In one of the most despicable incidents of the United States’ 14-year war in Afghanistan, U.S. troops bombed a hospital in Kunduz, killing 22 people, including patients, three children, and medical personnel from Doctors Without Borders, or MSF. Thirty-seven people were injured, including 19 staff members in the Oct. 3, 2015, attack.
U.S. forces knew they were targeting a hospital because MSF, as it does in all conflict contexts, had provided its exact GPS coordinates on multiple occasions over the past months, including most recently on Sept. 29. There was a nine-foot flag on the roof that identified the building as a hospital. After the first strike, MSF contacted U.S. officials and reported the hospital was being bombed and begged them to halt the attack. Nevertheless, the U.S. AC-130 gunship continued to pummel the hospital repeatedly for more than one hour.
“Our patients burned in their beds,” said MSF International President Joanne Liu. “Doctors, nurses and other staff were killed as they worked.” She added, “Our colleagues had to work on each other. One of our doctors died on an improvised operating table – an office desk – while his colleagues tried to save his life.”
In attempting to explain why they had bombed a hospital, U.S. military leaders changed their story four times. On Saturday, the day of the bombing, U.S. spokesman Col. Brian Tribus said the strike occurred “against individuals threatening the force. The strike may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility.” On Sunday, Gen. John Campbell, U.S.-NATO commander in Afghanistan, claimed the strike occurred “against insurgents who were directly firing upon U.S. service members … in the vicinity of a Doctors Without Borders medical facility.” On Monday, Campbell announced, “Afghan forces advised that they were taking fire from enemy positions and asked for air support” and “several civilians were accidentally struck.” By Tuesday, Campbell said, “the decision to provide aerial fire was a U.S. decision, made within the U.S. chain of command. A hospital was mistakenly struck. We would never intentionally target a medical facility.”
Since the Pentagon has access to video and audio recordings taken from the gunship, they must know what actually occurred. Daily Beast reported that the recordings contain conversations among the crew as they were firing on the hospital, including communications between the crew and U.S. soldiers on the ground. Moreover, AC-130 gunships fly low to the ground so the crew can assess what they are hitting.
But members of Congress who oversee the Pentagon have been denied access to the classified recordings.
Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states, “Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the parties to the conflict.”
International law expert Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, said, “The critical question for determining if US forces committed a war crime was whether they had notified the hospital ahead of the strike if they understood the Taliban to be firing from the hospital.”
MSF has said they were never notified that the hospital would be bombed. “Not a single member of our staff reported any fighting inside the MSF hospital compound prior to the U.S. airstrike on Saturday morning,” according to MSF General Director Christopher Stokes.
Parties to a military conflict have a duty to distinguish between civilians and combatants, and civilians and their facilities cannot be targeted. If the hospital were being used for military purposes, the strike must be proportionate to the military advantage sought, and the U.S. forces had a duty to warn the people inside the hospital that it would be struck. No one in the hospital said it was being used for military purposes, and even if it was, the U.S. forces never warned those in the hospital before striking it.
The U.S. strike was a precise attack on the hospital, because no other buildings in the MSF compound were hit. MSF executive director Jason Cone said, “I want to reiterate that the main hospital building where medical personnel were caring for patients was repeatedly and very precisely hit during each aerial raid while the rest of the compound was left mostly untouched. So we see this as a targeted event.”
MSF is demanding an independent investigation by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission (IHFFC), established under Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions. But the United States must consent to the investigation. The U.S. government says there are enough investigations – one by the Pentagon, one by a joint US-Afghan group, and one by NATO. But none of these is independent and impartial.
Historian and investigative journalist Gareth Porter has written three articles about three different internal investigations the U.S. military used to cover-up operations that should have led to criminal prosecutions against U.S. officers. Why should we believe that this will be any different?
The Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court provides several bases for war crimes prosecution. They include willful killing; willfully causing great suffering or serious bodily injury; intentional attacks against civilian or civilian objects; intentional attacks with knowledge they will cause death or injury to civilians when clearly excessive in relation to the anticipated military advantage; and intentionally attacking medical facilities which are not military objectives. Although the United States is not a party to the Statute, there could be jurisdiction over U.S. leaders if the Security Council referred the matter to the Court. That will not happen because the United States would veto such a referral. If US leaders are found on the territory of a country that is a party to the Statute, that country could send them to The Hague, Netherlands for prosecution. But the Bush administration blackmailed 100 countries into signing “bilateral immunity agreements,” promising they would not send US nationals to The Hague on penalty of losing U.S. foreign aid.
Other countries can prosecute foreign nationals under the well-established doctrine of “universal jurisdiction.” But since Bush initiated his war on Iraq, no nation has been willing to incur the wrath of the United States by maintaining such an action against a U.S. leader.
Nick Turse and Bob Dreyfuss documented the killing of as many as 6,481 Afghan civilians by U.S. forces from October 2001 through 2012. The U.S. government has killed large numbers of civilians in its drone attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen. But Obama rarely apologizes to or compensates the victims. It is only because a Western-based organization was hit and the attendant media coverage has been so overwhelming that led Obama to apologize to MSF.
MSF’s advance provision of the hospital’s coordinates to U.S. forces, its notifications during the bombing, its denial that any fire was coming from the hospital, and the Pentagon’s shifting rationales for the bombing constitute probable cause that a war crime was committed.
Obama should consent to a full, independent, impartial investigation of the hospital bombing by IHFFC. If that investigation shows that war crimes probably occurred, appropriate prosecutions of the U.S. chain of command should ensue.
A ruling ANC policy meeting has given its nod for South African plans to withdraw its membership of the International Criminal Court (ICC). This ‘landmark’ decision is bound to spur greater debate on the ICC and its ‘inherent biases’.
Let’s rewind a bit here.
At its national conference in 2012, South Africa’s governing party the African National Congress (ANC) resolved to engage with the International Criminal Court to seek amongst other matters the perceptions that the court treated African nations unfairly on matters of global justice.
The court was seen as only focused on Africa and no other continent. In the court’s 13-year history it has only brought charges against Africans.
In its resolution then, the ANC said; “As much as the ANC does not condone impunity, authoritarian and violent regimes, it is concerned about the perception of selective prosecution of Africans and urges the ICC to also pursue cases of impunity elsewhere, while engaging in serious dialogue with the AU and African countries in order to review their relationship.”
The ANC referenced cases of Ivory Coast and Sudan where the AU was engaged in peace building and ending of hostilities, during which the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) through the ICC engaged in interventions that could have scuppered the AU initiatives to put an end to hostilities.
In its 2012 resolution, the ANC called on the UN Security Council, which has referred some African cases to the ICC, to recognise the work done by the African Union, its Regional Economic Commissions and individual African countries to promote a peaceful end to and settlement of conflicts on the continent, the peace agreements signed and commitments made in regard to post-conflict justice.
It is worthwhile to remember here that none of the South African government’s proposals to make the court more representative and responsive to the continents multilateral African Union (AU) were ever adopted.
On Monday during its National General Council (NGC), ANC’s midterm policy review Congress noted the processes underway, under the auspices of the African Union, (including South Africa) to review Africa’s participation in the International Criminal Court.
The NGC has now moved further away from the 2012 resolution with its instructions to the South African government to start the process of withdrawing from the ICC.
South Africa is a signatory to the Rome Statute that set up the court.
The South African government of Jacob Zuma had been severely criticized for letting Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir evade an ICC arrest warrant in the country in June this year.
Zuma had hosted AU Heads of States and Governments in Johannesburg with al-Bashir in attendance.
During this time, the South African government was already arguing a matter in a court on the question of immunity for heads of states while leading their countries to multilateral meetings of the AU.
A South African court had ordered the government to ‘detain’ al-Bashir in the country whilst it deliberated on whether South Africa was obliged to arrest him.
In an earlier op-ed here, I argued that the government acted properly in not arresting the Sudanese leader.
The decision of South Africa’s ANC this past weekend should be seen as a part of Africa’s renewal and her demands to be heard and treated as an equal in global politics.
As Africa finds its voice and refuses to be colonized in commerce, justice and global politics, the next frontier will be her push for meaningful UNSC reforms to include her one billion population.
South Africa is seen as a front-runner for a permanent seat on the UNSC. The issue of UNSC reforms is inextricably linked to the ICC fallout as the UNSC controls much of ICC’s activities even though the majority of permanent members are not ICC state parties.
A month ago Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomed the Sudanese president in China as an “old friend”. Beijing, like Washington, is not a member of the ICC, although both are permanent UNSC members.
Instead, the ICC has been seen by many as a proxy tool of the US to further its narrow global hegemonic political interests and to even effect its policy on regime changes through the ICC itself. This has made this court unequal and inequitable in every sense.
The African Court for Human Rights is, conversely, widely regarded by the majority of African states as the better model to deal with cases of human rights abuse.
The ANC has demanded that all African cases currently before the ICC be transferred to this court.
This could see a likely release for former president of the Republic of Cote d’Ivoire, Laurent Gbagbo still held at The Hague. Most countries, especially in Africa, viewed France’s actions in his arrest unfair and unlawful.
South Africa has not only consistently shown the ability to negotiate and kick-the-can but has also been able to come up with global alternatives as seen in the formation of the BRICS bank as a counterweight to the unreformed International Monetary Fund.
South Africa’s BRICS partners India, China and Russia are not state parties to the ICC.
At the center of the South African move at ICC, is the demand for a representative global order and the ruling ANC is showing impatience with the dragging negotiations to achieve equitable balance amongst United Nations member states.
We should expect an enmasse ICC withdrawal of African states after this ANC decision. The age of African solutions for African problems has started. The notion of “nothing about us without us” is no longer reversible.
English speaking friends, here is the longer note I promised you yesterday. There is much more to write, but I need to turn to organising what we will do in our workplace tomorrow.
A double suicide bombing at a Trade Union organised peace march in Ankara on Saturday, October 10 killed over 100 people and injured over 500.
The march had been called by two trade union federations–DISK and KESK–, by the Chambers of Engineers and Architects and by the Turkish Medical Association. Hundreds of union-organised buses brought tens of thousands of people from all over Turkey to the assembly point near the Ankara railway station.
We gathered in front of Ankara railway station. While we were organising our contingent, distributing flags and banners and preparing to enter the line up for the march we heard a very loud double bang. People started to cry. We did what we could to stop panic and to get people to walk, not run, calmly away from the explosion. People had lost their shoes, their friends, their composure. As we moved away we saw human body parts lying on the ground, thrown there by the force of the explosions. We now realise we had been mid way between the two explosions and about 30 metres away from each.
We turned a corner and passed under the railway bridge. There we saw riot police approaching in full gear, but ambulances being kept waiting.
We now know that these riot police attacked those rescuing the wounded with tear gas and water cannon while the dead were still lying on the ground.
We had traveled from Istanbul to Ankara on a postal workers union bus. Before we could return to Istanbul, we needed to wait for everyone to be accounted for. Finally one postal worker whose leg had been shredded by shrapnel from the bomb arrived in a taxi. We had to lift him up the stairs into the bus. They hadn’t even given him a crutch in the hospital. We got word that the President of the number 9 branch of the Postal Workers Union was in intensive care. With heavy hearts, we set off home.
This is the latest in series of violent provocations that have occurred since it became clear that the HDP (Peoples Democratic Party) was going to get enough votes in the June 7 general election to deny President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the parliamentary majority he needed to impose a Putin-style executive presidency. Before the election, there were 170 violent attacks on HDP offices, bombings of HDP offices in Adana and Mersin, then the bombing of the final HDP election rally in Diyarbakir [June 5, 2015], killing four people.
Erdogan’s AK Party have made a pact with the devil in the shape of Turkey’s deep state, the secret apparatus within the security forces that was responsible for the years of terror in the 1990s when thousands were the victims of “murder by persons unknown” or simply disappeared, their bones dissolved in acid wells.
Just as in the 1990s, killings blamed on “terrorists” provoke fear and hatred. Years later, it turns out that they were not the work of “terrorists” but carried out, or ordered, or arranged by the deep state.
The single most important act that preceded the turn to an intensification of violence in Turkey and the end of the two year ceasefire with the PKK was the bombing at Suruç [July 20, 2015] which killed 33 young socialist activists. Prime Minister Davutoglu now makes the absurd claim that the government “caught the person responsible”. It was a suicide bombing. No living person has ever been held to account, despite the fact that the bomber was being tracked by the security forces. The bombing was blamed on Islamic State although the notoriously publicity hungry Islamic State has never claimed responsibility, despite BBC claims to the contrary. The bomber may or may not have believed that he was acting for Islamic State, but no actual connection has been established.
It was an intervention by the United States after Suruç that began the intense government violence that we now live with every day. In exchange for use of the Incirlik air base in South Eastern Turkey by U.S. warplanes to bomb Syria, the U.S. gave the green light to bombing raids by Turkish war planes on Kurdish targets inside Iraq and in Turkey.
Now, town by town, city by city the security forces of the Turkish state are declaring curfews, attacking the population and arresting local elected officials. They are attempting to force election officials to declare that the election cannot be safely carried out in these districts where the HDP gets 80-90% of the vote.
But all of this violence and repression appears not to be working. Opinion polls show no fall in the support for the HDP. If anything, support among the embattled Kurds is increasing. Support for the HDP among Turks and other ethnic groups is not falling, either.
The response of the government, the president, and the forces of Turkey’s “deep state” with whom they have made an alliance, is to step up the violence even further.
Every week, the violence, the repression and the suppression of free speech is increasing. HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtas was due to speak on Bugün, a small TV channel this week. 24 hours before the broadcast, that channel and seven others were removed from the Digiturk TV satellite by order of the public prosecutor for “supporting terrorism”. One of the channels was a children’s channel.
Which brings us to the bombing in Ankara.
The government has not declared three days mourning for the victims in Ankara. It has declared three days mourning for the Ankara victims and the police, soldiers and paramilitary village guards who have died since July. Notably, the civilians who have died in the Kurdish areas in the same period were not included. In his statement about the bombings, Prime Minister Davutoglu started by posing the PKK as a possible culprit, followed by a left guerilla group and only then Islamic State. He spent 20 out of 30 minutes of his statement attacking the HDP.
In response to Davutoglu’s attacks, HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtas said “We are Turks and we are Kurds, we are soldiers, we are police. We are the ones who die. We know what your children get up to. They don’t die. We die. And you are responsible.”
Behind the descent of the Turkish government into violent attacks on its own population lies the policy of intervention in the civil war in Syria. Within the context of all the foreign interventions in Syria, the Turkish government has tried to pursue its own interests, and turn a profit by acting as proxy for Saudi Arabian and Qatari intervention in Syria.
Now the Turkish government is getting backing from the U.S. for its attacks on the Kurds by offering use of the Incirlik air base. And also blackmailing the European Union into supporting Turkey’s regional ambitions by threatening to open the doors to allow the two million Syrians who are being denied proper refugee status in Turkey to cross the border into Europe.
The hands of the EU and U.S. are dirty. They have always stood behind repressive regimes in Turkey and approved every military coup in Turkey’s history. Now their interventions in Syria are also responsible for fueling the rising death toll in Turkey. We have suffered 600 dead since the June 7 election.
The massacre in Ankara may be blamed on the Islamic State. The real culprits are closer to home. Bombing Syria is no solution. It will strengthen Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and increase the murderous activities of the deep state in Turkey.
Using events in Turkey as an excuse for voting for British bombing of Syria would be dangerous hypocrisy.
Now the unions and associations that called Saturday’s peace demonstration have called a general strike for Monday and Tuesday. The divided nature of the unions in Turkey means that this general strike will not bring life to a stop in Turkey. It will, however, be an opportunity in the work places and on the streets to build the unity of the exploited from different ethnicities and beliefs against the elites who want to defend their power by having us die fighting one another. This class unity is the only way forward for Turkey and for the whole of the Middle East.
Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has declared that there will be a thorough investigation of the recent U.S. destruction of a hospital in Afghanistan that killed 22, including 12 of the medical staff, with more than thirty still missing in the rubble. The hospital, run by Geneva-based Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders), had informed the U.S. headed international military force of both its location and its activities in order to avoid becoming a target for either side in fighting around Kunduz but that apparently was not enough. The U.S. military command in Afghanistan approved the bombing, which reportedly included multiple attacks from a C-130 gunship and lasted over half an hour, though there is some confusion over what constituted the “threat” that was being responded to, MSF claiming that there were no Taliban militants anywhere near their building either using it for shelter or as a firing point. Both MSF and some senior United Nations officials regard the attack as a war crime. President Barack Obama uncharacteristically apologized for a “mistake” though he took pains not to blame the U.S. military.
Ashton might be a brilliant physicist but he has never been a soldier in spite of his long service in the Department of Defense. I don’t doubt his good intentions when it comes to declaring United States government willingness to let the chips fall where they may but he has no idea what he is up against. The uniformed military will stonewall, run circles around him and work hard to construct a narrative that ultimately blames no one but the Afghans for what happened. In the unlikely event that they fail in that, a soldier at the low end of the process will be punished with a slap on the wrist to demonstrate that military justice works while pari passu protecting the senior commanders. And the report will not even appear until long after Kunduz is forgotten. At that point Congress and the White House will have no stomach for going after our valiant warriors so the buck will ultimately stop with a toothless report that accomplishes nothing at all.
The Secretary of Defense, who reportedly had a dual major at Yale that included medieval history, might well consider the historical precedents for his initiating an investigation. He should appreciate above all that the “A” word that must never be spoken inside the United States government is “accountability,” which is by design as the government must never be made to look bad. Without demanding accountability even meticulous investigations into possible war crimes have no meaning and are literally not worth the paper they are written on.
Carter’s historical review might well start with the massacre of more than 500 civilians at My Lai during the Vietnam War, which was only investigated by the army after journalist Seymour Hersh got hold of the story, leading to the current practice of embedding journalists to control the narrative. More recently there was Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi prison operated by U.S. forces and intelligence agencies in 2003. Systematic physical abuse of prisoners was widespread, to include rape, anal penetration with foreign objects, being hung from hooks, and even murder. Much of the evidence for the abuse was documented by photos and videos made by military personnel who supervised the process. The “enhanced interrogation” procedures used were sanctioned by Lieutenant General Richard Sanchez, who commanded U.S. forces, and were also endorsed by memos from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The White House maintained that the Geneva Conventions protecting prisoners and the International Convention Against Torture, to which the United States was a signatory, did not apply in Iraq.
The “thorough investigation” of the crimes committed at Abu Ghraib resulted in courts martial of a number of low ranking servicemen and women, only two of whom received short prison sentences. At the higher levels there were only administrative penalties and the demotion of General Janet Karpinski, who was in charge of all the prison camps in Iraq. Karpinski has insisted that she was scapegoated as the command structure above her had explicitly authorized the interrogation techniques.
An after-the-fact Pentagon ordered review of the prison and its procedures conducted by Major General Antonio Taguba concluded “That between October and December 2003, at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility (BCCF), numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees.” For his pains, Taguba was himself investigated after the report was leaked to the public. He observed “I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.” He was subsequently ordered to retire, a typical response of punish the messenger whenever the Pentagon decides that it has been embarrassed.
The White House denied and later sought to downplay the Abu Ghraib story. In 2004 President George W. Bush finally apologized after the evidence of war crimes became indisputable, saying that he was “sorry for the humiliation.”
CIA interrogators, as well as Israeli “advisers,” were also involved in the torture program at Abu Ghraib and reportedly killed at least one prisoner. But the Agency simultaneously had its own show running at a network of “black site” secret prisons in Europe and Asia, some of which were operating under the same procedural rules on “enhanced interrogation” that prevailed in Iraq. Prisoners were waterboarded, which simulated drowning, sometimes repeatedly. At least one prisoner died from freezing to death and others were subjected to “rectal rehydration.” The interrogators were advised that only procedures leading to “organ failure” were prohibited.
Jose Rodriguez, at the time CIA’s Deputy Director for Operations, ordered destroyed the video tapes that had been made of many of the interrogations, arguing absurdly that they could be used by enemies of the United States to identify the interrogators. He was more motivated, one should assume, by protecting his own circle of senior officers by destroying the evidence, which one might consider a successful outcome from his point of view.
The December 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee’s report reveals that no CIA officials have ever been reprimanded or held accountable in any way for using torture to interrogate detainees: “CIA officers and CIA contractors who were found to have violated CIA policies or performed poorly were rarely held accountable or removed from positions of responsibility. CIA managers who were aware of failings and shortcomings in the program but did not intervene, or who failed to provide proper leadership and management, were also not held to account [and] accountability recommendations were overruled by senior CIA leadership. As detailed in the study, there was no accountability for personnel responsible for the extended detention of individuals determined by the CIA to have been wrongly detained.”
Subsequently, the only known CIA participant in the “enhanced interrogation” regime to be punished was John Kirakou, imprisoned after exposing the existence of the program in 2007.
George W. Bush, even defended the interrogations in advance of the Senate report’s release last year, calling the CIA officials connected to it “patriots.” Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who pledged that if he had to do it all over again he would, reviled the report as “full of crap,” a “terrible piece of work” and “deeply flawed.”
More recently, a gaggle of retired senior CIA officials, most of whom were participants in the torture program, produced their own response to the Senate allegations. It is a short book called Rebuttal: The CIA Responds to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Study of Its Detention and Interrogation Programs.
The CIA’s response goes something like this: the Senate report on torture was written by Democrats who were out to get the Agency and is therefore little more than a partisan hatchet job that targeted some senior officers. The book includes multiple assertions that the senators and their staffers willfully ignored things like “context,” which means that anything was permissible as everyone was terrified that a terrorist group based in Afghanistan was about to existentially threaten the United States.
As some of the book’s co-authors, to include former Director George Tenet, his deputies John McLaughlin, Jose Rodriguez, and Mike Morell, as well as the current Director of Central Intelligence John Brennan, were part and parcel of the process approving and implementing the enhanced interrogation procedures, one would have to believe that they have a lot to answer for. But instead of accountability we now have a book sugarcoating how and why the United States chose the dark side, a book written in expectation that a considerable hunk of the public will continue to believe that torture not only works but also that it is perfectly acceptable when a nation is “under stress” as it was after 9/11.
Both the public and the authors would prefer not to consider that opening the door to torture as official policy provides justification for Washington’s actual enemies to do the same when they capture a U.S. citizen, something that every American traveler abroad might consider before setting out. And one might also marvel at a book by the CIA (which reviewed and approved the text) propagandizing its point of view on torture, something that is illegal as the Agency is forbidden from seeking to influence domestic opinion in the U.S.
Only in the United States would a book justifying torture written by a group of former senior government officials be taken seriously enough to find a readership or publisher, which is something that Ashton Carter should perhaps consider before he launches his investigation. No one was held accountable for what were indisputably war crimes committed with the complete approval of the U.S. government going all the way up to the White House level. And today many of the perpetrators are regarded as heroes.
As it is a given that no senior official or officer in the United States government will ever be held responsible for anything, instead of calling for an investigation Ashton Carter might just as well respond “Sure we bombed that hospital. What are you going to do about it?” Or even better “Accountability? That’s just a word that begins with ‘a.’”
When the Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan was attacked on Oct. 3 by a U.S. AC-130 gunship, it was not a unique event. Hospitals have come under fire during conflicts presided over by the two previous presidents as well as Barack Obama.
The Geneva Convention, to which the United States is a signatory, prohibits the targeting of hospitals. “Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict,” according to the treaty.
After the Kunduz attack, U.S. officials at first said Afghan forces had been taking fire from the building. Obama later apologized for the attack in which 22 patients and staff members were killed. Médecins Sans Frontières has called the attack a war crime and wants an independent investigation.
Hospitals also came under fire during the Iraq War under the George W. Bush administration. U.S. planes bombed a Baghdad maternity hospital in 2003, according to ThinkProgress. Several people were killed in the attack and 27 injured.
Nor were hospitals safe under Bill Clinton’s watch. NATO forces bombed a hospital in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1999, killing four. Technical problems were blamed for the attack. Also that year in Nis, Serbia, NATO dropped cluster bombs on an outdoor market and neighboring hospital, killing three in the hospital.
In 1993, U.S. and Turkish forces bombed the largest hospital in Mogadishu, Serbia, where Médecins Sans Frontières was working. Three patients were killed. The United Nations said the hospital was attacked because it was being used as a hideout by forces loyal to Gen. Mohammad Farah Aidid, the Somali military commander who had taken over the government in a coup.
Although the movement to stop honoring Christopher Columbus with a holiday is gaining support, most of white America would prefer to avoid the subject.
“Why does everything always have to be political with you?” a colleague asked, as I was railing against the U.S. federal holiday honoring Christopher Columbus.
The subject came up after the news that my modest hometown of Fargo, North Dakota, is considering a proposal to declare the second Monday of October “Indigenous People’s Day” instead of the traditional Columbus Day. Last year, Seattle and Minneapolis became the first major American cities to endorse the shift, and a movement is slowly building across the country, with the hope of one day having the federal holiday renamed.
Why make a simple long-weekend holiday a political issue? I’m not “making” it political — how we describe our history and who we claim as heroes are inescapably political because it reflects how we understand the world, and those choices reflect our values. If we want to live in a meaningful democracy, that’s politics — arguing about the values that shape public policy.
Some people dismiss such disputes as merely symbolic, but words and symbols matter. When I was growing up in Fargo, in school we sang the ditty that begins, “In fourteen-hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” which goes on to happily explain, “The Arakawa natives were very nice; they gave the sailors food and spice.” What did Columbus give those natives back? Slavery and death, mostly. The unsavory deeds of “The Great Mariner” may be unpleasant for the non-Indigenous inhabitants of the United States (such as me) to ponder, but it is a crucial part of our history whether we like it or not: Christopher Columbus initiated, and participated in, the European genocidal campaign against the Indigenous people of the Americas.
Although the movement to stop honoring Columbus with a holiday is gaining support, most of white America would prefer to avoid the subject, often suggesting that we find less provocative language to talk about Columbus and the conquest. In classes at the University of Texas at Austin, I make the point that there is no escape from making judgments about history by putting on the screen a simple sentence with a request that students fill in the blank:
“Columbus __________ America.”
When I was a grade-school student in the mid-1960s in Fargo, we filled in the blank with “discovered,” a word with political implications. If we say Columbus discovered America, we imply that other humans had yet to set foot on the island of Hispaniola, since a claim to discover something is a claim to be the first person to arrive. But since Columbus found the island inhabited by the Arawak-speaking Taino people, asserting that he and the other Europeans with him discovered America suggests that the Taino were not fully human, not capable of discovery. To use the word “discovered” in this context, then, is racist and ethnocentric. There is a politics to the choice of “discovered.”
Sometimes students will respond that “discovered” is just shorthand for “was the first European to discover.” But if that’s what is meant, then why not use the full phrase? Is it really crucial to save those five words? And if that is the case, would we be just as likely to describe the first Indigenous Americans’ trip to Europe by saying those folks discovered Europe? Even in the most charitable interpretation, the claim that “Columbus discovered America” is European-centric, and that is a political stance.
When I ask students to suggest another term, some come back with “conquered,” “colonized,” “destroyed,” or similar terms. A strong case can be made for choosing such words (I often use them myself), but they just as clearly have political implications, primarily a judgment that the actions of Columbus and other Europeans were immoral, illegal, or illegitimate in some fashion. There are obvious political judgments in the choice of those terms.
Students then offer a variety of terms that, on the surface, seem to avoid judgment: “encountered,” “engaged with,” or — my favorite of all the ones ever offered in class — “stumbled upon.” But those words, despite the appearance of neutrality, also carry a politics. I offer the students an analogy: Suppose some folks from another neighborhood roll into your part of town, make their way through the houses of you and your neighbors, steal everything of value, and kill or work to death everyone. Would you say that those newcomers “encountered” or “stumbled upon” your neighborhood? Such a seemingly neutral term would obscure the violence, and therefore would favor the marauders.
There’s no escape from history, nor from being responsible for the judgments we inevitably make about history.
This controversy is part of a larger problem in the United States, where people tend to be selective about how they use history. When people want to invoke some grand and glorious aspect of the past, then history is all-important. We are told how crucial it is for people to know history, and there is much hand wringing about the current generation’s lack of knowledge about, and respect for, that history. In the United States, we hear constantly about the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, the spirit of the early explorers, the determination of those who “settled” the country, the heroism of soldiers — and about how crucial it is for everyone to learn about these things.
But when one brings to a discussion of history those facts that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable — such as the nearly complete genocide of Indigenous people that was at the center of the creation of the United States — those same history-lovers will say, “Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?”
So, it appears that those parts of our history that prop up our sense of ourselves as a noble and righteous people are the proper focus of study and public comment; what’s important to know is what can be celebrated to make ourselves feel good. Those who also want to include in that discussion the uglier aspects of our past are accused of looking to cause trouble.
If by trouble, people mean trying to stimulate an honest conversation about how the United States came to be the most affluent nation in the history of the world, then I endorse trouble-making. An important step in understanding the violence of the United States around the world today is coming to terms with the violence of our past. As William Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
So, when the Fargo City Commission takes up the Indigenous People’s Day proposal on the recommendation of the city’s Native American Commission at its next meeting — which happens to be Monday (October 12), on Columbus Day — I’ll be taking the opportunity to talk politics, past and present.
Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. His books include Plain Radical: Living, Loving, and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully (Counterpoint/Soft Skull, 2015); and The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Jensen is also co-producer of the documentary film “Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing” (Media Education Foundation, 2009), which chronicles the life and philosophy of the longtime radical activist.
Nine cities in states across the US have pressed for resolutions to recognize October 12 as Indigenous Peoples’ Day rather than Columbus Day. Eight of those cities passed resolutions in the last two months and three adopted a resolution just this week.
The City Council of Albuquerque, New Mexico voted six to three on Thursday to recognize October 12 as Indigenous Peoples’ Day in a new proclamation:
“Albuquerque recognizes the occupation of New Mexico’s homelands for the building of our City and knows indigenous nations have lived upon this land since time immemorial and values the process of our society accomplished through and by American Indian thought, culture, technology.”
The proclamation noted 500 years of Indian resistance since the arrival of Christopher Columbus and marked the day “in an effort to reveal a more accurate historical record of the ‘discovery’ of the United States of America,” and to “recognize the contributions of Indigenous peoples despite enormous efforts against native nations.”
On October 7, the City Council of Lawrence, Kansas supported efforts from students from Haskell University to have the city honor their ancestors by declaring October 12 Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
On Tuesday, Portland’s City Council also declared Indigenous Peoples’ Day, something tribal leaders have been seeking since 1954, as did the City Council of Bexas County, Texas, according to US Uncut. Local San Antonio activists are pressing for the same.
In August, lawmakers in St. Paul, Minnesota declared that October 12 was to be Indigenous Peoples’ Day rather than Columbus Day. The city of Minneapolis passed their resolution a year ago.
Minneapolis City Councilwoman Alondra Cano, who represents the diverse 9th Ward, told RT that tribal councils and indigenous peoples have been raising awareness about the myths of Christopher Columbus and his legacy since the civil rights movement. Through that work, they were able to connect to young people who, during a mayoral forum in 2013, asked candidates if they would support Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day. Current Mayor Betsy Hodges pledged she would.
“It is important to recognize there is a strategy on the ground. There is organizing that happened to help advance these policy agendas at the city council level,” said Cano.
In September, Anadarko, Oklahoma’s proclamation was signed while surrounded by leaders from the Apache, Choctaw, Delaware, and Wichita tribes, among others.
Meanwhile, Mayor Matt Waligora of Alpena, Michigan said the city wants “to develop a strong and productive relationship with all indigenous peoples, including the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe, based on mutual respect and trust.”
Olympia, Washington also supported a name change resolution in August, joining Bellingham.
In March, the Newstead Town Council in Erie County, New York voted to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day after being petitioned by their local high school lacrosse team, the Arkon Tigers.
In New York this weekend, the Redhawk Native American Arts Council will bring together over 500 indigenous American artists, educators, singers and dancers from 75 different nations on Randall’s Island in New York for a Native American Festival and pow-wow. It is the first pow-wow to be held in Manhattan.
On Monday, organizer Cliff Matias said they would celebrate Indigenous People’s Day and recognize America’s earliest native tribes.
“Not so much an anti-Columbus Day but a celebration of indigenous peoples’ culture,” Matias told RT. “It is 500 years and we are still here to share our culture, so that’s pretty amazing. If you look at Columbus’ journey here, and the colonization, and the genocide, and the slavery he brought to this hemisphere, we probably weren’t supposed to make it 500 years later, but our traditions, our culture, they are here.”
Matias said making it an official holiday in New York will take a lot of negotiating, but he intends to capture people’s hearts first and their minds later. The population of indigenous groups in New York is small, unlike places like Seattle and Minneapolis.
“Then there is a large population of Italian Americans who for some reason align themselves with this idea of Columbus being an Italian American,” said Matias. “He never made it out of the Caribbean, and was sent back to face charges. So even then Columbus was seen as a criminal who filled his ships with rapists, murders and thieves. We are hoping to generate some interest that Columbus is not a great representative. I always say they should have Frank Sinatra Day.”
In 1990, the state of South Dakota, with its large Dakota Nation, established Native Americans’ Day on the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ so-called founding of America, in order to rename the day for the great Native American leaders who contributed so much to the history of the state. Berkeley, California began their Indigenous Peoples’ Day in 1992.
It took the city of Seattle until October 2014 for the council to declare Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The news was heralded by the sound of drums and loud cheers, and an impromptu singing of the American Indian Movement song in City Hall.
Educator Matt Remle from the Lakota tribe led the effort there, which required five years of negotiating with tribal councils before a resolution could be written, but he said the biggest catalyst has been the use of the internet in native communities.
“With native communities utilizing the internet and social media to tell essentially our own stories, The Last Real Indians [website] was started with the basic idea that native issues, Indian issues, are seldom if ever covered in mainstream media,” he said.
“So instead of trying to bang on their doors… we just do it ourselves as native peoples. So what you’ve probably been seeing over the past several years is natives capitalizing on that, and being able to tell our own stories and to reach …. globally.”
Remle said that after Seattle recognized Indigenous Peoples’ Day, other cities reached out to petition for the same celebration.
Most good spy stories involve political blackmail. In the first season of the popular television show HOMELAND, about the CIA’s post-9/11 terror wars, the bearded old CIA veteran Saul meets with a federal judge to get a court order to conduct surveillance on someone in the United States without probable cause. The judge appears to balk for a moment, until Saul cryptically reminds him about that thing. With a look that says, “You got me, you bastard,” the judge relents and signs the order. The CIA, we are meant to understand, knows something about this judge that the judge does not want the rest of the world to know.
Knowledge actually is power.
We know that the NSA and FBI have for over a decade been collecting the phone records of every person in United States, which includes every member of congress. An NSA whistleblower alleges that the NSA deliberately spied on Supreme Court justices. For decades, the FBI under Hoover ran a counterintelligence program (codename: COINTELPRO) that brandished political blackmail as a central weapon for control and manipulation. In a piece of political theater that may never have come to light had it not been for the courage of a few dissidents, the FBI wrote an anonymous letter to Martin Luther King, Jr., urging him to commit suicide. We know you are a pervert, the letter said. You should just end it now, and save yourself the embarrassment when we expose you to the press.
Today, even local law enforcement agencies and private corporations possess incredibly sensitiveinformation about all of us—elected and appointed political and judicial figures included. Although I don’t have data to support this claim, my experience growing up in the United States leads me to strongly assume that most Americans would like to believe that this is a country in which secretive law enforcement and spy agencies do not routinely manipulate sensitive information for political purposes. Blackmail is a thing that happens in the mob or in corrupt foreign countries, I assume many people think—not in the US government.
But I assume the opposite. The cliché that absolute power corrupts is a cliché for a reason—and it’s why basic democratic norms like checks and balances on government power are so important. When civil libertarians and rights advocates repeat the words ‘transparency, accountability, and oversight’ over and over again in innumerable contexts, it’s not because we like how they sound rolling around our mouths. These three practices are foundational in any society that seeks to be democratic (as opposed to just using democratic rhetoric) and fight the human tendency to abuse power.
Corruption is only natural. That’s why we build systems to check greed, selfishness, and abuse of power. Or, rather, it’s why we should.
Take the case of Congressman Jason Chaffetz. The GOP Congressman was highly critical of the Secret Service during a time when it seemed like the press was every week reporting on another in a series of embarrassing agency mistakes. It turns out that the Secret Service did not appreciate Chaffetz’ public criticisms. Instead of investing energy in fixing the problems with the agency that the Congressman wanted to discuss publicly, the assistant director of the agency used his access to confidential government databases to leak embarrassing information about Chaffetz to the press, which subsequently published it. “Some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out. Just to be fair,” the assistant director wrote in an email to colleagues before the leak.
I don’t have lots of money, but if there was a way of discovering the whole truth about these secretive and powerful members of our society, I would bet one thousand dollars that law enforcement and security agencies from police departments all the way up to the NSA, and everywhere in between, routinely deploy confidential information for political purposes. I’ve seen far too many scandals come to light to assume anything other than rampant corruption at agencies like the FBI, CIA, and NSA—not to mention state and local police departments. Do you really think the CIA would torture and murder people, and then destroy the evidence and try to interfere with an investigation into its activity, but not engage in a little political blackmail on the side? Torture and murder are all good, but the use of sensitive personal information to acquire political power is going too far?
Maybe you disagree with my assumption that agencies with access to loads of sensitive information about people likely routinely use it to secure and expand their power, but it doesn’t matter if my assumptions are totally wrong. Even if you believe that security agencies are generally good, and only bad apples misuse their access to sensitive information, we have enough examples of such abuse to support the obvious conclusion that transparency, accountability, and oversight over security agencies are basic requirements in a free society. The only way to ensure people don’t abuse their access to information is to limit that access, and then institute and uphold rigorous transparency and oversight mechanisms to ensure they aren’t improperly using information they legitimately hold.
Ultimately, the ACLU’s call for a 21st century warrant requirement for the tracking and monitoring of our electronic communications and devices is a conservative call for basic reform. Nonetheless, it’s an uphill battle in many states to fold information age technology into foundational Fourth Amendment law.
But lawmakers considering bills like those currently before the Massachusetts state legislature, on license plate, drone, social media, and electronic privacy, should remember that corruption happens everywhere. In a state that suffered the terror reign of Whitey Bulger and his FBI cronies, you’d think that lawmakers would be clear on the need for basic accountability in law enforcement. As of today, however, Massachusetts falls far behind other states in the category of passing basic electronic privacy law.
Let’s hope we don’t wait until someone in Massachusetts state government gets Jason Chaffetzed before we take essential steps towards protecting personal information in the digital age. It’s a simple matter of common sense, and for legislators, might someday mean the difference between having a lovely morning and waking up to an embarrassing headline screaming their name.
There are two great myths used in recent years to convince the world of imminent catastrophe unless we drastically change our living style in the direction of austerity. Both myths are based on scientific fraud and uncritical propagation by sympathetic mainstream and even some alternative media. One is the idea that world climate is warming, or at least “changing,” owing almost solely to us, to our man-made emissions. The second great myth, launched first in 1956 in Houston Texas by an employee of one of the world’s largest oil companies, was dusted off some 15 years ago at the start of the Dick Cheney-George W. Bush Administration. It’s called the theory of Peak Oil.
The good news is our coastal cities are not about to be washed away by melting icebergs or rising oceans, nor is our supply of conventional oil and gas–hydrocarbons–likely to run out for centuries or more. It has nothing to do with the highly damaging and very costly extraction of tight oil from shale rocks, but with the abundance of conventional oil around the world, the vast part of which has yet to be discovered or even mapped.
The most dramatic discoveries of new oil and gas reserves in recent years has come from the Mediterranean in areas off Cyprus, Israel, Lebanon and believed to be offshore Greece as well. In 2010 Israel and the Houston, Texas company, Noble Energy, discovered the largest offshore gas field, Leviathan. It was the world’s largest gas discovery in a decade, with enough gas to serve Israel for at least a century. The geophysics of the offshore areas around Greece suggest that that hapless country could also have more than enough undiscovered oil and gas to repay all foreign debt and more. Not surprisingly the Washington-led IMF demands that Greece privatize her state oil and gas companies, a near certainty that major Western oil firms would sit on their development as was done in past decades until leases expired in 2004 and reverted back to the Greek Government.
In 2006 Brazil’s Petrobras made the largest offshore oil discovery of the last 30 years, holding at least 8 billion barrels of oil in the Santos Basin 250 kilometers from Rio de Janiero. Then-President Lula da Silva proclaimed it would give the “second independence” for Brazil, that from Western oil imports. In 2008 nearby Petrobras, a state company, discovered an equally large natural gas field called Jupiter near their Santos oil discovery. Under Lula’s presidency, the Parliament passed measures to insure oil development would remain in Brazilian hands under Petrobras and not in those of the American and British or other foreign oil majors. In May 2013 after Lula retired and was succeeded by Dilma Rousseff as President, US Vice President Joe Biden flew to Brazil to meet with her and the heads of Petrobras. According to Brazilian sources, Biden demanded Rousseff remove the laws that kept American oil majors from controlling the huge oil and gas finds. She politely declined and soon after she was hit with a major US Color Revolution destabilization that continues to this day, not surprising, with a scandal around Petrobras at the center.
More recently, Iceland, recovering from her banking crisis, began seriously looking offshore for oil and gas in the Jan Mayen Ridge north of the Arctic Circle in 2012. The geophysics are the same as offshore North Sea and one Icelandic former senior government official told me during a visit some five years ago that a private geological survey indicated Iceland could be a new Norway. According to the US Geological Survey, the Arctic could hold 90 billion barrels of oil, most of which is untapped. China made Iceland a key partner, and the two signed a free-trade agreement in 2013 after China’s CNOOC signed an offshore joint venture in 2012 to explore the offshore.
In April 2015 the energy exploration firm UK Oil & Gas Investments announced it had drilled near Gatwick Airport and found what they estimated could be up to 100 billion barrels of new oil. By comparison the entire North Sea has yielded some 45 billion barrels in 40 years. As well in May, UK oil company Rockhopper announced a new oil discovery in the disputed waters of the Falkland Islands offshore of Argentina believed to contain up to one billion barrels of oil.
Now in August, 2015 the Italian oil company ENI announced discovery of a supergiant gas field in the Egyptian offshore, the largest ever found in the Mediterranean Sea, larger than Israel’s Leviathan. The company announced the field could hold a potential of 30 trillion cubic feet of lean gas in place covering an area of about 100 square kilometres. Zohr is the largest gas discovery ever made in Egypt and in the Mediterranean Sea.
There are huge undeveloped oil and gas reserves in the Caribbean, the area of an impact crater that made numerous fissures and where three active tectonic plates come together and part. Haiti is one such region, as is Cuba. In May the Cuban government released a study that estimated Cuba’s offshore territorial waters held some 20 billion barrels of oil. Russia’s oil subsidiary, Gazprom Neft, has already invested in one section in Cuban waters, and during Russian President Putin’s July, 2014 visit to Havana in which Russia cancelled 90% of Cuban Soviet-era debt worth some $32 billion, Igor Sechin, the CEO of Russia’s state-owned Rosneft, the world’s largest oil company, signed an agreement with Cupet, the Cuban state oil company, to jointly explore the basin off Cuba’s northeast coast. That Russian participation in the huge Cuban oil search might explain the sudden rush of the Obama Administration to “warm up” relations with Cuba.
How oil is ‘born’
The accepted oil industry explanation holds that oil is a finite resource, a so-called fossil fuel, biological in origin, that was created hundreds of millions of years ago by the death of dinosaurs whose detritis by some yet-unidentified physical process transformed into hydrocarbons. The claim is that concentrated biological detritis somehow sank deep into the earth—the world’s deepest oil drilling in Russia’s Sakhalin region, drilled by Exxon, is more than 12 kilometers deep. There it supposedly flowed into underground pockets they call reservoirs. Others say also algae and tree leaves and other biological decayed matter added to the process.
In the 1950s a group of Soviet scientists was tasked with making the USSR self-sufficient in oil and gas as the Cold War heated up. The first step in their research was to critically investigate all known scientific literature on origins of hydrocarbons. As they looked closely at the so-called fossil fuel theory of oil, they were amazed how unscientific it was. One physicist estimated that for the huge oil that has come out of one giant well, Ghawar, in Saudi Arabia, it would require a block of dead dinosaurs, assuming 100% conversion of meat and bone to oil, that would reach 19 miles wide, deep and high. They soon looked for other explanations for the birth of oil.
They made exhaustive tests in the deep-earth research labs in Moscow of the Soviet military. They developed the brilliant hypothesis that oil was constantly being created deep in the bowels of the Earth below the mantle. It pushes upward towards the surface passing through beds of various elements such as ferrite. They did repeated laboratory experiments producing hydrocarbons under temperature and pressure imitating that in the mantle. These migration channels, as the Soviet scientists termed them, were fissures in the mantle caused over millions of years under the expanding of the earth and forced by the enormous temperatures and pressures inside the mantle. The path the initial methane gas takes upwards towards the surface determines whether it emerges and collects as oil or as gas, as coal, as bitumen as in Canada’s Athabasca Tar Sands, or even as diamonds which are also hydrocarbons. The Russian and Ukrainian scientists also discovered, not surprisingly, that every giant oilfield was “self-replenishing,” that is new oil or gas is being constantly pushed up from inside the mantle via the faults or migration channels to replace oil withdrawn. Old oil wells across Russia that were pumped far beyond their natural full rate during the end of the Soviet era when maximum production was considered highest priority, were then shut, considered exhausted. Twenty years later, according to Russian geophysicists I have spoken with, those “depleted” wells are being reopened and, lo and behold, completely refilled with new oil.
The Russians have tested their hypothesis to the present day, though with little support until now from their own government, whose oil companies perhaps feared that a glut of new oil would collapse oil prices. In the west, the last thing Exxon or other Anglo-American oil majors wanted was to lose their (once) iron grip on the world oil market. They had no interest in a theory that would contradict their Peak Oil theory.
‘War for Oil’ nonsense
Today a geopolitical decision by Saudi Arabia to wipe out the market-disturbing recent emergence of the United States as world’s largest oil producer owing to the major increase in shale oil production, has temporarily collapsed world oil prices from over $100 a barrel in July 2014 to around $43 today in the US market. That is leading to a dramatic cut-back in oil exploration around the world. In a fair world, oil or gas should be available at affordable prices to every nation to serve its own energy requirements and not the monopoly of a tiny cartel of British or American companies. Good to know is the fact that the oil and gas are there in super-abundance that we need not freeze in the dark or turn to windmills until the time mankind develops completely different forms of energy that are clean and earth-friendly. Wars to control oil or gas would become silly nonsense.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics.
When 16-year-old Matthew Robinson and his mother, Eva, took their dog out for a walk one September evening four years ago, they never once thought they’d end up in a federal courtroom. Yet that’s where they have been as their terrifying case against two police officers was put in the hands of a jury this week in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Tased, beaten, and terrorized — the Robinsons were not suspected of any crime when they were stopped by police beside their home in Dover, Arkansas. The catalyst for the stop was innocent: Matthew looked and waved at Dover Deputy Marshall Steven Payton as he drove by. Payton admitted this behavior is perfectly legal, yet said he found it suspicious. That led to Matthew being beaten, tased multiple times, kicked, searched, and arrested while his mother was also beaten, handcuffed, choked, and arrested. Her glasses were broken as her face was repeatedly slammed into the hood of a patrol car.
Dover Deputy Marshall Steven Payton testified that he detained the Robinsons and their dog in the back of his patrol car, with the intent to take them to jail solely to identify them. When co-defendant Pope County Sheriff’s Department Sergeant Kristopher Stevens arrived on the scene, he ordered Matthew to get out of the car. When Matthew was not able to get out quickly enough, the Pope County sergeant tased him twice inside the car.
Counsel for the officers claim that the incident would have been avoided if Matthew had said who he was or if he had gotten out of the patrol car when they said, maintaining that officers had “no choice” to use the taser.
We disagree. De-escalation is always an option.
The case has been rife with missing evidence that police had a duty to preserve. Data from the taser, which would have shown the number and duration of taser deployments on Matthew, was destroyed even after a request was made for a copy of the data. Sergeant Stevens admitted at trial he was untruthful when he told Mr. Robinson there was no data on the taser. Though three police cars were audio and video capable, and should have been in use, police produced only one grainy video of part of the stop.
Photographs show 22 separate taser marks on Matthew’s torso, sides, shoulder, stomach, and lower back. Police admitted at trial to tasing Matthew at least six times, though Sergeant Stevens’ written report from the incident reflected only three tasings and Deputy Payton’s report showed only one. Sergeant Stevens admitted that his testimony in the juvenile case against Matthew, where he denied tasing the teenager while he was on the ground being cuffed, was untrue and that he had in fact tased the minor while he was on the ground. He also admitted that each of the six tasings were in violation of the department’s policy, as was the failure to properly record the incident.
To boot, each officer testified that the other was in charge of the scene. Neither Matthew nor his mother were ever read their rights or told that they were being arrested or why. This is in direct violation of the Robinson’s rights and the polar opposite of good policing.
While the officers continued to deny any wrongdoing, they have admitted to previously testifying falsely, false reports, missing evidence, and multiple violations of policy and training standards. We brought out the missing evidence and inconsistent testimonies in the Robinsons’ case. Missing evidence and police misconduct, after all, are often reasons that the criminal justice system fails us.
With the officers and departments disclaiming any and all responsibility, the Robinsons had nowhere else to turn but to court. They’ve had to fight for four years to ask a jury to serve as the first line of accountability.
In the end, Sergeant Stevens and Pope County settled with the Robinsons just before the verdict for $225,000. No action has been taken by the departments or the officers to prevent such a thing from happening again. Officers have not been disciplined or retrained, and no policies have been revised or implemented. In fact, both officers testified that they would do things exactly the same again.
Success in civil rights cases is against the odds, especially in a case involving police. Tremendous time, money, resources, and energy must be invested just to fight for a chance to obtain some bit of relief or accountability. And then, judges and juries are not empowered to truly bring about better, safer policing.
Unchecked violations of the duty to serve and protect threaten police credibility and safety as well as public safety. We entrust our police officers with great power — to detain, arrest, and use deadly force if necessary — and we provide them special status in return. For all our sakes, they should honor that status by serving and protecting, not terrorizing and tasing.
Al-Khalil/Hebron, occupied Palestine – Yesterday night, October 7th 2015, a large group of settlers harassed, insulted and physically assaulted Palestinian residents and internationals in the Tel Rumeida neighbourhood of occupied al-Khalil (Hebron), injuring several.
Around 08:00 pm, more than 50 settlers from the illegal settlements within al-Khalil, most of them children and teenagers, accompanied by a few adults, marched around the Palestinian neighbourhood of Tel Rumeida, chanting insults and hate-speech, calling for the death of Arabs. The group was not only chanting racist abuse, but also demonstrated a high level of violence and aggression towards the Palestinian residents of the neighbourhood.
After marching through the streets loudly chanting, they attacked Palestinians right outside a shop, running towards them and beating them, and hurling rocks at Palestinian youth and internationals documenting these violent assaults. Instead of intervening, Israeli forces watched these attacks happen at first just to point their loaded guns at Palestinians that just a few seconds before were standing in a hail of stones, threatening to shoot. Two persons were injured with stones thrown by the settlers, a Palestinian youth in his hand and an international in his chest. In the meantime, the settlers openly picked up more stones and rocks from the ground, attacking families that opened their main gates to find out what the shouting was about. Again, instead of preventing or stopping attacks by the settlers, the army violently pushed Palestinians to move back into their homes, yelling at them. All complaints made by Palestinians against the attacks by the settlers were ignored by the soldiers. But not only the settlers, also the Israeli soldiers violently attacked several Palestinians and beat them.
Many families rushed into their homes upon hearing the yelling, locked their doors and then had to watch the settlers chanting abuse at them from behind their windows – protected only by the metal grids installed in the past due to frequent settler attacks. Soldiers, in the best case, are standing idly by. Last night, they were pointing their guns at children and women watching in fear from the roof of their houses – the one place farthest away from the settlers down on the street; and soldiers were banging on the door of Palestinian family homes, while the group of settlers are aggressively chanting and threatening the families while standing right behind the soldiers.
When the march proceeded down the hill towards Shuhada checkpoint, where over two weeks ago the Israeli army ruthlessly gunned down and killed the Palestinian student Hadeel al-Hashlamoun, more than two dozen activists from Youth Against Settlement arrived to document the racist abuse and attacks against Palestinians. Israeli forces that by then finally arrived, immediately stopped the Palestinians and isolated them in an alley, preventing them from going anywhere. The group of settlers on the other hand was allowed to keep on chanting racist abuse and burned Palestinian flags, cheering and clapping. Israeli soldiers were getting their guns ready, facing the Palestinians that were clearly upset when their flags were being burned, but did not do anything to stop the flag-burning.
In order to allow for the greatest possible space for the settlers to move around and keep on chanting, Israeli forces pushed back the Palestinians, with one soldier threatening an international that he would ‘break his face’ if he didn’t move right away. Settler children and women also attempted to break cameras of internationals, blocking them from documenting the events and spit at them.
Infamous, aggressive settler Anat Cohen repeatedly attacked an international observer while she was standing right in front of a police car with two policemen inside, that did not even bother to get out of the car and instead just kept watching from inside. Soldiers did at no point try to prevent Anat Cohen’s attacks and instead ordered the internationals to go back up the hill, which at that point was not safe with settlers still roaming the streets. The settler woman both tried to grab the international observer’s camera and attempt to punch her in the face without soldiers intervening. When the international observer was ordered by soldiers to move towards the Palestinians detained on the other side of the road, Anat Cohen pushed her as she was passing in front of the police car, and her daughter kicked the her in the stomach. Soldiers still did not intervene and refused to take a complaint about this attack, forcing her and another international to leave.
This incident again illustrates the power settlers hold over the Israeli army. Even when attacking Palestinians – or internationals that enjoy a greater protection than any Palestinian – settlers enjoy the protection of the Israeli army.
Last evening, most Palestinian families, did not go to sleep, staying up late scared of what might happen during the night. Unfortunately, this incident in al-Khalil is only a case in point in a long record of settler attacks, that recently have been escalating not only in al-Khalil, but throughout the occupied West Bank.
For most, the shoot-down of flight MH-17 over Ukraine is a forgotten memory. Western media has continually trumped up one of three stories.
Russian-backed rebels did it
Russia did it
Russian-backed rebels did it with Russia’s help
The extent to which Western media fabricated all sorts of lies to make those claims is still not widely known or understood.
Reader Jacob Dreizin, a US citizen who speaks and reads Russian, and who works for the US government (but speaks only for himself), just recently decided to review some video footage and translations offered by Time Magazine on July 17: Russia Is Blocking Justice for the Victims of Flight 17.
Dreizin emailed Time about factual errors in the article a few days ago. He sent this letter to Time.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I have found a serious factual error—in fact, a complete fabrication—in your July 17, 2015 piece titled How Russia Is Blocking Justice for the Victims of Flight 17, which is posted here:
In the piece, your author, Simon Shuster, states as follows:
On the day of the tragedy, the Ukrainian State Security Service, which is known as the SBU, released what it claimed to be an intercepted phone conversation between Kozitsyn and one of his fighters. According to the SBU’s recording, the fighter reports to Kozitsyn that they have shot down a civilian plane by mistake. “There’s a whole sea of corpses, women and children,” the fighter says. The voice identified as that of Kozitsyn does not seem moved by this information. “They shouldn’t have been flying,” the voice says. “There’s a war going on here.”
I am a native Russian speaker and I have listened to this recording, which commences at around 1:50 at the following link:
https: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCMFhiqp9R0
I can tell you that in this recording, despite the allegations of your author, who claims to be a native Russian speaker (as per his LinkedIn account), at no time does either party to this particular conversation claim to have shot down an airplane.
Rather, as per the SBU’s accurate translation, which is shown in subtitles on the YouTube link, and which I confirm is correct, the unnamed alleged rebel speaking with a person alleged to be Kozitsyn merely recounts his observations of the wreckage of a plane that he believes has been shot down. He takes no credit for shooting it down, nor does he state or suggest who shot it down.
Why, then, does your writer, Simon Shuster, state “According to the SBU’s recording, the fighter reports to Kozitsyn that they have shot down a civilian plane by mistake”?
Mr. Shuster’s account substantially departs from his own source material. Why?
Of course, the SBU’s intent is to showcase a number of alleged rebels talking about an aircraft going down and to imply (by way of their interest in the matter) that they were responsible for the MH17 disaster. Mr. Shuster, like so many others over the last 14-some months, seems to have taken that implication and ran with it, to the point of actually putting words into the recording that are simply not there!
Another point of interest: In the first recording in the above link, which starts at around 0:18 in the link, the SBU allegedly presents the rebel commander Igor Bezler talking with his alleged Russian handler as to his knowledge of a certain rebel unit shooting down a plane around 30 minutes prior to the conversation occurring. The SBU translation subtitles also suggest that Bezler can see smoke coming from the crash site, although to me that part is indiscernible.
Given that Bezler’s headquarters and main zone of control (the city of Gorlovka) was roughly 25 to 30 miles northwest of the MH17 debris field, it is highly likely that—assuming it is in fact him on the recording—the conversation relates to a prior shoot-down of a Ukrainian combat plane in the Gorlovka area, i.e. something that did in fact take place before the downing of MH17.
In any case, there is nothing within the recording itself to identify a place, date, time, or even the parties to the conversation—we have only the SBU’s word as to who these people are and when the conversation is taking place.
Also of interest, the second recording in the link (starting at 0:43) is unnatural in places and, to a Russian speaker such as myself, seems to be either a splice of two or three separate conversations, or else one conversation that has been condensed (i.e. pieces of it have been removed, possibly to present an inaccurate picture of the whole.)
Last but not least, the fact that this diverse montage (totaling three separate conversations) was jumbled together in one video, subtitled in English, and posted to YouTube, not to mention pitched to the media, all just a few hours after MH17 went down (note the date on the link), is suspicious to say the least. I work for the U.S. Government, and (though I am not speaking for the Government or any of its agencies or offices in any way whatsoever) I have never seen Government move so fast—it is simply inconceivable.
My main point in writing you is to inform you that your writer, Simon Shuster, has made a bold, significant claim on your website that is patently and demonstrably false—and moreover, one that he must have known to be false.
Thus, I request that you issue a public retraction on this matter.
I commend Dreizin for taking a stand for the truth, and I hope it does not cost him his job.
Bottom Line
Neither the US nor Ukraine is interested in the truth if Ukraine is responsible.
Neither Russia nor the Rebels are interested in the truth if the rebels or Russia is responsible.
Blatant lies and sloppy media reporting by Ukraine and Western media is clearly rampant.
Most have jumped to conclusions believing biased reporting and outright fabrications by their government.
A small subset of us would like to know what really happened, regardless of whom is to blame.
Shortly after the incident, allegations similar to those made by Simon Shuster were widely trumped up as “proof” the rebels did it. The ensuing propaganda campaign was an unfortunate success, at least to the small subset of us who want the truth be known, no matter which side is to blame.
A Review of Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas by Cass Sunstein (based on an earlier paper co-authored with Adrian Vermeule); In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business by Charlan Nemeth; and Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them, edited by Joseph E. Uscinski
On January 25 2018 YouTube unleashed the latest salvo in the war on conspiracy theories, saying “we’ll begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways—such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.”
At first glance that sounds reasonable. Nobody wants YouTube or anyone else to recommend bad information. And almost everyone agrees that phony miracle cures, flat earthism, and blatantly false claims about 9/11 and other historical events are undesirable.
But if we stop and seriously consider those words, we notice a couple of problems. First, the word “recommend” is not just misleading but mendacious. YouTube obviously doesn’t really recommend anything. When it says it does, it is lying. … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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When the Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan was attacked on Oct. 3 by a U.S. AC-130 gunship, it was not a unique event. Hospitals have come under fire during conflicts presided over by the two previous presidents as well as Barack Obama.
When 16-year-old Matthew Robinson and his mother, Eva, took their dog out for a walk one September evening four years ago, they never once thought they’d end up in a federal courtroom. Yet that’s where they have been as their terrifying case against two police officers was put in the hands of a jury this week in Little Rock, Arkansas.
A Review of Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas by Cass Sunstein (based on an earlier paper co-authored with Adrian Vermeule); In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business by Charlan Nemeth; and Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them, edited by Joseph E. Uscinski
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