Author: Justin Podur

I don’t use it too often, though perhaps I should — Al Jazeera reported today that the Arab League asked the international community to give Sudan time.

To put it mildly, this is rather underwhelming. So is the Sudanese government’s own line, that the US is ‘using’ the crisis in Darfur.

That the US is using it, and will use it, cynically and with no regard for the victims, is not in doubt (on July 22 the US Congress agreed that what was going on in Sudan was ‘genocide’ — something they never managed to do for Rwanda 10 years before; and let’s not forget al-Shifa, the pharmaceutical plant Clinton blew up in 1998). But the question is about the thing that is being used, not the US’s use of it, and the thing that is being used is very real and very horrific, according to the reports that are coming out, and despite the Arab League’s exhortations, it seems to me that time is the very thing that is not on the side of the victims of this assault.

All the details are difficult to get. But the Arab League’s position, that the onus is on the rebels to disarm, is untenable. The signs point to this being a war by government-backed militias against the population that won’t stop until the government is forced to call it off or the government has achieved its military, political, and economic objectives, probably having to do with displacing a large sector of the population.

You can read the UN Humanitarian Roundups at the Darfur Information Center to get an idea of what’s going on on the ground. The current concern is that the Sudanese government is trying to force hundreds of thousands of displaced people to go back to their homes, with no guarantees about not getting massacred.

CACI International, the mercenary firm accused of conspiring with fellow “subcontractor” Titan to actively engage in torture, abuse and other prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is the subject of yet another torture-related lawsuit. This brings the tally to two civil lawsuits and at least five (probably ineffectual) government investigations.

CACI is, needless to say, pulling out all the proverbial punches (why stop at literal punches) to defend itself against the “opportunistic” lawyers at the Iraqi Torture Victim Group. Check out the firm’s press release, to get an understanding of what true corporate spin is.

This latest lawsuit is being brought by a consortium of trial lawyers representing five Iraqis who say they were tortured while being held at Abu Ghraib. CACI, along with Titan, is being accused in the suit of the following practices:

-Acts of murder
-Violent physical assaults including being beaten while hung suspended off the ground by an arm or wrist
– Being held naked and forced to endure cold and the elements
– Being chained in a cramped position and forced to listen to loud music for sustained periods
– Being denied food and water for sustained periods
– Being urinated on
– Being photographed while naked and other humiliating situations
– Hearing and seeing other prisoners raped and sexually assaulted

– Being restrained and then forced to witness family members being beaten.

Worth noting is the following line from CACI’s retaliatory press
release: “The lawsuit filed against CACI is tantamount to an “ambulance
chasing” and “piling-on” activity in a blatant attempt to extort
financial gain.”

How utterly ironic. The company seems to forget itself. After all,
the only reason it is in the business of “interrogation” is to reap
financial gains — and as these lawsuits allege, by whatever means
necessary. CACI has been effective so far. In just three months,
between January 2004 and March 2004, CACI has added $16 million to its
bottom line. Its three-month revenue came in at $288.4 million, with
revenue specifically from US Department of Defense orders coming in at
$195.4 million.

Check out the company’s financials at any number of financial news Web sites to get a taste of how lucrative torture and interrogation can be. CACI’s ticker symbol is CAI. (Conspiracy theorists beware — don’t type in CIA).

Mandisi Majavu makes an argument for sanctions against Sudan for
its program of murderous ethnic cleansing in Darfur. Mandisi has been
following the situation there in his blog. Meanwhile, The Passion of the Present blog is
reproducing mainstream journals’ arguments for intervention. It quotes,
for example, a Washington Post Editorial that says the following:

“Sudan’s
government has attacked civilians with helicopter gunships. It has armed a militia that burns villages, slaughtering the men and raping the women. It has spent months obstructing humanitarian access to the resulting refugee camps, denying aid workers visas and impounding their equipment in customs, condemning tens of thousands of people to die for lack of food and medicine. Even the recent ramping up of diplomatic pressure, which has allowed relief to flow more freely, has not distracted Sudan’s government from its purpose. Its commandants have been closing down refugee camps and sending inhabitants off into the torched countryside, where there is no food, no protection and no
foreign witnesses.”

“Asking a government like this to provide security in Darfur is
like calling upon Slobodan Milosevic to protect Albanian Kosovars. The real solution is the reverse of the one Mr. Powell appears to believe in. Rather than summoning Sudan’s government into Darfur to protect refugees, the United States should be calling upon the government to pull back from the region. Just as was the case in Kosovo, security in Darfur is going to require a foreign presence, preferably an African one that builds on the small African Union observer mission that is already in the region. Mr. Powell may fear that calling for such a force is risky: What if no Africans come forward, and the job of peacekeeping falls to the United States? But the secretary must weigh that risk against the opposite one. What if Sudan’s government maintains control of Darfur and uses it to exterminate hundreds of thousands of people?”

This line: “Asking a government like this to provide security in Darfur is like calling upon Slobodan Milosevic to protect Albanian Kosovars.” Or, one could add, asking Israel to protect Palestinians, the US to protect Iraqis…

For the record, I think Mandisi is right. I believe the Sudanese regime is unleashing its militias on Darfur because it feels a free hand to do so after signing the separate peace with the SPLA, the main insurgency that was a real rival. The victims of the militias in Darfur have no such protection — but the Sudanese government could call the whole thing off in a second if it wanted to, if the international community said clearly that the game was up. Maybe a better analogy is Indonesia in East Timor in 1999, a slaughter and collective punishment that it wouldn’t have taken bombing to stop, just a word from the US to the Indonesian generals.

A friend just sent me this article from the Los Angeles Times with a bit more detail on the source and context of Bush’s hypocritical filth on Cuba (I apologize for using euphemisms in the description). It’s been a few days since I’ve seen any technical difficulties so I’m going to try to get back to normal blogging. Since the LA Times requires registration, I’m reproducing the article below.

Bush Took Quote Out of Context, Researcher Says
Student whose paper on Castro was used in a speech is ‘annoyed.’ He says the president misconstrued the Cuban leader’s stance.
By Maura Reynolds

Times Staff Writer

July 20, 2004

WASHINGTON — Like many scholars, Charles Trumbull hoped that one day his work would attract attention in high places. So you might think he’d be thrilled that someone in the White House used one of his research papers to draft a speech for President Bush last week.

But he’s not.

In a hotel conference room in Tampa, Fla., on Friday, Bush told law enforcement officials that Fidel Castro was brazenly promoting sex tourism to Cuba.

“The dictator welcomes sex tourism. Here’s how he bragged about the industry,” Bush said. “This is his quote: ‘Cuba has the cleanest and most educated prostitutes in the world.’ ”

Asked about the source for the quote, White House officials provided a link to a 2001 paper, written by Trumbull, on the website of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy.

At the time he wrote the paper, Trumbull was a Dartmouth College undergraduate, and the paper won a prize from the association as the best student paper of the year. Now a law student at Vanderbilt University, Trumbull does not remember the source for the wording of the Castro quote, which he did not footnote.

“I don’t know why I don’t have a footnote for that,” said Trumbull, 24, who is clerking this summer for a federal judge in Puerto Rico. “That was before I was in law school and understood that you have to footnote everything.”

Trumbull says the quote was probably a paraphrase of comments the Cuban leader made in 1992, which have been oft-repeated and seem to have taken on a life of their own.

But regardless of the exact wording, Trumbull says the president’s speech misconstrued the meaning, which he says should have been clear from his paper.

“It shows that they didn’t read much of the article,” Trumbull said in a telephone interview.

According to Trumbull, who conducted field research in Cuba, prostitution boomed in the Caribbean nation after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, providing an important source of currency for the Cuban economy. Castro, who outlawed prostitution when he took power in 1959, initially had few resources to combat it. But beginning around 1996, Cuban authorities began to crack down on the practice.

Although prostitution still exists, Trumbull said, it is far less visible, and it would be inaccurate to say the government promotes it.

Even when Castro made the remarks, Trumbull said, he was not boasting about Cuba’s prostitutes as sex workers.

“Castro was merely trying to emphasize some of the successes of the revolution by saying ‘even our prostitutes our educated,’ ” Trumbull said. “Castro was trying to defend his revolution against negative publicity. He was in no way bragging about the opportunities for sex tourism on the island.”

On Monday, administration officials acknowledged that they did not have a source for the wording of the president’s citation other than Trumbull’s paper. A White House spokeswoman defended the inclusion, arguing it expressed an essential truth about Cuba.

“The president’s point in citing Castro’s quote was to highlight Castro’s morally corrupt attitude to human trafficking,” White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said. She pointed to two other instances in which Castro boasted of the education level of Cuba’s prostitutes; in neither case was the context a direct promotion of sex tourism.

The speech “was vetted the same way all the president’s speeches are vetted,” Buchan said, declining to provide details.

A State Department official familiar with the matter said the Cuba material was added to the speech at the last minute. He said the White House contacted the department no more than a day before the speech and asked for material on human trafficking in Cuba. A quick search of the Internet turned up Trumbull’s paper; the official said there was inadequate time to find the original source for Castro’s quote.

The State Department official later found the original quote, which he acknowledged was much less succinct than the president’s version.

“There are hookers, but prostitution is not allowed in our country,” Castro told Cuba’s National Assembly in July 1992, according to a translation by the British Broadcasting Corp. “There are no women forced to sell themselves to a man, to a foreigner, to a tourist. Those who do so do it on their own, voluntarily…. We can say that they are highly educated hookers and quite healthy, because we are the country with the lowest number of AIDS cases.”

Trumbull described himself as “annoyed” by the use the White House made of his project. “It is really disheartening to see bits of my research contorted, taken out of context, and used to support conclusions that are contrary to the truth,” he said.

Julia Sweig, a Cuba expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said it was one thing for an undergraduate to include an unsubstantiated quotation in a college paper, but it was another for the White House to include one in a presidential speech.

“That’s incredibly sloppy, and it shows that when it comes to Cuba policy, they are willing to cut huge corners,” Sweig said.

Bush’s standing with Cuban Americans — a crucial segment of supporters in the battleground state of Florida — has taken a hit in recent months. Critics have accused Bush of reneging on promises to crack down harder on the Castro regime. Some Republican state lawmakers even wrote the White House, suggesting the president risked losing support among Cuban Americans if he did not act.

In response, the Bush administration this spring unveiled rules limiting Cuban Americans’ packages and visits to Cuba, which officials said would hurt Castro. But some Cuban Americans say the new rules punish them by restricting their contact with relatives.

“They took a hit on their Cuba policy, so [the president’s remark on sex tourism] was an effort to make up lost ground,” Sweig said.

——————————————————————————–
Times staff writers Peter Wallsten and Kathleen Hennessey contributed to this report.

Another one a few days old now — technical difficulties, of
course. But maybe you heard the latest round of Bush slanders and lies to justify violence? Nope, I’m not talking about the garbage about Iran’s ‘link’ to 9/11 (in which Iran is ‘linked’ because the hijackers traveled through Iran… didn’t they all travel through the US too?) No, this one is about Castro, who apparently, and this is right out of Bush’s mouth, promotes ‘sex tourism’.

Continue reading “The vile regime and its sex tourists”

Anne Petter, a Jewish-American ISM activist, was allowed to enter Israel after a month in detention. Jamie Spector, a Jewish American ISM activist, was not — and was deported instead.

There appear to be some glitches (I still get the odd ‘Action Canceled’ and ‘This Page Cannot Be Displayed’ when trying to do things) and some casualties (notably all the thoughtful comments and discussions we’ve had below these blog posts — how are commentors ever supposed to trust again?) but it appears that we are back in the blogosphere. With a moment to comment on three different Israel/Palestine related cases.

The first is only peripherally related to Palestine, or rather, its relationship to Palestine is ambiguous and the full extent is unknown. It is of a resolution to the Daniel Freeman-Maloy case. Readers might recall this student who was expelled from his campus for ‘unauthorized use of a sound amplification device’. Rather flimsy, no? Well the courts thought so, and essentially struck down the University’s ruling. The University is not sorry, according to their spokesperson Nancy White. Though I can’t help but suspect that White’s comment was an attempt at satire: “We think we’ve made our point, and people are now very well aware that the university is quite serious about following the code of conduct.” Since the University has violated its own procedures and has shown to be anything but serious about following any kind of rational procedures, no other interpretation than the comical one can follow.

Now that we’ve had our laughs, though, there are more serious matters.

There has been a court order to halt the destruction of the Palestinian village of Barta, near Jenin. Isn’t it a shame that we only hear about these places when they are being destroyed? Here is a report with a photo of the destruction (looks a little like my own photo from nearby Jenin, no?) from an ISM activist.

And finally, a district court judge in Tel Aviv released Jewish ISM activist Anne Petter after her 28 day long detention. Petter is not, of course, allowed to visit the Occupied Territories. This is a frequent condition slapped on people trying to enter, and an odd one, since if the idea is that these people are a threat to Israeli security, one would think they would be allowed only into the Occupied Palestinian Territories and not into Israel. But then, that would require Palestinians to have a border of their own… details below.

Welcome back aboard.

————

Press Release

Judge Releases American Peace Activist Protesting Israel’s Separation Wall

Judge Dismisses General Security Service’s “Security Threat” Claims

Tel Aviv
21 July 2004

Tel Aviv District Court Judge Oded Mudrik dismissed the state’s allegations that Ann Petter poses a security threat to Israel and might participate in terrorist activity, allowing Petter, American peace activist detained 28 days, entry into the state of Israel. Petter was traveling to Israel/Palestine to document protests against the Separation Wall that Israel is constructing in the West Bank, which was ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice on July 9.

The Judge called the State’s report “embarassing” and expressed reservations about the basis upon which the General Security Service recommended to bar Petter from entry. After he evaluated the secret evidence presented by the GSS behind closed doors, Judge Mudrik concluded that the GSS could not sustain their recommendation to deny the defendant entry based on involvement in terrorist activity or membership in an “extremist leftist organization.”

The Judge expressed doubt as to whether clear rules and regulations exist in the procedures of the Ministry of Interior that leaad to the recommendations denying people entry into Israel.

Petter will be released on bail on Friday under the conditions that she not enter the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Petter participated in a peace march last year organized by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which is a Palestinian-led movement working for Palestinian freedom and an end to the Israeli occupation.

Jamie Spector, a Jewish-American peace activist also denied entry into Israel, appeared in court this morning and the Judge will render a decision on Friday at 11:30 am at the Tel Aviv District Court.

This blog is experiencing technical difficulties. Were it not, I would have definitely pointed out Forrest Hylton’s post on the Bolivian referendum, in which he argues that the result of that referendum is neither as bad for the movements nor as good for the government as it looks. I would also probably have pointed out Vijay Prashad’s review of Bob Jensen’s review of F9/11. I linked to Jensen’s review because his criticisms were right — but Vijay’s views about the film are much closer to my own.

Another thing I would be doing if the blogs were not in technical difficulty is following the story in Gaza and the trouble in the Occupied Territories, with parts of the Palestinian Authority as well as other political groups revolting against the PA. I would have pointed out other things too — like the UN resolution on the Wall, which Israel is of course going to ignore; the scaled-up violence in Nablus, with brutal killings right in front of internationals and cameras, assassinations in Jenin and Gaza…

And a lot of other things besides. But, since the blog is experiencing technical difficulties, I’ll hold off and hope things get better soon.

One can never accuse Riggs Bank of lacking a global perspective. Indeed, the American financial institution’s expansive scope of malfeasance makes it an international player on the corrupt corporate scene. With dubious deals in Saudi Arabia, Chile and Equatorial Guinea, Riggs’ underhanded schemes span three continents – what an equal opportunity brigand. Where to begin?

A recent Senate inquiry into the bank’s dealings in Chile alleges that Riggs helped U.S. dictatorial darling Augusto Pinochet hide millions of dollars in the Washington, DC-based bank’s coffers between 1994 and 2002. The millions of dollars were apparently transferred from his London account into Riggs’ at the same time Pinochet’s henchmen were claiming the dictator didn’t have enough money to pay for legal fees and fines. Mind you, throughout the years Riggs serviced Pinochet, he was under a world-wide court order to keep his assets frozen and was being (finally) investigated for the countless human rights abuses he inflicted on the Chilean population. Riggs, of course, didn’t have a problem with that – his millions fattened their balance sheet. The Senate panel concluded that Riggs “appeared to take active steps to hide the Pinochet relationship from bank examiners.” Now that shows a bank’s commitment to its clients, no?

Now onto Equatorial Guinea, where Riggs helped facilitate, through over 60 different accounts, the exchange of huge monetary gifts between U.S. oil companies such as Exxon and Marathon and the country’s first family. Exploitation of the country’s vast oil, petroleum, timber, manganese, uranium, titanium and iron ore resources couldn’t have been easier. Riggs carried between $400 million and $700 million from the government of Equatorial Guinea on its balance sheet during a time when, according to the Senate panel, there was “evidence suggesting the bank was handling the proceeds of foreign corruption.” Something about up to $700 million being in Riggs’ account from a country, which in 2001 took in $200 million in revenue (as recorded on its budget), just doesn’t add up.

Finally, for kicks, let’s rehash the recent past and mention Riggs’ $25 million fine after it was found at the heart of a Saudi Arabian money-laundering scheme.

Here are some interesting tidbits about this exemplary financial institution: Riggs is colloquially known as the bank of U.S. presidents; its chief, billionaire Joe Allbritton, is a long-time Bush family friend; and the bank has been at U.S. government’s beck and call for over a hundred of years, check out the timeline.

Here’s a good one that came via the Dominion. Apparently Gildan Activewear, one of the world’s leading T-shirt manufacturers, is closing its high-cost Honduras operation and moving the production to — Haiti! Why? The Honduran workers have been trying to unionize. After Gildan’s entry in Haiti and Nicaragua, Honduras became high-cost! Lucky for Haiti, its new police force (suspiciously like the old police force) and international occupation forces somehow seem to help it stay a low-cost place to make shirts.

You can read a little more about our friends at Gildan in this article by Stephen Kerr about Canada’s role in the Haitian coup.

MONTREAL — T-shirt maker Gildan Activewear Inc. is closing a major facility in Honduras that has been at the centre of a controversy over allegations of poor treatment of workers.

Company officials said yesterday the decision to shut the El Progreso plant, which employs about 1,800, is not connected to allegations regarding labour practices and is being made solely because of cost considerations.

“It’s purely an economically driven decision in light of our commitment to constantly driving down our cost structure,” chief financial officer Laurence Sellyn said.

“It became our highest-cost facility as we added sewing capacity in Haiti and Nicaragua,” he said.

But an official with a workers’ rights group yesterday questioned the logic of Gildan’s decision to shut the factory, saying it’s hard to believe the move isn’t related to the fact that workers have been trying to organize a union at El Progreso.

“What kind of message does this send to the workers? You try to organize a union, you try to exercise your internationally recognized rights and what happens? The plant is shut down,” said Lynda Yanz, a co-ordinator at the Toronto-based Maquila Solidarity Network.

Montreal-based Gildan employs about 5,000 people in Honduras, a favoured location for the garment trade because of its low-cost labour. Total worldwide employment at Gildan is about 9,500.

Gildan recently joined the Fair Labor Association, a U.S.-based labour rights organization that has prepared a report based on an independent audit of company practices in Honduras.

A second report, based on an audit that was done without the company’s collaboration, has also been prepared by another group, the Worker Rights Consortium.

Mr. Sellyn said Gildan has addressed several of the concerns raised in the FLA report, but he would not disclose what they are, saying only that they weren’t major.

However, the Quebec Federation of Labour’s Solidarity Fund, the province’s biggest labour fund, conducted its own investigation last year and concluded that Gildan fired about 40 workers involved in union organizing at the El Progreso facility.

The fund is selling its 11.2-per-cent stake in Gildan in protest.