The CIA has brought darkness to America

After 9/11 the agency was given free rein to break the rules by fighting in the shadows

Gary Younge                    GuardianUK                9 March 2014

Little more than a week after 9/11, Cofer Black gave instructions to his CIA team before their mission. "I don't want Bin Laden and his thugs captured, I want them dead … I want to see photos of their heads on pikes.” A month later, at a meeting sponsored by Schwab Capital markets, CIA executive director "Buzzy" Krongard laid out for investors what such a war would entail. "[It] will be won in large measure by forces you do not know about, in actions you will not see and in ways you may not want to know about," he said. Laws were for the weak; for the powerful there was force. This was not just the mood of a moment; it has beenpolicy for more than a decade.

Obama's arrival offered a shift in focus and style but not in direction or substance. It was never difficult to see what could go wrong with this approach. As covert operations were shielded from oversight, so human rights violations became not just inevitable but routine.

In a 2004 report military intelligence officers told the International Committee for the Red Cross they believed between 70% and 80% of the detainees in Iraq were innocent. "The most serious thing is the abuse of power that that allows you to do," Lawrence Wilkerson, former secretary of state, Colin Powell's chief of staff, told Jeremy Scahill in his book, Dirty Wars. "You find out the intelligence was bad and you killed a bunch of innocent people and you have a bunch of innocent people on your hands, so you stuff 'em in Guantánamo. You did it all in secret, so you just go to the next operation. You say, 'Chalk that one up to experience'… And believe me that happened."This is not new. The origins of the Watergate scandal, in which President Richard Nixon bugged his electoral opponents, lies in Nixon's secret bombing of Cambodia; McCarthyism had its roots in the cold war.

But during the war on terror the process has become particularly pronounced. In recent months, it has emerged that the CIA has been spying on investigators from the Senate intelligence committee – the very committee charged with overseeing the CIA. The investigators, who were authorised to examine CIA documents relating to interrogation methods, found a withering internal review which concluded with the finding that torture techniques, like waterboarding, used in "black site" prisons had been ineffective. This was particularly troublesome because the CIA director had argued the opposite before the committee, contradicting the agency's own findings. When the CIA discovered that the investigators had the review, it started going through their computer logs to find out how they had got hold of it. In short the CIA spirited people away and tortured them, concluded this was useless, suppressed those conclusions, lied about them to elected officials and then spied on the people who had a democratic mandate to discover the truth precisely because they discovered the truth. Those black sites in far away lands have sister cities within the democratic process.

The defence for this duplicity is invariably national security. To be kept safe we must also be kept ignorant; to protect democracy it must be undermined. The unfettered phone surveillance of American citizens by the National Security Agency revealed the degree to which politicians collude in much of this – asking soft ball questions and apparently happier being fobbed off than taking on the democratic responsibilities.

But nobody can claim we weren't warned: "We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world," former vice-president Dick Cheney said shortly after 9/11. "A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion … That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal … to achieve our objective."

Those shadows are long. They have concealed unspeakable horrors abroad. Increasingly they are casting darkness at home.                [Abridged]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/09/cia-america-fighting-shadows Twitter: @garyyounge

The Clash in Crimea is the Fruit of Western Expansion

By Seumas Milne                     Guardian/UK                          March 5, 2014

Diplomatic pronouncements are renowned for hypocrisy and double standards. But western denunciations of Russian intervention in Crimea have reached new depths of self parody. The so far bloodless incursion is an "incredible act of aggression", US secretary of state John Kerry declared. In the 21st century you just don't invade countries on a "completely trumped-up pretext", he insisted, as US allies agreed.  That the states which launched the greatest act of unprovoked aggression in modern history on a trumped-up pretext – against Iraq, in an illegal war now estimated to have killed 500,000 should make such claims is beyond absurdity.

It's not just that western aggression and lawless killing is on another scale entirely from anything Russia appears to have contemplated. But the western powers have also played a central role in creating the Ukraine crisis in the first place.  The US and European powers openly sponsored the protests to oust the corrupt but elected Yanukovych government, which were triggered by controversy over an all-or-nothing EU agreement which would have excluded economic association with Russia.

The president’s overnight impeachment was certainly constitutionally dubious. In his place a government of oligarchs, neoliberal Orange Revolution retreads and neofascists has been installed.  Fascist gangs now patrol the streets. But they are also in Kiev's corridors of power.  Neo-Nazis in office is a first in post-war Europe. But this is the unelected government now backed by the US and EU. And in a contemptuous rebuff to the ordinary Ukrainians who protested against corruption and hoped for real change, the new administration has appointed two billionaire oligarchs – one who runs his business from Switzerland – to be the new governors of the eastern cities of Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk. Meanwhile, the IMF is preparing an eye-watering austerity plan for the tanking Ukrainian economy which can only swell poverty and unemployment.

From a longer-term perspective, the crisis in Ukraine is a product of the disastrous Versailles-style break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.  And contrary to undertakings given at the time, the US and its allies have since relentlessly expanded Nato up to Russia's borders, incorporating nine former Warsaw Pact states and three former Soviet republics into what is effectively an anti-Russian military alliance in Europe. The European association agreement which provoked the Ukrainian crisis also included clauses to integrate Ukraine into the EU defence structure.

Western military expansion was first brought to a halt in 2008 when the US client state of Georgia attacked Russian forces in the contested territory of South Ossetia and was driven out. The short but bloody conflict signalled the end of George Bush's unipolar world in which the US empire would enforce its will without challenge on every continent.  Given that background, it is hardly surprising that Russia has acted to stop the more strategically sensitive Ukraine falling decisively into the western camp, especially given that Russia's only major warm-water naval base is in Crimea.

Clearly, Putin's justifications for intervention – "humanitarian" protection for Russians and an appeal by the deposed president – are legally and politically flaky, even if nothing like on the scale of "weapons of mass destruction."  But Russia's role as a limited counterweight to unilateral western power certainly does. And in a world where the US, Britain, France and their allies have turned international lawlessness with a moral veneer into a permanent routine, others are bound to try the same game.

Fortunately, the only shots fired by Russian forces at this point have been into the air. But the dangers of escalating foreign intervention are obvious. What is needed instead is a negotiated settlement for Ukraine, including a broad-based government in Kiev shorn of fascists; a federal constitution that guarantees regional autonomy; economic support that doesn't pauperise the majority; and a chance for people in Crimea to choose their own future. Anything else risks spreading the conflict.       [Abridged]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/05/clash-crimea-western-expansion-ukraine-fascists

© 2014 Guardian News and Media

WW1 Objectors

Priyamvada Gopal           Guardian/UK           27 February 2014 

The question 'Do you love your country?' is not answered by blindly following politicians.

The commemorations of the first world war now under way in the media and museums will cover the roles of women, soldiers from Africa and Asia, even animals, and examine the impact of the war on everything from the economy and technology to medicine and cinema.  But there seems to be a curious exclusion. The bravery of those who rallied behind the powerful banner of nationalism will be honoured, but what about the courage of those who took the path of most resistance and dissented from the status quo by challenging the war itself?

The coalitions that organised resistance to the unfolding of the first world war did so in the face of enormous social disapproval and institutional pressures. As the War Propaganda Bureau's massive efforts kept public opinion on side, it took a special kind of bravery to query the wisdom of bloodshed before shots were fired, or call for a negotiated peace mid-carnage. Fighting for peace earned you anything from vitriolic accusations of cowardice and treachery to job loss, mob attacks, arrest, imprisonment, hard labour, courts-martial, show trials and even execution orders. As a consequence, many campaigners suffered nervous breakdowns and ill health. Their sacrifices must not go unsung.

Well before the first trenches were dug, questions were being asked about the motives for and conduct of the war by an expanding anti-war coalition, fronted by some of Britain's most distinguished people. Denounced furiously by Rudyard Kipling as "human rubbish", Britain's dissenters included Liberals, Labour supporters and socialists; a striking number were women. They ranged from the aristocratic philosopher Bertrand Russell, who lost his Cambridge lectureship over his activism, to the socialist James Keir Hardie, raised in a Glasgow slum; the lion tamer John Smith Clarke; and the train driver's daughter Alice Wheeldon. There were aristocratic pacifists like the conscientious objectors Clifford Allen and Stephen Hobhouse; feminists like Catherine Marshall and Sylvia Pankhurst and the famous exposer of Belgian atrocities in the Congo ED Morel, imprisoned on obscure charges for criticising secret diplomacy. Adam Hochschild's excellent To End All Wars tells some of their stories.

While anti-war organisations such as the Women's International League, the Society of Friends, the Union of Democratic Control, and the No-Conscription Fellowship differed on many matters, including whether it was all right to work in non-combat roles, what brought them together was a sense that behind the rhetoric of a "glorious, delicious war" for civilisation and freedom lay rather more grubby interests, not necessarily those of ordinary Britons. Some believed this was not so much a war against militarism as a war between militarisms.

As the commemorative drums of national unity start to beat again to rally us behind dominant narratives, it is time to remember that more than 20,000 men refused conscription.  Then, as now, dissidents understood that the belligerent question "do you love your country?" is not answered by blindly following politicians' commands, particularly where there is lack of consultation. The distinguished economist  JA Hobson, neither socialist nor pacifist, saw the war as rational only for those who stood to benefit from the "ever-worsening burden of armaments".  To be anti-war was to actively fight poverty, mediate for peace, build schools and workshops, undertake relief work, and provide refuge for troops and civilians alike.

Many critics of the war also understood that it was being waged for stakes outside Europe in great tracts of colonised land in Asia and Africa.  In those countries Britain was doing anything but defending freedom.  Many prominent anti-war leaders, including the feminist Sylvia Pankhurst and Labour politician Fenner Brockway, became trenchant critics of British imperialism, which believed itself better than the German brand. At a 1917 Leeds anti-war conference, resolutions were also passed calling for the independence of Ireland, India and Egypt.

Commemorating Britain's anti-war campaigners is not about fetishising the past. Many of the issues they faced remain pressing today. They were on the front lines of the criminalisation of dissent, the erosion of civil liberties and press freedom in the name of national security, and crackdowns on industrial action and popular unrest.   Then, as now, the poor were requisitioned to fight the wars which enrich the few, dying and suffering disproportionately.

The fighting spirit we need to invoke today is that which was willing to face down a small but powerful ruling class with control of state and media apparatuses complete with embedded war correspondents and close advisory relationships between politicians and press barons. Remembering that the Great War also unleashed revolution and anti-colonial rebellion, it is this spirit of principled dissent that we must seek to channel and honour.   [Abridged]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/27/first-world-war-bravery-fight-for-peace

Creative Trinity

Ian Harris           Otago Daily Times        February 28, 2014

 Festivals of the arts are celebrated around New Zealand, with the current international festival in Wellington a prime offering. From music and dance to drama, the visual arts and contemporary literature, they present a dazzling display of human creativity, all up front and personal. Most of those who attend performances are likely to enjoy and evaluate them on that basis alone. It is possible, however, to add another level to the festival experience by seeing events through the lens of the Christian doctrine that humankind is created in the image of God. In fact, the idea of God as creator and the creativity of the arts are more closely intertwined than many people realise.

“God created man in his own image,” says the biblical book of Genesis, “in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” And the Hebrew word for image means just that, a likeness. The declaration in Genesis is not, of course, a scientific statement of origins. It expresses a relationship between God (or Godness) and human beings. At the very least, it says that humanity is capable of reflecting this God/Godness.

Usually the relationship is expressed as between creator and creatures, the one who initiates and those who owe their being to that act of creation: on the one hand lie divine power and will, on the other the duty to comply. For people who think of God as a being with an existence independent of humanity, that lies at the heart of their faith.

There is another way to approach the metaphor, however, and that is the way of creativity. It builds on the idea that if God is portrayed as creator, and humanity is created in God’s image, then one of the essential ways people reflect Godness is when they in turn are creative, even in quite humble ways.

Many years ago detective fiction writer Dorothy Sayers teased out the human creative process in a way that brought out remarkable parallels with the Christian understanding of God as creator. She says any artistic work begins with someone’s creative idea. The writer or artist envisages the completed work, so that in a sense the end is in the beginning; but at this stage there is nothing to show.

Time and effort, passion and sweat, false starts and endless revisions are needed to translate the idea into the appropriate outward form. An energy flows back and forth within the writer between the idea and its expression. But it is the originating idea that controls the choice of episodes or phrases or brush-strokes to make them conform to the pattern of the whole work.

Beyond that double process is a third and vital element, that of the work’s power to communicate to others. That can be known only in the reading/hearing/viewing of the finished piece – which will hinge largely on the talent of the performers and the responsiveness of the audience itself.

Wellington audiences will experience the creative power of Bach’s St John Passion, for example, or Britten’s Noye’s Fludde to the extent that they are engaged by them. Ideally, their experience of such works will have rounded out the composers’ idea and the creative activity that lie behind them, and fulfilled the works in the consciousness of those who attend them.

But while each of these three elements can be considered separately, the idea on its own is not the work, nor the activity of the composers and performers that bring it to fruition, nor its power to communicate. The dynamic interaction of all three is needed to fully realise the work.

In other words, there is a trinity to be discerned in the creative act – and, says Sayers, the remarkable thing is that this trinity mirrors in human experience what the early church sought to express through the Christian Trinity of Father (idea), Son (activity or energy expressing the idea) and Holy Spirit (communicative power).

A common mistake is to take each element of this Trinity on its own (or to use the more usual word “person”, which originally meant an actor’s mask, or role) and add them up to make three Gods instead of one. Another trap is to make the ideas so convoluted that ordinary mortals give up on them.

But as a symbol of the dynamic unity of idea, energy and power, this Trinity can be seen as both central to human experience and a window into Godness – and nowhere so clearly as in a festival of the arts.

Desmond Tutu condemns Uganda's proposed new anti-gay law

Retired archbishop accuses president of breaking promise in reconsidering law extending penalties against homosexuality

Maev Kennedy                     Guardian/UK                              23 February 2014

In condemning Uganda's proposed new law, Desmond Tutu again equated discrimination against gay people with the the horrors of Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has condemned Uganda's proposed law against homosexuality, saying there is no scientific or moral basis ever for prejudice and discrimination – and accusing the Ugandan president of breaking a promise not to enact the law. The new law would extend the prohibitions and penalties in a country where homosexuality is already a crime, to include acts such as "suggestive touching" in public.

President Yoweri Museveni had first said that he would not sign the legislation, then that he would do so after seeking scientific advice, and at the weekend that he would delay it pending more advice.

The proposed law has drawn harsh criticism from US president Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton. The US warned that such a move could "complicate" approximately £240m in annual aid to Uganda. In a statement Tutu said: "When President Museveni and I spoke last month, he gave his word that he would not let the anti-homosexuality bill become law in Uganda. I was therefore very disheartened to hear last week that President Museveni was reconsidering his position."

Tutu equated discrimination against gay people with the horrors of Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa.

"We must be entirely clear about this: the history of people is littered with attempts to legislate against love or marriage across class, caste, and race. But there is no scientific basis or genetic rationale for love. There is only the grace of God. There is no scientific justification for prejudice and discrimination, ever. And nor is there any moral justification. Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa, among others, attest to these facts."

The retired archbishop recalled apartheid-era police raids: "In South Africa, apartheid police used to rush into bedrooms where whites were suspected of making love to blacks. They would feel if the bed sheets were warm, crucial evidence to be used in the criminal case to follow. It was demeaning to those whose 'crime' was to love each other, it was demeaning to the policemen – and it was a blot on our entire society."

Tutu went on to plead with Museveni to use the debate to strengthen the culture of human rights and justice in Uganda, and clamp down on sexual exploitation rather than orientation.  "To strengthen criminal sanctions against those who commit sexual acts with children, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. To strengthen criminal sanctions against all acts of rape and sexual violence, regardless of gender or sexual orientation," he said. And, if needs be, to strengthen criminal sanctions against those involved in commercial sexual transactions – buyers and sellers regardless of gender or sexual orientation. Tightening such areas of the law would surely provide children and families far more protection than criminalising acts of love between consenting adults.

Same-sex relations are criminal in 36 of 55 African countries, and carry the death penalty in some.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/23/desmond-tutu-condemns-uganda-proposed-anti-gay-la