue of $177.16 billion exceeded Denmark's economic output last year.

Posted by Anupam Chander on October 28, 2005 at 06:21 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 26, 2005

Cindy Sheehan: Grim Milestone

Link: The Blog | Cindy Sheehan: Grim Milestone | The Huffington Post.

We are hoping that 2000 Americans come out in support of us during the next 3 days and "die" with us to show our misleaders and media what 2000 dead Americans looks like.

Posted by Anupam Chander on October 26, 2005 at 10:17 PM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 23, 2005

Lots of Unnatural Deaths in American Custody, But Few Prosecutions

Link: C.I.A. to Avoid Charges in Most Prisoner Deaths - New York Times.

espite indications of C.I.A. involvement in the deaths of at least four prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, C.I.A. employees now appear likely to escape criminal charges in all but one of those incidents, according to current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials.

...The Justice Department has charged only one person linked to the C.I.A. with wrongdoing in any of the cases: David A. Passaro, who was a contract worker, not a C.I.A. officer. The details of the C.I.A. cases remain classified, as do the Justice Department reviews.

But the prosecutors' decisions appear to reflect judgments that the C.I.A. was far less culpable in the mistreatment of prisoners than was the military, where dozens of soldiers have been convicted or accepted administrative punishment for their actions in cases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

...A case still technically under review by the Justice Department, the officials said, involves a high-profile episode in which a C.I.A. officer has been linked to mistreatment of prisoners, in a case involving an Iraqi who died under C.I.A. interrogation in a shower room at Abu Ghraib. But in another case, involving the hypothermia death of an Afghan at a C.I.A.-run detention center called the Salt Pit in Afghanistan in November 2002, the Justice Department has signaled that it does not intend to bring charges.

A third episode studied within the C.I.A. involves a former Iraqi general who died of asphyxiation after being stuffed head-first into a sleeping bag at the base at an American base in Al Asad, in western Iraq, on Nov. 26, 2003, after several days of interrogation. The questioning involved beatings by a group that included at least one C.I.A. contract worker. One official said that case was never referred to the Justice Department for prosecution.

Mr. Passaro is awaiting trial in North Carolina in connection with his role in a fourth case, involving the death of a prisoner in Afghanistan in June 2003.

It was not previously known that the C.I.A. had sent eight dossiers to the Justice Department. An article by The New York Times in February said only that the C.I.A. inspector general had made at least two such referrals, asking that the Justice Department review the cases for possible prosecution.

All of the cases have been reviewed by the C.I.A. inspector general, and in at least two of the cases - the deaths at the Salt Pit and Abu Ghraib - the individuals could still face punishment by internal accountability review boards, which could be convened at the discretion of Porter J. Goss, director of the agency.

C.I.A. officials have expressed deep unease over the possibility that career officers could be prosecuted or punished administratively for their conduct during interrogations and detentions of terrorism suspects.

Most of the Justice Department reviews have been handled by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia, law enforcement officials said. But they said officials at Justice Department headquarters in Washington had taken part in the decisions not to prosecute some of the cases.

...In a classified report this summer, the Senate Intelligence Committee expressed concern about what it called shortcomings in the C.I.A.'s handling of prisoners, government officials briefed on the document said. An unclassified section said Mr. Goss had carried out only 5 of 10 recommendations made last year in a classified report by the C.I.A. inspector general.

The cases cited in the eight dossiers include the hypothermia death of the prisoner in Afghanistan in November 2002 at a site nominally under Afghan control, in a case first reported by The Washington Post; the death of Manadel al-Jamadi on Nov. 24, 2003, at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where he had been taken after his capture by members of the Navy Seals, but was imprisoned in C.I.A. custody; and the asphyxiation of Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush. He died in the sleeping bag at a base in western Iraq on Nov. 26, 2003, after several days of interrogation that included at least one C.I.A. officer.

Mr. Jamadi's death was among the most notorious of the incidents at Abu Ghraib that became public in the spring of 2004, in part because his body was photographed wrapped in plastic and packed in ice. He died after being beaten by commandos of the Navy Seals who struck him in the head with rifle butts and then turned him over to C.I.A. interrogators at Abu Ghraib.

A lieutenant in the Navy Seals was acquitted in May of striking Mr. Jamadi and failing to restrain his men from hitting Mr. Jamadi. The lieutenant, Andrew K. Ledford, remains the only person to have been prosecuted in that death.

Eight members of the Seals and a sailor who served under him, received administrative punishments for abusing Mr. Jamadi and other detainees.

Former intelligence officials have said that questions remain about the role of a C.I.A. officer and a contract interrogator who had taken custody of Mr. Jamadi and were questioning him in the shower room at Abu Ghraib when he died. Mr. Jamadi was found with his hands bound behind his back and shackled to a barred window. Mr. Jamadi had not been examined by a physician when he was brought to Abu Ghraib, because the C.I.A. officers had circumvented normal procedures of registering his presence as a prisoner.

An intelligence official briefed on the case said it was clear that the C.I.A. officers and members of the Navy Seals team bore some responsibility for the prisoner's death, but that the legal culpability of each was difficult to untangle. A government official who reviewed a coroner's report said evidence suggested that Mr. Jamadi's broken ribs - apparently sustained in beatings by the Navy Seals - contributed to his death.

"It may have been too hard a case to prove," said the intelligence official, referring to possible criminal charges against the C.I.A. employees. "He was in de facto agency custody, but he was in a military prison. They could see that he was injured, but they maybe didn't know he was so injured. If he had had a medical examination they would have known. But they didn't do one."

Four soldiers are awaiting trial in military court in Colorado in the case of General Mowhoush. Testimony presented in a pretrial hearing at Fort Carson, Colo., indicated that General Mowhoush had been beaten with a piece of insulating rubber, by a team that included a C.I.A. contract worker, and that his interrogators had, on at least one occasion, piled onto his chest, before he suffocated in the sleeping bag.

In the case from Afghanistan from 2002, a young C.I.A. officer who ran the detention center had ordered that the prisoner be left out in the cold, one intelligence official said, confirming the account in The Washington Post. The prisoner was stripped and dragged outside by Afghan guards at what was technically an Afghan-run detention center, they said.

The intelligence official described the death as a case of "negligent homicide," but said the legal culpability the of C.I.A. officer who ran the center was less clear-cut, because there was no way to prove that Afghan guards had not abused the prisoner during the night.

Posted by Anupam Chander on October 23, 2005 at 06:29 AM in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack