Hope is not a plan

The Red Cross is close to finalizing a new symbol: the red diamond.

The diamond was designed, after much debate and discussion, to provide a neutral third symbol for the agency, whose currently recognized symbols are the red cross (a reversal of the Swiss flag) and the red crescent. The red diamond may serve as a less controversial symbol that can be adopted in countries with religious makeups that favor neither cross nor crescent. It will also allow the Israeli Magen David Adom society to gain official recognition from the Internationa Committee of the Red Cross, from which it was previously blocked by dint of using a red star of David as its symbol.

The new compromise may be hitting a hitch in complaints from some Arab nations that it is an "unnecessary accomodation of Israel." This is about the historical level of compromise and conversation in the Middle East, unfortunately. Requiring the MDA to use a neutral third-party symbol somehow becomes an accomodation. On the other side, the American Red Cross has been denying its $30 million annual payout to the ICRC because the MDA was not given official recognition.

In short, we weren't helping, and now other countries aren't helping.

I hope it works. The ICRC needs to seem as neutral as possible to carry out its mission.

The BBC story

Slobodan Milosevic, on trial for crimes against humanity and genocide, died.

The BBC story
The Al Jazeera story
The CNN story

The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict has developed a new game called A Force More Powerful, which is meant to teach players how to oppose violent, totalitarian regimes with nonviolent methods.

Their ad copy reads :

A Force More Powerful is the first and only game to teach the waging of conflict using nonviolent methods. Destined for use by activists and leaders of nonviolent resistance and opposition movements, the game will also educate the media and general public on the potential of nonviolent action and serve as a simulation tool for academic studies of nonviolent resistance.

...and:

Groups are the game's basic political units, representing the interests and agendas common to every complex struggle. Recruiting characters and building alliances is a principal game activity, involving labor, business, government, agricultural, academic and professional, media, religious and military categories.

AFMP scenarios are generic, though meant to mimic real-world situations and political structures. AFMP Is customizable, however, so you can specifically tailor it to match a given country and regime.

Walgreens is in trouble as more patients have received receipts containing notes from their Drug Utilization Review, a database field intended to hold information about patient preferences and insurance notes. Instead, some patients have found themselves labeled "crazy" or "psycho" in their DUR -- others received more straight-up insults.

The Sun-Sentinel news story

In more serious health care news, Kaiser Permanente Bellflower was recently caught dumping a patient in front of the Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles, 17 miles from the hospital. Notably, the whole thing was caught on cameras the mission expressly installed to catch such incidents, which they've been tracking for quite a while now. The patient, Carol Anne Reyes, was disoriented, had no idea where she was now and only knew that she'd been "in a hospital" before.

Ms. Reyes is originally from Gardena, which is 14 miles from where she was dumped in downtown Los Angeles -- a hard distance to cover when you're disoriented, wearing a hospital gown and have no cash or identification.

The Los Angeles Times story

In the early thirteenth century, the Catholic Church responded to the gnostic Cathar heresy by initiating the Albigensian Crusade, one of the most violent episodes of medieval religious suppression. It's the origin of the saying "Kill them all, God will know his own" as well as the reason you don't run into many gnostics these days.

Today, Abdul Rahman was granted asylum in Italy following his near execution under Sharia for having converted away from Islam.

This approach to buttressing a religion has always struck me as demonstrating either a stark pragmatism or a distinct lack of confidence in that religion. Either you don't honestly believe in the truth of your religion and have concluded that you really do need to kill people to keep them from leaving, or you are afraid that your faith isn't as strong as you think...and come to the same conclusion.

There is, of course, option number three. The faith is nothing to you, but you understand that having a unified religion -- and a group that fanatically enforces that unity -- gives you power over people.

Faith is secondary.

The thirteenth century is still going strong all around the world.

As part of an ongoing legal and social struggle in Pakistan related to how women are treated, the country recently revised its rape laws, moving handling of rape cases out of the jurisdiction of Sharia (Islamic law) and into the civil courts. The six-party Islamic alliance MMA is protesting this move.

Why is this significant?

The civil code in Pakistan is influenced by British law, which means that a rape case would be prosecuted much in the manner that a westerner would expect (that is to say, not always effectively, and often allowing damaging attacks on the victim's reputation, but with the basic rules of a criminal court in place).

Under Sharia, the victim of a rape would need to have four male witnesses to the crime, or else she would be punished for adultery.

The MMM is protesting that this legal change will encourage "free sex" as well as "lewdness" and "indecency."

It is hard to express more clearly than in this example how certain aspects of fundamentalist Islam -- as it is practiced -- are incompatible with a sane, civil society. As Wafa Sultan said, the current problem is not a clash of cultures, but a clash of eras. Right now, it is medieval Islam versus the modern world. And much as medieval Christianity gave us such horrors as "Kill them all! God will know his own.", medieval Islam gives us horrors like assuming a woman is adulterous because she wasn't raped in front of enough witnesses.

The BBC story
The al Jazeera story

Augusto Pinochet, responsible for the deaths of thousands following his overthrow of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, had this statement read for him today:

"Today, near the end of my days, I want to say that I harbour no rancour against anybody, that I love my fatherland above all," the statement read by his wife Lucia Hiriart said.

"I take political responsibility for everything that was done."

Excellent. We'll be expecting Augusto to march on into court and enter some solid guilty pleas for crimes against humanity, then. Also:

"Thanks to their courage and decision, Chile moved from [you mean "into"] the totalitarian threat to [after many years, and against my will] the full democracy which we [involuntarily] restored and which all our compatriots enjoy."

Augusto continues to dodge trial under his lawyer's claim that he's too frail to deal with it.

For those who weren't aware, we -- at least, the U.S. as represented by Henry Kissinger -- helped with the overthrow and death of Allende.

This is why it is vital that we not let the Kissingers, Rumsfelds and Rices of the world act "on our behalf."

Because they never do.

The BBC article

After being approached by one Michael Hart Jones, actor Richard E. Grant alerted the BBC show Newsnight to Jones's AIDS-medication scam. Jones, ostensibly fronting for Commercial African Resources and Development (CARD), was looking for money for an "AIDS cure" based on goat serum.

This is not unlike the old practice of implanting goat glands into men to cure impotence. That didn't work, either.

Assuming Jones, who along with CARD has already been implicated in a money laundering scheme in Sierra Leone, actually believes in his product, there are still problems.

As the article notes, the claim that goats were injected with HIV to generate antibodies, then those antibodies cured the disease, runs straight up against the fact that this method using antibodies hasn't worked. As a bonus, if you really did inject someone with goat antibodies, they'd also have to deal with their body mounting an immune response against those antibodies (being, after all, from a goat).

However, let's say we're flatly empirical, and imagine something is different this time. The specific claim made:

We posed as investors and secretly filmed him as he claimed that CARD had used it to save the lives of dozens of soldiers in Tanzania in 2001 "they were stretchered in virtually dead - as far as I was concerned they were dead". After the miracle cure "in two weeks they were up and about and back on track".

No. If you are near-death from AIDS, you have nearly no helper T cells, you probably have AIDS-related dementia and your body is wracked by one or more diseases. Even if the virus goes away instantly (like magic), your immune system would take time to recover enough to even start addressing whatever diseases you have, and the dementia is a done deal -- that's damage that's not growing back.

For a host of reasons, ranging from desperation through a desire for a "home grown" answer (that doesn't come with the expense of Western medications), Africa is especially susceptible to lies like this. It's unpleasant to watch them coming from users like Hart Jones appears to be.

The BBC story

The US and the UK are considering enforcing a no-fly zone over the Darfur area in Sudan, if UN forces are not allowed to deploy in that area.

How much this matters depends on how much air support is helping the genocide, and how much force people on the ground can muster to defend themselves.

As far as the former goes, I was able to find Human Rights Watch reports detailing helicopter attacks on aid camps in 2002 and active Janjaweed camps as of 2004, many of which included facilities to support aircraft. Sudanwatch points to Reuters reports indicating use of gunships against civilians as late as 2005.

For force on the ground...here the situation diverges from our other no-fly-zone experience, Iraq. Whereas the Kurds were able to build up a ground force that could effectively stand off the regular Iraqi army, I don't see where the civilian population in Darfur is going to find arms of any kind, such that it can put up an effective defense against the combined efforts of the Janjaweed and the government of Sudan. Without that, a no-fly zone just slows the killing, rather than stopping it.

al Jazeera article

The GAO's report on Transportation-Disadvantaged Populations came out this month. It opens with this precious line:

The evacuation of New Orleans in response to Hurricane Katrina was considered relatively successful for people with their own vehicles;

It then goes on to note that the 100,000 people without their own vehicles had a hell of a time getting out. Key points from the report:

• Private transportation providers may feel constrained by liability concerns
• 12% of urban plans (and 10% of state plans) adequately address evacuation of transportation-disadvantaged groups (that is, anyone without a car)
• "Furthermore, in one of five major cities GAO visited, officials believed that few residents would require evacuation assistance despite the U.S. Census reporting 16.5 percent of car-less households in that major city."
• Most state and urban areas seriously underestimate the preparation and planning required to move disabled people

The upshot? Have your own plan ahead of time, either your car or someone else's.

You can download the whole report by clicking here.

"Who remembers now the destruction of the Armenians?"

From this CNN article, transcripts of taped conversations between Husein and his aides prior to killing 180,000 Kurds in the Anfal campaign:

"I will strike them with chemical weapons and kill them all," a voice identified by prosecutors as that of Majeed, Hussein's cousin and a senior aide, is heard saying.

"Who is going to say anything? The international community? Curse the international community," the voice continued.

This is not to make the Hitler-Hussein comparison, but to point out that anytime a genocide is ignored, it sends the message that you, too, can get away with genocide.

This is also not a time for people to self-righteously say "Well, we toppled this genocidal bastard," because the Anfal campaign happened on the Reagan-Bush watch, and we left it alone because it had very little to do with us.

Just like Sudan.

The GAO recently issued a report titled "Food Stamp Program: Payment Errors and Trafficking Have Declined Despite Increased Program Participation." You can read it by clicking here.

I think this one is worthwhile because programs such as food assistance and welfare in general are frequent targets for people looking for an "easy" place to cut funding. In addition to high-handed claims about making people into "welfare queens," the thought is that these programs are rife with corruption and misspent money.

Of course, the scale of Federal food stamp money in the U.S. is nothing in comparison with the money lost to poor military procurement procedures, corporate welfare and such novel ideas as destroying the estate tax.

The GAO reports that the error rate -- a rate that combines over- and under-payment of food stamp recipients -- has dropped from 9.86% in 1999 to 5.84% in 2005. This amounts to prevention of $1.1 billion in payment errors in 2005.

The food stamp trafficking rate -- that is, fraud involving food stamps -- has also declined. It ran at about 3.8 cents per dollar of redeemed benefits in 1993, versus 1 cent per dollar in 2002-2005. New electronic benefit management methods and other tools have helped reduce food stamp fraud. Law enforcement agencies are now targeting high-volume traffickers in hopes of further reducing the fraud rate. To put the trafficking figures into actual money, an estimated $812 million in benefits were trafficked in 1993, versus $241 million in recent years. Still big money, but that's $571 million less lost to unscrupulous people.

Maybe we can send the auditors from the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service over to DoD to audit all those lovely no-bid contracts given out to our friends at KBR.

Amnesty International has begun offering Amnesty Wireless, a cellphone service that sends 10% of your phone charges to Amnesty and offers free calling to other Amnesty Wireless members as well as 30 minutes of free calling to certain political leaders each month.

This struck me as just an interesting new fund-raising mechanism until I hit that last bit, which is pure genius.

From the AP:

Nearly 60 countries signed a treaty on Tuesday that bans governments from holding people in secret detention, but the United States and some of its key European allies were not among them.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack declined comment except to say that the United States helped draft the treaty, but that the final text "did not meet our expectations."

Lest you get too caught up in the fact that we haven't signed on, consider everyone else who also declined to commit: Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain...

Notably, various Americans are currently being prosecuted (in absentia) or considered for prosecution in at least two of those countries for renditions carried out within their borders. Of course, inasmuch as the EU member states appear, based on documents from meetings with the US, to have agreed to the policy of allowing these renditions, the pending legal proceedings represent the people in those countries disagreeing with the official policy of their respective nations.

Or, in other words, carrying on a dialogue that will strengthen their respective democracies.

Everyone in charge ends up being a little suspect from time to time, don't you think?

This al Jazeera article reports that US government has indicated we'll be considering a lot more Iraqi refugees for resettlement here. According to that report, we've accepted 466 refugees since 2003, and only 202 in 2006, but have plans to interview another 7,000 by September of this year. We're also going to offer $18 million to UNCHR to help them handle Iraqi refugees elsewhere. Given the estimate of 2 million externally displaced Iraqis, that's about nine bucks a head. We can probably do better.

The DHS 2005 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics has some numbers on refugees and asylees accepted from various areas in 2005. Here are some values for the combined totals of refugees and asylees obtaining legal permanent resident status from various areas in 2005 (note that this is not the same as refugees arriving in 2005, which I'll discuss later, and which the al Jazeera report is talking about):

(Continued in the extended)

The people of Chagos were removed from their home islands in the late 60s and early 70s by the government of the UK when it leased the island of Diego Garcia to the US (we use it as a military base). Since then, the displaced Chagossians have been fighting for the right to return to the islands

They won the right of return in a court case in 2000, but following several years of inactivity, the government of the UK used royal prerogative to overturn the court decision, arguing that "it would not be right for the Chagossians to be allowed home because of security concerns." (That's an al Jazeera quote, not a quote from any British official.)

That use of royal prerogative has now been deemed unlawful.

Lord Justice Sedley, giving the lead ruling, said the government's use of the Order in Council under the Royal Prerogative - powers that allow action without reference to Parliament - was an unlawful way of preventing the islanders from returning.

"To accept the islanders' right to return but do nothing about it - as it did between 2000 and 2004 - would be meaningless and immoral."

The government has one final avenue of appeal open to it -- the House of Lords. They have a month to decide whether or not to file such an appeal.

BBC article
al Jazeera article

This week brings some contrasting efforts to change the world, two happening in the courts, the third ending up in the courts.

In the Netherlands, relatives of people killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre are suing the Dutch government. While the Dutch governmental response is that all claims should be made against those who committed the massacre, the plaintiffs in this case argue that the Dutch government is at fault for refusing to provide air support for Dutch troops in Srebrenica. Certainly, it's true that people flocked to Srebrenica as a safe haven, only to find that is really wasn't. You can read more in this BBC article.

Elsewhere, the government of Nigeria, as well as the government of the Nigerian state of Kano, have filed suit against big pharma company Pfizer, claiming that it carried out improper trials for a meningitis drug, and in so doing caused deaths, as well as mental and physical problems. Pfizer holds that it did everything properly, and obtained "verbal consent" from parents of children who were involved. you can read more in this BBC article.

Finally, a plot to violently overthrow the government of Laos was busted up in California. Nine people, led by former Hmong general Vang Pao, were trying to buy weapons en masse to equip an insurgent effort in Laos, with the goal of taking out several government buildings. The Hmong, who you may never have heard of, are ethnic minorities in Laos who were backed and equipped by the CIA during our larger war in Southeast Asia. When we pulled out of the effort, we mostly abandoned the Hmong, although some have filtered over to the US, and others ended up lingering in refugee camps in Thailand for years. The BBC has an overview of the state of the Hmong in Laos here. You can read the full article on this abortive insurgency here.

It's a popular pasttime in the US to point to the UN as a bloated, inefficient entity that really doesn't deserve our money. Certainly, strange decisions are made by parts of the UN, like the incomprehensible vote that put Zimbabwe in charge of the commission on Sustainable Economic Development. In a report titled Peacekeeping: Observations on Costs, Strengths, and Limitations of U.S. and U.N. Operations, the GAO addresses the issue of the relative efficiency and capabilities of the UN and the US in peacekeeping operations. In short, does it make more sense for us to send our own troops, or to give the UN money to send in a UN-led force?

This is an important issue both because the US is already stretched across quite a few military commitments right now, and because peacekeeping operations are pulling in a lot of American money.

The GAO analysis used as a point of comparison the current UN stabilization mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), and estimated the cost of an equivalent peacekeeping mission as carried out by US forces. The punchline?

An American peacekeeping mission would cost roughly twice as much as its UN equivalent. The major cost differences come primarily in salary and housing, as we pay our troops and civilian elements much more than the UN does, and we'd put more money into housing our civilian employees in secure facilities.

Add to that something I didn't know, namely that the UN actually practices realistic budgeting:

This table shows that the UN has consistently come in somewhat under budget for the entire MINUSTAH peacekeeping operation in Haiti. In contrast, the American practice of late has been one of very unrealistic budgeting, especially for military operations. Part of the problem there may be that, unlike in our prior wars, we have not yet integrated the war into the regular budget, instead funding it with emergency appropriations.

Obviously, cost is not the only factor involved in the decision of "who to send." The GAO report addresses some of the key elements to consider for each force.

For the US:

• Rapid deployment - We have the best airlift capacity in the world, and can have troops on the ground within the critical first 6-12 weeks following a ceasefire or peace accord. No one in the world can match us on this.
• Unified command and control - Naturally, since an American force consists of troops from one nation.
• Superior training and equipment - Remember how we pay our troops more? It matters.
• Shortages of skills and equipment - As mentioned, American military forces are stretched thin right now, and we might not have people to spare from Afghanistan and Iraq.
• Perceived lack of impartiality - This is why we didn't try to directly intervene as a peacekeeping force in Lebanon in 2006.

For the UN:

• Multinational participation - This is one way to avoid the perceived lack of impartiality mentioned above. If a force consists of several nationalities, it seems more likely to be fair.
• Experienced peacekeeping officials - The UN has people whose entire job is peacekeeping operations. They have experience from earlier peacekeeping efforts that are transferable ot each new operation.
• Able to coordinate international assistance - Similarly, the UN is geared for international cooperation, and can channel aid in from donors, the World Bank, and so forth.
• Limited rapid deployment - In a mirror of the American strength above, UN forces just aren't put together and deployed quickly. It takes time to round up troops from member nations, to put a command together, and then to put people in place.
• Limiteds on command and control - As a multinational force, any UN peacekeeping group is potentially a lot more disorganized and chaotic than a one-nation force. Also, as the report notes, UN peacekeepers have been caught comitting crimes and abuses, but appear to rarely face disciplinary action.
• Varying equipment and training - Not all nations have the same standards for training and equipping their troops. Some nations have sent troops with basically no equipment, which then puts the burden on the force commander to equip them. Similarly, undertrained troops may lead to the abuses cited above.

The final conclusion is, of course, that there are reasons to go either route. If you want fast, disciplined, and expensive (and the risk of inflaming the situation due to past history), pick a US force. If you want slower, experienced, cheaper, but potentially disorganized, go with a UN force.

The real conclusion, as far as I'm concerned, is twofold. One, the UN does something we currently don't -- they make realistic budgets. Two, we can't afford to carry out anymore peacekeeping operations anyway, so we might as well ditch some of our knee-jerk, know-nothing responses to the UN and accept that sometimes, it's the right choice.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia just charged Kang Kek Ieu (also known as "Duch") with crimes against humanity. This is a significant step for both the Cambodian people and the human race, and it's coming sooner than many expected to see it happen.

Duch was in charge of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison during the time of the Khmer Rouge. He personally oversaw the torture and subsequent murder of 17,000 of his fellow Cambodians, as part of the Khmer Rouge's program of "resetting" their nation.

As with the charges levied against war criminals from Bosnia and Rwanda and the dogged pursuit of Pinochet, this action shows that there is never a statute of limitations on crimes against humanity. The message is clear -- you are subject to the law until you die.

It's the best message we can send.

BBC article

The government of the golden land of Myanmar has taken the popular totalitarian tack of blaming external agents provacateurs -- specifically, the "neo-colonialist" kind -- of inciting all that unpleasantness that's been going on for the past week or so in their country. Although late last week they were blaming the BBC and Radio Free Asia for spreading misinformation, it's notable that this week they finally caved to how information is really being spread and largely shut down internet access and mobile services within the country.

They've also been killing protesters, beating and jailing monks, and, apparently, assassinating foreign journalists. Along with an uncounted number of Burmese citizens, Japanese journalist Kenji Nagai was killed -- on camera, no less. It's looking suspiciously like he was not a random bystander, but was specifically targeted for killing by government troops. The Japanese government has not yet decided what to do -- it's in the odd position of having very little it can refuse to send to Myanmar, as it's already limiting itself to purely humanitarian aid.

The government propaganda site I linked to at the top helpfully tells me that protesters are using "catapults" against police, and that monks are threatening people into protesting. Seriously:

Some monks and people enter homes Saboteurs threaten families demanding them to join protest if not provide cash, kind Authorities urge people to make complaints in person or on line to Ward PDCs, Township PDCs or local authorities against intimidations, extortions, coercion

Yup. Cash extortion. Apparently that's just how the Buddhist monks roll in Myanmar's propaganda imaginariverse.

Mr. Bush -

In response to the discovery that DoJ went ahead and authorized torture even in the wake of your fatuous declaration that our country does not torture (as, indeed, it never should), your spokesperson had this to say:

White House Spokeswoman Dana Perino confirmed the existence of the February 2005 opinion, but she says all procedures used by U.S. interrogators are tough, safe, necessary, and lawful.

Perino says she will not comment specifically as to whether simulated drowning constitutes torture because discussing any specific interrogation techniques would allow the enemy to train against them.

I quote here from Voice of America, a source I hope you have the sense to trust is not conspiring against you.

Ms. Perino's answer is, in truth, no answer at all. She can't comment on whether something is or is not torture because people may train against it if she does? Seriously?

Maybe I should switch to a new career as a criminal defense attorney. When someone asks if my client is guilty of murder, I'll say that I can't comment on that nor can it be openly discussed, as it might inform others about the practice of murder (or not -- after all, if I don't comment, who's to know what my imaginary client did?).

Shoving someone's head under water until they nearly drown is torture, you dim, immoral excuse for a man. Marching Ms. Perino out and sticking her with the unfortunate job of trying to deflect an all-too-deflectable press corps is a sad, yet accurate, commentary on how little you have in common with the American citizens you regularly endanger by tarnishing our country's reputation for freedom and justice with your tawdry pretense of national defense.

Your answer, as told by Ms. Perino, was no answer at all. Try again.

(Sent today.)

Voice of America article

Even as the Burmese military government curtails protests in the capital by killing and jailing people into submission, it's also running an active campaign of killing and displacement among minorities in its eastern jungles. You can get a brief overview via this documentary short, titled "Shoot on Sight" --

That film was produced by the human rights group Witness. You can learn more about the movie and the situation by clicking here.

Backstopping such ground-level videos and eyewitness accounts are the efforts of the Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights group within the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Science and Human Rights Program. As they've done in other areas such as Sudan where people are abused and the official policy is denial, the GTHR group has used satellite imagery to track the effects of military actions against civilians in the Burmese jungles.

This "before and after" picture set, of an area within the Papun District on the Thai border, shows the complete removal of a local village. Other picture pairs from Papun, which you can see on this page, also show the rise of military bases in the area.

Even though international eyes have been on urban protest in the last few weeks, we must remember that for decades, Burma's military leaders have been attempting to maintain power for power's sake by killing minorities and razing their homes.

I'm not a regular Frank Rich reader (or even a regular NYT reader, as my primary news sources are the BBC, AP, and al Jazeera), but his recent column touches twice on important points of pragmatism.

Point 1: Our excessive use of contractors places our own people at risk

His words:

Last week Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war combat veteran who directs Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, sketched for me the apocalypse to come. Should Baghdad implode, our contractors, not having to answer to the military chain of command, can simply “drop their guns and go home.” Vulnerable American troops could be deserted by those “who deliver their bullets and beans.”

This potential scenario is just one example of why it’s in our national self-interest to attend to Iraq policy the White House counts on us to ignore. Our national character is on the line too. The extralegal contractors are both a slap at the sovereignty of the self-governing Iraq we supposedly support and an insult to those in uniform receiving as little as one-sixth the pay.

Point 2: Compromising our ethics buys us nothing

Again, from the piece:

Our moral trajectory over the Bush years could not be better dramatized than it was by a reunion of an elite group of two dozen World War II veterans in Washington this month. They were participants in a top-secret operation to interrogate some 4,000 Nazi prisoners of war. Until now, they have kept silent, but America’s recent record prompted them to talk to The Washington Post.

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an M.I.T. physicist whose interrogation of Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy, took place over a chessboard. George Frenkel, 87, recalled that he “never laid hands on anyone” in his many interrogations, adding, “I’m proud to say I never compromised my humanity.”

Despite everything you've seen on 24, torturing people doesn't really work, and it creates all kinds of practical problems for you -- for example, if we go around torturing people left and right, what kind of support can we expect from other nations when our people are held? It's a foolish choice.

One last bit from the piece:

By any legal standards except those rubber-stamped by Alberto Gonzales, we are practicing torture, and we have known we are doing so ever since photographic proof emerged from Abu Ghraib more than three years ago. As Andrew Sullivan, once a Bush cheerleader, observed last weekend in The Sunday Times of London, America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.”

My home county is burning down again. This time it's much worse than the fires of a few years ago. According to the AP wire, as reported on KNBC in Los Angeles, the statewide evacuation estimate is about 900,000 people now, with over 500,000 of those in San Diego (meaning they're evacuating a sixth of the county). The reporter cited this as the largest peacetime movement of Americans in the history of the country.

Here's a schematic view of the burn in San Diego county as of earlier today:

(This map courtesy San Diego news station CBS 8)

Here's a satellite view of the smoke plumes heading out to sea from southern California:

People, especially in Orange County, have been complaining about the lack of available resources. Credit the firefighters for making their case, over and over again for decades, for additional resources. San Diego county alone probably needs another thousand firefighters, give or take. No credit to representatives who now complain about the lack of resources while vigorously opposing "big government" and refusing to pay taxes, believing that infrastructure and infrastructure defense solves itself.

Also no credit to all of you who fear terrorists more than anything else, when our long history and our very recent history show that, short of a terrorist group with a nuclear weapon, there is nothing that even a motivated group of terrorists could do that can match the trauma of this kind of super-disaster.

We don't have enough firefighters to put fires down and keep them down. Right now, they're skipping from place to place, not sleeping, just fencing with the flames and hoping the winds will change.

CNN coverage

You can get live feeds from SoCal news stations (such as KNBC) at wwiTV.

The winds have largely died down and even shifted direction, fire-fueling East-West Santa Anas being replaced by slower and moister offshore breezes. Even so, the is still quite dry and no rain is coming, and as the president tours the area to survey the damage, firefighters still struggle to contain flames that face no natural boundary other than the ocean.

Unfortunately, two more deaths have been reported in Poway, directly attributable to the fire. Several other people died during or just after evacuation.

Elsewhere, we learn that police have arrested one arson suspect and killed another one.

Here's a map of the damage in the San Diego area:

Taken from this BBC page, which also tells us that over 300,000 acres have burned in San Diego county.

Torture charges filed in the United States against Donald Rumsfeld were dismissed earlier this year based on Rumsfeld's immunity to such prosecution and the lack of Constitutional rights of the subjects, even as an American judge accepted that the evidence showed that they had, indeed, been tortured on Rumsfeld's watch. Late last year, the Center for Constitutional Rights led the way by filing war crimes charges against Rumsfeld in Germany. These charges were dismissed by the German judge, indicating that the US should spearhead such an investigation.

Now, coinciding with a Rumsfeld visit to France, the Center for Constitutional Rights, along with European human rights groups, have filed torture charges against Rumsfeld in France. They want French investigators to hold Rumsfeld and look into the case.

"We know that we can't get him into prison right now, but it would be great to make sure that he couldn't safely leave the U.S. anymore," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Donald Rumsfeld seems to be on track to follow in the footsteps of Pinochet, finding himself with progressively fewer and fewer places he can safely go without risking prosecution.

Despite the perhaps negative tone of many things I post about here, I am, on the whole, convinced that the trend line of humanity is going in the right direction. Today's example:

Prosecutors in Italy have issued arrest warrants for 140 people over a decades-old plot by South American dictatorships called Operation Condor.

A judge issued the arrest warrants on Monday, following a request from state prosecutor Giancarlo Capaldo.

One of the true, positive achievements of the last two decades has been an unwillingness to let old crimes against humanity simply rest. In a very real way, there should be no statute of limitations on wanton cruelty, and more and more often, that is the case. It's never a wasted effort prosecuting these people, even decades and decades after the fact.

BBC article

Nuon Chea, also known as "Brother Number Two," the effective second-in-command of the Khmer Rouge, appeared in court for the first time this week. He is charged with a panoply of crimes against humanity for his actions as a leader within the extraordinarily cruel and bloody Khmer Rouge regime.

The tribunal, convened in 2006, has charged Nuon Chea with "murder, torture, imprisonment, persecution, extermination, deportation, forcible transfer, enslavement and other inhumane acts".

The tribunal is expected to hear documentary evidence that Nuon Chea personally ordered the murder of 14,000 people held at the Tuol Sleng prison, a former Phnom Penh high school.

The hearing today was meant to address a request by Nuon Chea that he be allowed out of custody. It had to be deferred, however, due to accreditation issues with one of the two Dutch attorneys on his defense team (Victor Koppe, whose bio can be found here).

Speaking before Monday's court appearance, Son Arun, Nuon Chea's lawyer, said his client "feels an absence of freedom in his detention, where all he does is eat and sleep".

As one assumes detention is necessarily meant to cause an absence of freedom, we're all glad to hear it's working properly. Nuon Chea is the second Khmer Rouge leader up on crimes against humanity charges to ask for bail. Earlier this year, Kang Kek Leu was denied bail, as the judge thought the former head of Tuol Sleng prison might, possibly, flee in the face of being charged with 17,000 murders. Given the similarity of Nuon Chea's charges, one imagines a similar outcome for his plea for bail.

The pressing of decades old crimes against humanity charges continues to be a high point of our nascent millennium. Whether it's Southeast Asian communists or former right-wing Latin American leaders, everyone is now on notice that there is no statute of limitations for crimes against humanity.

In his own half-assed, self-justifying defense, Nuon Chea once said: "Naturally, we are sorry, not only for the lives of the people, but also for the animals. They all died because we wanted to win the war."

Eliding the difference between his fellow Cambodians and farm animals is, more than anything else, the clearest view of what Nuon Chea thinks of everyone around him.

al Jazeera article

In an interview on BBC radio yesterday, Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, when asked about the legality of torture, pulled up everyone's favorite example of the "terrorist who knows where the nuclear bomb that's going to destroy Los Angeles is hidden" (otherwise known as any episode of 24). He suggested that it would be ridiculous to limit people in what they could do, under these circumstances, to extract information from that person. From there, he reasoned that there's a sort of sliding scale, whereby you can abuse someone more if their information is more critical.

No.

There may someday be this situation, where thousands to millions of lives are at stake, and someone on our side is confident that the person they have in custody, right now, knows enough information to prevent a disaster. They may even make the decision to torture that person to get that information.

And if and when they make that decision, I want them to make it knowing that they will go to jail for doing it.

I want the bar for torture to be "Am I willing to go to jail for this?"

After all, ask me any day of the week, and I will happily go to jail for two to four years (that's for assault with bodily injury, under California law) to save thousands or millions of lives. I believe that our police officers and Federal agents would make that same decision. And I really want them to have to.

There can be no sliding scale. Sometimes, the bar simply must be set at jail time. If you're willing to trade a few years of your freedom for the outcome, then you may have possibly given enough thought to what you're about to do to another human being. We don't want it to be any easier than that.

Former SS prison guard Michael Seifert was extradited last week from Canada to Rome, where he will serve the remainder of his life in custody following his conviction for World War II-era murder. Seifert was convicted in absentia eight years ago by an Italian military tribunal for his role in killing and torturing people during his time as a guard at a prison camp in Bolzano. He was arrested in 2002 at the request of the Italian government, and his attempts to prevent his extradition finally failed this year.

Seifert's extradition has been welcomed by groups campaigning for Nazi war criminals to be brought to justice.

"It sets an example for other war criminals, not only Nazi war criminals, but war criminals related to Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur or any other genocide," he said.

Once again, this is one of the good signs of our times, much like the trials of former Khmer Rouge leaders and the prosecution of former South American government officials involved in operation Condor. Every time we do this, we reaffirm that there is no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity.

BBC article

Delegates from over a hundred nations are meeting this week in New Zealand to prepare a treaty banning the use of cluster munitions. These weapons, described here at fas.org, comprise hundreds of bomblets contained within an overall case. The intent is for the device to open up in midair, spreading bomblets over an area, where they are meant to detonate immediately. When they work, the explosions are impressive, and clearly lethal to any infantry or soft-skinned vehicles unlucky enough to be in the strike zone.

The move to ban cluster munitions comes because they often don't work, littering an area with unexploded munitions that can be triggered months and years later by unlucky civilians. For example, a 2001 cluster bombing of the Shomali Valley during our campaign against the Taliban in late 2001 left 17% of the bomblets unexploded on the ground. A good third of those were buried more than a few inches deep, meaning that large metal detectors would be needed to find them -- and that they thus present a huge risk to children at play and farmers plowing their fields. You can read the abstract of that study here. A second, more in-depth study in Afghanistan showed that over 80% of the casualties from unexploded devices were civilians, with children being most likely to be hurt specifically by unexploded ordnance (which includes cluster munitions, but excludes landmines). You can read that study here.

The big three arms distributors -- the U.S., China, and Russia -- are not participating in the conference.

The conference has been organised by the Cluster Munitions Coalition (CMC), a global network of 200 civil society organisations including leaders from the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

According to the CMC, France, Germany, Japan and the UK have been stepping up diplomatic pressure to weaken the draft treaty by excluding certain weapons, including a transition period and allowing the use of cluster bombs in joint military operations with countries that do not sign the treaty.

It's hard to find empirical evaluations of the relative worth of cluster munitions versus conventional munitions when addressing the same targets. The claim is often made that cluster bombs reduce immediate collateral damage by being far less destructive than conventional munitions, but again, there are no publicized evaluations to back this up. This Human Rights Watch background paper from 2001 addresses the claims that have been made, but concludes that very little solid data exist on this topic.

On the face of it, I find it difficult to believe that there are many targets for which a cluster munition is a better choice than a conventional weapon. There are probably no targets that a cluster munition can kill that a 500-pound bomb can't, and the unconfirmed potential for reducing collateral damage is at best mortgaging future civilian casualties to potentially reduce immediate civilian casualties, which given the persistence of unexploded ordnance almost certainly isn't a good deal.

al Jazeera article
BBC article

Israeli helicopters continue missile attacks within the Gaza strip even as Hamas launches the occasional missile over the border. Characteristically, the most recent Israeli attacks netted some collateral fatalities and injuries among Palestinians who had the misfortune to be standing near the wrong car. Just as characteristically, Hamas is just randomly killing people as it pitches missiles into Israel without any specific targets.

Statements from the relevant parties set the tone for this reciprocal cycle of non-goal-achieving violence:

Hamas says attacks from the Gaza Strip, including rockets fired by its own fighters and others, are a response to Israeli military operations in the territory and the occupied West Bank and would end if Israel stopped all such activity and lifted its blockade.

David Baker, a spokesman for Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, said: "Israel will be diligent in our efforts to put an end to these lethal rocket attacks. Those firing rockets at our civilians will know neither rest nor have any respite from the measures we will take to stop these attacks."

Gaza's Coastal Municipalities Water Utility has put out this appeal for international assistance as they have run out of chlorine to sterilize drinking water within the area due to the ongoing blockade of Gaza. It's not altogether clear how this does not count as collective punishment of a civilian population, although it's worth noting that Palestinians not bearing citizenship of other nations who live within Gaza may not actually qualify for protection under the fourth Geneva convention, which normally prevents such collective punishments from being carried out. Of course, there may be any number of Palestinians bearing citizenships of signatory nations such as Jordan or perhaps Egypt (or even Israel itself), and they are theoretically protected from collective punishment by Israel or any other signatory. Random citizens of Israel are, of course, also supposed to be protected from being rocketed by any citizens of signatory powers who happen to disagree with Israeli policy.

al Jazeera article

This week, the government of Thailand began the (quite likely forced) repatriation of Hmong refugees into Laos, in an attempt to clear the roughly 8,000 Hmong who are currently living in a refugee camp in Petchabun province, Thailand. This is a problem, as the Hmong people, our ally in an anti-communist insurgency in Laos in the 70s, face a very credible threat of persecution if they are kicked back into that still-communist nation.

For their role in helping us during the war, the Hmong have already been subject to extensive persecution, including chemical weapon attacks on fleeing civilians. The United States is already home to a substantial Hmong refugee population, and has taken refugees from Thailand before. I see no reason why we can't continue to provide a second, safe home to these people who continue to be punished for having once fought on our side.

Given that the government of Thailand is looking to clean its hands of the refugee problem and establish better relations with Laos, now is an excellent time to write to your senators and representative, urging them to take action.

We could do worse than adopting another couple thousand good people into a country that already has the fourth-largest Hmong community in the world. Here's a template:

Representative/Senator X -

I'm writing to bring to your attention the critical plight of Hmong refugees living in camps in Petchabun, Thailand. These women, children, and men were once our strong allies in our fight against communism in Laos and surrounding nations. Now, they face persecution at the hands of the Laotian government if they are forced to leave Thailand and return to a land that they can no longer safely call home.

The government of Thailand is, at this moment, making moves to send 8,000 Hmong living in Petchabun over to Laos. I urge you to take immediate action to prevent this. The United States is already home to one of the largest Hmong communities in the world. They have proven that they can be an integral part of American society, and have proven their commitment to our side many times over in the past. It is no small thing to place your life and home on the line for a cause you believe in. Now that they have lost that life and their homes, I urge you to take action now, and to provide asylum, safety and a new life for these people here in the United States.

Thank you --

That's what I'm about to mail out to my representative and senators. Our abandonment of the Hmong was one of many terrible, falsely "realpolitik" minded moves me made in the wake of our wars in Southeast Asia. It is our responsibility as a nation to live up to our ideals and, when a friend needs our help, give them a place to stay and a new community to call home.

al Jazeera article
More about the Hmong

Representatives from over a good century of countries are meeting in Dublin this week in an effort to secure a cluster munition ban. This is not the first such meeting. Another took place earlier this year in New Zealand with the same goal. This time, like last time, the biggest purveyors of cluster munitions -- the United States, Russia, and China -- are not in attendance. Neither are cluster munition fans Israel, Pakistan, and India. Our quote is particularly stellar:

The US has said that it favours non-binding guidelines on the use of the weapon.

I really, really want someone from the current administration to step up and ask an analyst at DIA to do a cost-benefit analysis on cluster munitions. What problems do they solve that a standard laser-guided munition does not? As I discussed in an earlier post, there is extensive evidence of the massive civilian collateral damage caused by cluster munitions, often years and years after the conflict, but there is a strict paucity of countervailing evidence support the weak claim that cluster munitions actually reduce collateral damage by being "less destructive" at the moment of use.

Mark Garlasco, a campaigner for New-York based Human Rights Watch spoke to Al Jazeera from Dublin.

Garlasco said: "I have seen cluster munitions used across the world... in Lebanon... in Iraq. These are the types of weapons that should never be used. There is no way to use these weapons in a legal manner.

You can read more about the ban effort at the Cluster Munition Coalition website. You can read about Israel violating our terms of use agreement on cluster munitions we sold to them during the 2006 summer war in Lebanon in this earlier post.

al Jazeera article

With upwards of 24,000 people displaced and the loss of most of the potable water in Cedar Rapids, the destruction in Iowa is hard to legitimately comprehend. It's hard to actually visualize 1,000 city blocks being under water.

More problems may be on the way, on the order of the recent levee break in Des Moines or worse. Downriver, we have to hope that cities and towns can be reinforced to avoid even more disastrous flooding.

Beyond the tragedy for us, however, this natural disaster is going to be extremely relevant for the rest of the world, as the flooding has canceled out this year's soybean and corn crops. In 2007, Iowa produced 2.37 billion bushels of corn and 439 million bushels of soybeans. That's more corn than we export annually.

This may be an even hungrier year than the rest of the world expected.

BBC article
Washington Post article

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has told a conference of church leaders that they really need to get with the program:

Archbishop Tutu told the conference in London that the Anglican Church was ideally placed to tackle poverty because of its presence at the heart of communities in the UK and overseas.

Archbishop Tutu accused some of his fellow Anglicans of going against the teaching of Jesus in their treatment of homosexual people by "persecuting the already persecuted".

BBC article

A fraud trail aimed at the Church of Scientology is set to go ahead in France by the end of this year or in early 2009. This marks a continuation of the Scientology organization's ongoing problems in gaining and maintaining a foothold in several European nations, most notably including France and Germany.

But it been accused in some countries of cult-like practices and exploiting its followers financially.

In Germany last year, federal and state interior ministers declared the Church of Scientology unconstitutional, and in France in 2000 a government committee recommended dissolving the Church.

For more on Scientology, you may want to read here before you go and have your personality tested by someone with a resistance meter.

BBC article

In June of this year, the High Court in South Africa ruled against mass killer Matthias Rath, refusing to let him kill large numbers of South Africans by convincing them to switch off of highly effective anti-HIV drugs and instead buy into his ineffective vitamin profiteering effort.

This week, the happy news came out that Matthias has dropped his libel case against the Guardian and its columnist, Ben Goldacre. Matthias initially sued Goldacre and the Guardian after Goldacre called him out on his pandemic profiteering, and the fact that Matthias was actually hurting and killing HIV-positive people in Africa by pushing a massive ad campaign of lies about the effectiveness of his vitamins over known HIV treatments. From the Guardian:

The Dr Rath Foundation focuses its promotional activities on eight countries - the US, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, France and Russia - claiming that his micronutrient products will cure not just Aids, but cancer, heart disease, strokes and other illnesses.

The collapse of the case will have repercussions around the world. International authorities on Aids welcomed the outcome. Prof Brian Gazzard, one of the UK's leading HIV/Aids experts, who advised the Guardian on its case, said he was delighted at the result. "The widespread provision of anti-retrovirals in sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most important public health measures of this century," he said. The confusion caused by suggestions that giving undernourished people vitamins and minerals was an alternative to taking Aids drugs was "extremely harmful".

One clear hallmark of a medical scam -- the suggestion that the magical cure is a cure-all. Cancer, HIV, heart disease, and stroke? Impressive.

The court case pulled up some scary material from Matthias, including the text of a complaint made by his companion Anthony Brink against Treatment Action Campaign founder Zackie Achmat in the Hague, in which Brink tried to have Achmat charged with genocide, suggesting that it would be appropriate to torture him as a consequence.

Had the case proceeded, the court would have been presented with details of Brink's complaint to The Hague, which called for Achmat to be permanently confined "in a small white and concrete cage, bright fluorescent light on all the time to keep an eye on him" and force-fed his Aids drugs or, "if he bites, kicks and screams too much, dripped into his arm after he's been restrained on a gurney with cable tied around his ankles, wrists and neck". The complaint was described by the Rath Foundation in January last year as "entirely valid and long overdue".

Trying to get someone charged with genocide is a pretty extreme corporate tactic. Notably, if someone did ever catch Achmat and dose him up with modern anti-HIV meds...well, he'd be okay. As much as liars like Andy and Matt would like to give people the impression that HIV meds are all AZT, modern HAART therapy is effective and has relatively mild side effects, with its major drawback being its expense -- a problem that Achmat effectively challenged and has helped resolve in South Africa. In fact, it was Achmat's efforts to make HIV treatments highly affordable that threatened Matthias Rath's vitamin profiteering, which in turn prompted the attempt to attack Achmat with a genocide charge.

We'll give the last word to columnist Ben Goldacre:

Rath is an example of the worst excesses of the alternative therapy industry; UK nutritionists make foolish claims on poor evidence - they can make your child a genius with fish oils, or prevent heart attacks in the distant future - but Rath transplanted these practices into the world of HIV/Aids, where evidence really matters.

Now that AIDS profiteer Matthias Rath has dropped his harassing libel suit against the Guardian and columnist Ben Goldacre, the Guardian is once again free to report on Rath's malice in Africa and in general on the shocking failure of the South African government to deal appropriately with the AIDS pandemic.

As the Guardian reports, South Africa was ripe for infestation by scam artists like Rath based on the government's AIDS denialism and its unfortunate view that the choice between drugs that work and other practices that don't was somehow an extension of old anticolonial battles. I'd like to once again quote something very important that Barack Obama said in 2006:

"On the treatment side the information being provided by the minister of health is not accurate," he told reporters outside an AIDS clinic in Cape Town's Khayelitsha township.

"It is not an issue of Western science versus African science, it is just science and it's not right."

Indeed.

Unfortunately, the South African government has been letting its people die by using this, of all things, as a venue to shrug off "Western" influences. Curiously, this has meant repeated intrusions by Western scam artists -- apparently, you're accepted as long as you're promoting nonsense. Consider folks like Michael Hart Jones, who was trying to set up a goat-serum AIDS cure scam. And, of course, Rath, who used incredibly unethical methods to screw up AIDS care in South Africa:

In time, MSF learned that Rath Foundation workers had infiltrated Aids clinics in Khayelitsha. A nurse and the manager of the bustling Ubuntu clinic, Nompumelelo Mantangana, says she discovered that some of the foundation's employees were paying health staff to pass on the names of HIV-positive patients: "We stopped that but not before it did a lot of damage."

She says the Rath Foundation played on the fact that many people came to the clinic only once they were sick, and that ARVs tended to make them feel worse before their health began to recover. "They said, come off the ARVs and take the multivitamins and you will feel better. And you do - but it doesn't mean you are getting well. Eventually you get sick again," she says.

But then, if you're already unethically leading people away from life-saving treatments, it's hard to imagine it being a big stretch to take the extra step and actually steal them away from effective clinics.

For more, read the full Guardian article on the topic, and applaud the Guardian for standing behind Goldacre in the face of this harassing and frivolous lawsuit.