This is More of a Revolution Than You Might Think

I have a new column up at al-Masri al-Youm, reflecting on the State Security raids, which made me think that Egypt needs some sort of reconciliation process to deal with the magnitude of what is being discovered and chart a way forward. Every day, more evidence of corruption, torture and abuse is being uncovered. The Egyptian judicial system will take decades to deal with it. While it needs to play a role, there also needs to be something akin to a truth commission to hear people's testimony — both victims and abusers — and then move on to building a better Egypt.

While ministries shuffled paper and red tape, state security kept tabs on people. This goes beyond the issue of torture, which it certainly practiced abundantly, or the racketeering, blackmailing and other schemes its officers carried out with impunity. What those who gained access to its offices discovered is that, much like the Ministry of Transport might keep an inventory of its buses and trains, State Security maintained an elaborate database on citizens, the threats they represented, their weaknesses, relationships and other every little detail of their lives.
The Arabist

Honor Killing

Another young woman tortured and murdered to add to the gruesome gallery..... The horror of these young girls, terror stricken victims, who live in homemade concentration camps, is given the imprimatur of the West in its complicit silence -- the urbane face of bloodthirsty savagery. The West looks away and more girls lead desperate, brutal lives. The "Feminists" look away, and pretend it is outside the realm of women's rights -- leftist tools of Islamic jihad. These useful idiots are on someone's payroll, or they fear Islam. Either way, get out of the way. Shame on all of you for failing our women, our children, our girls, our very way of life. How dare they throw away our superior culture with both

Nun Informs President of Torture

Sister Dianna Ortiz

Dear President Obama,

On November 2, 1989, I was burned with cigarettes more than 111 times. I was raped over and over again--and this was only the beginning.

During the past few years, I have had ample reason to reflect on the life of an extraordinary man, Jean Amery, an Austrian philosopher who was tortured by the Nazis. I was first introduced to his writings shortly after my own torture in Guatemala. Like many who have survived this unspeakable horror, I emerged from that clandestine prison lost and broken--a body without a soul. Gone was the God to whom I had committed my life. Gone was trust, the very idea of justice betrayed. Gone was all that I had believed in. Everything that defined me as a human being ceased to exist.

Amery's words, odd as this may seem, brought some comfort: "Anyone who has been tortured remains tortured." "Anyone who has suffered torture never again will be at ease in the world...faith in humanity, already cracked by the first slap in the face, then demolished by torture, is never acquired again."

These words seemed written just for me. Somehow, somewhere on this earth was another person who understood what I had learned at the cruel hands of my torturers. For a moment at least, it gave me peace of mind. It was only years later that I would understand the fundamental meaning of Amery's words: "Anyone who has suffered torture, never again will be at ease in the world." And it was years after this understanding that I would learn that Jean Amery had killed himself.

Mr. President, from anonymous graves, voices still cry out. From clandestine prisons, in the midst of indescribable pain, we, my sisters and brothers, beg you to hear. Will you listen to what we alone know of this crime against humanity--what we know from the inside out?

Please hear us! Torture does not end with the release from some clandestine prison. It is not something we "get over." Simply, "looking forward" is not an option for us. Torture is a permanent invasion of our minds and our souls. Surviving is far worse that the actual physical torture itself. Those wounds heal in time--but the memories cling to us. Psychological torture is time without end. No one fully recovers from torture. The damage can never be undone.

What is our claim to speak with authority on this subject? We have been beaten, hanged by wrists, arms, or legs, burned by electrical devices or cigarettes, bitten by humans and dogs, cut or stabbed with knives or machetes. And this is only a sample of what has been done to us. Each mark, visible or invisible, is a permanent reminder of what was done to us--a reminder that in so many cases fills us with embarrassment and even shame. What a cruel irony that it is the tortured one and not the torturer who feels shame.

And what an irony it is that today in the United States, the tortured so often are told that what they experienced was not even cruel and unusual, let alone torture. What an irony that those who oppose torture, oppose the violation of U.S law by acts of non-violent civil resistance can be sent to prison while those who ordered this brutality walk free, receiving the de facto impunity implied in your call to "look forward" and only forward.

Mr. President, there is ample reason to believe that important members of the previous administration may well have violated the law. Is it not your responsibility and that of the Attorney General to investigate that possibility? And if the law was violated, is it not your responsibility to hold perpetrators accountable, no matter how exalted their previous positions?

We who have paid the dreadful price of torture beseech you to determine just what happened to law and morality during the past eight years and to make those findings public. It is only by an independent investigation that we will learn the truth, and, if that investigation warrants, it will be by prosecution that we may hold to account those who violated the law and despoiled our national honor. Getting things right in the future depends on knowing what went wrong in the past. You know this when it comes to the economy. You know this when it comes to a health care system. How can you not know it when it comes to human rights?

Mr. President, on behalf of those who know this cruel subject so well, I ask you to act in service to the truth and to the principle that no matter how high the position held nor how much power accrues to it, its incumbent must be held accountable to the law. As I hope you will agree, sir, to do less is to betray the very idea of justice.

Thank you for reading my letter.

Sister Dianna Ortiz, U.S. citizen tortured in Guatemala

Founder, Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC)

Death Penalty May Deter Rogues

Representative Nadler is doing a great job to keep the pressure on. The Administration put undemocratic directives and laws on the books a road to tyranny. Inadvertantly, they became enemy combatants.
Although I doubt the Congress or the incoming President will do anything about torture, crimes against humanity and murder, the mechanisms to prosecute remain in place.
These may deter evil-minded rogues in the future.

Keep Prosecutions Local

Keep Prosecutions Local

Each one of us has two Senators and one representative. Is bringing down three evil-doers too much to ask? Funding preemptive war and torture constitutes crimes against humanity and murder. If we can't catch them taking bribes, they will fall to a morals charge. To facilitate arrests, the FBI should open its investigative files for public perusal.
So long as sexual deviants don't open themselves to Federal blackmail, I have no quarrel with them.
These measures would work almost everywhere not just the USA.

Egypt Tortures Bloggers

Torture for Egyptian Bloggers and Activists

Amira Al Huseini

Egyptian bloggers, cyberactivists and activists on the ground continue to pay the price for speaking up against the rising cost of living and calling for higher wages and a better life. What started as a call for a strike on April 6, quickly spiralled out of control, with a face off between rioters, protesters and the police. Here’s an account of what has happened and is still happening to some of the activists who have used the worldwide web to spread news of what is happening at home.

During the unrest, on April 6 and 7, Egyptian bloggers worked round the clock telling the world about the workers’ revolt that shook their country, as thousands rioted at a textile mill in Al Mahalla. They were also among the first casualties of the unrest, which left some killed, scores injured and an undetermined number of activists, organisers and mere spectators behind bars. Their coverage came in the form of blog posts, YouTube videos, Twitter feeds, Flickr shots, Facebook messages and all other online tools they could get their hands on.

The saga seems to continue, as some activists are still detained, six weeks after their arrest, prompting calls from their colleagues for their immediate release. Others, allegedly harassed, physically abused and later released by the police, continue to use online tools to tell the world their story.

Gramps Makes Mess Media Tidies Up

Arianna Huffington, HuffPost

Second Update: McCain and Me: Hero Worship Dies Hard (But When It Does...)

Update: Through a spokesperson with the colorful name Tucker Bounds, McCain has denied telling me he didn't vote for Bush in 2000. "It's not true," Bounds told the Washington Post, "and I ask you to consider the source."

My sentiments exactly -- because John McCain has a long history of issuing heartfelt denials of things that were actually true.

He denied ever talking with John Kerry about his leaving the GOP to be Kerry's '04 running mate -- then later admitted he had, insisting: "Everybody knows that I had a conversation."

He denied admitting that he didn't know much about economics, even though he'd said exactly that to the Wall Street Journal. And the Boston Globe. And the Baltimore Sun.

He denied ever having asked for a budget earmark for Arizona, even though he had. On the record.

He denied that he'd ever had a meeting with comely lobbyist Vicki Iseman and her client Lowell Paxon, even though he had. And had admitted it in a legal deposition.

And those are just the outright denials. He's also repeatedly tried to spin away statements he regretted making (see: 100-year war, Iraq was a war for oil, etc.).

So, yes, by all means, "consider the source."

Original Post: At a dinner party in Los Angeles not long after the 2000 election, I was talking to a man and his wife, both prominent Republicans. The conversation soon turned to the new president. "I didn't vote for George Bush" the man confessed. "I didn't either," his wife added. Their names: John and Cindy McCain (Cindy told me she had cast a write-in vote for her husband).

The fact that this man was so angry at what George Bush had done to him, and at what Bush represented for their party, that he did not even vote for him in 2000 shows just how far he has fallen since then in his hunger for the presidency. By abandoning his core principles and embracing Bush -- both literally and metaphorically -- he has morphed into an older and crankier version of the man he couldn't stomach voting for in 2000.

McCain's fall has been Shakespearean -- and really hard to watch for those, like myself, who so admired and even loved him. His nobility and his true reformer years have given way to pandering in the service of ambition.

But a large portion of the electorate hasn't noticed the Shakespearean fall. How else to explain The 28/48 Disconnect -- wherein only a die-hard 28 percent of voters still approve of Bush, but 48 percent say they'd vote for McCain, who is running on the "more of the same" platform?

The thing is, these voters clearly still think of McCain as the maverick of 2000, a straight shooter who would never seek the embrace of a man he couldn't bring himself to vote for, nor accept the regular counsel of Karl Rove, the man behind the vile, race-baiting attacks on him during the 2000 campaign.

And the main reason for The 28/48 Disconnect is the mainstream media's ongoing membership in the John McCain Protection Society. They too continue to party -- and report on McCain -- like it's 1999.

Look at the slack they cut him after his infamous stroll through a Baghdad market was revealed as an utter sham. James Frey was eviscerated for far less. Or the slack they cut him after his repeated confusion of Sunni and Shia. Or the slack they cut him when his promise to run a "respectful" campaign ran aground on his sleazy attempt to connect Barack Obama and Hamas.

Every time McCain screws up, the media jump all over themselves to make it better, as if grandpa had said something embarrassing at the dinner table and it needed to be smoothed over as quickly as possible.

The latest example came late last week when the Straight Talk Express hit an oil slick and skidded off the road. Click here for the blow by blow, but, in short, McCain implied that Iraq is essentially a war for oil, then tried to take it back, explaining that he was actually talking about the first Gulf War, then, when pressed, denied that he was actually talking about the first Gulf War.

And, by and large, the media gave him a pass. Chris Matthews called the original war for oil comment "an astounding development," but most everyone else was too busy picking over the bones of the Wright/Obama carcass to give it much play.

Interestingly, McCain's mental meltdown over the reason we invaded Iraq was prompted by a comment from a McCain supporter who said he hoped a group called "Swift Boats for McCain" would be formed to help McCain in the campaign.

The gentleman needn't worry. The group already exists. It's called "the media." And they are very well-funded, and highly motivated. The Swift Boat Media for McCain are, for instance, going to make sure that we hear a lot more about the nuances of Obama's decision to not wear a flag pin on his lapel than about McCain's ideas on a little thing like the Iraq war.

Witness the reaction to McCain's repeated declarations that he thinks we should be in Iraq for "100 years." The DNC had the gall to use McCain's own words in an ad, causing McCain to flip out: "My friends, it's a direct falsification," he said, "and I'm sorry that political campaigns have to deteriorate in this fashion."

So, to review: using a candidate's own words against him is off limits, but making disgraceful insinuations about Hamas and Obama isn't.

But instead of nailing McCain on the "deterioration" of his ethics -- to say nothing of his logic and reasoning -- the Swift Boat Media dutifully repeated his talking points, as in this AP lede claiming, without reservation, that the DNC ad "falsely suggests John McCain wants a 100-year war in Iraq."

McCain tries to wriggle away from his "100 year" comment by saying that he wasn't talking about a hundred year war, but a very long term commitment of U.S. troops, like we have in Germany or South Korea. Maybe so, but the last time I looked no one was blowing up American soldiers in Wiesbaden.

The New Yorker's Rick Hertzberg, a writer who hasn't drunk the It's Still 2000 Kool-Aid, sums up McCain's Strangelovian "vision": "McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal -- that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay."

The John McCain the media fell in love with in 2000 isn't on the ballot in 2008. And the proof has all but jumped up and grabbed the media by the throat: the ring-kiss of "agents of intolerance" Falwell and Robertson; the decision to make permanent tax cuts he twice voted against, saying he could not "in good conscience support" them; the campaign finance reformer replaced with a candidate whose campaign is run by lobbyists and fueled by loophole rides on his wife's jet; the hard-line stance against torture replaced by a vote allowing waterboarding; the guarded-by-a-battalion stroll through the "safe" neighborhoods of Baghdad; the use of Karl Rove as an advisor... and the embracing of the disastrous policies of a man he so abhorred he would not vote for him.

What will it take for the Swift Boat Media to realize that John McCain jumped the shark a long, long time ago?

The Activists Generally Ignore the Real Issues

In no special order, I list problems to be addressed. They include sale of nuclear secrets to the highest bidder, government-run trafficking in drugs and human beings, torture, corporate use of slave labor, abduction across international borders and human rights abuse.
The culprits thrive in federal, state and local governments throughout the world. Any talk of reform or revolution is premature. The first step is to define and to publicize the ills and the perpetrators. It should not be left to a handful of whistle blowers to risk their lives to shed light on these matters.
All of us should stand with them.

Albert Camus on Unjust Wars Torture and Genocide

In 1948, in the shadow of that monstrous world war, the French author/philosopher Albert Camus accepted an invitation from the Dominican Monastery of Latour-Maubourg.
To their credit, the Dominicans wanted to know what an "unbeliever" thought about Christians in the light of their behavior during the '30s and '40s. Camus' words seem so terribly relevant today that it is difficult to trim them:
"For a long time during those frightful years, I waited for a great voice to speak up in Rome. I, an unbeliever? Precisely. For I knew that the spirit would be lost if it did not utter a cry of condemnation ...
"It has been explained to me since, that the condemnation was indeed voiced. But that it was in the style of the encyclicals, which is not all that clear. The condemnation was voiced and it was not understood. Who could fail to feel where the true condemnation lies in this case?
"What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man.
"That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today.
"It may be ... that Christianity will insist on maintaining a compromise, or else on giving its condemnations the obscure form of the encyclical. Possibly it will insist on losing once and for all the virtue of revolt and indignation that belonged to it long ago.
"What I know -- and what sometimes creates a deep longing in me -- is that if Christians made up their mind to it, millions of voices -- millions, I say -- throughout the world would be added to the appeal of a handful of isolated individuals, who, without any sort of affiliation, today intercede almost everywhere and ceaselessly for children and other people." (Excerpted from Resistance, Rebellion, and Death: Essays)

The Activist Base Ignores Endemic Problems

Most of us cringe when we learn that more human beings are enslaved today than in former times. We know how to eradicate the slave trade, but we lack the will to proceed.
In no special order, I list problems unaddressed. They include sale of nuclear secrets to the highest bidder, government-run trafficking in drugs and human beings, torture, corporate use of slave labor, abduction across international borders and human rights abuse.
Generally, these violations can not occur without the co-operation of the authorities. The culprits thrive in federal, state and local governments throughout the world. Any talk of reform or revolution is premature. The first step is to define and to publicize the problems. It should not be left to a handful of whistle blowers to risk their lives to shed light on these matters.
All of us should stand with them.

The Rising Cost of Baseball Tickets

Why does everyone assume elections will take place this year? As expressed in NSPD51, the President can state an emergency and declare Martial Law at his discretion.
Has anyone been able to change his course in a meaningful way?
Does he have a reason to retire?
Living abroad for 25 years, I'd like to see a ballgame or two. If the price of admission includes prison and torture, I'll stay where I am.

The Importance of Being Ted

If your name happens to be Ted Kennedy, Naomi Wolf or Cat Stevens, you are on the list of criminals and terrorists dedicated to destroy the American Way of Life.

If you call yourself John Williams, Richard Anderson or any one of 100’s of common American names, you may be detained at the airport and flown to a dungeon in darkest Egypt. Under torture you will confess. Most people do.

In this case, the words ‘suspect’ and ‘accused’ do not apply. Detainees are guilty until proven innocent. The niceties of habeas corpus and due process are ancient history.

If you don’t co-operate, the authorities will rape your spouse and sodomize your kids.

Joe McCarthy used to walk the corridors of power with a pocket full of blank pages. They listed alternatively 113 traitors in the State Department or 67 Communists in the Screen Writers Guild.

Not to be outdone, J Edgar Hoover amassed a list of 12,000 Communists who prepared to overthrow the government.

Thanks to computers, Homeland Security has upped the ante. Their list of criminals and terrorists will top one million by July, 2008. They run monthly local raids to catch these dangerous outlaws 12,000 to 20,000 at a clip. Mostly, they are runaway dads and scofflaws. They have failed to catch a single terrorist.

What is So Liberal about the Mass Media?

The US mass media ignores the State Department theft of nuclear secrets, the violent deaths of over one million Iraqis, the lack of US government oversight, the detention and torture of victims grabbed illegally by the CIA, the unconstitutionality of NSPD 51, the threat of martial law etc.
What 'liberal' bias do you detect?
Maybe you call them biased for not urging the lynching of Michelle Obama and the assassination of her husband.

America Going to the Dogs

USA Going to the Dogs

My dogs must dig a shallow hole to sleep in every night. Since I have a tiled floor, they indulge their instinct in the beleaguered items I laughingly call my furniture. Consequently, wood chips and mattress stuffing dominate my décor a definite lived-in effect.

As these leftovers are poor stuff as victuals, my doggie crew counts anything soft as edible. I dare not enter my humble home without a bag of munchies.

The Israeli Police State authorities have never acquired this wisdom. They insist on climbing over the walls to conduct warrantless searches and seizures. It is difficult to smash metal doors before twenty-eight sets of canine teeth gnawing at every exposed body part.

Americans generally lack such protections. They live behind shrubs and wooden picket fences easily breached. Their animals are house pets licking the hands of intruders.

The good citizens have forgotten they are responsible for self-defense. They depend on uniformed authorities for protection. They rely on the legal system for justice. The Constitution is in the hands of those sworn to uphold it.

The founding fathers weren’t so trusting. They knew power corrupts, so they set up a system of checks and balances. Nobody could hold a mandate indefinitely.

Who could anticipate a time when Americans would live in fear? Afraid to speak freely, they take instructions from television personalities and administration pundits. They fear to associate with potential enemy combatants who uphold ancient traditions and who espouse causes deemed heretical in high places.

In preparation for Martial Law, the leaders have revoked habeas corpus and the rule of law. They promote a foreign policy based on intervention, preemptive war and torture.

As my dogs, they beggar the future for one night of comfortable slumber.