This month PM Press, the Oakland, CA. publisher founded by AK Press founder Ramsey Kanaan and others, is publishing Gilbert’s memoirs. The book, titled Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground, and Beyond, is certain to be included in the top tier of books having to do with the period of US history known as the Sixties. There is no self-pity within these pages, but lots of self-reflection. In what can only be considered a refreshing approach, Gilbert takes full responsibility for the path he has chosen and explains that path in an intelligently political manner and with a decidedly leftist understanding. Love and Struggle combines objective history, personal memory, and a critical perspective into a narrative that is at once an adventuresome tale and a political guide through the past fifty years.

Gilbert begins his story by describing his youth and his developing awareness that the United States was not what he had been led to believe it was. An Eagle Scout who believed the myths inherent in American exceptionalism, he was unprepared for the cognitive dissonance he underwent while watching the attacks by law enforcement on civil rights marchers in the US South. That sense of conflict deepened when he headed off to Columbia University. By 1965, angered by the US war on the Vietnamese and armed with a well-researched understanding of why the US was really involved there, Gilbert was organizing Columbia students to join antiwar protests. Like many of his contemporaries, by 1968 he was an anti-imperialist and working full-time against the war in Vietnam and racism in the United States. By 1969, he was one of the original members of Weatherman and by April 1970 he was underground.

Gilbert tells his story with a hard-learned humility. Occasionally interjecting his personal life–his loves and failures, his relationship with his family–with his political journey, it is the politics which are foremost in this memoir. A true revolutionary, every other aspect of Gilbert’s life is subsumed to the revolution. This kind of life is not an easy one. Indeed, it arguably makes the life of an ascetic monk look easy by comparison. After all, the monk is only trying to change himself, while the committed revolutionary wants to change the world into one where justice prevails; a world that by its very structure resists such change.

Love and Struggle carefully examines the history of the periods Gilbert has lived in. From the early days of the antiwar movement and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) to the public street-fighting arrogance of early Weatherman; from Weatherman’s transition to the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) and its growing isolation from the New Left it was a part of; and from the post-Vietnam war US left to the Brink robbery and its aftermath, Gilbert keeps the politics front and center in his text. In his discussion of the period between Weather’s publication of its essential work Prairie Fire and its immediate aftermath, Gilbert provides an insight into the debates inside WUO and among its supporters in the years after the peace treaty was signed with northern Vietnam. His portrayal of the differences around theory being debated in the WUO serve as a broader description of the debates raging throughout the new left as the US intervention in Vietnam’s anti-colonial struggle neared its end. For those of us who were politically involved at the time, the debates ring with familiarity: national liberation over class; the interaction between race and class in the US; the oppression of women and white male privilege. In a testimony to his writing abilities, Gilbert’s discussion of the issues makes them as alive in this book as those arguments actually were in the mid-1970s. His keen political sense reveals the interplay between different political perspectives, understandings of history, and the always present contests of ego. The political arguments outlined by Gilbert (especially when describing the battle inside WUO) are still relevant today. Their echoes are present in the General Assemblies of the Occupy Wall Street movement and in forums more specific and less specific across the nation. Gilbert’s presentation of the essential WUO arguments that challenges the overriding role of class in the nature of oppression is not only reasoned and impassioned, it is worth studying and makes points useful to the future of anti-imperialist struggle in the United States Furthermore, the book includes an ongoing and excellent discussion of the nature of white supremacy and white skin privilege. For anyone who has spent time involved in the Occupy movement the past few months, the relevance of this latter discussion is all too familiar.

For those looking for a sensationalist account of life as a revolutionary or a confession, they should look elsewhere. David Gilbert’s memoir is a political account of a political life. Every action undertaken, every decision made is examined via the eye of a leftist revolutionary. This does not mean there are no page-turning moments in the book, however. Indeed, the sections describing Weather’s move underground and Gilbert’s daily life off the grid are interesting and revealing, as are those describing the attempts by WUO members to evade capture. The descriptions of Gilbert’s clandestine life and his subsequent moving back aboveground and then back under are also riveting.

Underlying the entire narrative is a current of what is best described as self-criticism; of Weather, the New Left, armed struggle and, ultimately, of Gilbert himself. As anyone who has experienced something akin to a self-criticism session can attest, such sessions can be emotionally wrenching episodes of retribution and petty anger. They can also be tremendously useful when conducted humanely. Gilbert’s written attempts at this exercise in Love and Struggle lean toward the latter expression while also providing interesting and useful considerations to the aforementioned issues (along with issues related to those criticisms). Gilbert’s realization that his ego occasionally caused him to make decisions that weren’t based on politically sound rationales is something any radical leader should take into account. In fact, Gilbert’s continuing struggle with his ego and it’s place in the decisions he made while free reminded me of a maxim relayed to me a couple times in my life; once by an organizer for the Revolutionary Union in Maryland and once by a friend from the Hog Farm commune. That maxim is simply: if you start believing that the revolution can’t exist without you, then it’s time to leave center stage and go back to doing grunt work where nobody knows (or cares) who you are. In other words, you are not the revolution so take your ego out of it.

In the well-considered catalog of books dealing honestly with the period of history known as the Sixties in the United States, Love and Struggle is an important addition. Borrowing his technique from memoir, confession, and objective history-telling, David Gilbert has provided the reader of history with the tale of a person and a time. Simultaneously, he has given the reader inclined to political activism a useful, interesting, and well-told example of one human’s revolutionary commitment to social change no matter what the cost.

I know. I lived through it on the Patriot Act. When Congress decided to squelch the truth about the CIA’s advance warnings about 9/11 and the existence of a comprehensive peace option with Iraq, as the CIA’s chief Asset covering Iraq, I became an overnight threat. To protect their cover-up scheme, I got locked in federal prison inside Carswell Air Force Base, while the Justice Department battled to detain me “indefinitely” up to 10 years, without a hearing or guilty plea. Worst yet, they demanded the right to forcibly drug me with Haldol, Ativan and Prozac, in a violent effort to chemically lobotomize the truth about 9/11 and Iraqi Pre-War Intelligence.

Critically, because my legal case was controlled by civilian Courts, my Defense had a forum to fight back. The Judge was an independent arbiter. And that made all the difference. If this law on military detentions had been active, my situation would have been hopeless. The Patriot Act was bad enough. Mercifully, Chief Justice Michael B. Mukasey is a preeminent legal scholar who recognized the greater impact of my case. Even so, he faced a terrible choice —declaring me “incompetent to stand trial,” so my case could be killed—or creating dangerous legal precedents tied to secret charges, secret evidence, secret grand jury testimony and indefinite detention—from the Patriot Act’s arsenal of weapons against truth tellers—that would impact all defendants in the U.S. Courts.

It was a hideous choice—The judicial farce was more ugly because it stamped me a “religious maniac” for believing in God—a ludicrous argument. It lined up beautifully, however, with Congress’ desire to bastardize the “incompetence” of Assets engaged in Pre-War Intelligence. Anything to escape responsibility for their own poor decision making.

To this day, it scorches my heart with rage and betrayal. It was unforgivable on so many levels.

And it had nothing to do with fighting terrorism. This was about fighting truth—and protecting powerful leaders in Washington determined to glorify themselves with phony patriotism and media fireworks in the War on Terrorism—a fantasy if there was one.

Those of us with the facts at our fingertips, who could expose leadership fraud and deceptions, had to be destroyed. I had three strikes against me. First off, I had personal knowledge of the CIA’s advance warnings about 9/11, and how Republican leaders thwarted efforts to preempt the attack. Secondly, I had direct knowledge of Iraq’s contributions to the 9/11 investigation, and how Republican leaders rejected financial documents on early Al Qaeda figures like Ramzi Youssef and Sheikh Abdul Rahmon of Egypt and Sheikh al Zawahiri—who replaced Osama bin Laden as Al Qaeda’s leader. That would have shut down the financial pipeline for terrorism, if Washington cared about results. Finally, my team had successfully negotiated a peace framework with Baghdad that would have achieved all objectives in Iraq without firing a shot.

Oh I was a threat to the Washington elite, no doubt. Without the Patriot Act, the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq would have failed. Given normal due process, I would have shouted truth from the rooftops and exposed them all.

Let’s not mince words. Members of Congress who support laws like the Patriot Act and Military Detentions fear the American people deeply. They hate what America stands for. Above all they fear exposure of their mediocrity as our leaders. They are desperate to hide their leadership failures. And so they commit Treason against us— savaging the liberties enshrined in our Constitution to safeguard their access to power, weakening our ability to challenge them openly, building a society of fear.

They ply us with buzzwords—like “anti-terrorism” and “national security.” But they are the greatest threat facing our nation today. They are traitors among us.

Terrorism is a buzz-word to quiet outrage over this shredding of the Constitution. Most Americans don’t understand that the Patriot Act has expanded the scope of terrorism to cover any free political speech that challenges Institutions of Authority. Acts of violence are not necessary. The possibility that free speech could weaken public trust in leadership qualifies as the New Sedition. Any political speech that provokes the People to think and question authority can be squashed as a threat to political control.

I was no Traitor. My whole life was dedicated to non-violence. My bona fides in anti-terrorism were the best anywhere. I gave advance warning about the 9/11 attack, the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, and the 1993 World Trade Center attack. When the FBI cracked open my computer, they found proof that my team had run one of the very first investigations of Osama bin Laden in 1998, before the Dar es Salaam/Nairobi bombings. I started negotiations for the Lockerbie Trial with Libya, and preliminary talks on resuming weapons inspections in Iraq.

I was a very real threat, however. I was guilty of possessing inconvenient knowledge powerful enough to persuade voters to throw a lot of deceptive politicians out of Congress.

Military detentions would push America farther into the abyss. First, it eliminates the need for charges against political defendants altogether. And secondly, it transfers decisions about a defendant’s fate away from the oversight of a civilian Judge to a military Sentry and base commander. It’s a complete negation of the Courts.

At a practical level, there are consequences that Americans would never dream possible:

• There’s no requirement for Military Officers to acknowledge that a prison exists inside a military base. Nor can Military officers be compelled to identify individuals who might be detained on the base.

• There’s no guarantee an attorney would be assigned to the accused. Indeed, the Sentry and Commanding Officer would have full authority, individually, to decide whether attorney visits shall be allowed at all. Access to an attorney would be a matter of military discretion, including frequency and duration. The Military Commander or sentry could decide to prohibit an attorney from entering the base altogether, without specifying a reason.

This must be underscored. Civilian Judges provide a fail-safe for defendants under military auspices. Under the proposed law, that protection would be removed. The Commanding Officer of the military base would assume full authority of the Court. The accused inmate would have nowhere to protest any aspect of the detention, or to move towards resolution.

• Since the military alone decides who enters the base, the Sentry would have the power to reject visits by Family or Journalists, if they so choose.

• In straight violation of the 8th Amendment of the Constitution, accused civilians would be denied the right to petition for bail

• Military prisoners might have limited rights to send letters or make phone calls to family or attorneys, at the discretion of the Commanding Officer. The military would have the right to keep a defendant totally incommunicado from the world.

• An accused person would have no automatic rights to recreation outside of the cell. Prisoners could be locked in a 10 X 12 room 24-7, and denied the rights to exercise for one hour in a prison yard. That would be “indefinite,” too.

• Like Bradley Manning, they could be forced to sleep almost naked with the lights on, under 24 hour surveillance, even in the absence of suicide threats.

Don’t bother arguing about it. One of the high points of my legal drama occurred when my fantastic and beloved Uncle Ted Lindauer—a family member— who happened to have 40 years of senior legal experience— jumped into my legal fray in a Herculean effort to restore my freedom.

Three Times Tenacious Uncle Ted Drove 700 Miles (1,000 kms) in Each Direction—from southern Illinois to Fort Worth, Texas. He carried proper identification and proof of his legal standing. He was registered on my visitor’s list, and prison authorities understood that he was functioning as Co-Counsel for my Defense.

On the first and second visits, Ted Lindauer arrived on the weekend during normal visiting hours. Nevertheless, the Sentry swore up and down that there was no prison inside Carswell Air Force Base, and I was not an inmate—

Horrified, Ted Lindauer requested to speak with the Commanding Officer on duty.

Confronted with letters mailed from the prison and Court documents signed by Judge Mukasey, nevertheless, the Sentry and Commanding Officer refused to back down. Both stubbornly denied that I was housed anywhere on their military base.

On the second visit, the Sentry and Commanding Officer had a new excuse. Yeah, there was a prison on Carswell Air Force Base. But there were no visiting hours on weekends. Other prison families stood close by. One after the other, the sentry granted them access to the base to visit their relatives detained at the prison. Yet when Ted Lindauer, a 70 year old man with silver hair, stepped forward, the sentry guard refused.

Ted was furious. He warned the Sentry that my family knows some Generals, too! He insisted on the sanctity of my rights to attorney access, and promised to file a complaint with Judge Mukasey to compel the military to allow this attorney visit to occur.

Ted swore that he would return with U.S. Marshals. And by God, he was coming onto that base.

Thankfully, there was a civilian Judge to back him up. Judge Mukasey raised hell. On the third visit, he did indeed order U.S. Marshals to flank Ted Lindauer at the front gates of Carswell Air Force Base.

Judge Mukasey waited in his Chambers in New York ready to give the order. Only when U.S. Marshals stood before them, ready to forcibly enter the base, did Carswell back down. They stopped pretending there was no prison, that I was not an inmate, and granted my Uncle—a family member and attorney—access to his client.

It’s a cautionary tale. The military is not equipped to handle this type of responsibility. It flies against all of their structure. And it illustrates poignantly why a Civilian Judge is critical to protecting a defendant’s rights when the military has physical jurisdiction.

All of this was occurring at a critical juncture. At that moment, citing the Patriot Act, the Justice Department was arguing that I should be detained “indefinitely” up to 10 years—with no right to a trial or hearing. More horribly still, the Justice Department was demanding the right to forcibly drug me with Haldol—a rhinoceros tranquilizer—until I could be “cured” of knowing the real facts about Iraq and 9/11 and serious leadership failures in the War on Terrorism.

Witness had already told the FBI about my work as an Asset—and my team’s all important advance warnings about 9/11. The Feds understood very precisely what they were hiding—and who would be the losers in Washington, if my story was told.

Because I was denied the right to a hearing, I was blocked from providing that validation to the Court–or the American public—something Republicans on Capitol Hill feared desperately. Without a hearing, the Feds had free rein to savage my reputation with fantastic embellishments, portraying me as a religious maniac. (I freely confess that I have rock solid faith in God. However, the Justice Department played fast and loose with descriptions of my spirituality).

By the end of it, all of my Constitutional rights had been savagely violated— My 1st Amendment rights to freedom of speech and religion; my 4th Amendment protections against illegal searches of my home; my 5th Amendment rights not to be forcibly interrogated by surrogates for the prosecution; my 6th Amendment rights to a speedy trial by a jury of my peers, with the rights to face my accusers and rebut accusations in a public Court of law. The Justice Department even violated my 8th Amendment protections against threats of torture, (forcibly drugging definitely qualifies).

To this day, I cannot believe such abuse could be possible in the United States. I’m a fighter, and I could not stop them. All the Constitutional protections that should have saved me were stripped away. It horrifies me.

No American really understands the preciousness of Liberty until more powerful individuals in the government fight to take away those rights. Then in a blinding flash, you are awed by the magnificence of the Founding Fathers’ vision. What they gave us was extraordinary. It must be protected from tyrants like those in Congress today. They are tyrants who fear and despise us. There is no ambiguity. They are against us.

President Obama must veto this bill or confess his hypocrisy as a champion of liberty. And members of Congress who support military detentions or the Patriot Act must be targeted for defeat in 2012.

They are the greatest threats facing this country today.

They are traitors to freedom. They are Enemies of the Constitution. And they deserve to be branded Enemies of the State.

The US brags about its political systems as being based on the separation of powers between the Executive (President and Vice-President), the Legislature and the Judiciary and a resulting built-in checks and balances system. This is supposedly a superior form of democracy based on checks and balances to avoid abuse of power by one or the other of the three branches forming the US government. In the US Constitution Article II Section 2 states that the US president has “the power to grant reprieves and pardons…” Every indication is that President Obama, far from using his constitutional powers to free the Cuban Five, made it clear to the Supreme Court judges that they should rule against revision.¹

This has obviously been a political case right from day one. It is even further revealed by the Supreme Court’s decision and the shameless refusal of the judges to publicly explain to the world the basis of their ruling. Of course the judges are not obliged to divulge it according to the American legal system. However, in a case such as this one which the whole world and many governments are watching, a public explanation was necessary. We are perhaps witnessing one of the greatest ironies in the current international political scene. The Cuban Five are cruelly and politically persecuted for their peaceful anti-terrorist motivations and activities. The reason? They are acting on behalf of and supporting the Cuban government. One of the main charges that Washington levies against Cuba is lack of democracy, that it is does not, amongst other characteristics exhibit a political system similar to the American one which would include checks and balances. The Cuban system is in fact one unified revolutionary peoples’ political power, from the top down and from the bottom up including the judiciary, each enjoying its own respective fields of competence. The relationship and inter-action of all the different Cuban state levels between themselves including the judiciary and all of these institutions in turn with the citizens, is a feature of the Cuban type of democracy. There is no need to get into a debate as to whether the Cuban system is more democratic than the American model. However, if one takes into account this latest Supreme Court episode of US democracy in action on the one hand and my direct experience and study of the Cuban political system on the other hand, Cuba has no “democracy” lessons to take at all from the USA.

1. See Ruben Campa, et al., Petitioners v. United States of America and Wayne S. Smith, “Free the Cuban Five!” Nation, 13 July 2010.

Private First Class Manning is accused of being the source of the huge number of secret diplomatic cables, field intelligence reports, and at least one military video published by WikiLeaks. He was held without charge for nine months in the brig at Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia, isolated for 23 hours a day in “Maximum Custody and under Prevention of Injury Watch.” I believe that the conditions of his imprisonment, including the Abu Ghraib style humiliation of being forced to strip and surrender his clothing nightly, amounted to torture. Manning’s rights were violated further when President Obama, the military’s commander in chief, declared Manning guilty. Since Manning faces a possible court martial by military officers, all of whom are under Obama’s command, this makes it impossible for him to receive a fair trial.

I have several reasons to aid Private Manning.

The first is my commitment to the concept of Freedom of Information. Bradley Manning has been imprisoned and threatened with death for providing the truth to the American people. In the words of Daniel Ellsberg: “If Bradley Manning did what he’s accused of, then he’s a hero of mine.” The free flow of information is absolutely essential to a functioning democracy. Since 2001, the burgeoning “National Security State” has made it almost impossible for voters to make informed choices.

The people’s right to know what their government is doing has been at the core of my activism for almost four decades. It was no accident that my brother and I chose to sue under the newly toughened Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) when we commenced our campaign to reopen our parents’ case in 1974. Reporters asked if we were worried that the material in the government’s files we sought would point to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s guilt rather than their innocence. We answered without hesitation that while we hoped the material would exonerate our parents, the public’s right to know was more important than the vindication of our beliefs. My brother and I spent 10 years of our lives fighting that case in the name of the public’s right to know. The attack on Bradley Manning is an assault upon this right and must be resisted.

Also, I am virtually certain that the cruel and inhumane conditions Manning was subjected to in the Marine Base brig were designed to coerce him into testifying against Julian Assange and the Wikileaks community. In other words, the government wanted Manning to become the David Greenglass of the Wikileaks case. In my parent’s case the government offered David Greenglass a deal in return for falsely testifying that my parents engineered Greenglass’s theft of what the government called “the secret of the Atomic bomb,” even though my parents did not participate in that theft and there was no such secret. Similarly, the government sought to use Manning as a pawn to spark a conspiracy trail against Julian Assange and his associates in order to expand the security state and inflame public fear that hackers threaten our national security.

Finally, it is reported that Bradley Manning may be charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917, and face the death penalty if he is convicted. That’s the same penalty my parents received for violating that act.

Under such circumstances, how could I stay away! For more information about the Bradley Manning support network go to: www.bradleymanning.org.

I will never surrender my pride and dignity nor allow the system to ‘cut my tongue’ and I will always, without fear, speak out against these war crimes and crimes against humanity, no matter if I spend the rest of my life in a prison cage, and draw my last breath of air laying down in this steel bed surrounded by razor-wire fences and cages, and its prison policies that are designed to destroy one’s humanity…

– Alvaro Luna Hernandez, October 18, 2010, Hughes Unit Prison, Gatesville, Texas

Locked in solitary confinement in a tiny cage inside one of the most notorious control units in the Texas state prison system, Alvaro Luna Hernandez is immersed in a stack of old law texts, his eyes glancing back and forth between court transcripts and a thick legal book every few moments. The streaks of gray in his full, and otherwise dark, beard betray his age in spite of his healthy, powerful frame as he reaches towards the ledge of the sink for a lone Styrofoam cup to take a sip of the stale, lukewarm commissary-bought coffee he drinks every morning, when he can afford it.

Just fifteen months shy of 60 years old, Alvaro has a remarkable amount of energy and routinely gets more work done before noon than most attorneys do in an entire day. Today he’s putting together the documents to get a new trial on a writ of habeas corpus proceeding for another prisoner who is both indigent and illiterate and feels he has been wrongly imprisoned. After that, it’s on to the cases of two other inmates Alvaro is helping out who are each facing several decades behind bars if their appeals fall through before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Austin. Other prisoners know to go to Alvaro for legal help; he has a well-known reputation throughout the state—indeed nationwide, as highlighted in the recent book Jailhouse Lawyers (City Lights: 2009) by Mumia Abu-Jamal—as a tenacious and effective “jailhouse lawyer” who has filed and won no small number of civil rights suits over the past four decades.

Alvaro Luna Hernandez is a political prisoner of the State of Texas and the U.S. government. He is nearly 15 years into a 50 year prison sentence for an “aggravated assault” conviction stemming from a July 1996 incident in which he disarmed a Brewster County Sheriff attempting to shoot him. Alvaro vehemently denies the charge that he assaulted the Sheriff. To Mexican-Americans in the cities, slums, plains, deserts, and prison cages of the Southwest, he is a civil rights hero, a Chicano freedom fighter true to his barrio roots and eternally fearless in the face of injustice. For years, he has been internationally recognized by amnesty movements and human rights lawyers and experts as a U.S. political prisoner, yet inside the United States, the name Alvaro Luna Hernandez remains largely elusive on the lips of progressives and social justice advocates.

A high-school dropout with no formal education, Alvaro hasn’t always been such a capable, and indeed, brilliant, litigator. It was during the late 1970s that he transformed himself from a rebellious, zoot suit-wearing “pachuco” hustler in his youth into a prominent leader in the struggle for racial justice and human rights in the Southwest United States. While serving hard time for a crime he didn’t commit, Alvaro educated himself about Chicano history, the prison system, and revolutionary political theory. He founded and headed up prisoners’ study groups designed to rehabilitate and politicize other inmates.

With Alvaro in the lead, a powerful prison reform movement swept across Texas’ criminal justice system and through the state’s federal courthouses in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Alvaro diligently studied the law and used his newly found skills to file an impressive array of constitutional and civil rights lawsuits against Texas police, judges, and prison officials. He and other prisoners utilized hunger strikes, work stoppages, yard takeovers, and federal civil rights lawsuits in a concerted effort to compel the brutal Texas prison machine to respect the human rights of its exploding prison population, made up almost entirely of poor men of color. Along with a handful of other prisoner-plaintiffs, Alvaro won a landmark federal civil rights lawsuit against the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) after a trial that lasted 159 days in 1978 and ’79 (Ruiz v. Estelle). The court ruled, in a scathing denunciation of the widespread abuse of inmates by the prison system, that the practices of the TDC constituted “cruel and unusual punishment,” and ordered a number of substantial reforms.

“Unfortunately,” Alvaro says, “most of these ‘reforms’ were merely cosmetic…. Despite these ‘prisoner victories’ in reforming the system, the federal-nation-state will only go so far because in Texas, the super profits of the state policy of mass incarceration has replaced oil, cotton, and cattle [as the biggest industry in the state].”

Alvaro’s principled work to rehabilitate prisoners and enforce human rights standards in Texas prisons earned him the disdain and contempt of prison officials who locked him in administrative segregation, forcing Alvaro to spend almost the entire decade of the 1980s in solitary confinement as part of a campaign of repression aimed at political prisoners and jailhouse lawyers who threatened to expose abuses in U.S. prisons—including torture, killings, and beatings at the hands, or directions, of prison guards and administrators—and unite inmates under a banner of revolutionary change.

In March 1991, one year after he was moved out of solitary and back into the general prison population, Alvaro was freed from prison, having served over 15 years, after an investigative journalist for the Houston Post, Paul Harasim, uncovered a gross pattern of systematic prosecutorial misconduct and abuse (which included paying off the lead witness and suppressing physical evidence) in the murder case in which Alvaro was wrongfully convicted, narrowly escaping the electric chair. Certainly no bleeding heart liberal, Harasim nonetheless told readers that “What I learned about the prosecutorial behavior in the trial of Alvaro Hernandez in West Texas made my stomach turn…. I wonder if I can support state sanctioned executions any longer.”

Settling in Houston with his wife following his release, Alvaro wasted no time throwing himself into community organizing and political activism. He founded, and became National Executive Director of, the National Movement of La Raza, a civil and human rights group dedicated to empowering Mexican-Americans and struggling for social justice. Alvaro also helped organize and form committees to support the families of prisoners and bring about “truces” between Chicano street gangs in Pasadena, Texas following a number of tragic shootings. Spearheading the campaign to stop the execution of Mexican national, Ricardo Aldape Guerra, Alvaro founded and headed up Guerra’s defense committee. Following years of tireless campaigning and legal battles, his frame-up conviction for killing a Houston cop in 1982 was overturned and Guerra was freed from Texas’ Death Row in 1997.

Alvaro’s impassioned and successful activism in the Houston area earned him international recognition. In the spring of 1993, serving as a delegate for an NGO, Alvaro addressed the United Nations General Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, criticizing the U.S. government for its record of human rights abuses of political prisoners and Mexicans in the Southwest. Alvaro’s delegation was headed by Rigoberta Menchu of Guatemala who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her courageous human rights activism during the U.S.-backed genocide against Mayan peasants in Guatemala during the 1980s. Upon returning from Europe, Alvaro was invited to speak on national television in connection with the Ricardo Aldape Guerra defense case and began hosting Houston-area radio talk shows to spread a message of racial equality and Chicano empowerment. In the following years, Alvaro worked to inspire and educate young people across the United States, speaking not only at universities and conferences, but also at elementary and high schools, lecturing on an array of social and political issues ranging from human rights and grassroots activism, to American history, the criminal justice system, and the death penalty.

Following his divorce in August 1995, Alvaro moved back to his hometown of Alpine, Texas, located just 80 miles from the Mexican border. In spite of the fact that Alvaro had virtually zero interactions or confrontations with police in the five and a half years that he lived in Houston, almost immediately the local police forces in Alpine were all over him—arbitrary searches day and night, K-9 drug dogs, and frequent “traffic violation” vehicle stops resulting in no citations.

The police hatred of Alvaro in West Texas, especially in Alpine, is fierce, both personal and political, and decades old. Alvaro has always refused to submit to police authority and abuse; sort of like a rebellious slave in the spirit of Fredrick Douglas, but more like a modern-day Gregorio Cortez. When he was 17 he smashed up some police squad cars as well as the personal vehicle of a racist Sheriff following a police confrontation, a stunt which landed him three years in prison. Years later, in 1976 following an escape from county jail—at which he was awaiting transfer to state prison for the wrongful murder conviction—and subsequent shootout with law enforcement, Alvaro was taken to a windowless “conference room” in the jail where he was beaten within an inch of his life by several on-duty police officers. The cops took turns beating and stomping their handcuffed captive, causing him to lose consciousness, his face, eyes, and lips swollen and bloodied beyond recognition, his scalp ripped open with blood pouring from his head onto the cold concrete floor. Once the police were finished, they dragged a bloodied and unconscious Alvaro across the jail and threw him in a cell, leaving him for dead. The near fatal beating meted out to Alvaro resulted in federal criminal civil rights indictments of Pecos County Chief Deputy Sheriff Mike Hill and Deputy Sheriff Bill Mabe, culminating in misdemeanor convictions and probation for the officers. For his part, Alvaro was awarded substantial monetary compensation for damages following a civil suit. The convictions of the officers, however mild, ultimately destroyed their careers as policemen, thus earning Alvaro a special animosity in local law enforcement circles for daring to fight back against police on their own terms, both in the streets and in the courts.

Alvaro’s persistent defiance against oppression has always stemmed from a deep-rooted thirst for the freedom so cruelly denied to him and millions of other Chicanos in the Southwest United States since the colonization and annexation of the Mexican territories north of the Rio Grande following what is commonly known as the U.S.-Mexico War (1846-1848). In a very real sense, the rural West Texas community of Alpine is like a microcosm of race-relations in the region. Like all of Alpine’s Chicano residents, Alvaro grew up on the south side of the Southern Pacific railroad tracks which served as the de facto racial dividing line between Mexican-Americans and whites. Much like the Jim Crow South at the time, the parallel social universe of rural West Texas manifested harsh economic and political means of control to ensure the subordinate position of Mexicans in an Anglo-dominated society. The town’s Mexican population was largely impoverished, locked into a near-permanent state of economic subservience to white business interests while the gross disparity in social services and infrastructure served as a very visible reminder of the prevailing racial hierarchy, not only in Alpine, but in the American Southwest in general.

The Alpine police and the Brewster County Sheriff’s office were, of course, all white and patrolled the Chicano barrio south of the tracks daily and nightly with a brutality usually reserved only for the town’s “meskins.”

“People were scared of them,” Alvaro writes in a letter from his prison cell, recalling how as a young boy he would go looking for his father or grandfather in the local bars, the Sheriff would often barge in, gun on his hip, to intimidate, arrest, and humiliate Chicano men and elders simply as a means of letting them know “who was boss.”

Whether at the pool hall or walking the streets, Chicano youth were routinely singled out for arbitrary beatings and harassment by the cops. Alvaro was a tough kid, a self-proclaimed “vato loco” and product of the “pachuco” subculture. He was often getting into trouble for drinking beer or fighting, and had many violent confrontations with police as a teenager. Once at a high school football game some policemen were trying to arrest another Mexican kid and started beating the young man; Alvaro intervened to stop the assault and the cops turned their attention, and rage, to him, beating and pistol whipping young Alvaro as a hostile crowd gathered around, throwing garbage at the officers. The police busted open his skull, requiring several stitches, but not before taking him to jail, charging Alvaro with “assault on a peace officer.” Alvaro’s run-ins with the police landed him, at the age of 15, in a juvenile prison run by the Texas Youth Council (TYC) for a year. The juvenile detention centers in Texas had reputations for being extremely brutal and abusive—so much so that the Texas Youth Council was ultimately shut down by federal courts in 1983 following over a decade of lawsuits.

Just months after getting released from the custody of the TYC, something happened that would change Alvaro’s life forever. It was June 12, 1968. Alvaro was hanging out with his best friend, Ervay Ramos. The two buddies were cruising around Alpine in Ervay’s brother’s car when red police lights started flashing in the rear view mirror. Ervay was, like Alvaro, 16 years old, but didn’t have a valid driver’s license. He sped off and the police car gave chase. Fishtailing through a back alley with the wail of the siren growing louder in the distance, Ervay quickly stopped and told Alvaro to jump out of the car. He drove off and struck a nearby fence next to the football practice fields and landed in a ditch. With the cop car getting closer, Ramos jumped out of the car and ran down the alleyway hoping to escape. Alvaro was just feet away and saw with his own eyes what transpired next.

“The police car, driven by Bud Powers, a well-known cop with a reputation in the barrio for being racist and brutal, pulled up and stopped [behind] the Ramos car,” Alvaro vividly recalls. “[Powers] stepped outside, pulled his revolver and shot the fleeing Ramos in the back with his .357 magnum pistol killing him instantly.”

The murder of Ervay Ramos was one of a number of similar killings of Chicano youth by police in the Southwest at the time. Officer Bud Powers received a proverbial slap on the wrist—five years’ probation—and never served a day in jail. The killing of Ervay Ramos was cited by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in their 1970 report to the President entitled “Mexican Americans and the Administration of Justice in the Southwest” as one of several examples of what the Commission referred to as a pattern of “serious police brutality” and “widespread discrimination” suffered by Mexican-Americans at the hands of law enforcement officers and the U.S. judicial system in the Southwest United States.

So when Alvaro moved back to Alpine in 1995 with political struggle and courtroom justice for his slain childhood friend on his mind, he was met with considerable police opposition. He was working as a freelance paralegal for attorneys throughout the state when Alpine community members began approaching him for help regarding police brutality and other injustices in town. They had seen Alvaro on television when he was in Houston, working against the death penalty and police oppression. They knew about his impressive record of civil rights activism and how he had litigated a number of successful federal and state civil rights lawsuits against Texas police, judges, and prison officials. Moreover, citizens sought out Alvaro for help because, in addition to being a prominent public critic of racial and social inequalities in Alpine, it was well known—both by the general public, as well as by law enforcement—that he was working on re-opening the 1968 Ervay Ramos murder case with the intention of bringing his killer, policeman Bud Powers, into federal court on murder charges.

The response of the Alpine police to all of this was to organize and carry out a sophisticated campaign, in the spirit of the F.B.I.’s “counter intelligence program” (COINTELPRO) of the 1960s and ’70s, of surveillance, harassment, and repression against Alvaro. They hired a local heroin addict, Mary Valencia, to work as a police informant, ransacking his legal files and personal belongings while working as a maid at the motel he was staying at. Police followed him around, subjecting him to unjustified searches and harassment.

Worse yet, the police convinced the father-in-law of an Alpine Police Sergeant—a man who was known around Alpine as a local town drunk—to falsely accuse Alvaro of armed robbery—a ridiculous frame-up charge which Alvaro ultimately ended up getting dismissed in court while acting as his own attorney. In the meantime, however, Alvaro bonded out of jail by selling his car to the bail bondsman, but just weeks later the bondsman “withdrew” from the bond, unbeknownst to Alvaro at the time.

On July 18, 1996 Sheriff Jack McDaniel showed up on Alvaro’s doorstep looking to re-arrest him. Brewster County’s new sheriff was far from an anonymous cop just “doing his job.” McDaniel had been cited in a victorious civil rights lawsuit filed by Alvaro against then-Sheriff Jim Skinner a few years back. Moreover, it was no secret around town that Alvaro was investigating Sheriff McDaniel for corruption and embezzlement of funds from the county treasury—funds that Alvaro alleged were being used at McDaniel’s private ranch in West Alpine. Coupled with his work on re-opening the Ramos case and his long history of resistance to local police power, Alvaro argues that the prerogative of the cops was clear: “The police all knew what I was up to and they were determined to stop me at all costs.”

When questioned on the legality of the arrest—for which no warrant was presented—an enraged McDaniel pulled his gun on Alvaro. Fearing quite literally for his life, Alvaro disarmed the Sheriff in self-defense before he could shoot, told McDaniel to leave, and then fled the scene. Nobody was injured. For three days Alvaro was able to evade law enforcement in the rugged countryside of Brewster County during the course of what was one of the most massive manhunts in recent West Texas history. Following a shootout with police at his mother’s house, Alvaro was captured and charged with two counts of aggravated assault; one for allegedly pointing the gun at Sheriff McDaniel after disarming him, and another count for allegedly shooting an officer, Curtis Hines, in the hand during the shootout.

At the trial, witnesses testified that Alvaro never pointed the gun at McDaniel. McDaniel accused Alvaro of pointing the gun at his chest—threatening him with a deadly weapon—but Alvaro swears this is a lie. In a live interview on local television on July 18th following the confrontation at Alvaro’s house, McDaniel told viewers that Alvaro had only disarmed him and neither threatened nor shot him.

“Days later,” Alvaro explains, “when the Sheriff met with the District Attorney he changed his story to say that I had not only disarmed him but had pointed the gun at him—the difference between a minor misdemeanor and a first degree felony offense.” The videotape was ultimately kept out of court proceedings; Alvaro’s lawyer Tony Chavez is rumored to have potentially struck a backdoor deal with the prosecution. At the time, Chavez was under investigation himself for drug trafficking and was facing many years in prison under a plethora of forthcoming RICO charges. In fact, just months after Alvaro’s trial, Chavez immediately took a plea bargain and was sent to federal prison for 30 months and disbarred from the practice of law.

Throughout the trial numerous witnesses, including former law enforcement officers, also testified to the intense, longstanding police hatred of Alvaro. Alvaro was found not guilty on the second count of shooting Officer Hines in the hand (it was determined that Hines was hit by a ricocheting police bullet). Despite considerable public protest, however, the nearly-all-white jury found Alvaro guilty of “aggravated assault” for allegedly pointing the gun at McDaniel’s chest—an accusation which Alvaro vociferously and consistently denies to this day.

Alvaro Luna Hernandez was sentenced to 50 years in state prison in the summer of 1997. He will not be officially “eligible” for parole until 2021.

Though his appeals have all been exhausted, options still remain within the legal system to bring about Alvaro’s release. The KOSA TV videotape interview with McDaniel may still exist, and a full review of federal, state, and local files pertaining to Alvaro, and his ex-lawyer Chavez, is likely to shed light on Alvaro’s conviction and political imprisonment. Obtaining the pro bono assistance of one or more bright legal minds to help pursue other existing, and very promising, legal avenues to reenter the courts continues to be a top priority and a potential source of hope.

There is one thing, however, that remains clear and undisputed: absent a substantial popular mobilization and grassroots campaign pushing for his freedom, Alvaro faces a virtual life sentence of incarceration in the brutal control units of Texas’ state prisons. Yet in the meantime, although buried deep beneath the razor-wire fences, uncounted tons of cold steel, and the rows of soul-destroying concrete cages of Hughes Unit Prison, Alvaro Luna Hernandez remains among America’s most fearless political prisoners, incessantly struggling for freedom, locked up but never defeated.

The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man…

– Huey Newton

For as long as I can remember, Baltimore has had the reputation as a corrupt and tough town. City Hall is known as a cashbox for the thieves that run it. The cops are no-nonsense and care little about the Bill of Rights, especially when dealing with the city’s poor and non-white residents. Neighborhoods are closed societies that one is hesitant to walk through unless he is a resident. The demarcations between the wealthy and poorer neighborhoods are enforced, often quite forcefully, by the police. When I worked at an IHOP in the mid-1970s about twenty miles outside of Baltimore I would occasionally end up in a certain after hours club in one of the city’s rougher sections. I was often the only white male in the room, although there were often several white women. The guys I was hanging with made sure that nobody screwed with me, but my safety (or anyone else’s) was never guaranteed. There was a fellow I drank with there who I used to talk politics with. He claimed to be a former member of the Baltimore Black Panthers and talked a lot about Panther member Marshall Eddie Conway, who had been in prison since 1970 on a very questionable conviction.

It was with this memory in mind that I recently read Marshall Law: The Life and Times of a Baltimore Black Panther. This memoir describes Conway’s early life in Baltimore, his introduction to the Black Panthers, his eventual arrest and conviction for murder, and his life in prison since then. The details of the case, like so many cases against Black Panthers, are sketchy and based on the testimony of an informant who was only brought in when the prosecutor saw how weak the case against Conway was. In fact, Conway’s arrest was the result of a tip from an informant who was never identified and whose existence has never been verified. At the time of his arrest Conway was working at the US Post Office. The Baltimore chapter of the Panthers had already been the target of intense law enforcement surveillance and infiltration under the aegis of the COINTELPRO program. A show trial based on the indictments drawn up from this surveillance resulted in no convictions and the dismissal of the charges. During Conway’s trial for murder, no physical evidence was ever presented that linked him to the crime scene. Police officers at the scene could not positively identify Conway and he was denied representation by a lawyer of his choice. The prosecution relied primarily on a supposed jailhouse confession that Conway claims did not occur. He maintains his innocence to this day.

There is another aspect to this story. It is Conway’s commitment to revolutionary struggle, self improvement and the betterment of others whose lives and circumstances have brought them to prison. Unlike so many Americans, Conway has always opposed drugs, in large part because they destroy communities and lives. His politics have enabled him to stay free of drugs and the associated business. This story of a young black man railroaded into prison because of his race and politics does not end with that sentence. The reader is presented with Conway’s life inside the Maryland prison system. Lockdowns, fires, riots and the daily grind of so much of one’s physical activity being controlled by others. While reading Marshall Law I was constantly reminded of Bob Dylan’s lines from the ballad “George Jackson”: “Sometimes I think that this world/Is one big prison yard./Some of us are prisoners and some of us are guards.” As Conway learned and explains through his tale, freedom is not only a physical concept but also an existential state.

In prose both concise and personal, Eddie Conway’s memoir is essentially a story about hope. Here is a man who has been in prison for forty years for a crime many people are convinced he did not commit, yet he maintains a realistic optimism in his situation and that of the world. The hope he maintains is not one based on some pie-in-the-sky scheme. Instead, it is based on a practical understanding of the merits and rewards of political organizing. As Conway tells the reader, those merits are not only seen in the programs and other results brought to life by political organizing, they are also seen in the personal meaning they give to those doing the organizing. From the Black Panthers community breakfast programs he was involved in to the various programs he helped organize in the Maryland prison system, Conway proves the values of organizing again and again.

Marshall Eddie Conway remains in prison. His case is one of many that is supported by a number of prisoner support organizations including the Jericho Movement. Many of the prisoners involved are considered political prisoners since the circumstances of their arrests and convictions are the result of their political activities. Indeed, some are clearly the result of frameups by law enforcement. Most of these prisoners have spent considerably more time in prison than other men and women serving time for similar crimes but not known for their political convictions. It is clear from reading Marshall Law: The Life and Times of a Baltimore Black Panther that should he achieve his freedom, he will not compromise his beliefs to do so. This may be why he remains locked up.

Lawyers representing every leading law school in the United States have written an open letter to President Obama criticizing the conditions of Manning. Among the law professors is Lawrence Tribe who was President Obama’s law professor at Harvard and served in his administration until recently. The letter, Private Manning’s Humiliation, raises questions about President Obama saying: “President Obama was once a professor of constitutional law, and entered the national stage as an eloquent moral leader. The question now, however, is whether his conduct as commander in chief meets fundamental standards of decency.”

Col. Ann Wright (ret) who served 29 years in the military noted that “President Obama could end the treatment of Manning with one phone call. As Commander-In-Chief he is responsible for the actions of the Marines at Quantico. Certainly he understands the constitutional right to be convicted before punished and that the condition of Manning violates protection from cruel and unusual punishment.”

The UN Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez reprimanded the United States for blocking an official visit with Manning to investigate his treatment. The UN torture investigator has been reviewing Manning’s case since December but the United States will not allow a private meeting with no tape recording. The military has also refused a U.S. Congressman’s request for an official visit to Manning, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, as well as a visit from Amnesty International.

Daniel Ellsberg, a veteran who graduated from Quantico and is noted for leaking the Pentagon Papers commented: “It seems likely that the Pentagon’s refusal to allow Amnesty International and the UN Rapporteur on Torture to hold unmonitored discussion with Bradley Manning (as the UN mandate demands) reflects well-founded fear that such experts on abusive conditions and torture could conclude that Manning’s treatment is not only ‘ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid’ — as State Department spokesperson P.J. Crowley was forced to resign for saying– but criminal.”

This comes at a time when the U.S. and China are challenging each other on human rights. China issued a lengthy report regarding human rights violations in the United States this week. As PJ Crowley, former Assistant Secretary of State said when he resigned the Manning case would be an embarrassment to the U.S. internationally, highlighting “the broader, even strategic impact of discreet actions undertaken by national security agencies every day and their impact on our global standing and leadership. The exercise of power in today’s challenging times and relentless media environment must be prudent and consistent with our laws and values.”

Around the world there is growing anger at the treatment of Manning. Five hundred thousand people have sent letters to President Obama urging him to “immediately end the torture, isolation and public humiliation of Bradley Manning.” The petition was put out by Azaaz.org and is addressed to President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton and Secretary of Defense Gates.

“A half million people have taken a stand in support of Bradley Manning. It’s certainly a challenge to President Obama to get on the right side of history here and finally put an end to the extreme and illegal pre-trial punishment,” said Jeff Paterson, a veteran speaking on behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network. “After he ends the mistreatment of Manning, he could then ensure that Bradley receives the fair and public trial that is guaranteed under the Constitution.”

*****

Call the White House and tell President Obama end the torture of Bradley Manning: Comments: 202-456-1111. Switchboard: 202-456-1414

Rockwood offered a unique perspective on Manning’s case. In 1994, Rockwood was a US Army counter-intelligence officer sent to Haiti in an operation that was supposed to restore democracy to the country. As in other political transitions, those in power sought to use the transition to settle political scores. Right-wing groups used the ensuing chaos to carry out the torture and murder of supporters of ex-President Bertrand Aristide.

Rockwood understood that as an occupying army, the US military had a duty under the Geneva Conventions to protect civilians. This perspective, instilled into the fourth generation military officer, led him to conduct what the Army called “unauthorized” human rights inspections of Haitian jails. These inspections uncovered horrific acts of torture and abuse, all done while the US military occupied the country.

Rockwood was immediately taken into custody and, much like Manning, he became a military whistleblower by describing the inhumane and illegal acts carried out by the Haitian right-wing under the watch of the US military.

Rockwood was able to present himself in public – in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post, in a high-profile appearance on 20/20 and eventually in his book Walking Away from Nuremberg. On the other hand, the US Government has isolated Manning from the media so, “we don’t have his words.” As a result, any speculation as to what Manning’s motive was or even whether he did or did not carry out the act of passing along the secret files remain a mystery. Rockwood presented Manning as something of an “accused hero.”

Keeping Manning from the media and visitors is a part of the “suicide precautions” that the military has imposed on him. Again, Rockwood’s case offers an interesting counterpoint. Not only did Rockwood not spend one day in jail, he was not even handcuffed when he was taken into custody. Manning now faces full-body cavity searches, 24-hour surveillance and the humiliating experience of being paraded around naked by his jailers.

Manning’s treatment “is really without precedent.” Rockwood not only blamed the military, but also focused on the role of the psychologists and psychiatrists who must have signed off on the suicide precautions. He noted the sharp debate that occurred inside the American Psychological Association about the collaboration between practitioners and the military in instances of torture. Rockwood described the detention of Manning as another example of this unethical combination.
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For Rockwood, it is critical to support Manning since, if it is indeed true that he passed along the secret files to Wikileaks, Manning “threatens the basic infrastructure of our secrecy industry.” And it is this secrecy industry, much more than even the military industrial complex, that presents the greatest threat to democracy throughout the world. “No matter what good our country can do in the world,” Rockwood stated “it is being undermined by the secrecy industry.” As a result, the US peace movement should not just focus on “bringing the troops home,” but on “ending war as a way of life.”

Rockwood closed his presentation with a series of provocative comparisons. Why, he asked the crowd, was Bradley Manning in jail while Colin Powell is presented as an American hero? Similarly, who has contributed more to the defense of democracy, Bradley Manning or the torture memo author John Yoo? Answering these questions will go a long way to determining the future of democracy in this country.

The urgency of Manning’s case was brought home during the conversation after the presentation. Proceedings are expected to begin sometime in May or June of this year and he could face his court-martial in November. Rockwood stated repeatedly that Manning faced espionage charges that could result in the death penalty. He advised activists in the crowd that efforts to embarrass the government during his own case proved to be the most effective solidarity tactic. For instance. Rockwood was given an award by the American Civil Liberties Union that helped to increase the pressure on the US military.

It was also noted that Manning is, very clearly, “Obama’s prisoner.” The President could free him with one short executive order, yet Barack Obama has chosen to remain silent to the abusive conditions Manning is held in. With a presidential election coming up in 2012, the case of Bradley Manning may prove to be a sore spot for a president seeking a second term.

The words they find it very difficult to say — “civil war”.

Libya is engaged in a civil war. The United States and the European Union and NATO — The Holy Triumvirate — are intervening, bloodily, in a civil war. To overthrow Moammar Gaddafi. First The Holy Triumvirate spoke only of imposing a no-fly zone. After getting support from international bodies on that understanding, they immediately began to wage war against Libyan military forces, and whoever was nearby, on a daily basis. In the world of commerce this is called “bait and switch”.

Gaddafi’s crime? He was never respectful enough of The Holy Triumvirate, which recognizes no higher power, and maneuvers the United Nations for its own purposes, depending on China and Russia to be as spineless and hypocritical as Barack Obama. The man the Triumvirate allows to replace Gaddafi will be more respectful.

So who are the good guys? The Libyan rebels, we’re told. The ones who go around murdering and raping African blacks on the supposition that they’re all mercenaries for Gaddafi. One or more of the victims may indeed have been members of a Libyan government military battalion; or may not have been. During the 1990s, in the name of pan-African unity, Gaddafi opened the borders to tens of thousands of sub-Saharan Africans to live and work in Libya. That, along with his earlier pan-Arab vision, did not win him points with The Holy Triumvirate. Corporate bosses have the same problem about their employees forming unions. Oh, and did I mention that Gaddafi is strongly anti-Zionist?

Does anyone know what kind of government the rebels would create? The Triumvirate has no idea. To what extent will the new government embody an Islamic influence as opposed to the present secular government? What jihadi forces might they unleash? (And these forces do indeed exist in eastern Libya, where the rebels are concentrated.) Will they do away with much of the welfare state that Gaddafi used his oil money to create? Will the state-dominated economy be privatized? Who will wind up owning Libya’s oil? Will the new regime continue to invest Libyan oil revenues in sub-Saharan African development projects? Will they allow a US military base and NATO exercises? Will we find out before long that the “rebels” were instigated and armed by Holy Triumvirate intelligence services?

In the 1990s, Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia was guilty of “crimes” similar to Gaddafi’s. His country was commonly referred to as “the last communists of Europe”. The Holy Triumvirate bombed him, arrested him, and let him die in prison. The Libyan government, it should be noted, refers to itself as the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. American foreign policy is never far removed from the Cold War.

We must look closely at the no-fly zone set up for Iraq by the US and the UK (falsely claimed by them as being authorized by the United Nations) beginning in the early 1990s and lasting more than a decade. It was in actuality a license for very frequent bombing and killing of Iraqi citizens; softening up the country for the coming invasion. The no-fly zone-cum invasion force in Libya is killing people every day with no end in sight, softening up the country for regime change. Who in the universe can stand up to The Holy Triumvirate? Has the entire history of the world ever seen such power and such arrogance?

And by the way, for the 10th time, Gaddafi did not carry out the bombing of PanAm Flight 103 in 1988.1 Please enlighten your favorite progressive writers on this.

Barack “I’d kill for a peace prize” Obama

Is anyone keeping count?

I am. Libya makes six.

Six countries that Barack H. Obama has waged war against in his 26 months in office. (To anyone who disputes that dropping bombs on a populated land is act of war, I would ask what they think of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.)

America’s first black president now invades Africa.

Is there anyone left who still thinks that Barack Obama is some kind of improvement over George W. Bush?

Probably two types still think so. 1) Those to whom color matters a lot; 2) Those who are very impressed by the ability to put together grammatically correct sentences.

It certainly can’t have much otherwise to do with intellect or intelligence. Obama has said numerous things, which if uttered by Bush would have inspired lots of rolled eyeballs, snickers, and chuckling reports in the columns and broadcasts of mainstream media. Like the one the president has repeated on a number of occasions when pressed to investigate Bush and Cheney for war crimes, along the lines of “I prefer to look forward rather than backwards”. Picture a defendant before a judge asking to be found innocent on such grounds. It simply makes laws, law enforcement, crime, justice, and facts irrelevant.

There’s also the excuse given by Obama to not prosecute those engaged in torture: because they were following orders. Has this “educated” man never heard of the Nuremberg Trials, where this defense was summarily rejected? Forever, it was assumed.

Just 18 days before the Gulf oil spill Obama said: “It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced.”¹ Picture George W. having said this, and the later reaction.

“All the forces that we’re seeing at work in Egypt are forces that naturally should be aligned with us, should be aligned with Israel,” Obama said in early March.² Imagine if Bush had implied this — that the Arab protesters in Egypt against a man receiving billions in US aid including the means to repress and torture them, should “naturally” be aligned with the United States and — God help us — Israel.

A week later, on March 10, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told a forum in Cambridge, Mass. that Wikileaks hero Bradley Manning’s treatment by the Defense Department in a Marine prison was “ridiculous, counterproductive and stupid.” The next day our “brainy” president was asked about Crowley’s comment. Replied the Great Black Hope: “I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are.”

Right, George. I mean Barack. Bush should have asked Donald Rumsfeld whether anyone in US custody was being tortured anywhere in the world. He could then have held a news conference like Obama did to announce the happy news — “No torture by America!” We would still be chortling at that one.

Obama closed his remark with: “I can’t go into details about some of their concerns, but some of this has to do with Pvt. Manning’s safety as well.”³

Ah yes, of course, Manning is being tortured for his own good. Someone please remind me — Did Georgieboy ever stoop to using that particular absurdity to excuse prisoner hell at Guantanamo?

Is it that Barack Obama is not bothered by the insult to Bradley Manning’s human rights, the daily wearing away of this brave young man’s mental stability?

The answer to the question is No. The president is not bothered by these things.

How do I know? Because Barack Obama is not bothered by anything as long as he can exult in being the president of the United States, eat his hamburgers, and play his basketball. Let me repeat once again what I first wrote in May 2009:

The problem, I’m increasingly afraid, is that the man doesn’t really believe strongly in anything, certainly not in controversial areas. He learned a long time ago how to take positions that avoid controversy, how to express opinions without clearly taking sides, how to talk eloquently without actually saying anything, how to leave his listeners’ heads filled with stirring clichés, platitudes, and slogans. And it worked. Oh how it worked! What could happen now, having reached the presidency of the United States, to induce him to change his style?

Remember that in his own book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

Obama is a product of marketing. He is the prime example of the product “As seen on TV”.

Writer Sam Smith recently wrote that Obama is the most conservative Democratic president we’ve ever had. “In an earlier time, there would have been a name for him: Republican.”

Indeed, if John McCain had won the 2008 election, and then done everything that Obama has done in exactly the same way, liberals would be raging about such awful policies.

I believe that Barack Obama is one of the worst things that has ever happened to the American left. The millions of young people who jubilantly supported him in 2008, and numerous older supporters, will need a long recovery period before they’re ready to once again offer their idealism and their passion on the altar of political activism.

If you don’t like how things have turned out, next time find out exactly what your candidate means when he talks of “change”.

Dear Lord, please save us from the Holy Republican Empire

Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, John Boehner, and many other Republicans often find it difficult to speak about domestic or foreign issues without bringing religion into the picture. Speaker of the House of Representatives John Boehner, for example, in a recent talk at the National Religious Broadcasters conference stated that America’s national debt is a “moral hazard.” The Washington Post (March 5, 2011) reported, “Boehner made clear that this fiscal crisis requires people to get on their knees.”

Rep. Joe Barton of Texas justified his opposition to controlling greenhouse gases because “you can’t regulate God.”

Arizona Senator Jon Kyl accused Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid of “disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians” for considering keeping Congress in session during Christmas.

Rep. Steve King of Iowa compared Democrats to Pontius Pilate, the ancient Roman official who sentenced Jesus to be crucified.⁴

And South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint recently declared that “the bigger government gets, the smaller God gets. … America works, freedom works, when people have that internal gyroscope that comes from a belief in God and Biblical faith. Once we push that out, you no longer have the capacity to live as a free person without the external controls of an authoritarian government. I’ve said it often and I believe it –– the bigger government gets, the smaller God gets. As people become more dependent on government, less dependent on God.”⁵

So, in a futile attempt to enlighten the likes of these esteemed Republican members of Congress, I feel obliged to point out the following:

On the 4th day of November 1796, a “Treaty of peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and subjects of Tripoli, of Barbary” was concluded at Tripoli [Libya]. Article 11 of the treaty begins: “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion … ” Be it further noted: Article VI, Section II, of the United States Constitution states: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

The creed of America’s founders was neither Christianity nor secularism, but religious liberty.

After the terrorist attacks of 9-11, a Taliban leader declared that “God is on our side, and if the world’s people try to set fire to Afghanistan, God will protect us and help us.”⁶

“With or without religion, good people will do good things and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things — that takes religion.” — Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize-winning physicist

The Bad Guys

I’ve written on many occasions about America’s ODE — Officially Designated Enemies: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hasan Nasrallah, Moammar Gaddafi, and others. Once the government of the United States of America makes it clear that an individual foreign leader is not one of the Good Guys, that he doesn’t believe that America is God’s gift to humankind, and that he is not willing to allow his country to become an obedient client state, the US mainstream media invariably picks up on this and goes out of its way to denigrate the individual at every opportunity. (If any reader knows of any exceptions to this rule I’d be interested in hearing from them.)

Juan Forero has long been a Latin American correspondent for the Washington Post. He’s also the same for National Public Radio. I used to send letters to the Post pointing out how Forero was distorting the facts each time he wrote about Hugo Chávez, errors of omission compounded with errors of commission. None were printed, so I began to send my missives directly to Forero. He once actually replied saying that he (sort of) agreed with me on the point I had raised and implied that he would try to avoid similar errors in the future. I actually detected some improvement after that for a short period, then it was back to usual. During the current unrest in Libya he wrote: “Chavez said it ‘was a great lie’ that Gaddafi’s forces had attacked civilians.”⁷

Well, how stupid can Hugo Chávez think the world is? We’ve all seen and read of Gaddafi’s attacks on civilians.

But it turns out that if you find the original Spanish you get a fuller and different picture. According to the United Press International (UPI) Spanish-language report, Chávez said that the fighting in Libya was a civil war and those who were attacked were thus not simply protestors or civilians; they were on the other side of the civil war; i.e., combatants.⁸

Al Jazeera in America

The uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East have given a great boost to al Jazeera, the television network based in Doha, Qatar. Until recently Americans shied away from the station; it was just too easily associated with the Middle East and Muslims, which of course leads easily to thinking about terrorists and “terrorists”; and certainly any well-brought-up American knew that the station could not be as unbiased as CBS, CNN, NPR or Fox News. The station had reason to be paranoid about its office in the United States, land of ten million crazies (more than a few of them holding public office). It occupies six floors in a downtown Washington, DC office building, but its name doesn’t appear on the building directory.

But US mainstream media now quote al Jazeera English and show their news footage. Many progressives, including myself, have taken to watching the station in preference to US mainstream media. In general, the news is of more substance, the guests are mainly more or less progressive, and there are no commercials. However, the more I watch it the more I realize that the station’s presenters and correspondents are not necessarily as well imbued with the progressive perspective as they should be.

One case in point of many I could give: On March 12 al Jazeera correspondent Roger Wilkinson was reporting about the trial in Cuba of Alan Gross, the American arrested after he dispensed electronic equipment to Cuban citizens. Gross entered Cuba as a tourist but was actually there in behalf of Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), a private contractor working for the Agency for International Development (AID), a division of the State Department. Gross was thus a covert unregistered agent of a foreign government. Wilkinson reported this very controversial story with all the innocence and distortion of the US mainstream media. He mentioned in passing that the Cuban government tries to control the Internet. What can one conclude from that other than that Cuban officials want to hide certain information from its citizens? Just like the US mainstream media, Wilkinson gave no examples of any Internet sites blocked by the Cuban government; for the simple reason, perhaps, that there aren’t any. What is the terrible truth that Cubans might learn if they had full access to the Internet? Ironically, it’s the US government and US multinationals who impinge upon this access, for political reasons and by pricing their services beyond Cuba’s means. This is why Cuba and Venezuela are building their own undersea cable connection.

Wilkinson spoke of AID’s program of “democracy promotion”, but gave no hint that in the world of AID and the private organizations that contract with it — including Gross’s employer — this term is code for “regime change”. AID has long played a subversive role in world affairs. Here is John Gilligan, Director of AID during the Carter administration:

“At one time, many AID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people. The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind.”⁹

AID has been but one of many institutions employed by the United States for more than 50 years to subvert the Cuban revolution. It is because of this that we can formulate this equation: The United States is to the Cuban government like al Qaeda is to American government. Cuba’s laws dealing with activities typically carried out by the likes of AID and DAI reflect this history. It’s not paranoia. It’s self-preservation. In discussing a case like Alan Gross without considering this equation is a serious defect in journalism and political analysis.

Hopefully the Gross case will serve to temper the nature of US “democracy promotion” efforts in Cuba.

Washington’s policy — and therefore Britain’s policy — toward Cuba has always stemmed mainly from a desire to keep the island from becoming a good example for the Third World of an alternative to capitalism. But Western leaders actually do not, or do not dare, understand what can motivate people like the Cuban leaders and their followers. Here’s one of the Wikileaks US-Embassy cables, March 25, 2009 — William Hague, then-British Conservative MP and Shadow Foreign Secretary, giving the US embassy in London a report on his recent visit to Cuba: Hague “said that he was slightly surprised that the Cuban leadership did not appear to be moving toward more of a Chinese model of economic opening, but were rather still ‘romantic revolutionaries’.” In his conversation with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez “the discussion turned to political ideology, during which Hague commented that people in Britain were more interested in shopping than ideology.” [Oh dear, what a jolly good defense of the Western way of life. Rule Britannia! God Bless America!] Hague then reported that “Rodriguez appeared disdainful of the notion and said one needed shopping only to buy food and a few good books.”

Japan devastated by an earthquake and tsunami. America devastated by the profit motive.

Christine Todd Whitman, George W. Bush’s first Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator, speaking of how the nuclear industry has learned from every previous nuclear accident or disaster: “It’s safer than working in a grocery store,” she said.

Whitman is now co-chairwoman of the nuclear industry’s Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.¹⁰

1. Washington Post, May 27, 2010.
2. March 4, 2011, Democratic Party function, Miami, FL, CQ Transcriptions.
3. Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2011.
4. For this and the previous two examples, see “Jim DeMint’s Theory Of Relativity: ‘The Bigger Government Gets, The Smaller God Gets’“, Think Progress, March 15, 2011.
5. Fox News Sunday, December 19, 2010.
6. Washington Post, September 19, 2001.
7. Washington Post, March 7, 2011.
8. UPI Reporte LatAm, March 4, 2011 (email me for the text).
9. George Cotter, “Spies, strings and missionaries”, The Christian Century (Chicago), March 25, 1981, p.321.
10. “Former EPA chief: Nuke crisis ‘a very good lesson‘,” Politico, March 14, 2011.

In 1966, then University of Puerto Rico economics associate, Dr. Antonio J. Gonzales said:

The Puerto Rican Independence Party bases its struggle in favor of the independence of Puerto Rico on the conviction that we continue to be a (US) colony, thus being denied (our) right to freedom and sovereignty.

After taking over in 1898, America “never granted Puerto Ricans the total control of their lives and destiny. Sovereign powers have never been transferred to us in order to be able to decide in all those areas that affect the collective life of our nation.”

For over 112 years, America’s had total control, Puerto Ricans virtually none, forced to “accept the dispositions of laws imposed” by a colonial power. In its relationship with America, Puerto Rico is called “Estado Libre Asociado” (Free Associated State or Commonwealth). Under international law, it’s a colony, seeking independence. Therein lies the roots of its struggle, Oscar Lopez Rivera imprisoned for supporting it.

A collective 1981 statement by Puerto Rican Independentistas, convicted of “seditious conspiracy,” said the following:

Our position remains clear: Puerto Rico is a nation intervened, militarily conquered and colonized by the United States….We are prisoners of war captured by the enemy. Our actions have always been and continue to be in the nature of fighting a war of independence, a war of national liberation….The US interventionist government has absolutely no right, no say so whatsoever in regards to Puerto Rico, ourselves, or any Puerto Rican prisoner of war. The US interventionist government has only one choice….and that is to GET OUT! It is our right to regain and secure our national sovereignty. Nothing will stand in the way of achieving our goal.

The struggle continues, Rivera one of its victims. The web site prolibertadweb.com calls him and others like him:

“workers and professionals, students and teachers, community organizers, artists, mothers, and fathers of families. They are fighters (for) Puerto Rico’s Independence and social justice.” They reject colonization and exploitation. They’re committed  activists for justice, struggling to end it.

Each year for decades, the UN Decolonization Committee approved a draft resolution for Puerto Rican independence, the latest one on June 21:

calling on the Government of the United States to expedite a process that would allow the Puerto Rican people to exercise fully their right to self-determination and independence, and for the General Assembly formally to consider the situation concerning Puerto Rico, which the world body had not formerly taken up since the Territory’s removal from the list of Non-Self-Governing Territories in 1953.

….a majority of petitioners expressed dissatisfaction today with the commonwealth’s treatment by the United States, arguing that the administering Power was hampering Puerto Rican decolonization initiatives and those of civil society….(America) continue(s) acting as a colonizing Power over a country with its own cultural identity.

Background on Rivera

Born in 1943 in San Sebastian, Puerto Rico, he moved to America at age 12, then two years later to Chicago to live with his sister. A decorated Vietnam veteran, he returned home to his Puerto Rican community, plagued by unemployment, drugs, police brutality, and dire levels of healthcare, education, and other essential social services – issues he was determined to address.

He helped create the Puerto Rican High School and Cultural Center. He co-founded the Rafael Cancel Miranda High School (now called Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School). He worked for public school bilingual education, for universities to admit more Latino students and hire Latino faculty and staff, and for Chicago area corporations, like Illinois Bell, People’s Gas and Commonwealth Edison, to end discriminatory hiring.

He became an organizer for the Northwest Community Organization (NCO), ASSPA, ASPIRA, and Chicago’s First Congregational Church. He also helped found FREE, a half-way house for convicted drug addicts, and ASAS, an educational program for Latino prisoners at Illinois’ Stateville Prison.

He also worked for Puerto Rican independence. In 1974, he helped organize the committee to “Free the Five” (Rafael Cancel Miranda, Irwin Flores, Oscar Collazao, Lolita Lebron, and Andres Figueroa Cordero). In 1975, he was forced underground with other comrades after the Justice Department named him an FALN leader (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional – Armed Forces of National Liberation).

On May 10, 2001, FBI Director Louis Freeh described the organization as follows to the Senate Committees on Appropriations, Armed Services, and Select Committee on Intelligence, under the heading: “Left-wing and Puerto Rican extremist groups,” saying:

….left-wing (domestic terrorists) generally profess a revolutionary socialist doctrine and view themselves as protectors of the people against the ‘dehumanizing effects’ of capitalism and imperialism. They aim to bring about change in the United States through revolution rather than through the established political process.

Terrorist groups (like FALN), seeking to secure Puerto Rican independence from the United States through violent means, represent one of the remaining active vestiges of left-wing terrorism….they view….acts of terrorism as a means by which to draw attention to their desire for independence….Acts of terrorism continue to be perpetrated (by) violent” separatist groups like FALN.

Rivera’s Arrest and Imprisonment

On May 29, 1981, he was arrested, the FBI calling him one of America’s most feared fugitives. Accused of being an FALN leader, he neither confirmed or denied it, affirming only his nonviolent activism. At trial, he refused to participate, declaring himself a “prisoner of war.”

In 1981, he was convicted of armed robbery, miscellaneous charges, and seditious conspiracy – sedition pertaining to actions to incite insurrection or rebellion; conspiracy by working with others to achieve it.

Initially sentenced to 55 years, 15 more were added in 1988, based on spurious charges of participating in a conspiracy to escape, that sentence to begin when the original one ends.

In 1999, the Clinton administration offered him and 11 other Puerto Rican nationalists clemency. He declined, saying it required him to serve 10 more years with good conduct. Had he accepted, he’d have been free a year ago.

His sister, Zenaida Lopez, said he refused because on parole, he’d be in “prison outside prison.” Incarcerated at Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Terre Haute, IN, July 27, 2027 is his scheduled release date unless  paroled and accepts or gets unconditional clemency sooner.

Punitive Sentencing and Treatment

The “ProLIBERTAD campaign for the freedom of Puerto Rican political prisoners and prisoners of war” called sentences given “Puerto Rican patriots excessive and punitive.” On average, men got 70.8 years, women 72.8, 19 times longer than average in the year they were sentenced, real criminals faring much better.

For example, from 1966 – 1985, average murder sentences were 22.7 years; rape, 12.5 years, and arms violations 12. Only 12.8% of all federal prisoners got over 20 years. Most often, only repeat offenders get longer sentences. No Puerto Rican “patriot” had a prior record at time of arrest.

Worse still, they’ve been harshly treated in prison, in violation of UN Minimum Uniform Rules on the Treatment of Prisoners (UNSMRTR), Rule A1 6(1). They’ve been held far from families despite facilities closer to home. Some have been sexually assaulted, Alejandrina Torres attacked in three different prisons, in one case by prison guards and a male lieutenant. She was then held in solitary confinement for complaining.

They’ve been denied adequate medical care. Some have been held in underground confinement, Rivera, in 1993, describing his treatment at Marion, IL maximum security as follows:

I am enclosed in a cell that is 8 feet wide by 9 feet long on an average of 22 hours each day. Today while I write this letter, I have been 36 hours without going out and tomorrow if they do not take us out it will have been three days without moving from this same space. In this little space I have everything. From eating my meals to taking care of my needs. So it is my dining room and latrine at the same time. My bed is a slab of cement. And the whole cell is painted the same dead yellow color. From an aesthetic point of view, it is as attractive as a jail for zoo animals.

In 1987, Amnesty International (AI) condemned Marion conditions, saying:

In Marion, violations of the (UN) Minimum Standard Rules (for treating prisoners) are common. There is almost no rule in the Minimum Standard Rules that is not broken in one form or another.

In 1988, AI called conditions in Lexington, KY’s Maximum Security Unit for women “deliberately and gratuitously oppressive.”

The same holds for all federal and state maximum security facilities and many others, prisoners routinely abused, especially political ones.¹

From 1986-1998, Rivera was held in punitive maximum security confinement, and remained in max facilities until 2008. Only then was he transferred to a medium security prison on condition he report every two hours to corrections staff, an unheard of stipulation. Currently at FCI Terre Haute, his mailing address is:

Oscar Lopez Rivera
87651-024
FCI Terre Haute
PO Box 33
Terre Haute, IN 47808

A Final Comment

In early January 2011, likely the first week, Rivera will appear before the US Parole Commission after nearly 30 years in prison. Supporters are urged to download, print and sign the attached letter and mail it to the following address:

Chairman Isaac Fulwood, Jr.
US Parole Commission
5550 Friendship Blvd.
Suite 420
Chevy Chase, MD 20815-7286

In addition, the National Boricua Human Rights Network urges signers to email gro.sthgirnamuhaucirobnull@rodracir so they can keep track of supportive letters.

“Together,” they say, “we can help free Oscar Lopez Rivera!”

1. Earlier articles explained here, here, and here.

Indonesia’s security forces continue to operate with impunity under the old dictatorship’s rules: peaceful dissent is criminalized; civil society leaders are humiliated and intimidated and the international community is precluded from any effective monitoring of conditions in this besieged community.

The video is the second in recent months to offer graphic footage of Indonesian security force torture of Papuans. In it, a Papuan man is held to the ground while a hot stick, still smoldering from a fire, is held against his genitals. A plastic bag is wrapped around his head several times, a rifle held against him. Another man has a large knife held against him while he pleads: “I’m just an ordinary civilian, please…” One of his interrogators responds: “I’ll cut your throat… Do not lie, I will kill you! Burn the penis!” The video appears to have been taken on the cell phone of one interrogator. Although the interrogators are dressed in plain clothes, they speak in Javanese and in Indonesian with non-Papuan accents. Plain clothes dress is common for Indonesian security forces in West Papua. The techniques used used mean they are almost certainly trained security personnel in the Indonesian army or police. The dialect of the victims places them in the Puncak Jaya region, where security forces are accused of repeated rights abuses.

The extreme brutality revealed in this footage is not new. What is new is that there is now additional video evidence of the brutality suffered by Papuans for nearly five decades. The international community can now clearly witness the indisputably harsh reality of life for Papuans. While Indonesia continues on the path of democratization and peaceful resolution of disputes, one region is sent on the opposite path: towards ongoing military domination, widespread suppression of political activity, and routine use of torture and other severe violations of basic human rights. In West Papua, the brutal and unaccountable Indonesian military and its accomplices, the militarized police (Brimob), special forces (Kopassus) and “anti-terror” force (Detachment 88) continue to operate with impunity under the old dictatorship’s rules: peaceful dissent is criminalized; civil society leaders are humiliated and intimidated and the international community is precluded from any effective monitoring of conditions in this besieged community.

Thanks to the courage of Papuan human rights advocates in the face of harsh security measures designed to silence them, the world periodically has been witness to the harsh rule of West Papua. In the past, the faith in international justice and humanity demonstrated by these courageous Papuans has been betrayed by the international community’s deference to the Indonesian government’s insistence that neither its course nor rule there not be challenged. Numerous governments have placed the territorial integrity of Indonesia and the desire to support its democratization process first. In the process, however, they have abandoned what could have been constructive efforts to uphold human rights in West Papua, which continue to be systematically violated.

Geopolitical and commercial goals led the U.S. government to ignore Suharto dictatorship atrocities targeting its own people and the people of East Timor for decades. President Bill Clinton acknowledged this when East Timor gained its independence in 2002, saying: “I don’t believe America or any of the other countries were sufficiently sensitive in the beginning and for a long time, a long time before 1999, going all the way back to the ’70s, to the suffering of the people of East Timor.” It was the suffering of the people of East Timor that led to Congress deciding to suspend military cooperation with Indonesia.

Despite the continued human rights violations, the Obama administration has continued the Bush administration’s policy of support to the Indonesian security forces through the IMET program, and support to the notorious Detachment 88 of the Indonesian National Police, credibly accused of torture and other rights violations. It has resumed cooperation with the Indonesian special forces (Kopassus) notwithstanding that unit’s decades-old record of human rights abuse.

The system of security force rule and repression of peaceful dissent has been dismantled in much of Indonesia, but the same security system and the same systematic human rights violations continue in West Papua today. Such stopgap solutions as “special autonomy” have been clearly rejected by the Papuan people. Despite the continued human rights violations, the Obama administration has continued the Bush administration’s policy of support to the Indonesian security forces. It has continued support to the Indonesian military through the IMET program, and support through the Anti-Terror Assistance Program to the notorious Detachment 88 of the Indonesian National Police, credibly accused of torture and other rights violations. It has resumed cooperation with the Indonesian special forces (Kopassus) notwithstanding that unit’s decades-old record of human rights abuse including recent, credible accounts of brutality targeting Papuan civilians. In so doing the Obama Administration, like its predecessors, has wittingly or unwittingly made itself complicit in the repression now underway in West Papua.

The United States, under President John F. Kennedy, was responsible for the transfer of West Papua to Indonesian rule. In that act, the United States made itself co-responsible for the outcome of its actions. Successive administrations have not been sufficiently sensitive to the ongoing human rights violations, including torture to this day, which resulted from Indonesian rule.

President Obama’s upcoming visit to Indonesia offers an opportunity to end the silence on West Papua, and to craft new policies that advance human rights rather than lending support to human rights violators. Information about the ongoing human rights violations in West Papua was heard on September 22 by the House of Representatives Sub-committee on Asia, the Pacific.

The Obama administration should:

• Insist upon an investigation and prosecution of those who recently tortured Papuans in Puncak Jaya
• Seek an investigation by relevant United Nations human rights rapporteurs of this and other instances of torture in West Papua
• Suspend cooperation with Indonesian security forces accused of systematic human rights violations, including Detachment 88 and the Brimob (Mobile Brigade) of the National Police and the Indonesian special forces (Kopassus)
• Call for full and open access for journalists, humanitarian assistance personnel including the International Committee of the red Cross and other international monitors to all of West Papua
• Seek meetings between President Obama and Papuan human rights and civil society leaders during his visit to Indonesia
• Call upon the Indonesian government to carry out an internationally facilitated, senior-level dialogue process with Papuan officials and civil society designed to resolve the Papuan conflict peacefully, as was done in Aceh province.

At a June 2, 2010 Washington National Press Club press conference, the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five’s coordinator, Gloria La Riva, announced new Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) obtained evidence revealing names of 14 journalists who “were receiving covertly (paid) monies from the US government.”

Included was Pablo Alfonso who received $58,600 for 16 articles published in (the south Florida Spanish language) El Nuevo Herald newspaper. La Riva explained that “During the pre-trial period, there were hundreds of articles on the Cuban Five and not one was favorable.” Journalists were bribed to write them.

According to the National Lawyers Guild, Heidi Boghosian, “This shows that the US Government was an accomplice to manipulating the jury by bribing journalists that violated the principles of impartiality and accuracy.”

She also affirmed that the Five’s Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial was violated, federal authorities corrupting the process to convict them.

On September 9, 2006, New York Times writer, Abby Goodnough, headlined, “US Paid 10 Journalists for Anti-Castro Reports,” saying:

“The Bush administration’s Office of Cuba Broadcasting paid (them) to provide commentary on Radio and TV Marti, which transmit” anti-Castro propaganda to Cuba. Journalists named included Pablo Alfonso getting almost $175,000 since 2001 and Armstrong Williams (a notorious right wing liar) receiving $240,000 to write on various issues, including privatizing public education.

On September 14, 1998, a Florida grand jury accused the Five of infiltrating terrorist groups, charging them with 26 offenses, including conspiracy to commit crimes against the United States and espionage. For lack of evidence, the latter charge became conspiracy to commit it.

Gerardo Hernandez was separately accused of voluntary homicide, relating to the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue plane shot down for illegally entering Cuban air space, though no evidence linked him to the event. Other charges involved using false documents and for not registering as foreign agents.

Throughout their 12 year ordeal, they’ve been horrifically treated. Pre-trial for 17 months, they were isolated in a Special Housing Unit, for many weeks in separate cells. After a successful legal motion, two each per cell followed; one, however, still alone in isolation.

The five men were in America monitoring Miami-based, US funded, extremist right-wing group terrorist activities against Cuba. Ongoing for decades, declassified US documents showed that from October 1960-April 1961 alone, CIA operatives smuggled in 75 tons of explosives and 45 tons of weapons. During the period, 110 attacks were carried out, using dynamite and bombs against 150 factories, 800 plantations, and six trains.

From 1959-1997, US funded groups and CIA operatives committed around 5,800 terrorist acts, hundreds involving bombings that killed or injured thousands of civilians. In addition, from 1959-2003, 61 planes or boats were hijacked. From 1961-1996, 58 sea attacks were launched against dozens of economic targets and the civilian population.

Evidence shows CIA recruitment and support for over 4,000 individuals and 300 paramilitary groups, responsible for murdering hundreds of Cubans and injuring thousands, many permanently disabled. Fidel Castro, himself, was targeted hundreds of times unsuccessfully.

Moreover, chemical and biological warfare was conducted. In 1971, a biological attack contaminated half a million pigs, then killed to prevent swine fever from spreading. In 1981, introduced dengue fever affected over 340,000 people, killing at least 158 including 101 children. On July 6, 1982 alone, around 11,400 cases were registered.

South Florida is a hotbed of anti-Castro extremism, CIA operatives complicit in training and funding planned terrorist attacks, likely still ongoing. On June 16, 1998, Cuban authorities asked FBI officials to provide documents on known US-sponsored extremists to no avail. Three months later, the Cuban 5 were arrested for risking their lives legally for their country, monitoring subversive Americans to warn Havana of impending attacks. They harmed no one, committed no crime, did nothing illegal, had no weapons, nor did 119 volumes of testimonies and over 20,000 court pages of documents contain any evidence against them.

Beginning in November 2000, their politically-charged trial was orchestrated to convict. Little more than a seven month show trial, the South Florida venue alone prevented judicial fairness. Five times, in fact, motions to change it were denied, despite clear evidence a fair trial was impossible. As a result, on June 8, 2001, the men were convicted, then in December sentenced to four life terms and 75 years.

For being loyal Cuban citizens serving their country heroically, they were criminally charged, convicted in a witch hunt proceeding, and imprisoned. Committing no crime, they legally monitored US-sponsored terrorist groups, including Brothers to the Rescue, Omega 7, Alpha 66, Brigada 2506, Comandos F4, and other anti-Castro elements.

So far, they’ve been denied justice, though on August 9, 2005, after seven years in prison, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals overturned their convictions, ordering a new trial outside Miami. However, on October 31, the entire Court halted the ruling, ordering an “en banc” (full court) 12 judge hearing. In August 2006, the Court reversed the 2005 decision (10-2), affirming the District Court ruling.

An Independent Legal Opinion

In December 2007, UK attorney Steve Cottingham, a partner at OH Parsons & Partners Solicitors, titled an article on the case “Miami Five: Who Are Terrorists,” saying:

The trial was “profoundly flawed… their (prison) conditions… inhumane, and they were fall guys in an attempt to cover up the US’s support for illegal activity to overthrow the (legitimate) government of the Republic of Cuba.”

With the trial venue in Miami, defense lawyers knew fair proceedings were impossible. As a result, they commissioned a survey for proof. “The Court-appointed defense expert on psychology, Dr. Gary Moran PhD, testified that 69 per cent of all respondents (in Dade County) and 74 per cent of all Hispanic (ones) were prejudiced against people charged with the types of activities outlined in the indictment.” In addition, 49% of all those surveyed said a fair and impartial trial was impossible.

As a result, the defense requested a venue change several times, each application denied. Prior to trial, the local media poisoned public opinion with malicious accusations and more. Moreover, despite careful jury selection, the charged atmosphere imposed overwhelming pressure to convict.

On December 2, 2000, the Nuevo Herald newspaper published an article, saying:

“Fears of a violent reaction by Cuban exiles against the jury that decides to acquit the Five men accused of spying for Cuba has caused many potential jurors to ask the judge to excuse them from their civic duty.” One said, “Sure I’m afraid for my safety, if the verdict doesn’t suit the Cuban community there.” Clearly, the challenge for the defense was too great to overcome, at trial producing the inevitable outcome.

Proceedings included 43 witnesses for the prosecution, 31 for the defense, lasting nearly seven months, as well as hundreds of documents for jurors to review. A key prosecution witness, General James R. Clapper (with 30 years experience in military intelligence) testified that they contained no secret national defense information helpful to Cuba. Key defense witnesses, including retired Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, said the Cuban military threat to America is “zero.”

Nonetheless, on June 8, 2001, “Despite the lack of evidence of espionage or damage to US interests, the jury took a remarkably short time to convict all the Five on all counts….”

Numerous legal violations and improprieties were committed from time of arrests through proceedings, including:

• defendants had no immediate access to lawyers;
• they were interrogated for many hours without counsel;
• they were unjustly isolated for 17 months;
• thousands of pages of alleged evidence were kept secret;
• prosecutors threatened several witnesses with charges as accomplices if they revealed any information to defense counsel;
• the Miami venue denied defendants a fair trial;
• the local and national media created a charged atmosphere to convict;
• reports indicated that jurors were threatened with death if they voted for acquittal; and
• the entire process, including jurors, assured conviction, proceedings, in fact, a travesty of justice sending innocent men to prison.

Moreover, from arrest to incarceration, numerous domestic and international laws were violated, including the Constitution, Federal Bureau of Prisons regulations, the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the Vienna Convention on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on Children’s Rights, the UN Minimum Rules on the Treatment of Prisoners, and the American Convention on Human Rights.

The Five were imprisoned in different parts of the country, their families denied visas and visiting rights, and although model prisoners, they were held in isolation.

They remain imprisoned, but not without hope. In February 2009, their attorneys appealed to the Supreme Court for a new trial. The original one, in fact, was the only judicial process in US history condemned by the UN Human Rights Commission. Ten Nobel Prize winners also petitioned the US Attorney General to free the Five. In 2009, however, the Supreme Court  declined to hear the case without comment.

Amnesty International (AI) strongly criticized US treatment as human rights violations, saying in early 2006:

It was “following closely the status of the ongoing appeals of the five men (with regard to) numerous issues challenging the fairness of the trial which have not yet been addressed by the appeal courts.”

In January 2007, AI called for US authorities to grant family members visas to visit their loved ones, saying America’s actions were “unnecessarily punitive” by denying them.

In the UK, 110 MPs petitioned the US Attorney General in support of the Five. In April 2009, the Brazilian human rights group, Torture Never Again, awarded the men its Chico Mendes Medal, alleging their rights were violated, including by having “their mail censored and their visiting rights very restricted.”

A Final Comment

On September 15, Bernie Dwyer, an Irish journalist and filmmaker, interviewed Leonard Weinglass, a member of the Five’s defense team, saying:

The five should have been returned to Cuba shortly after their arrest, as is the custom when foreigners are arrested in the United States on missions for their home countries and their activities here caused no harm.

Instead, they were “subjected to cruel conditions of confinement, unjustly prosecuted in (an unfair venue) victimized by (prosecutorial) misconduct… and excessively and illegally punished with life sentences.”

After the Supreme Court declined to hear their appeal, “an outpouring of public support (followed), including (from) 10 Nobel Prize winners, the bar associations of many countries, the entire Mexican Senate, two former (European Union) presidents,” parliamentarians from other countries, heads of state, trade union leaders, student associations, human rights organizations, and dozens of distinguished figures globally.

On June 14, 2010, “We filed (and) will be filing a Memorandum of Law on October 11. The government will be given 60 days to respond and then presumably at the end of this year or in early 2011, we will have a hearing on Gerado (Herandez’s) claims in Miami.” If denied, it will be appealed, and if again, “once again (we’ll) ask the Supreme Court to review the case.”

Asked whether worldwide free the Five campaigns have helped, Weinglass said “Absolutely, (and they) should be continued and if anything increased” as the best way to achieve justice for these unjustly imprisoned men.

On October 13, 2010 AI issued a report and sent a letter to Eric Holder on the Five, expressing concerns about the fairness of their trial, while taking no position on their guilt or innocence, a disturbing part of it as their innocence is beyond question.

Nonetheless, AI asked the Justice Department “to review the case and mitigate any injustice through the clemency process or other appropriate means, should further legal appeals prove ineffective.” It also reiterated concerns about the wives of two of the prisoners (Rene Gonzales and Gerardo Hernandez) denied temporary visas to visit their husbands.

On October 19 at the US Embassy in London, a Vigil for the Five will be held. Noted speakers include UK MPs, labor leaders, lawyers, musicians, and many others. Those attending are urged to “Bring candles to this peaceful vigil for the Five and their families to mark the 12th year of their unjust imprisonment.”

The Five and many hundreds of other US political prisoners bear testimony to America’s judicial unfairness, imprisoning innocent men and women for political advantage in violation of constitutional and fundamental international human rights laws, ones US authorities repeatedly flout with impunity.

Two web sites – here and here – among others, provide information on their case.

In modern times, she’s one of American depravity’s most aggrieved victims, now given a virtual life sentence for a crime she didn’t, and couldn’t have, committed, explained in the above articles.

In recent months, she’s been in New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in maximum security solitary confinement, during her trial, conviction and September 23 sentencing. Importantly, her life was effectively destroyed by years of horrific tortures, repeated rapings, and other abuses in Bagram Prison at America’s Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan.

Addressing the court, said said “I’m not paranoid. I’m not mentally ill. I don’t agree with” anyone saying so, though it’s hard imagining why not after years of horrific brutalization.

A Pakistani/American scientist, years of torture and abuse destroyed her persona, yet somehow she survived and endured more stress from prosecution, a travesty of a trial, conviction and sentencing.

Reporting on the court’s decision, the BBC repeated government lies, including her possessing bomb making instructions to blow up New York landmarks – “evidence that she was a potentially dangerous terrorist.” Yet her indictment was on totally different charges – preposterous ones accusing her of the following:

In the presence of two FBI agents, two Army interpreters, and three US Army officers, this frail 110 pound woman allegedly assaulted three of them, seized one of their rifles, opened fire at close range, hit no one, yet she alone was severely wounded.

At trial, no credible evidence was presented. The charges were concocted and bogus. None accused her of plotting to blow up New York or any other landmarks or facilities.

Yet proceedings were carefully orchestrated. Witnesses were enlisted, pressured, coerced, and/or bribed to cooperate. Jurors were then intimidated to convict, her attorney Elaine Whitfield Sharp, saying their verdict was “based on fear, not fact.” No evidence was presented except claims government prosecutors invented to convict.

The International Tribune also highlighted today’s proceedings, headlining “Dr. Aafia sentenced to 86 years imprisonment,” saying:

It was on seven counts “for allegedly firing at US troops in Afghanistan.” After the announcement, protests erupted across Pakistan. In Karachi, civil society and political party workers rallied “in front of the Karachi Press Club….ask(ing) the federal government” to intervene on her behalf.

Jamaat-e-Islami, PASBAN, Defense of Human Rights, and other civil society members marched toward the US Embassy, expressing outrage and demanding she be released “as a goodwill gesture.”

“Advisor to Sindh Chief Minister, Ms. Sharmila Farooqui, asked the United States to release (her) on humanitarian (grounds) as a goodwill gesture to Pakistan…. Now is the time for the US to show goodness and pardon a Pakistani woman who is innocent.”

Farooqui said Aafia was wrongly abducted, then handed over to US authorities. She’s “an innocent woman,” outrageously treated, convicted and sentenced.

Explaining further she said:

“In Islam and Pakistan, handing over a woman to foreign countries is a sin, but it is a pity that an innocent woman was mercilessly given in(to the) hands of the (previous) US” government.

She also urged international human rights organizations to actively pursue her release.

A Final Comment

At issue is 9/11 truth, the subsequent bogus “war on terror” based on a lie, America’s war on Islam that followed against Iraq, Afghanistan, and Muslim Americans, victimized for political advantage. Aafia is perhaps its most aggrieved living victim, her persona destroyed and life ended by a virtual life sentence unless clemency or world pressure saves her.

Her case should incite everyone’s moral outrage. It also reveals America’s true face, its rogue agenda, targeting Muslims for their faith and ethnicity, making us all equally vulnerable.

1. Earlier articles explained her case in detail.  See here, here, and here.

It took a while to sink in. We were doing human rights work there. Perhaps you’ll say I should have seen it coming – it’s obvious in retrospect but I was, after all, an unfledged volunteer. I had not thought things out so very deeply. Besides, knowing something doesn’t help you when you finally get it. I was sitting reading, idly tweaking mouse turds and it hit me: war-torn Africans have more rights than I do.

It’s true. Their government can’t push them around. The policemen are gracious and kind. Their wartime commanders end up in the dock for their crimes. The state accepts limits. After the country’s ten-year civil war the EU, UN, and aid agencies swathed the country with civil-society assistance, building it anew with meticulous attention to the world’s strictest standards of governance, the International Bill of Human Rights. People know their rights. They can organize in ways that don’t involve waving signs. In a country like America, where cigarette companies once dodged accountability by mass-mailing the Bill of Rights on antiqued stock for framing, it’s hard to grasp the depth of civic discourse in Sierra Leone.

My government had signed some of the same human rights treaties but I forgot. The knowledge had sunk down to the place where you keep big benders or awful childhood traumas. In my American cognitive miasma I had put away awareness of my innate human rights with long-forgotten foreign-affairs abstractions like irredentism or the Resorgimento, whatever that is, because it doesn’t apply in America, they’re not my rights, they’re not allowed.

At the same time I resented what I could not have. I had left the country with a one-way ticket in George Bush’s second term and, in a lame simulacrum of Lear’s blasted heath, angled for developing-country volunteer work while rusticating in a Tuscan hill town run by commies. Their wonderful socialist life softened me so badly that I turned down the first African billet but I thought again, intrigued by the idea of being in a place where people see the point of human rights.

Of course, Sierra Leone has been through hell, and states are more apt to adopt human rights agreements if extremism threatens their democratic stability. Human rights may be a luxury for stable, peaceful nations, but not for states in the shadow of failure. Sierra Leone knows how pervasive corruption spawns popular resistance. It has seen how scorched-earth opposition can channel reform demands into factional terror. That shadow is behind them.

Sierra Leone has adopted most elements of the International Bill of Human Rights. Two they have in common with America: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The UDHR, though accepted as customary international law, is still something of a wish list. The ICCPR, by contrast, is a self-improvement regimen for states. The center that we worked for fanned out to the villages, taking elders and activists through each article of the pacts, grounding examples of their human rights in daily village life. The center mediates disputes and reports abuses with the same principles.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) offered aid there too. As human rights were touchy in America then, in G.W. Bush’s second term, USAID had concocted something they called civic participation. Sounded like Fourth of July picnics to me but it finessed any awkwardness for them. I helped hit them up for funding with some bureaucratic bumf but perversely, I translated their jargon into human-rights terms, relating each civic participation objective to treaty provisions with particular attention to the articles that America most blatantly breached. It probably cost my boss some grant money. I feel bad about it now but I couldn’t help it. The treaties are simple and clear, written to be understood by everyone everywhere. Their categorical heft can damage the delicate traceries of obscurant statist cant.

The UN General Assembly unanimously adopted the ICCPR in 1966. The US Senate ratified it 26 years later. It wasn’t torpor that accounted for the glacial pace but pitched, seesaw struggle. After World War II, as the United Nations articulated its charter in a series of international compacts, American Bar Association President Frank Holman led a fight against “eastern seaboard internationalists” and the treaties they might use to impose a socialist world government. Holman joined Senator John Bricker’s campaign for a constitutional amendment to curtail treaty powers. The amendment drew support from professionals, veterans, evangelicals, and bluebloods. The eastern seaboard barely turned the tide: in 1954 President Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson intervened to avert Senate adoption of the Bricker Amendment by one vote.

The debate took a shape that would abide. Pro: treaty powers are crucial if America is to lead the free world. Contra: some treaty with India could prohibit me from butchering my cow. Individual liberty was pitted against America’s international prestige. Individual liberty figured differently in the actual calculus of support. Amendment supporters of both parties feared for the Jim Crow laws. The state’s desired strictures on blacks were at risk if treaty law mandated human rights. The logic did not hinge on mere racial animus but on remorseless geopolitical undercurrents. The Soviets would exploit America’s racial cleavage for subversion, just as they had exploited the misery of Chinese peasants. Historian Rick Perlstein documents the murky auguries of the right: maps of the planned Negro Soviet Republic on printed postcards mailed to warn the Congress; panic over African Negro cannibals skulking in Fort Stewart, Georgia, ostensibly training in counterinsurgency but secretly staging a UN coup. When you know the secret it all makes sense. The UN is a Soviet plot to instill human-rights sedition by treaty. Race is the chink in the fortress and human rights the pry bar.

Provincials and Southerners mobilized against Eleanor Roosevelt and the One-Worlders. Starting in 1959 the John Birch Society blanketed the nation with “US out of UN” polemics. Factional propaganda and immersive indoctrination produced an archetype that Jung would recognize. It survived the collapse of the Soviet Union by virtue of a remarkable syncretic tizzy that thrust new world-federalist puppetmasters into the breach: the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Bilderberg cabal, the Illuminati, the Antichrist, or the zeta reticuli grays, who presumably concluded they were not getting anywhere ripping cows apart. Our folkways preserve the mythos today. The Hutaree militia, recently disbanded by militarized internal-security shock troops, was a ragtag band of Christian maniacs who hoped to ambush and murder their hometown police, melt away into the trailer parks, and then bomb more police who would gather at the victims’ funerals. Among other artifacts, the Hutaree produced a video of their maneuvers that gave me poignant, sensate memories of my duck-and-cover childhood. The pretend soldiers had an observation post just like the treehouse that my grandpop made for me. As they did, I prodded the ones who pretended to die with my rifle and hid in the woods, though in my day we had to make do with plastic guns and pew-pew vocalizations. Most endearing was the climax and objective of their make-believe assault. It brought back my daily duty as a cold-war captain of the Safety Patrol, Flag Detail: the intimate synchrony of the march, the coarse nubby stuff of the flag drawn tight in recursive folds, the clinking hardware that had to be secured each night. Just so, with cub-scout gravity, the Hutaree commandos secured their victory over the Antichrist. Ringed by doughty sentries warding off the outside world, they took down the enemy flag and raised their own. I did not recognize the Hutaree colors but I knew the enemy flag even as the flames consumed the olive branches strangling our globe on the sky-blue ground of the UN.

The factional game of capture the flag climaxed as the cold war lost its steam. President Carter signed the ICCPR before he plunged into the abyss and left ratification to Reagan, who lost no sleep over it. By 1992 more than 100 states had acceded to the covenant including Nicaragua, Libya, Zimbabwe, Lebanon, and Equatorial Guinea – but not the leading nation of the free world. It was getting embarrassing. The Senate finally ratified it for George H.W. Bush in 1992, the last year of his term. That November the covenant’s curse would claim another one-term president.

Remembered as Nixon’s patrician UN ambassador, Bush might have been suspect, but as President, Bush acquitted himself of any world-federalist perfidy. His administration combed the treaty with great care. They weren’t guarding your notional freedoms, or mine, they were looking for provisions that encroached on the prerogatives of state. The result was a package of Reservations, Declarations and Understandings, the mother of all signing statements – that apple didn’t fall so far from the tree, it seems. Eleven Western nations objected to our special pleading. A few highlights, along with their implicit implications:

- Regarding the covenant’s pervading squeamishness about the death penalty: your government reserves the right to kill you, and that means killing teenagers too.

- Torture. They had to tighten up Article 7 a bit, too wooly, apt to cause no end of trouble. No torture, it read, nothing cruel, inhuman or degrading. Your government undertook to restrict the sense to constitutionally-prohibited cruel and unusual atrocities. Our usual rigors are sacrosanct since our routine cruelty is free of unusual wrinkles. Inhuman? Degrading? What’s that supposed to mean? The government of America will brook no foreign interference with its coercive capacity.

- Child prisoners, child soldiers, either way, there’s another sticking point. While one could see how it might be a problem, what we do here in America is after all a far cry from bloodthirsty Africans kidnapping and brutalizing children. The world depends on America’s protective hegemonic umbrella, and the linchpin of its readiness is recruiting, luring adolescent misfits into the ranks with a kind word and a chin-up bar. These are not child soldiers, they’re the troops.

- About the various anti-discrimination provisions: treaty or no treaty, the American state will choose to discriminate when discrimination is justified – and it’s not discrimination if it happens to have a disproportionate effect on certain unregenerate groups, so don’t go counting nappy heads in our prisons.

- Like all civilized nations, the government of America deplores unlawful arrest or detention or miscarriage of justice. Redress is assured by domestic law. Compensation, that’s another matter. Our domestic law will take precedence here, to protect the authorities’ rights. Errant authorities are naturally made to pay: how and when, that’s America’s affair. We’ll have none of your foreign standards.

- And Article 10, regarding persons deprived of their liberty, Where to begin? That’s not the way we do things here in America. Unconvicted persons will be treated as such, unless we can see that they’re dangerous. And when we lock them up we’re not just going to rehabilitate them, we’re going to punish them and deter them and incapacitate them too, if we want.

- As for Article 47, which asserts the “right of all peoples to enjoy and utilize fully and freely their natural wealth and resources,” it comes across as vague and somewhat bolshy. America will subordinate that article to the precedent of past agreements that have served the state so very well. The government of the United States is, understandably, a bit wary of expropriation by indigenes.

- The government accepts the competence of the Human Rights Committee, insofar as other states – but not American citizens – may call the government to account if it shirks its treaty obligations. The government opts out of the protocol that lets the treaty’s Human Rights Committee consider individual complaints. The American government’s subjects may appeal only to the government itself. No external checks and balances, thank you, we’ve got enough at home.

- And what’s this about war propaganda?

In a tour de force of willful obtuseness, the administration objected to the Article 20 prohibition on war propaganda as an unacceptable restriction on free speech, as though a state threatened by America’s annihilative might will enlist the UN to oppress every flabby gun nut crying war on his couch. Article 5 states that the ICCPR cannot be used to restrict existing rights. The reservation blurs the distinction between respecting the right in all government actions and protecting the right from actions of private parties. Article 20 is a constraint on our government, not us. And there’s the rub. It’s almost as though Bush worried that a successor, perhaps even his son, might need to fabricate evidence for a higher cause. Because you never know, as a statesman, when you might need to fake cloak-and-dagger terror summits, commission inept forgeries from Italian brownshirts, attack dissenters with sensitive government information, suborn journalists or put them on the payroll, set critics up as blackmail-ready deviants or pedophiles, or tell whoppers about shipments of something like tennis ball cans. The unacceptable idea was that citizens ought not to be stampeded into war.

These quibbles were of minor import, though, because the administration took the guarantees of citizens’ rights and deemed them not “self-executing,” even though that’s for the treaty to say, or the courts. A non-self-executing treaty is still binding. But in practice, here in America a non-self-executing treaty means that you the citizen have no judicial redress for violations of your rights unless and until Congress makes a law circumscribing these putative rights to its satisfaction. If particular legal strictures don’t meet the human-rights standards of the supreme law of the land, the courts have nothing to say about it. So much for checks and balances. To be sure, the courts in their sovereign majesty are free to consider foreign ideas in their deliberations, but you the citizen get no rights enforceable in court. Your universal human rights are not so universal after all.

G.H.W. Bush drafted the package of qualifications hand in glove with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Bush’s unctuous collaboration with the Senate helped smooth the way, a bit. Tensions emerged in committee hearings at which Jesse Helms, Senator No, was permitted to speak first, out of order. He decried hasty ratification of a treaty that had been balked for a quarter century. Indeed, Helms observed, by virtue of such long delay the treaty had been overtaken by events and was unneeded, and nothing but an entering wedge for despotism. Helms’ holding action was supported by Professor Ronald Rotunda, whose partisan bona fides would later qualify him as an advisor to Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr. Rotunda fleshed out Helms’ fears that the ICCPR would empower foreign tyranny. Privacy protections and propaganda curbs could be exploited to justify censorship abroad. That children must be registered and named at birth meant not just birth certificates but national identity cards. Restrictions on hate speech would lead to book banning. Anti-discrimination would scotch affirmative action. Helms himself, always alert for invasive depravity, questioned whether Article 18 might permit drug use as religious praxis.

Industry weighed in as well. The Foreign Relations Committee heard the censorship concerns of the World Press Freedom Committee, which had been formed to counter a UNESCO study of transnational media concentration. The Council for International Business feared an upset of US labor laws – Article 22 recognized a bit too much freedom of association, and might embolden the many working people who had relinquished their right to organize for protection of their interests.

Other groups wished to let the treaty take effect and expand the scope of authorized traditional rights. Having changed with the times, the American Bar Association called the covenant “a modern Magna Carta.” A buoyant Amnesty International acclaimed a treaty that “preserves the important achievements of today’s governments against the retrogressions of tomorrow’s.” As advocates for a treaty that benefits individuals rather than nations, Human Rights Watch warned, “We leave our children vulnerable to abuse by future governments when we deny to them the full range of protections envisioned by the treaty.”

Senator Helms decorated the treaty with a proviso of great sentimental value: a vestigial Bricker Amendment. In the event, the Foreign Relations Committee voted unanimously for the ratification resolution.

The ratification vote was choreographed with none of the spats and histrionics of domestic lawmaking. They were on their best behavior, even Helms. Perhaps they felt like statesmen. Diplomacy had lost some of its sissy taint after our first war with Iraq, when George H.W. Bush managed to combine statecraft with war and death in a most beguiling manner. And of course Bush had gone to great lengths to gut the pact.

George Mitchell, Senate Majority Leader, introduced the resolution to ratify with the executive’s poison pills and cut off further tinkering. Then Claiborne Pell rose to cajole the Senate. Pell chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee. They called him the Senator from Mars, and on that day he did yeoman work for America’s alien overlords. In soothing terms he compared the covenant to our ‘traditions and values.’ Pell used the word consistent, neatly sidestepping the sore point that it gives citizens more protections than the Constitution does. He shamed the Senate mildly for lagging the bandwagon despite unanimous UN adoption, blaming Reagan for the long delay. It didn’t look good in the wider world, he said, and until we signed on, we wouldn’t be able to hector other nations from the pulpit of the Human Rights Committee. This prospect had taken on new allure since the Soviet Union’s collapse, with many new nations to mentor and mold in our image. Pell defended the Bush administration’s exceptions to the pact and likened them to Carter’s. Their illogic and blatant negation of the pact sweetened the bitter pill for the Senate’s aspiring autarchs.

Several organizations sent letters for the record, including Amnesty International (AI), the United Nations Association (UNA), and the law schools of Florida and Yale. AI denounced the package of exceptions, suggesting some were void. The UNA came right out and said it: ICCPR was to be the single standard for all nations. This was something of a fart in church. No one in the chamber would have said so. The polite fiction was that the covenant’s purpose was to help other nations aspire to our shining example, that the pact was a set of training wheels for junior champions of the American way. The Florida professors complained about Bush’s exceptions but allowed that ratification should proceed anyway after our 40-year ‘ratification log-jam.’ Yale Law piled on, bemoaning the tin cans tied to the treaty’s tail. They suggested that Senators might express reservations of their own about the reservations or the declarations or the understandings or the proviso. Interestingly, Yale’s list of signatories included Harold Koh. Koh is now legal advisor to the Obama administration, simpering at our president’s drive to consolidate and extend the despotic powers arrogated by his predecessor George W. Bush. Still hoping for the best.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan rose to speak. He had lulled conservatives with jingoistic shoe-pounding as UN ambassador and tempted Nixon leftward back at home. In his remarks Senator Moynihan defended the administration’s exceptions as conscientious, even painstaking. His praise insinuated promise of internal reform into the record of the lawmakers’ intent.

“Moreover, it is possible to place a wholly different interpretation on the administration’s package of reservations. The administration has not taken a blanket, or catchall reservation. It has not said that our domestic practices, wherever they differ from the covenant, are always superior. Rather, it has undertaken a meticulous examination of U.S. practice to insure that the United States will in fact comply with the obligations that it is assuming. This can certainly be viewed as an indication of the seriousness with which the obligations are regarded rather than as an expression of disdain for the obligations… Far better to ratify with the firm intention of living up to the covenant’s terms.”

As the Hutaree know, the Antichrist mixes truth and lies in just that way. By pretending to take Bush’s nationalistic snook at face value, Moynihan sealed the world federalists’ deal. He knew better than most what they were getting into.

Mitchell called for an unusual standing vote. That meant individual votes were not recorded. The agents of unitary world domination would remain in the shadows. The Senate ratified the pact.

It seemed like a small step. The ICCPR restricted its scope to the easy parts of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which we’d already accepted. But scrutiny of the pact had focused on the rights, understandably, perhaps, since we’ve made a fetish of our own Bill of Rights. The real novelty of the ICCPR was not in the guarantees but in a process for gauging compliance. Our rulers looked forward to their enhanced role in shaming lesser states but no one broached the converse prospect. It must have been a blind spot corresponding to my own. Just as extraneous foreign rights seemed to have nothing to do with me as an American, human rights monitoring was bound to be a formality for America’s benevolent philosopher kings.

In ratifying the ICCPR the government accepted review by its monitoring body, the Human Rights Committee. The UN elects committee experts for two-year renewable terms based on merit. The eighteen members serve in their personal capacity and not as government representatives. Experts recuse themselves if their own state is under examination, or to avoid suspicion of impartiality. They act mainly by consensus rather than by vote, to speak with a global voice. States select members to equitably represent the world’s different regions, civilizations and legal systems. The committee reviews and questions governments on compliance, weighing shadow reports from advocacy groups along with reports from the state. Compliance may mean changes to local, state, or federal law. The committee also aspires to vet new laws before their introduction, to forestall treaty violations.

If the Senate expected only ringing affirmations of its freedoms, it was promptly disabused. Committee proceedings hide in plain sight on a web page, pointed questions asked and sometimes answered, intently ignored. A conspiracy of silence left the committee hallooing into the digital void, with members acknowledging that press coverage is minimal and interest is confined to private advocacy groups, “a matter that concerned only Geneva,” as one committee member put it. Though it’s not fit to print, our rulers are called to account – not randomly, by the sham of forced choice in rigged contests with new parties ruthlessly crushed, but by sovereign peers with apodictic standards. It’s imperceptible to our populace but an infuriating thorn in the side of the US regime. If something broke the seal of mass distraction, the appalling catalog of wrongs on view would do nothing for the legitimacy of a government that already leans heavily on propaganda and coercion. All sorts of Americans hate their government for varied incoherent reasons. Wait till they see the good reasons for reviling it.

At first the committee took pains to flatter and coddle their prickly hegemon, but in their first meeting, in New York with the Clinton administration, they worried that qualifications and federalist foot-dragging might reduce the covenant to a dead letter. It didn’t help that due to the manifest perfection of American democracy the government had signed up in such a way as to stop the covenant from ever acknowledging more rights than domestic law allowed.

An awkward fracas overshadowed the committee’s quiet work. In 2001 the General Assembly voted to squeeze the US off the higher-profile Human Rights Commission, spurning America’s claim to a Western-country seat in favor of France, Austria and Sweden. After more than half a century on the panel, America had lost the right to sit in judgment there. This was wounding to our government, and became the thrust of a ferocious attack on the integrity of the commission. Press attention ignored the substance of the commission’s actions to focus on the lowlife tyrants that slandered us but the proceedings cast US positions in stark relief as contorted sophistries of a government caught dead to rights.

The contradictions mounted when the state undertook to rein in our rights after 9/11. It didn’t amount to redress but it was something to see foreign diplomats make fools of American officials. The process let perennial punching bags Sudan, China, Cuba, and Zimbabwe join the fun.

The Human Rights Committee continued to patiently goad America’s government into compliance with the ICCPR. Just as they would do on a mission to some failed despotic state, the transnational mandarins meticulously organized derelictions and malefactions in terms of the government’s solemn pledge, the supreme law of the land. If countries died and had to face Saint Peter at the gate, he would page to something like this in his book. As Americans, to read it is to flinch at the appalling gulf between our pretensions and our fraught, cowed, subject lives: The Katrina disgrace. Routine electrocution by taser. The factional emblem of civilians armed with lethal weapons. Medical experiments on soldiers and prisoners. Commercial penal colonies for migrants. Our multitude of disenfranchised convicts. A Detainee Treatment Act that lets the executive’s captive kangaroo courts weigh evidence extracted by coercion in our offshore torture gulags. Sham Indian trusts. The circus of the vegetative Terry Schiavo’s death. AIDS, pregnancy, and septic abortion in girls trained to abstinence. And much more. All these mortifying sins inflicted on us, tied together by a simple theme: breaches of a pact “protecting humans from the overreaching power of States.” An astounding idea, and a hopeful one, to unwrap our government’s shroud of patriotic bunting and to distinguish our country from our state.

The committee had only the feeblest powers: progress reporting and submission deadlines. Our government turned in its homework seven years late. Committee and government eventually met in 2006 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva. The interrogatory process was toothless by design and little help to the tortured or brutalized or disappeared, but it hinted at something never seen: our state called on the carpet by chapter and verse, pointed questions and directed answers that could not take place on native soil. These were not press-pool lickspittles, or grandstanding politicians, or faithful partisans in judicial sinecures. The committee routed the government’s cant like border collies giving eye to sheep. They insisted on knowing precisely how America’s laws comply with our human rights.

America’s defenders asserted the government’s sovereign right to slough off its obligations to its subjects. Their counterattack was, as the committee put it, “merely to insist that the United States had not violated the Covenant.” One bemused diplomat, feigning innocence of our government’s big-lie technique, remarked on its “dogged reaffirmations.” In lieu of results, America’s conservative champions placed great store by the magic of substantial budget allocations. They touted bitterly-fought Supreme Court decisions that brought US law in line with the covenant, prompting the response that now you can drop your reservations. It was as though they were left behind to writhe in the clutches of Nicolae Carpathia.

They fought the Beast with hermeneutic Shaolin Do, dialectical feats requiring the same indulgent suspension of disbelief as the leaps and twirls of martial-arts films. Remorseless exposure and dissection of absurdities at one point drove our government to quote Eleanor Roosevelt in a last-ditch fight to justify offshore torture. Digging through the travaux préparatoires, they found the guiding light of human rights worrying about displaced persons and pressed her into service to uphold disappearances, controlled drowning, anal rape, forced masturbation, and penis-slitting. Having demonstrated to their satisfaction that Mrs. Roosevelt didn’t care about torture abroad, the government vaunted its human-rights vigilance at home with stories of redress for a horrifying litany of domestic atrocities that make us sound like the city of Dis.

Reminded that Article 6 ensures the right to life, the government briskly cited the laws that forbid its practices of assassination by executive decree, death by torture in secret concentration camps, and civilian massacres in occupied lands. Then it went on to rhapsodize about protection for the unborn.

Article 4 requires the government to notify other treaty parties if it declares a state of emergency. The article also keeps the lid on assassination, torture, deportation, and other acts even in a state of emergency so declared. Our government noted that in America we have national emergencies, of course, lots of them, such as the perennial emergency of 9/11, and emergency powers too – but no state of emergency as such. This is true, in an oblique sense. A state of emergency under Article 4 is a threat to the life of the nation. Our state’s wholesale withdrawal of global human rights – assassination, indefinite detention without charge, torture, arbitrary deportation, and illegal suspension of America’s patchwork privacy rights – all of it came in panicked response to the deft, humiliating pinprick of 9/11, an unrepeatable stunt carried out under the nose of a somnolent executive. An emergency of state prestige.

Infuriatingly for the haughty Americans, the government’s minders helpfully referred them to the UN’s standards: Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners; Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials; Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (The latter might have been the last straw, likening Katrina’s unruly black ingrates to victims shown in third-world refugee relief appeals.) Treating America like any other state was insupportable lèse-majesté, but the blasé transnational technocrats calmly helped them to improve. To defuse their incongruous Perry Mason bluster the committee mildly noted that the panel was not a “quasi-judicial procedure.” No, it wasn’t, it was worse than that. It was exactly the sort of remedial civil-society tutelage that might be imposed on some bloodthirsty patrimonial satrap from a superstitious waste.

As the government blared its domestic propaganda Wurlitzer, the committee chided the “increasingly strident rejection of the relevance of international law and standard-setting by significant public figures in the United States such as judges and government officials.” America’s war on scrutiny spared the committee but felled its salient target, the Human Rights Commission. In 2006 the UN dissolved the commission and replaced it with a Human Rights Council. In the UN our government voted against the reorganization, as it preferred to be judged solely by countries that measure up to American standards. But the damage is done. The US is subject to human rights monitoring by outside observers selected by the world at large, like every other state. The reconstituted review process is called Universal Periodic Review. In instituting the Human Rights Council the UN slipped in a formal procedure for complaints that includes individuals and organizations, even American citizens. We now have recourse to an independent supranational body that checks state diktat against our rights, objectively defined.

In this threat to state diktat, cautious patriots fear a trap. The ICCPR might disrupt our tested and poised legal framework with UN mob rule of sovereign states: not just states that are fit to be our peers, but repressive pariah states, weighed equally in oppugnant scales of justice. What if the New World Order were to displace our unmatched American freedoms?

The changes might prove profound. Under traditional American due process, broad immunity and corrupt oversight give prosecutors unchecked police-state powers. They are free to investigate persons, not crimes; to taint jury pools with promiscuous leaks; to direct testimony under threat; or to pit family members, including minors, with extortionate threats of prosecution. The ICCPR might inconvenience prosecutors apt to run amok. Articles 9 and 14 might afford compensation for Henry Samueli, liberal enemy of the state, now that the courts have set his conviction aside for treatment “shameful and contrary to American values of decency and justice.” The same articles might provide judicial redress for political prisoner Don Siegelman. The G.W. Bush administration targeted Siegelman for prosecution as an electoral challenger for state office in Alabama, according to sworn testimony and a petition from 44 former state attorneys general. Under Article 7, Siegelman might compel examination of his solitary confinement in a maximum security prison.

And what of our First Amendment, that shining beacon of freedom, principal object of patriotic anxiety in its sacrosanct perfection? It might be supplanted by its counterpart, Article 19. The First Amendment hasn’t done much for the hapless journalists of Al Manar and Al Jazeera. President Obama retains the anodyne pluralists of Al Manar on a Terrorist Exclusion List that forbids their content to American viewers, though the Senate Intelligence Committee and CIA have failed to catch the network inciting any sort of terrorism. Al Jazeera fared no better, as America bombed its Kabul and Baghdad offices. Foreign suasion may have staved off worse, although Britain has censored state records bearing on President Bush’s intent regarding military attacks on Jazeera’s headquarters in US ally Qatar.

US resistance to Article 19 stemmed from press restrictions it permits. In contrast to America’s light touch with censorship and air strikes, Article 19 permits restrictions defined in law on four specific grounds: for respect of the rights or reputations of others; or for the protection of national security, or ordre public, or public health and morals. As currently interpreted, Article 19 requires that any restrictions on press freedom must be narrow and grounded in factual detail. Under Article 19 our Secretary of Defense might have been obliged to explain what, exactly, in Jazeera’s video footage of the siege of Fallujah made it “vicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable” – or what that has to do with the permissible grounds for restrictions. When the government divined marching orders for fanciful terror plots in Al Jazeera broadcasts, officials might have had to tell us more about the secret decoder ring they used, inasmuch as its results were impossible to replicate and were forcefully debunked by US and French intelligence. Suppression of Al Manar might call for something more than fabricated claims of televised bomb-making classes and President Bush beset by puppet assassins. Article 19 is universally interpreted to require a proportionality test for press restrictions. It is intriguing to speculate how bombardment of press offices, reportedly directed at the highest levels, meets proportionality tests.

Unlike the First Amendment, Article 19 guarantees not only expressive freedom but freedom to seek and receive information. Under the aegis of the First Amendment, in defiance of statutory whistleblower protections, the Obama administration made an example of Thomas Drake, who informed on felony eavesdropping and botched procurements at NSA. Under Article 19, the government’s prosecution of Drake breaches not only the right of free expression but the public’s right to know. Under America’s rule of law, worthless billion-dollar programs must remain state secrets.

Whereas American press freedom is absolute, where permitted, the ICCPR recognizes a complicating consideration: Article 17 guarantees the right to privacy. The press has long experience weighing privacy concerns. But recognition of this right would ravage America’s security panopticon. Under the remnants of our Fourth Amendment, the government uses private contractors to circumvent the Privacy Act, and these contractors in turn rely on the government to extract personal information that they sell on to marketing firms. Officials boast of indiscriminate and illegal warrantless surveillance, including domestic use of military and intelligence systems. Communications firms, having been exempted from the law, have made a lucrative business of surveillance on demand with no judicial oversight. In light of the vindictive breach of privacy that risked lives, disclosed state secrets, and exposed intelligence sources and methods, Valerie Plame might have been grateful for Article 17 protections against arbitrary government attacks.

If our state is to continue overreaching, it may have to engage the New World Order. The Obama administration has joined the Human Rights Council and a new review of our government’s record will begin this year, assisted by a three-state troika of rapporteurs selected by lot. The government sent an interagency group on a ten-city consultation tour and the State Department is soliciting written input to the US report. In interposing to channel its citizens’ voice and damp unwanted press, the state has kept a tight grip on awareness at home. Our leaders’ new approach is to defend the police state more urbanely. It remains to be seen whether the state can keep the process under its control. The Human Rights Council has issued its own public submission guidelines for stakeholder reports. The committee continues its work as before, adjuring compliance to the letter of the ICCPR. As we agreed in the treaty, we can’t withdraw. Adherence in good faith entails compliance with the views of the committee. There’s no going back.

The UN will be picking through the wreckage of a constitution tested to destruction, and shards of rule of law remade into a weapon of the state. Much of interest happens in Geneva, where older, humbler nations watch Sierra Leone emerge from shadow as we take our own oblique course toward eclipse in intractable corruption, scorched-earth opposition, and factional terror, threatening not chaos but sullen, safe oppression. We can only hope America’s foreign tormentors don’t relent.

On September 6, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said hundreds were made in response to the killings of four West Bank settlers, adding, “The decision to carry out the attack was politically motivated and intended to embarrass the Palestinian Authority.”

True or not, those affected included teachers, traders, workers, students, professionals, and imams, unrelated to the incident, Fatah’s Preventive Security Services and General Intelligence Services doing Israel’s dirty work, while President Mahmoud Abbas collaborates during the latest sham peace talks.

Hamas responded harshly, urging supporters resist arrest by confronting PA police with force, accusing President Mahmoud Abbas of betraying his own people by “collaborating with the Occupation.” Its sources also said 750 West Bank Hamas members and leaders were arrested, many tortured, and prevented from seeing their families.

On September 9, detainee relatives issued a joint statement saying Israeli intelligence officers are participating in interrogations — senior officers from Maskobeh, Askalan, Petah Tikwa, and Jalama detention centers, supervising investigations at Al-Khalil, Nablus and Ramallah jails.

The statement also cited torture, saying 32 detainees were hospitalized since Ramadan began because of mistreatment. Further, it said Fatah arrested 920 Palestinians since August 11, most of them since the four killings, Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades claiming full responsibility, calling them:

“normal and legal response(s) to Zionist aggressions on the Palestinian civilians (and) part of the repelling operations against the occupation assaults on the Gaza Strip and West Bank.”

On September 9, YNetnews.com headlined, “Hamas: Fatah protecting enemy,” saying:

“Hamas threatened the Palestinian Authority after members of the organization were arrested in relation to terror attacks that killed four and injured two in the West Bank.”

Hamas spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, accused Fatah of “treason,” saying:

“This criminal campaign has crossed all red lines and constitutes direct cooperation with the enemy, in the clear light of day.” The arrests “prove once again the dangerous position of the ‘Fatah authority’ as a security agent protecting the enemy, exterminating the resistance, and destroying the Palestinian aim.”

The Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq called Fatah’s crackdown “sweeping and arbitrary,” saying “arrests of political opponents demonstrate that these measures are fueled by political expediency as opposed to genuine security concerns. In fact, this campaign is part of a pattern of oppressive policies adopted by the Palestinian Authority to stifle political dissent and to generate a sense of intimidation within Palestinian society.”

On August 25, PA General Intelligence forces suppressed a Ramallah protest against upcoming US-brokered peace talks. According to Khaleda Jarrar, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Ramallah mayoral candidate, PA operatives in civilian dress “attempted to thwart the event from the start, chanting slogans and leading event participants towards the center” of the city. “We aimed to voice our dissent, and the PA decided to enter the conference hall and drag participants out to an unplanned rally.”

Serving Israel, not Palestinians, Fatah suppresses dissent, violently or by edict. Al-Haq called the August 25 incident “a further example of the increasing climate of violence and intimidation that is effectively transforming Palestinian society into a police state.”

Affiliated with AIPAC, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) is an extremist pro-Israeli front group, co-founded by Dennis Ross, now “Special Advisor to the Secretary of State for the Gulf and Southwest Asia.” WINEP’s Board of Advisors includes Henry Kissinger, Richard Perle, James Woolsey, George Shultz, and other notorious Israel-firsters like Ross.

On August 25, its distinguished fellow David Makovsky noted “a surge in cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority ever since Hamas ousted security officials and the mainstream Fatah Party from Gaza more than three years ago.”

Never mind Hamas’ democratic election as Palestine’s legitimate government. In June 2007, however, working cooperatively with Israel and Washington, Abbas dissolved the unity government, instigated full blown confrontations when Israel imposed its siege, seizing West Bank coup d’etat authority as enforcer, disdaining his own people, his official role.

After spending five weeks in the region meeting with dozens of Israeli and PA officials, including Abbas, Makovsky noted that joint cooperation “substantially improved,” saying “the PA no longer attempts to hide its daily security cooperation with Israel,” including “weed(ing) out schoolteachers (and others) who support Hamas radicalism.” In other words, anyone voicing dissent.

Mahmoud Abbas: A Treacherous Illegitimate Leader

In an August 31 article, Jeffrey Blankfort called Abbas a “double agent,” saying he serves “his Israeli and US masters in plain sight,” at least since Oslo when as chief Palestinian negotiator, he “played Neville Chamberlain for Tel Aviv, agreeing to surrender occupied Palestinian land” and end legitimate resistance. As “emergency” PA leader (20 months after his term expired), he’s now “Israel’s sheriff,” suppressing peaceful demonstrations, arresting Hamas members and supporters, serving Israel, not his own people, an illegitimate Quisling head of state.

On June 19, 2003, in the London Review of Books, Edward Said discussed him in an article titled “A Road Map to Where,?” saying:

He first met him in March 1977 at a Cairo National Council meeting where he gave “by far the longest speech.” In retrospect, it launched secret PLO-Israeli meetings “that made Oslo possible.”

During the PLO’s 1971-1982 Beirut years, Abbas was in Damascus, later joining Arafat in Tunis, exiled for the next decade. After the 1991 Madrid conference, he, PLO officials, and independent European intellectuals formed teams “to prepare negotiating files on subjects such as water, refugees, demography and boundaries” ahead of secret Oslo meetings, “although to the best of my knowledge, none” of it was used. Other Palestinians were excluded from talks. In the end, no tangible results “influenced the final documents that emerged.”

“In Oslo, the Israelis fielded an array of experts supported by maps, documents, statistics, and at least 17 prior drafts of what Palestinians” finally signed. They, however, were allowed only “three PLO men, not one of whom knew English or had a background in international (or any other kind of) law.” The outcome was predictable, a one-sided agreement for Israel, Palestinians getting nothing besides annointment as “Israel’s sheriff.”

In his 1995 memoir, Through Secret Channels: The Road to Oslo, Abbas took credit as its “architect,” though he never left Tunis. In fact, “Arafat was pulling all the strings,” arranging his own capitulation. “No wonder then that the Oslo negotiations made the overall situation of the Palestinians a good deal worse.”

Thereafter, Abbas became known for his “flexibility” toward Israel, “his subservience to Arafat, and his lack of an organized political base (until made prime minister in 2003, then president in 2005), although he is one of Fatah’s founders and a longstanding member and secretary general of its Central Committee.”

America and Israel were delighted with his elevation, a man seen as “colorless, moderately corrupt, and without any clear ideas of his own, except that he wants to please the white man,” his masters in Washington and Tel Aviv. As a result, his “authenticity is what seems so lacking in the path cut out for” him, a stooge made president in a managed 2005 election.

Israel controlled the process, elevating him by imprisoning leading opposition candidate Marwan Barghouti on bogus murder charges, and obstructing Mustafa Barghouti for “demand(ing) total and complete reform, (ending all) form(s) of corruption, (and) mismanagement, and (working to) consolidate the rule of law.”

As a result, Israeli forces arrested him during the campaign, then expelled him from East Jerusalem to prevent his planned campaign speech. He was also excluded from Nablus and Gaza, harassed and intimidated in a process rigged for Abbas, boycotted by Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In a field of seven candidates, Barghouti finished second, far behind his majority. Abbas hasn’t disappointed, gets White House photo-op rewards, and his son, a millionaire businessman, admits to “collaborat(ing) with Israel.” His father does it tacitly against his own people.

Women have been enthusiastic activists since this country’s earliest days. They’ve become political prisoners after joining movements which have been anti-capitalist—as labor organizers, socialists and anarchists, running afoul of pro-business/ corporate/government authorities; anti-patriarchal—critics of a male-dominated/militarist society; anti-white supremacy—black civil rights activists and revolutionaries, or Native-American or Puerto Rican nationalists; or anti-imperialist/anti-war—pacifists or protesters of American empire, from WWI to Viet Nam, to Iraq/Afghanistan.

A number of these “unnatural” female activists have been in the news, at least in the “alternative” news, this summer. They are: Lolita Lebron, Marilyn Buck, Lynne Stewart, and Aafia Siddiqui. The first two women have recently died, and the last two have been re-sentenced (Stewart), or are awaiting sentence (Siddiqui). They represent different time periods and eras of American dissent and repression.

Lolita Lebron and Marilyn Buck were anti-white supremacy/anti-imperialist activists from the 1950s-80s. Lolita Lebron, who was a Puerto Rican nationalist, died on August 1st at the age of 90. From the 60s through the 80s, in a serious, comprehensive and all-encompassing attempt at revolution, women participated in groups that favored radical action—even armed resistance—against what they saw as an oppressive American state. Puerto Ricans have been fighting US control since the American takeover in 1898. An uprising in the 1950s was followed by martial law, and Puerto Rican Independistas took the struggle to America. In March of 1954 Lolita Lebron wanted to dramatically tell the world that Puerto Rico was “a U.S. colony.” Shouting “Viva Puerto Rican libre!” she led a small group which opened fire in the House of Representatives, firing 30 shots and wounding five Congressmen. She said she had not intended to kill anyone. But she was not sorry for the “act of freedom for my country.”² Lebron got life in prison, but was pardoned by President Carter in 1979 and returned to Puerto Rico, where she continued in the struggle versus US colonialism. She was arrested at age 81 for protesting the American bombing range at Vieques. Fellow women Puerto Rican nationalists have also received harsh jail sentences. After conviction of involvement in a movement-led Connecticut robbery in 1983, Alejandrina Torres was raped in prison and then placed in solitary at Lexington prison in Kentucky.³

Dovetailing with Lebron’s jail time, was that of a woman who also spent a very long time in prison: Marilyn Buck. She died of cancer, an illness very much exacerbated by her incarceration, at age 62 just recently, right after her she finally secured release. Marilyn Buck was an activist in the intense politically-charged atmosphere of the 60s and 70s, part of the huge movement challenging the American system: the capitalist state and white supremacy. Such activists were using words and ideas that, according to historian Dan Berger, “the state deemed too powerful to let slide as so much free speech.”⁴ The full force of the state came down on groups like the Black Panthers and Weather Underground, advocates of armed struggle against what they saw as a racist colonial power. Marilyn Buck protested against the Viet Nam war, racism, brought “women’s lib” to the SDS, was pro-Palestinian, anti-Shah (of Iran) and pro-Native-American, Mexican-American, and Black Panther.⁵

In 1973 Buck was arrested for securing two boxes of bullets for, and being associated with, the Black Panthers. She got 10 years. After three parole attempts were rejected she escaped in 1977. In 1985 she was recaptured, accused of helping prisoner Assata Shakur escape, and for being part of the Weather Underground’s “Resistance Conspiracy”—which purportedly planned several governmental bombings in the East. For that, she got 80 years in a California prison, where she wrote prize-winning poetry and analytic articles on the psychology of female repression. She argued that women political prisoners have bad experiences unique to them since women “already endure both social and cultural oppression and repression from childhood on … women are vulnerable to even deeper humiliation and degradation.”⁶ Considered a “terrorist,” she was put in solitary and held incommunicado after 9/11. In a sentiment with which Lebron would have agreed, Buck said she did not want to be a forgotten woman prisoner but a “comrade in an ongoing struggle versus imperialism, oppression and exploitation.”⁷

Lynne Stewart and Aafia Siddiqui, who were also arguably victims of white supremacy and imperialism, have both felt the enormous consequences of the anti-“terrorist”/anti-Muslim era, beginning with the 9/11 bombings. Stewart’s case actually pre-dates the 2001 bombings in the US—although she was convicted under a Patriot Act that some argue should not have been applied to her by Attorney General Ashcroft; while Siddiqui was on a watchlist created by that same AG. The “war on terror” hysteria has resulted in rapid and profound changes for political and civil rights in this country. One immediate occurrence has been a concentration of power in the executive, making the president the “Decider” in matters of war, peace and the law. Bush, and now Obama have used the law in a politicized Justice Department, enforcing laws like the Patriot Act, which has led to the arrest of thousands of innocent people without charges or legal representation, and has also been used to punish lawyers who represent the accused “terrorists.” Lawyer Lynne Stewart was recently re-sentenced after her Patriot Act conviction.

In the wake of the terror hysteria, 69-year-old Stewart became a political prisoner in January, for trying to defend her client, Sheikh Abdel Rahman, convicted for a 1996 New York City terror plot. Technically, she was charged for providing material support, through a press conference, to her client’s intended “terrorist conspiracy.” It’s questionable that she should have been tried under a Patriot Act passed in 2001. Her surveillance started in 2000, and the provision regarding “special administration measures” severely limiting the ability of the accused to communicate with the outside world, probably shouldn’t apply to lawyer-client communication. Disbarred, disgraced, and sentenced to 28 months, in spite of having breast cancer, colleagues say she was really jailed for being a long-time zealous advocate for Black Panthers and Weather Underground “bombers.” Stewart thinks she was being made an example to deter other lawyers, male or female, from defending “controversial figures and causes.”⁸

In her re-sentencing trial of July 15th, this is even more apparent. As this country accepts greater infringements on civil liberties, lawyers, especially those with “progressive” political beliefs⁹ are among the first to feel the effects. Stewart’s sentence was increased nearly five times, to 10 years. Her judge, John Koeltl, on re-considering her sentence, said she lied in court, abused her position as lawyer, and showed “no remorse.” Stewart talked about how prison had “diminished” her… she was “losing pieces” of her personality.¹⁰ As she has also said: “The police state has now arrived.”¹¹

“Police state” may sound extreme, but maybe not. Political prisoner Laura Whitehorn has argued that torture is not new in the US, even of women, but now it is an “integral part of U.S. imperialism, with white supremacy as a fundamental element”—torture as a “weapon of domination.”¹² So when Pakistani-born neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, 37, who studied and worked in America for years, was convicted of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents, it’s not surprising that her bizarre and murky story includes her torture at the hands of her American captors. Siddiqui, after a strange, unsettling trial in New York City in January, was found guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced, after a recent postponement, on September 23rd. Watched in the early 2000s because of her Muslim activism, she disappeared in Pakistan in 2003, only to re-appear in Afghanistan in 2008, disoriented and carrying plans to blow up New York buildings.¹³

Many believe she was kidnapped by the Americans in 2003, with her three children; raped, tortured, with one of her children dying, one missing, and one now with her sister. British journalist Yvonne Ridley has written that Siddiqui and other women have been, and are, at Bagram and other US torture prisons. There is very shaky evidence of her attack on soldiers with an M4 assault rifle that was somehow left unattended. But she was the only one who got shot, grievously, in the stomach. “Lady al Qaeda” (so-named by the NY Daily News ) was convicted in January. Her mind seemed to wander. She was forced by the judge to come to the court every day, which meant undergoing daily strip searches, just continuing her horrors. Although human rights groups say she is no extremist, in her testimony, Siddiqui insists she was held in a secret prison by the Americans.¹⁴ Siddiqui was supposedly tried for assault, not terrorism, but the government lawyers constantly told the jury she was a terrorist. Solid evidence was never presented that she was an assaulter or a terrorist. During her trial, witnesses described Siddiqui as a “completely broken human being.”¹⁵

We can celebrate woman’s suffrage and work for an ERA, but we have to remember the underside, the dark side, of women and politics in this country. For women who are politicals, for Lebron and Buck, for Stewart and Siddiqui, life in jail can be horrible in ways peculiar to women. Historian Dylan Rodriguez writes of a “gendered degradation” for political women in prison, through “profound, discrete acts of violent male authority.”¹⁶ Women, traditionally supposed to be docile and relatively non-political wives and mothers, have to suffer for not only being anti-imperialist or anti-white supremacist, but for being “unnatural females.”

1. See James Ridgeway’s site.
2. Democracynow.com, August 2, 2010.
3. See Matt Meyer, ed., Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free U.S. Political Prisoners, 2008, 15; Joy James, ed., Warfare in the American Homeland: Policing and Prison in a Penal Democracy, 2007, 166.
4. In Meyer, “The Real Dragon,” 4.
5. Meyer, 771-772.
6. James, 238.
7. Meyer, 772.
8. Meyer, 680, 801; Marjorie Cohn, Commondreams.com, November 25, 2009.
9. Meyer, 682.
10. Democracynow.com, July 16, 2010.
11. Stewart, “Afterword,” 753, in Meyer.
12. James, 273-274.
13. Cageprisoners.com, February 1, 2010; Draafia.org, December 16, 2008.
14. Petra Bartosiewicz, Time, January 8, 2010.
15. Siddiqui representative Tina Foster in Chris Hedges, “The Terror-Industrial Complex,” truthdig.com, February 8, 2010.
16. Rodriguez, Forced Passage: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime, 2006, 195-195.

In late July, it issued a new report titled, “Our Bodies Are Still Trembling: Haitian Women’s Fight Against Rape,” a problem Amnesty International (AI) highlighted in March saying:

“Sexual violence is widely present in the camps where some of Haiti’s most vulnerable live. It was already a major concern (pre-quake), but the situation in which displaced people are living exposes women and girls to even greater risks,” the issue IJDH examined in its report, explaining that Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps “exacerbated the already grave problem of sexual violence,” two US lawyer delegations and a women’s health specialist investigating the problem first hand in May and June, interviewing over 50 rape or attempted rape survivors.

IJDH didn’t quantify the incidence, but learned that “rapes in the camps are dramatically underreported,” women and girls in them extremely vulnerable, dozens of documented cases now known, suggesting the tip of a huge iceberg, worse for lack of security or concern by police, UN Blue Helmets, or Haiti’s pro-business, anti-populist government.

“Rape survivors… told interviewers that reporting rape to the police is an exercise in futility, since they could not identify their assailant or assailants,” one survivor saying police told her the problem was President Rene Preval’s, not theirs, a shocking indifference to a brutal crime — for most women and girls, their worst ever experience, one they’ll never forget or get over.

Dismal camp conditions “render women and girls particularly vulnerable….” Overcrowding and inadequate shelter make it easy for predators to take advantage, especially late at night when people are sleeping. Survivors noted the lack of lighting;  privacy even to bathe; tents; and police presence or concern.

When rape crimes aren’t investigated or prosecuted, violence is implicitly condoned, making illegal acts normal and justice denied. Most victims are girls under 18 – impoverished, displaced and denied redress under the 2000 UN Resolution 1325 and UN Guiding Principles on International Displacement, requiring a gender-based perspective to ensure their human rights, including preventive measures against rape and other violent acts.

According to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Gen Rec. No. 19, Violence Against Women (1992), gender-based violence (GBV): 

includes violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately. It includes acts that inflict physical, mental or sexual harm or suffering, threats of such acts, coercion and other deprivations of liberty.

Structural inequalities pre and post-quake left Haitians vulnerable, especially women and children — surrounded by rubble, homeless with inadequate food, clean water, sanitation, medical care, and protection, leaving them vulnerable to predators.

Most traumatizing is lost loved ones and friends, a support network when most needed, exacerbated by extreme deprivation, creating a dangerous GBV environment, rape and other sexual violence its most prominent feature, women and young girls victimized.

Despite no official figures, the evidence is overwhelming. Post-quake, rape escalated dramatically, the Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV) July 19 Preliminary Report on Rape tracked 230 cases in 15 of the hundreds of Port-au-Prince camps. A University of Michigan March survey found 3% of women and girls sexually assaulted since January, half under 18. Doctors Without Borders reported treating 68 rape victims at one Port-au-Prince facility in April. Haitian authorities downplay it, belying documented evidence. The main issues are overcrowding, lack of shelter and security, AI saying: “inadequate protection (and) lack of measures to prevent and respond adequately to the threat of sexual violence is contributing to the humanitarian crisis.”

Even with a security presence, Haitians say it’s “not effective largely because of their lack of coordination and failure to engage in partnerships with neighborhood associations and community,” on their own to address what authorities won’t. Women’s organizations have been especially active, but it’s not enough without state and UN aid, their neoliberal priorities other-directed, ignoring vital needs, including security.

Rape Incidence in Displacement Camps

Victims ranged in age from five to 60, suggesting a comparable profile throughout the camps, given “the strikingly similar patterns among the testimonies” gotten.  Most women reported being raped by two or more unknown assailants, most armed with guns, knives or other weapons.

Though unable to identify them, women believe they’re gang members or prison escapees, their motive rape, at times robbery or other crimes as well, mostly committed from 9:00PM-3:00AM, occasionally during the day. Women reported being attacked in IDP camp tents, under tarps, in latrines, and on nearby streets. One woman was forcibly taken to a house at an unknown location, then gagged and gang raped by an unknown number of assailants for two or three days, repeatedly abused and beaten until she escaped.

Some survivors mentioned widespread transactional sex for food aid cards. When coerced, it’s rape, a topic beyond IJDH’s investigation. 

A March delegation of psychiatrists and trauma victim specialists conducted a psychological evaluation, finding 95.7% of victims suffering from PTSD, including extreme fear, nightmares, suicidal tendencies and depression. Another 53.6% experienced depression alone. Nearly everyone complained of physical discomfort, including stomach pain, headaches, difficulty walking, and vaginal infection and bleeding. At least one woman became pregnant.

Besides being raped, women were beaten, stabbed, and injured in other ways. Their scars, bruises, and other physical signs bore witness to their ordeal. Most hadn’t seen a doctor or other medical professional, for some not knowing about free services, for others fearing retaliation, humiliation and stigma. “When victims did reach out, they were often shunned or ignored.”

Those getting treated reported quality and type care varied depending on the facility and available supplies. Some offered no HIV prophylaxis or emergency contraception. Waits were excessively long, doctors often not seen. In addition, little privacy and few female health providers were available. Several victims relied on traditional remedies, including special teas and baths.

With one exception, women reporting rape crimes to police were ignored or mocked, one victim saying “only the rich get the attention of the police.” For Haiti’s poor, they’re more enemy than ally, and that’s why most Haitians fear and shun them.

Except during Aristide’s presidency, government response has been hostile. Haiti’s long history is infamous for targeting anyone supporting democracy and human rights, women especially vulnerable, including being subjected to gender-based violence, rape its most prominent feature.

After the 2004 coup, AI said it again “became a political weapon by armed insurgents to instill fear and to punish women believed to have supported the democratic government.”

A 2006 Athena R. Kolbe/Royce A. Hutson Lancet-published study titled, “Human Rights Abuse and Other Criminal Violations in Port-au-Prince, Haiti” concluded that 35,000 women were raped from March 2004-December 2006 in Haiti’s capital alone, almost 12% of the perpetrators identified as right-wing political supporters.

More recently, authorities took modest steps to address the problem, including adopting the 2006-2011 National Plan to Combat Violence Against Women, its objective being a mechanism to collect data, prevent violence, and other measures.

Although progress was made, inadequate resources nor serious concern prevented real change, Haitian women and girls more vulnerable than ever under post-quake conditions, exacerbated by a dismissive, pro-business government, rarely ever deploying police inside camps for protection, despite a March 2010 MINUSTAH Human Rights Section “IDP Camp Joint Security Assessment Report,” recommending an “IDP Camp Strategic Policing Plan,” increasing patrols, especially at night.

Few female officers is another concern, women generally reluctant to report rape crimes to men, notably when they’re mocked, treated dismissively, and at times blamed, accused of promiscuity or involvement in domestic violence. As a result, authorities downplay the issue, allocate few resources, and help the rich, not vulnerable Haitians out of luck and on their own, rapists free to seek other victims or the same ones again.

Pre-quake, two women’s advocacy organizations took on the issue: Dwa Fanm in New York and ENFOFANM in Port-au-Prince, demanding justice for Haitian rape victims. In late May, the Women’s Ministry, Ministere a la Condition Feminine et aux Droits des Femmes (MCFDF), launched a national “End rape in Temporary Settlements!” campaign, encouraging women to come forward and report them to police.

UNICEF and UNFPA (the UN Population Fund) coordinate a Gender-Based Violence Sub-Cluster, addressing the issue during national emergencies like earthquakes, but, in fact, delivering little aid according to victims. Six months post-quake, “the Sub-Cluster still has not effectively implemented” measures it’s mandated to undertake… “in large part, (it’s) failed to include the voices of poor women living in the camps in planning and leadership roles,” or helping victims.

“Haiti’s history and the deep fissures within Haitian society between the poor majority and more affluent, educated classes, require attention” so far not provided. In addition, UN officials, like Haiti’s police and government, downplay the problem, shirking their responsibility for camp security, leaving it up to grassroots groups like KOFAVIV and others to act in their stead as best they can with limited staff and resources.

Legal Issues

Article 19 of Haiti’s 1989 Constitution obligates the State:

“to guarantee the right to life, health, and respect of the human person for all citizens without distinction, in conformity with the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man,” including protection against rape and other forms of violence, written in law but enforced only for the rich.

Haiti is also party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (the Women’s Convention), mandating domestic law abide by its provisions. In 2005, Executive Decree No. 60 introduced Haitian Penal Code changes, including the classification of rape and penalties, increasing them to 10 years, 15 if victims are under age 16, and life in prison for gang rape, reasserting a previous provision.

Yet legal and enforcement gaps remain because of judicial system corruption and indifference, resulting in lighter sentences when imposed. Most often, however, rapes aren’t reported or prosecuted, authorities doing little to address them, Port-au-Prince’s General Hospital not issuing medical certificates verifying them, calling them a “non-essential service.”

Yet under Haiti’s Constitution and international law, authorities are required to address GBV, “prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of sex, protecting the right to bodily integrity, and guaranteeing the right to be free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Besides the Women’s Convention, Haiti is obligated under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child (Children’s Convention).

As an OAS member, it must also enforce provisions of the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women  (the Belem do Para Convention) as well as the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR). They’re automatically Haitian law under the Constitution’s Article 19.

Article 1 of the Woman’s Convention defines gender-based violence to be “directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately” – including physical, mental, or sexual harm or suffering; threats of such acts, or coercion.

Gender-based violence also denies women their civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, guaranteed under Haitian and international law. The 1993 UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women inspired the OAS Belem do Para Convention to affirm “that violence against (them) constitutes a violation of their human rights and fundamental freedoms, and impairs or nullifies the observance, enjoyment and exercise of such rights and freedoms.”

Other international standards and UN Resolutions address the same issues, all UN members obligated to enforce them, including gender-based violence against women and girls. The laws are clear, standards high, yet Haiti’s government doesn’t enforce them for its poor, only the rich. Failing to do so “sends a message of impunity — that such attacks are justified or, at a minimum, will go unpunished.”

Enforcing international law falls mostly on States. However, UN members and international organizations share responsibility, especially when local efforts can’t adequately do so in emergencies like earthquakes.

In recent years, the international community established important principles to maximize foreign aid effectiveness, including for gender-based issues. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), recognized under customary international law, specifically identify gender equality and empowerment as a key goal, its operational framework prioritizing combating violence against women and girls, especially for the poor, and in conflict and post-conflict situations.

The OECD developed Guiding Principles for Aid Effectiveness, Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, endorsing global agreements and conventions addressing them.

A Final Comment

Despite Haiti’s obligations under international law and its Constitution, authorities have fallen far short, failing to confront issues as vital as gender-based violence, turning a blind eye to a pressing problem, leaving poor women and girls vulnerable to the worst kind of abuse, doing little to address or halt it, and virtually nothing for victims or survivors, often blaming them, not their violators.

America, UN member states, and the world body are more a problem than a solution, Haitian women and girls on their own and out of luck, especially under post-quake conditions when needs are greatest, including security against predatory rapists, what the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Rashida Manjoo, addressed, saying:

“If we are to secure women’s rights and their freedom from violence, it is imperative that we adopt an integrated human rights perspective that stresses the equal importance of civil and political rights and economic and social rights. Unless women can develop their capabilities and achieve economic independence, the human rights they are promised will not be realized,” especially in Haiti, given its violence-plagued history.

Palestinian children grow up “under the Israeli occupation, surrounded by cruelty, oppression, killing, starvation and destruction.” Yet, like all children, they dream of playing and living normally and safely. Instead, their father may be dead or in prison, their brother killed, their home destroyed, and their mother forced to give birth at an Israeli checkpoint, risking her and the newborn.

Palestinian children grow up differently from most others, their development “distorted by an occupation,” destroying their innocence, dreams and well-being. They live in constant fear, forced to grow up while still a child. “Actually (they are) grown up, for (they challenge) the toughest circumstances,” helping their families, replacing a parent when lost, and confronting Israeli incursions. “Amazingly… Palestinian child(ren set) the example to mature people,” even when very young.

They live when “we think that the world has become (more) civilized” without cruel colonizations, when global leaders defend human rights, dignity, democratic freedoms, and peace rhetorically, yet are indifferent to oppressed Palestinians, children always the most vulnerable, yet they persist and endure despite enormous hardships and obstacles, what Western children can’t imagine.

From September 2000 (the start of the second Intifada) through 2007 alone, 1,400 children were killed, 230 under age 12. What about others under occupation, with  no father, injured or handicapped, hungry, impoverished or in prison? Still more who’ve lost friends and relatives, who live in fear and can’t sleep, who feel helpless when Israelis attack, and unprotected under a ruthless occupation, ongoing for over 43 years, affecting them physically, emotionally, and economically, making them feel isolated, helpless, and unaided, world leaders indifferent to their plight and their families.

Demographics

Palestine is a young society, children comprising the majority. In its June 2007 annual report, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said 2.1 million are under age 18, representing 52.2% of the West Bank and Gaza, distributed as follows:

• 17% below age five;
• 15.4% from five-nine;
• 13% from 10-14; and
• 6.8% from 15-17.

They’re Palestine’s future, their development and regeneration hope for liberation, pursued courageously until achieved, but at a huge price. 

From September 29, 2000-December 31, 2008, children witnessed around 5,900 killings, over 35,000 injured, about 7,500 of their parents and relatives imprisoned, and the destruction of nearly 78,000 buildings through April 30, 2007.

A British study found that Palestinian children during the Intifada displayed higher political awareness levels. They know names of destroyed villages, especially where their parents were born, are knowledgeable about the conflict, and show commitment to resist it.

A separate report on Lebanese refugee children reveals extreme hardships under poor conditions in crowded homes without clean water, air, electricity, playgrounds, or job opportunities for their parents. In addition, children under age three experience a high rate of birth defects and respiratory diseases. In northern Lebanon, it’s 44.5%. Yet their Lebanese Baccalaureate passing rate is 73.9%, showing a commitment to achieve.

Palestinian Children: Their Rights and Violations

Israel repudiates children’s rights and welfare, treating them harshly like adults, in violation of the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child, its Principle 1 saying:

Every child, without exception whatsoever, shall be entitled to (fundamental human and civil) rights, without distinction or discrimination on account of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status, whether of himself or of his family.

They’re entitled to special protections and opportunities to develop physically, mentally, morally, spiritually, and socially in a healthy normal way under conditions of freedom and dignity — including their right to life, an adequate standard of living, health care, education, leisure, safety and peace, what Israel has denied them  for over four decades.

Wounded and Killed Children

Aya Fayyad’s story reflects others, her death a tragedy other parents face, her mother Fatima saying her daughter’s loss on August 31, 2003, the eve of her school year, left her dazed and unable to imagine her nine-year old was dead.

She’d gone out to play, riding her bike when tank shells exploded. Other children escaped, but not Aya, struck by bomb shrapnel and killed.

On June 10, 2004, Iman al-Hams, a 13-year old girl, headed for school with two of her classmates. Nearing the Girit military post, they heard shooting. Iman ran to escape it and was shot dead by 20 “machine gun bullets that settled in her tiny body.” Not satisfied, three soldiers and their commander approached her, shot her multiples times to be sure, claiming her school bag contained explosives, later admitting there were only books.

Hundreds of similar incidents claimed other lives and thousands wounded or disabled. PCBS’ April 2008 annual report cited 959 deaths from September 29, 2000-February 2, 2008: 384 in the West Bank, another 573 in Gaza and two in Israel, the number injured (including many seriously) totaling 28,822, the total disabled about 2,660, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health (PMH).

PMH also reported that 31.4% of killed children were shot in the head, another 32.5% in the chest, showing intent to kill, soldiers often firing at close range and committing murder – part of their training and indoctrination from kindergarten to be warriors and Arab-haters, Amnesty International (AI) responding in a press release saying:

The majority of Palestinian children have been killed in the Occupied Territories when members of the IDF responded to demonstrations and stone throwing incidents with unlawful and excessive use of lethal force. Eighty Palestinian children were killed by the IDF in the first three months of the Intifada alone.

AI also mentioned Sami Fathi Abu Jazzar, shot in the head by Israeli soldiers on the eve of his 12th birthday in the aftermath of a stone-throwing demonstration, injuring six other children with live fire, AI representatives witnessed it firsthand, concluding soldiers’ lives weren’t endangered.

In 2001, AI reported that Palestinian children were killed by “random” IDF firing, shelling or bombarding residential neighborhoods “when there was no exchange of fire and in circumstances in which the lives” of soldiers weren’t at risk. “Others were killed by (targeted) assassinations when the IDF destroyed Palestinian houses without warning, and by flechette shells and booby traps used (in) densely populated areas.”

Other children were killed at checkpoints, by settlers, and by being prevented from reaching hospitals when their lives were in danger — cold-blooded murder by other means.

Children in Detention and Custody

In its April 2008 report, the Palestinian Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs said over 7,000 children had been arrested since the start of the second Intifada, 360 still in detention, some as young as 10, treated harshly like adults, in violation of international law requiring special treatment for children.

Of these, 145 have been sentenced, 200 still await trial, and 15 are administratively held without charge. The report also explained that about 500 other prisoners were arrested as youths, turning 18 in prison. 

Other data confirmed around 75 children ill, not being treated, nearly all tortured by being beaten, hooded, painfully shackled and deprived of sleep for several days in the shabeh position — hands and legs bound to a small chair, at times from behind to a pipe affixed to the wall, painfully slanted forward, hooded with a filthy sack, and played loud music nonstop through loudspeakers.

Most children were arrested at home (77%), some at play, others at demonstrations. Most are students, some waiting over two years for a trial, becoming ill from poor food, hygiene, and lack of health care.

The Ministry’s 2007 report said about 220 were arrested, many still detained “under very bad conditions, receiving harsh treatment and prevented from pursuing their education or having any prospect of a prosperous future.”

One 16-year old youth was arrested heading to school for failing to have his ID card. Afterward, he was beaten, sent to Etzion detention camp, handcuffed, blindfolded, and beaten again brutally to get him to confess to stone-throwing and reveal names of other children with him at the time. During interrogation, his head was immersed in cold water, then hot, then the toilet. Later moved to Adorim camp, he was again beaten, tortured, held in solitary confinement for 34 days, then judicially-ordered held on “restrictive order” and transferred to Telmond Prison, in violation of Article 37 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) stating:

No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment….

No child shall be deprived of his or her liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily…

Every child deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity and respect… (and)

Every child deprived of his or her liberty shall have the right to prompt access to legal and other appropriate assistance…

CRC also mandates detention as a last resort for the shortest possible time. Israel does it preemptively, repressively, and irresponsibly to harass, abuse, inflict bodily and emotional harm, torture or kill – legalized by authorities decades ago, including harming children with:

• bad food and unsafe water;
• poor health care or lack of it;
• bad sanitation and hygiene;
• insect infested cells;
• cramped and crowded conditions;
• inadequate air and light;
• insufficient clothing, blankets and other protections;
• no play or recreation;
• isolation from the outside world;
• no family visits;
• the absence of counselors and specialists;
• detention with adults, some violent;
• solitary confinement;
• verbal, physical and sexual abuse; and
• no education.

Torture is official Israeli policy, explained in this writer’s August 2008 article:

Nothing is too brutal or extreme, including against women and children, one 15-year old saying he was stripped naked, forced into an extremely painful position, then burned by lit cigarettes to make him confess. Others are tortured to collaborate. A 10-year old said “They beat me on various parts of my body with plastic hoses. I had to have a surgical operation to have a platinum transplant in my arm. They kept me naked for a whole night, handcuffed and blindfolded; and I was not allowed to go to the toilet for two days!”

The Palestinian Prisoners Club reported that 95% of children are tortured, 85% to confess under duress and sign Hebrew documents they can’t read or understand.

Health Status

Harsh occupation causes health problems, physical and psychological, from witnessing violence, mainly against loved ones and friends. “These conditions raise the death rate among children,” soldiers often obstructing ambulances and medical workers from reaching casualties and the sick, and they prevent deliveries of vital equipment and materials, especially to Gaza.

Even seriously ill adults and children can’t access proper medical care abroad or in East Jerusalem in hospitals equipped to help them. They’ve also been isolated and denied proper nutrition, 64% of children becoming anemic from lack of sufficient sustenance.

UNICEF reported that one baby in three risks death because of Gazan medical shortages, and the Separation Wall and checkpoints cause a 20% West Bank death rate — 61 births from 2000 — 2004 occurring at them because soldiers obstructed passage, 36 dying immediately.

Israel also prohibited the distribution of special nutritional meals to about 20,000 Gazan children under age five, most never having had them in their lives, and suffer anemia, stunted growth, and general body weakness from malnutrition and extreme poverty, compounded by the siege.

Mental health is also impacted, a 2004 PCBS survey showing 8.8% of children experience horrible accidents firsthand, most are intimidated by air raids, bombings, shellings, incursions, and the constant threat of more.  UNICEF said about one-fifth of children are exposed to family violence from daily pressure, including poverty, unemployment, and lack of essential services and support networks.

A Gaza Community Mental Health Program study found 94.6% of children witnessed bombings and killings. Another Israeli Adler Research Center one showed 70% of West Bank children suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

As a result, the National Plan of Action for Palestinian Children said 93% of children are insecure, living in fear of being attacked, and 52% believe their parents can’t help. As a result, they experience an array of psychological symptoms, including:

• panic, fear and stress;
• anxiety, sadness and depression;
• forgetfulness and poor memory;
• hyperactivity and violence;
• fainting;
• digestive disorders and loss of appetite;
• involuntary urination and headaches;
• insomnia or excessive sleep;
• disturbed sleep or nightmares; 
• feelings of helplessness with no safe haven, even at home; and
• hatred toward their occupier, instilling a spirit to resist.

The Socio-Economic Situation

Child rights agreements state that every child has a right to special care and assistance, and a right to a proper environment that fosters his growth, well-being, self-respect and dignity in a good family environment.

Palestinian children, however, are impeded under occupation, and an environment designed to be threatening and unsafe. This reality “denies them the joy of living an innocent childhood,” and for some, the inability to become adults.

Yet Fourth Geneva’s Article 27 states:

Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honour, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity.

CRC’s Article 16 states:

No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation.

For decades, Israel has spurned international law and dozens of UN resolutions condemning or censuring its actions, deploring it for committing them, or demanding, calling on, or urging it, to end them. Israel never did and continues defying the rule of law, even its own, including High Court rulings authorities won’t accept, and actions like the following:

An Israeli military court ordered a seven-year old girl named Farah, whose father was assassinated five years earlier, to pay an 1,850 shekel fine in one month, without explanation, saying appropriate legal measures would be taken for refusing.

Another ruling prevented the parents of two-and-a-half year old Ahmad and nine-and-a-half year old Sawsan from accompanying their children through the Erez crossing for two urgently needed heart operations. They had to go alone on foot, Haaretz calling it “one of the most horrible and cruel scenes broadcast daily (and) a shameful stigma to Israel.”

Other socio-economic negatives include deteriorated home environments, lost homes, jobs, and mass  impoverishment – 56.1% in the West Bank, 82% in Gaza, and 24% of children living in abject poverty, according to PCBS figures.

As a result, they have to leave school to help out, tilling fields, selling miscellaneous items on streets, anything for a few shekels, especially in fatherless households, a situation not conducive to proper development. 

Education

“Israel works on hindering the education of Palestinians.” Besides violating their basic right, it jeopardizes a new generation, UNRWA commissioner-general, Peter Hansen, saying:

“Imagine the political fallout if every schoolchild in London had missed a month’s schooling last year because teachers could not get to their classes,” or if children, heading to and from school, were endangered by tanks, checkpoints, and soldiers – a daily reality in Occupied Palestine, under the harshest conditions facing unimaginable obstacles and disadvantages, impacting education like everything else, affecting a proper environment for teaching and learning.

Yet Palestinians consider education vital to protect and sustain, the 2007-08 UN Development Program Report showing the Occupied Palestine Education Index at 0.891, the highest of all Arab states, followed by Libya at 0.875, Lebanon at 0.871 and Kuwait at 0.868 — the Index measuring the rate of children who attend school. The overall Arab average is 0.687.

Final Comments

For over six decades, over four under occupation, Israel has pursued a ruthless, violent, racist policy of slow-motion genocide against millions of Palestinians, especially children, to cripple new generations physically and emotionally, to crush their spirit to resist, to harden a ruthless colonial agenda in violation of fundamental international humanitarian law with respect to basic human freedoms, self-determination, and the right of people to live freely on their own land in peace.

The “parties involved in this cause, including the Palestinian Authority, the media, (global activists) and human rights organizations, (must) work hard to expose (Israel’s) brutality….in international forums, in particular the UN General Assembly, to condemn (its) occupation to the world community, to accuse and prosecute it in international judicial institutions for committing the most horrific and inhumane crimes,” especially against children, representing hope and regeneration.

Come for Ameer they did, late one night this May, pounding at our door, ransacking our house and terrifying our two teenage daughters. And now I’ve joined the ranks of Palestinian prisoners’ wives, many thousands of us from the occupied territories as well as within Israel.  His July 13 hearing – persecution, really – could begin the legal nightmare that ruptures our family for many years. This is the likely course of events unless Ameer gets a fair trial and his coerced statements are rejected or suppressed by the court.  

“Democracies don’t fear their own people,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in her July 3 speech in Poland at the 10th anniversary meeting of the Community of Democracies. “They recognize that citizens must be free to come together to advocate and agitate.” But the head of Israel’s General Security Services said three years ago that Palestinian citizens’ organizational efforts for equality constitute a “strategic threat,” even if pursued by lawful means. 

That’s not how democracy works.  We may be a minority of 20 percent, but our rights to organize and insist on full equality and civil rights ought to be sacrosanct. That’s what our entire community believes. The Public Committee that Ameer chaired was established within the framework of the High Follow-up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel, the community’s overall coordinating body.  It’s a vital position and the leading organization protecting our civil rights.

And now he faces the most serious charges leveled against a Palestinian citizen of Israel since the creation of the state in 1948. He is accused of being a spy (for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah) and having contact with a foreign agent. His trial will likely last for months.

After his arrest, Ameer was held incommunicado for 21 days and tortured. Then Israeli officials pressed their charges, based on the “confession” he made during this time, when he was deprived of sleep, shackled in a painful position to a small chair, and not allowed to see his lawyers.

Ameer denies all charges. As he said in his first letter from Gilboa Prison, he was “forced to explain to them in a very detailed way how exactly I did what I didn’t do, ever.” And if the prosecution needs any more information to make its case, all they have to do is use “so-called secret evidence, which my lawyers and I have no legal right to know about.”

Clinton’s Krakow speech focused on civil society: Ameer is a civil society activist. He directs Ittijah, the Union of Arab-Based Community Associations – a coalition that brings together 84 non-governmental organizations. Clinton criticized several governments by name – but not Israel – for intimidation and assassination of activists. Why does America’s drive to promote human rights stop at Israel’s door?  

Throughout his life, Ameer has struggled for the rights of the Palestinian citizens of Israel – there are more than 35 laws on the books that discriminate against us – as well as those of the Palestinian people overall. He has the ability to lead and to convene diverse viewpoints, bringing them together across sect and ideology. His ability to network locally, at the Arab level, and internationally, coupled with his clear strategic vision – this is what Israel is trying to silence.

The youth also look to him for leadership, which infuriates the Israeli security services. They told Ameer so when they hauled him in for questioning during our community’s protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009.

During that interrogation they threatened to put him away if he kept up his activism, saying, “We can ‘disappear’ you. You should know that the next time we bring you in you will not see your family again for a long time.”

The few times we’ve been allowed to visit him thick glass has separated us and our meetings were taped. Ameer asked me for a copy of my new book to read in jail, but they wouldn’t let me even take him that. My daughters really miss their father. They often say, “If only we’d been able to hug him before they took him away.” That’s one of the things that hurts them most, not being able to hug their father.

Ameer still suffers from the torture and abuse inflicted on him, and they still try to break his spirit. They only allow 20 people into the courtroom even though it can hold many more, so when he sees it empty, he thinks no one cares. But far more people want to attend the trial than they allow in – family, community activists, politicians, and supporters from all over the world.

I have never thought of myself as a “wife” but rather as Ameer’s partner in life and in activism. But these days, as I wait with the other wives for our allotted visit, I find myself reflecting on the traditional Christian marriage vows: “What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” No man, I think, unless he’s an Israeli jailer.

Clinton spoke of “the cowardice of those who deny their citizens the protections they deserve.” Ameer deserves the protection of the law: the right to meet his lawyers in private – Israeli officials have been taping those meetings too; the right to see the evidence against him, much of which the prosecution plans to withhold on security grounds; freedom from torture; and inadmissibility of confessions secured under torture. When will Clinton call for a Palestinian activist’s human rights and an end to his persecution?

Fight Back!: Josh, can you tell us about the “Free Ricardo Palmera” group?

Josh Sykes: The “Free Ricardo Palmera” group was a facebook group administered by three activists with the National Committee to Free Ricardo Palmera. Professor Palmera is a political prisoner in the United States. He was a leading peace negotiator with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP). Since he was first arrested on a mission to meet with a United Nations representative in Ecuador and then extradited to the U.S., the National Committee has worked for his freedom. The extradition and imprisonment of Palmera, a true freedom fighter, goes against Colombian sovereignty and is a slap in the face to the Colombian people. Palmera is a good man who was railroaded in an attempt by the U.S. to criminalize the national liberation struggle in Colombia. The facebook group was one of many ways the National Committee got out information about the struggle to free Ricardo Palmera. When facebook shut it down it had more than 700 members from around the world, with many from the U.S. and Latin America. It was a good resource for us and we are working to get it back.

FB: Why was the group shut down?

JS: Facebook’s reason was that it violated the ‘terms of use’ so they shut it down on June 30. They said that it was obscene, that it attacked people, or was hateful. Nothing could be further from the truth. They also threatened the administrators of the group with having their profiles disabled if we continued to “abuse” facebook features – which we never did. Of course it wasn’t really about any of those things. We are a group advocating justice. Ricardo Palmera’s human rights are being violated. He is in solitary confinement [at the SuperMax prison in Colorado] with no human contact. He is held under ‘special administrative measures’ where the U.S. government says journalists cannot interview him, we are not allowed to visit him and when American supporters write letters they are returned saying Palmera is not permitted to read them. Palmera is currently on ‘trial by video’ in Colombia and he is shackled from head to ankle and threatened with electric shock if he moves too quickly. He cannot possibly get a fair trial this way. We continue to demand, “Free Ricardo Palmera!”

One possibility is that facebook is censoring views they don’t like. They’ve shut down a number of groups operating in solidarity with the Palestinian people, for instance. Another possibility is that the U.S. State Department put pressure on the bosses at facebook to shut us down, just like they put pressure on the U.S. judges during the trials and sentencing of Professor Palmera. In any case, facebook is acting like the Colombian government’s death squads trying to shut people up for speaking out against the rich and powerful.

FB: What are the latest developments?

JS: There is what facebook calls an appeals process, which is nothing more than a run-around. Today facebook disabled the accounts of myself and the two other administrators of the Free Ricardo Palmera group, Angela Denio and Tom Burke, with no warning and no reason given. We are appealing that too. Meanwhile, we are asking that people stand up and oppose this blatant censorship on the part of facebook.

Call facebook CEO Mark Zukerberg at (650) 543-4800 and demand that the Free Ricardo Palmera group, and the accounts of the three administrators, be reinstated. Join the protest group here. Demand an end to facebook’s censorship. Stop the attacks on progressive causes and activists.