Torture and hypocrisy

Accepting the “after 9/11 was extraordinary” argument for torture would then justify torture in any more dire situation — such as invasion by a foreign army or outright war. It would therefore justify torture (say) of US soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, or in any war. It would make war crimes, in time of war, legal. It is a contradiction in terms.

There was a good article in the NY Times about foreign policy upholding dictators and murderers. This may sound impossible; but this restriction does not apply to the sins of others. Imagine if one could get this sort of honesty in one’s own country.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/world/africa/13francophone.html

“Woe to you… hypocrites that you are! You clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they are filled with the results of greed and self-indulgence… First clean the inside of the cup and the dish, so that the outside may become clean as well.”
– Matthew 23:25-6

Reflections on history

Given that today is the 20th anniversary of a pivotal event in history, perhaps some reflections on history are in order. But “optimism” is not the right word for it; neither is “pessimism”.

Certainly, if we emphasise the world wars, utopian thinking seems like hopeless naievete. If one is to consider what human nature is capable of, the lower bound is barely imaginable: Holocausts, pogroms, pillages, rape, torture, assassinations, massacres, genocides, and war upon war upon war — these are the fodder of history. It seems to me this is less appreciated than it should be. Among conservatives and capitalists, for instance, we often hear the argument that human nature is so bad that we cannot hope for anything else. But if they really appreciated how bad human nature can be, they would live in perpetual astonishment that we have what we have today. Those who truly understand the horrors of the human species and think they are unavoidable should not be conservative, or capitalist, but Hobbesian, monarchist, or fascist. I would agree that human institutions are established and upheld by fallible and corruptible humans — but more: by murderous, vengeful, aggressive, malicious humans.

On the other hand, the range of freedoms, level of civilization, and social development achieved today would be scarcely imaginable half a century ago — and entirely alien to society a century ago. This is not merely a statement about technology, but about attitudes and general social progress. And so on: the general position a century ago would be unimaginable a couple of centuries before that. For most of human history, any notion of governance other than absolute tyranny would be considered a naive pipe dream; any notion of individual freedom an unattainable and indulgent luxury; and any notion of social equality pure treason to the tribe, or caste, or class, or race, or nation. And more, we see a steady growth in the range of beings considered worthy, or “us”, or worth defending: from the family, or tribe, to the village, the nation or race, to the civilization, to the entire world. Of course there are exceptions — exceptions spelt out in destruction and broken lives — but I find this identifiable.

A generally positive trend of course does not imply that we are approaching utopia. One may easily note that some of the greatest advances follow the greatest catastrophes — the UN after the Holocaust and the second world war; government stabilization of the economy after the Great Depression; socialist revolutions erupting out of war; monarchies overthrown out of hunger; right back to the Persian invasion uniting the ancient Greeks and further. The next catastrophes which, on a sober analysis, seem quite likely to occur — vast global climate change and the end of oil — and those which are still highly possible, like global nuclear war — are of such an order that we barely know if the human race will come out of it with any civilization intact. If we do, I would imagine that an improved social and political order would follow; but this seems to me by no means a likely outcome.

To ask what the human race is capable of, it seems to me not a complete answer to say we are horrible. We are, but we got this far, somehow. I see no reason why we cannot go further. Moreover, it’s trite to point out how fast society changes today, and that society is changing ever more quickly. The only thing we can say about the world a decade or more from now is that it will be vastly, even unimaginably different.

At least as far as economic institutions are concerned, the general pessimism has a clearly identifiable historical cause: indeed today it is the 20th anniversary of it. The horrors of the systems and governments that claimed to be “socialist” and offer the better alternative to capitalism are well known. Their collapse means that no alternative to capitalism appears to exist. (It does, but we have to look harder.) And their (false, in my view) claim to the label of “socialist” means that even to talk about a better system than capitalism is to enter a linguistic, definitional, and substantive political minefield.

The only scientific response we can give (if one were at all possible) to the question of what social systems are compatible with human nature is that we have no idea. We know some lower bounds but have no clue as to upper bounds. It seems clear that human tendencies and potentials may or may not flourish depending upon the environment, the institutions in which they develop — we do not know how far. We can say that human nature is capable of supporting vastly morally and politically better systems than have been thought possible for most of history. Moreover we have multiple previous instances of false announcements of the “end of history”. It would be extraordinary if that were actually the case today.

Can our “collective egoism” be transcended? Of course we all hope so. But we have no idea. All we can say maybe is that the collective of the egoism does seem to be historically broadening in scope — and, probably, largely due to social movements against war and for international solidarity. In truth we have very little evidence as to how human beings would live in a democratic, participatory economy, free of the authority of the boss, of the shareholder, greed, the profit motive, the authoritarianism of property, and all the deadening and infantilizing pressures and incentives that come with a market system. Such a situation has barely ever existed. We have some evidence that it is possible, from a few isolated historical examples, usually crushed by military force at the disposal of power.

And so it does not seem that history has foreclosed on us yet. I would say there is still a light upon the hill.

But still I would say that human history is not necessarily a staircase to utopia. It does not automatically progress; on the contrary. It is made by women and men, who make choices about how they act and how they live their lives. The trajectory of a society can be changed, or perhaps, perturbed from its orbit; existing habits and institutions exercise a stranglehold over much of how people act and think. Marx seems right when he says that “Men [and Women!] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under circumstances of their own choosing, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.” But they must make it; it is not done for them, and it is their struggle to do so.

In the case of those seeking a better economic system, reflecting on the 20th century, and its culmination in the events of 20 years ago today, again to paraphrase Marx, the weight of history hangs like a nightmare over the brains of the living.

Of course we can only be glad at the fall of the authoritarian communist regimes. We are glad they are gone. But today, a day of capitalist triumphalism, relentlessly repeating that greed has conquered the earth, is not a day for optimism. And, on any rational analysis, optimism is hard to find. Rationally speaking, the human race usually appears (and is) headed towards disaster.

But if we do not force ourselves into an optimistic orientation, we guarantee the worst. This is Gramsci’s optimism of the will.

Looked at another way, the potentials are clear. We have the technology to avert catastrophic global warming; we just need to implement it. We have technology progressing beyond our comprehension. We have a world fed up with capitalism, and yearning for something more: everywhere we look, in mainstream thought but even in popular culture, figures of power are demons and their system is leading us to doom. The institutions of global capitalism are no more than a few decades old, they are historically young. We have increasingly unified movements to oppose them, in spite of a vast propaganda apparatus to the contrary. We need a vision of what we want to achieve in this wondrous, still-young world, and then we can go out and build it for all the world.

And
if we make it out of this century intact, who knows what we may achieve? It seems to me, therefore, imperative to ensure that we do.

Socialism as saintliness

As part of my ongoing efforts to understand humans, I recently read William James’ “The Varieties of Religious Experience”. (Now, if only there were a book “The Varieties of Capitalist Experience”!) As you might expect, I do not share James’ views on most things, but several passages are highly interesting.

Now, some of the following seems clearly wrong: Quakerism for instance seems to me to be perfectly compatible with non-violent resistance. And, it may grate upon the non-religious among you (it did on me a little): I would read “salvation” as something purely ethical, although James means something more.

And, as friends have pointed out, this is a highly exclusive version of socialism. Socialism, if it is anything, is democratic and inclusive, in which all can have their say, not only in the legislative-political but also in the economic realm.

Moreover, as religious friends have pointed out, the “doormat Christianity” of turning the other cheek, as it is usually understood, is not faithful to the original text of the gospels, which preach non-violent resistance, rather than no resistance at all.

BUT in any case, note that at the end he considers utopian socialists as the secular version of this saintliness, as an exemplary, visionary orientation. I would disagree with his unsupported judgment about practicability — indeed he seems to be entirely contemptuous of them — but the general characterisation to me seems valid. Note some of the language is surprisingly modern; this was written in 1901-2, but the “world yet to be born” is straight out of Arundhati Roy, and the “creative social force” and “potentialities for human development” are fairly modern socialist or anarchist formulations, I would say. The vanguard imagery (torch bearers! drops flung ahead of the crest of a wave!) is perfectly overblown, straight out of orthodox Marxism-Leninism — of course this is “vanguardism” in its defensible sense of exemplary moral character, not the apologetics for Leninist authoritarianism with which that word has long been tainted.

The creation of a socialist heaven on earth, regardless of the existence of a heaven per se, of course is much older, as old as socialism itself — an animating vision of all revolutionary and
transformative politics.

And, the “facets of the character-polyhedron” is an awesomely geeky formulation. What is this earth thing you call love?

Passage follows.

“
[S]aintliness has to face the charge of preserving the unfit, and breeding parasites and beggars. ‘Resist not evil,’ ‘Love your enemies,’ these are saintly maxims of which men of this world find it hard to speak without impatience. Are the men of this world right, or are the saints in possession of the deeper range of truth?

No simple answer is possible…

As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors. The saint may simply give the universe into the hands of the enemy by his trustfulness. He may by non-resistance cut off his own survival.

… We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. The powers of darkness have systematically taken advantage of them. The whole modern scientific organization of charity is a consequence of the failure of simply giving alms. The whole history of constitutional government is a commentary on the excellence of resisting evil, and when one cheek is smitten, of smiting back and not turning the other cheek also.

You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers.

And yet you are sure, as I am sure, that were the world confined to these hard-headed, hard-hearted, and hard-fisted methods exclusively, were there no one prompt to help a brother first, and find out afterwards whether he were worthy; no one willing to drown his private wrongs in pity for the wronger’s person; no one ready to be duped many a time rather than live always on suspicion; no one glad to treat individuals passionately and impulsively rather than by general rules of prudence; the world would be an infinitely worse place than it is now to live in. The tender grace, not of a day that is dead, but of a day yet to be born somehow, with the golden rule grown natural, would be cut out from the perspective of our imaginations.

The saints, existing in this way, may, with their extravagances of human tenderness, be prophetic. Nay, innumerable times they have proved themselves prophetic. Treating those whom they met, in spite of the past, in spite of all appearances, as worthy, they have stimulated them to be worthy, miraculously transformed them by radiant example and by the challenge of their expectation.

From this point of view we may admit the human charity which we find in all saints, and the great excess of it which we find in some saints, to be a genuinely creative social force, tending to make real a degree of virtue which it alone is ready to assume as possible. The saints are authors, auctores, increasers, of goodness. The potentialities of development in human souls are unfathomable. So many who seemed irretrievably hardened have in point of fact been softened, converted, regenerated, in ways that amazed the subjects even more than they surprised the spectators, that we never can be sure in advance of any man that his salvation by the way of love is hopeless. We have no right to speak of human crocodiles and boa-constrictors as of fixedly incurable beings. We know not the complexities of personality, the smouldering emotional fires, the other facets of the character-polyhedron, the resources of the subliminal region… The saints, with their extravagance of human tenderness, are the great torch-bearers of this belief, the tip of the wedge, the clearers of the darkness. Like the single drops which sparkle in the sun as they are flung far ahead of the advancing edge of a wavecrest or of a flood, they show the way and are forerunners. The world is not yet with them, so they often seem in the midst of the world’s affairs to be preposterous. Yet they are impregnators of the world, vivifiers and animaters of potentialities of goodness which but for them would lie forever dormant. It is not possible to be quite as mean as we naturally are, when they have passed before us. One fire kindles another; and without that over-trust in human worth which they show, the rest of us would lie in spiritual stagnancy.

… If things are ever to move upward, some one must be ready to take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed. When they do succeed, they are far more powerfully successful than force or worldly prudence. Force destroys enemies; and the best that can be said of prudence is that it keeps what we already have in safety. But non-resistance, when successful, turns enemies into friends; and charity regenerates its objects. … [G]enuine saints find in the elevated excitement with which their faith endows them an authority and impressiveness which makes them irresistible in situations where men of shallower nature cannot get on at all without the use of worldly prudence. This practical proof that worldly wisdom may be safely transcended is the saint’s magic gift to mankind. Not only does his vision of a better world console us for the generally prevailing prose and barrenness; but even when on the whole we have to confess him ill adapted, he makes some converts…

In this respect the Utopian dreams of soci
al justice in which many contemporary socialists and anarchists indulge are, in spite of their impracticability and non-adaptation to present environmental conditions, analogous to the saint’s belief in an existent kingdom of
heaven. They help to break the edge of the general reign of hardness, and are slow leavens of a better order.
“

— William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 355-60

An appropriate orientation

“implacable to the whole system of official values: the ignobility of fashionable life; the infamies of empire; the spuriousness of the church, the vain conceit of the professions; the meannesses and cruelties that go with great success; and every other pompous crime and lying institution of this world.”

— William James, on Tolstoy

The antiwar movement in the large, and measuring it

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/measurenonprofit

I read this article and thought it was interesting. I had some comments on it, which pertain to the antiwar movement at large, so I thought I would share them. Make of them what you will.

1. Measuring is good when possible!

Being a scientist (and a mathematician at that), I like data. Observing and measuring is good. If you can find things to measure, more power to you.

However, I can see some difficulties in the context of the antiwar movement. In particular, some things are hard to measure; and more, some important or essential things that an activist group should be doing, might have completely zero short-term measurable effect. Some details follow.

2. The scale of antiwar goals.

To stop, or even prevent, a single war is a massive, world-historic event. To reduce the US national military budget, say to a level comparable to the rest of the world, even more so: that amounts to a total restructuring of the economy. To stop militarism, more so again: that is a culture and an economic and institutional inertia written deeply into american life. And, to stop jingoistic patriotism — the insane loyalty to a single geographic region with some arbitrary boundaries denoting the fates of long forgotten kings, emperors and imperialists who once carved up the earth for themselves — indeed amounts to a complete change of american life: so that every wave of the flag is met with curiosity or stupefaction, rather than with cheers and tears; so that the “american” in american life it more or less ceases to exist, to the extent it denotes anything more than a geographic location.

Make no mistake, the antiwar movement has these as goals, and not just in the US, but everywhere. They are not complete goals — a world with all these achieved might still be one of rank inequality, authoritarianism, and thwarted human life. One might argue they are best pursued alongside others — perhaps it can only be done along with a restructuring of the rules of international trade, greater international economic and political integration, debt forgiveness, the satisfaction of humanitarian and economic needs and so on; or more radically, the restructuring of the global economy, economic democracy, north-south reparations, finding a better economic alternative to capitalism, etc.

Nonetheless, the broad antiwar goals are goals for the long term. They chart a course for human history. Their time-frame is measured in centuries — even as the insanity and potential for catastrophe is so great as to demand that they be achieved now. Thus, one expects progress to be slow, even negligible; but one wishes, and needs, it to be done now.

Of course there are more local and immediate goals too, but the big picture must always be kept in mind, where measurable progress can be expected to be indistinguishable from zero even in the best possible case.

3. Sometimes vast changes happen unpredictably — in the meantime, ideas are important.

Events like the founding of the United Nations and the end of the cold war were world-changing — and entirely unpredictable a few years beforehand. Nobody would have advocated the second world war, or (say) the invasion of Afghanistan, in order to achieve these goals. The end of the second world war was indeed the impetus for the founding of the UN, but it is a superficial reading of history to regard that as the sole cause. These were not mere elite decisions, not merely the brokering of power by beloved leaders.

The creation of the United Nations built upon a century of pacifist organising and activism, the advocacy of various schemes of international integration, agitation for the outlawing of war (achieved in 1928 by the Briand-Kellogg pact, and today binding on all nations as customary international law), and the work of organisations like the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom. Nobody could have measured any progress whatsoever towards international integration until the first world war led to the League of Nations; and after its demise, again, until the second world war led to the UN. History is unpredictable, but the course of history depends upon the ideas and institutions that are in existence; the power of those ideas; and the balance of forces those ideas and their supporting institutions have at their disposal. By measurability standards the WILPFs and the Bertha von Suttners of the world are clearly zero or close to it. By the standards of history, they are monumental.

The conclusion must be that in political activism, the mere propagation of ideas — perhaps even the mere existence of active organisations working for those ideas — is of value in itself. Having an organisation, having people willing to meet regularly, putting time into the cause, in itself is something. Of course, the more people doing it, the wider the ideas spread, and the more clearly they are formulated and powerfully they are expressed, the better. Some of this may be measurable. But much of it surely cannot.

In any case I think, in the activist context, the proposition that no measurable effect implies no political effect is not always true.

4. Sometimes vast changes happen after long struggles — at the beginning, nothing was measurable.

An insistence on measurability would have stopped people speaking out against the Vietnam war for many years — as I recall, Kennedy first sent troops in around 1963 but the protest movement did not pick up until the end of the decade. Recall the stories of Chomsky and fellow activists going to speak every weekend, I think at the Boston Common — with a significant police presence, not to beat up the antiwar protestors (as we see more usually today!), but to protect Chomsky and company from being beaten up by pro-war onlookers. An absolutely hopeless situation — and disorganised at that — but without this sort of persistence, the later massive movement could never have arisen.

More generally, the situation for most serious activists — those antagonistic to power, to received ideology, and not subservient to some faction of power (like the CAP Shwarz refers to) — almost always seems hopeless. Power is strong by definition, it has legions of unthinking supporters, and no shortage of subservient academics, pundits, and intellectuals. Challenging a political and intellectual hegemony is tough work! The best approach however seems clear: have a realistic analysis, but do what is required for the cause and for the good. As Gramsci put it: pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.

History shows that it can be done. And, often it is drastic. The pace of change can quicken, dramatically. Ideas can be widespread, and regarded as good, just as impractical. Many people are not prepared to act until they believe that others are prepared to act. Political action is self-referential, at least at first, its philosophy is logically circular, as with much of social life — but it happens. And it cannot happen without an impetus that is non-measurable up to the instant it occurs, collapsing the nesting of logical brackets, and making a reality of the common knowledge that we think other people think we think they think.

5. The local situation may also make measurability hard.

None of this is to say that measurable effects should not be noted where possible, just that good work may not always have short-term measurable consequences. For campus organising, I can think of some sorts of measurements that could be made. But thinking about it, the same problems seems to apply even to goals local to a single campus. Getting the local war criminal prosecuted would be monumental in US history. Stopping, or placing further institutional limits on, military research would be a massive shift in the direction of the whole university — one can well argue, a
t least to a first approximation, that Stanford built itself into a world-class institution precisely by taking government money for military-related research. Moreover, current military research on campus is institutionally protected by white-washed reports and “academic freedom” and runs together with the vast sums of “defence”-related money supporting the economy of not just Stanford, but the entire country — military Keynesianism.

In addition, arguably the low-lying fruit (no classified research on campus, no ROTC on campus, for example) have already been won by movements long ago (well, the 1970s!).

But, the general idea seems fine. Activist groups should have identifiable goals, visions, and so on. And activist groups should not be wasting their limited time and resources by doing things which do not help their cause — or by not helping their cause as much as they potentially could.

I would just say to be on guard that too much of a focus on short-term measurability could potentially detract from the sort of cultural and ideological change that is, in the long run, central to any antiwar, or anti-imperialist, or pacifist mission, and which seems nigh impossible to measure objectively.

PhD Thesis

In 2009 I completed my PhD at Stanford. I submitted my thesis “Chord diagrams, contact-topological quantum field theory, and contact categories” on August 21, 2009.

A local pdf is available here (1.3 MB, 229 pages).

I defended my thesis on May 29, 2009. I gave a beamer presentation; the slides are available here (4.5 MB).

thesis thesis_defence

Information and actions, nuclear weapons, indefinite detention

1. Nuclear Weapons

Obama has made several rhetorical commitments to nuclear disarmament; there is also an ongoing Nuclear Posture Review. Now is the time to push him to do something substantial about it.

From the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation:
Video — U.S. Leadership for a Nuclear Weapons-free World
http://www.wagingpeace.org/

Tell President Obama to Make Dramatic Nuclear Cuts
http://capwiz.com/wagingpeace/issues/alert/?alertid=13704431

From TrueMajority:
A Nuclear Free World
http://act.truemajorityaction.org/t/120/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=33

From Peace Action:
Petition to President Obama for Nuclear Weapons Abolition
http://www.peace-action.org/nukes/campaigns/nptpetition.htm

From the Union of Concerned Scientists:
President Must Match Actions to Words on Nuclear Weapons
https://secure3.convio.net/ucs/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=2095

2. Indefinite detention

The Obama justice system
by Glenn Greenwald
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/08/obama/index.html

Petition from Amnesty:
Stand Against President Obama’s Proposed Indefinite Detention Regime
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=12497&ICID=T0906A02&tr=y&auid=5026108

Petition from ACLU:
Stop Indefinite Detention
https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?amp;cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=1625

The end of the Golden Shield

The NY Times reports on newly leaked emails from within the Department of Justice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/us/politics/07lawyers.html?_r=1&hp

Discussed further by Glenn Greenwald.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/07/torture_memos/index.html

These leaks further support and strengthen various arguments already made by those calling for accountability, including ourselves — and of course, the arguments made against other Bush administration officials as well.

In various discussions on Rice’s culpability, we have dealt with the possibility that, on trial for war crimes, Rice would point to the “torture memos” for exoneration, as supposedly independent legal advice. In response, we (and the prosecution) would argue that that is not a proper characterization of the facts. We have argued, based on previous revelations, that the memos were written as “get out of jail free” cards. According to reports of National Security Council Principals Committee meetings in 2002, chaired by Rice, the memos were regarded as a “Golden Shield” for officials who feared prosecution. One can even make the case that the relevant lawyers and officials at the Department of Justice were complicit, in a conspiracy to torture.

So, in court, there would be a question to establish which narrative is accurate:

(1) Rice and others request disinterested legal advice; legal advice allows waterboarding etc. In this case, Rice and others might have a viable defence. After all, they are not lawyers, and deference ought to be accorded to the opinions of qualified lawyers within the government.

(2) Rice and others want to perform, have performed, waterboarding etc but need their “golden shield” of legal advice. They want, perhaps expect, administration lawyers in the department of justice to provide all necessary justifications. They request “get out of jail free” cards, crucially involving waterboarding. Despite the clear legal precedents that waterboarding is torture etc, obedient, perhaps complicit, lawyers provide justification. Where the justification is insufficient or not forthcoming, pressure is applied until the requisite degree of legal backing is given. In this case, the defence is not viable. The legal opinions are not in good faith, or created under pressure/duress, or dishonestly, or in complicity to torture. Rice and others (maybe including lawyers) go to jail.

How could a judge or jury choose between these narratives? There are crucial matters of fact that could help distinguish them.

Plainly, words like “golden shield” in Principals Committee meetings support narrative #2. The fact that waterboarding had happened prior to the memos, also. But clearly, much turns upon the communications between lawyers and the principals like Rice. In this regard, these emails are crucial new pieces of evidence. In particular:

A. Chronology and retrospectivity.

If interrogations happen before the legal justifications, that suggests they were written as retrospective justification. In general, lawyers (and the law) abhor retrospectivity. Lawyers do not like to write retrospective justifications, and if they do, they prefer to write them in general terms. Importantly, these emails reveal that the memos, although written in general terms, were effectively retrospective, and were regarded that way.

B. Evidence of pressure/reluctance.

The details of communications between the principals like Rice, and the lawyers, are crucial. The more reluctant lawyers are to provide these justifications, or disagree with them, the more narrative #1 sounds preposterous. As far as the individual lawyers are concerned, the reluctant ones are less likely to be found complicit, although perhaps the more likely their seniors are. These emails are the incarnation of one lawyer’s reluctance and reveal extraordinary pressure from the White House, and policy-makers in general.

I should add that Comey’s reluctance appears to be on extremely narrow and legally indefensible grounds; he also seems to neglect the mountain of precedent that waterboarding is torture and so on; he seems to be somewhere between gross dereliction of professional duty and complicity in torture. But the point remains.

These are not petty matters. They are crucial findings of fact which would probably be the central issue in a war crimes prosecution. And I think we have crucial evidence here which demolishes any remaining possibility of viability for the “get out of jail free card” defence for Rice and others.

Rice's nonsense on torture

Oh wow, I only got around to watching this video now, and from some of the comments I thought she must have been making some half-convincing arguments… nope!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijEED_iviTA&feature=channel_page

Well, first we upgrade al Qaeda to tyrants, okay. Then one gets the impression that the US homeland was not attacked in WWII. Those little incidents at Pearl Harbor and on the Aleutian islands are called bombing and occupation, to most people.

Then we are informed that 500,000 deaths in WWII is “no!” Why? Perhaps we should have got the figure correct to the precise soldier?

The problem with the internet is that you can actually find obscure references instantaneously. In this case, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) report on Guantanamo. Turns out, with ten seconds of google:

* the OSCE people were only allowed in on the condition of not actually interviewing any detainees! These same conditions were rejected by other human rights organisations, like Amnesty.

* and, the guy who led the OSCE team, Alain Grignard, with the Belgian federal police, thought detaining prisoners for years with trial was a form of “psychological torture”.

http://intelligence-summit.blogspot.com/2006/03/osce-guantanamo-better-than-belgian.html

“Did you know that? Alright, no, well wait a second, if you didn’t know that, maybe before you make allegations about Guantanamo, you should read.”

But it gets better!

CR: “The ICRC also had access to Guantanamo, and they made no allegations about inerrogations about Guantanamo. What they did say is that they beleived indefinite detention…”

What sort of access did the ICRC have? Does anybody remember? Like, there were some prisoners that were deliberately kept away from the ICRC? And, like, this was such an official policy that it was actually written into the operating manual for the prison, there was an official level given to each prisoner, and the top level were kept away from the ICRC?

In fact, you can read various versions of the manual online.

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Chaplain,_Red_Cross_Muzzled_at_Gitmo_in_2004

In any case, with its access, the ICRC did write a detailed report, which was leaked recently. Perhaps you might actually like to read what the ICRC *did* have to say.

http://www.nybooks.com/icrc-report.pdf

From the introduction, the very first paragraph:

“The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has consistently expressed its grave concern over the humanitarian consequences and legal implications of the practice by the United States (US) authorities of holding persons in undisclosed detention in the context of the fight against terrorism. In particular, the ICRC has underscored the risk of ill-treatment, the lack of contact with the outside world as a result of being held incommunicado, the lack of a legal framework, and the direct effect of such treatment and conditions on the persons held in undisclosed detention and on their families.”

It’s clearly a glowing report, with sections entitled “Suffocation by water”, “Prolonged stress standing”, “Beatings by use of a collar”, “Beating and kicking”, “Confinement in a box”, “Prolonged nudity”, and so on. And clearly none of this involves any allegations about interrogations, surely.

And here is an example of non-allegations about interrogations, from the summary, section 1, page 5:

“as outlined in Section 4 below, and as concluded by this report, the ICRC clearly considers that the allegations of the fourteen [detainees interviewed] include descriptions of treatment and interrogation techniques — singly or in combination — that amounted to torture and/or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

Can’t you see there are no allegations about interrogation?

And this is fantastic:

CR: “By definition, if it was authorised by the President, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.”

I didn’t know we had monarchists left in this country!

Hmm, I wonder which article of the Convention has the “President said so” defence? Dang, that could have come in handy for Pinochet’s lawyers when he was being extradited for torture under the same convention! Pity he didn’t notice that provision, having been President of Chile and all, since by definition anything he authorises doesn’t violate the convention!