Mining industry digs in for turf war
Some recent commentaries that caught my eye...
Waterboarding and U.S. History by William Loren Katz
The all-but-certain next U.S. Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, apparently hasn't read much history - otherwise, he couldn't claim ignorance of waterboarding. For over half a millennium, fiends in power have tortured their victims through slow drowning, a practice the U.S. Army enthusiastically embraced in it's colonial war in the Philippines, at the turn of the 20th Century. Back then, they called it the "water cure." One soldier boasted "that he had used the water cure on 160 people and only 26 had survived." Possibly a million Filipinos died under the American boot - untold numbers of them by means of the very torture that George Bush wants to keep in the U.S. "tool kit."
Some high U.S. officials claim not be aware of it, and Judge Michael Mukasey, the President's choice for attorney general, prefers to equivocate, but waterboarding has long been a form of torture that causes excruciating pain and can lead to death. It forces water into prisoner's lungs, usually over and over again. The Spanish Inquisition in the late 1400s used this torture to uncover and punish heretics, and then in the early 1500s Spain's inquisitors carried it overseas to root out heresy in the New World. It reappeared during the witch hysteria. Women accused of sorcery were "dunked" and held under water to see if they were witches.
In World War II Japan and Germany routinely used waterboarding on prisoners. In Viet Nam U.S. forces held bound Viet Cong captives and "sympathizers" upside down in barrels of water. Water boarding also has been associated with the Khmer Rouge.
An extensive record of its use by the United States land forces exists in the records of the invasion and occupation of the Philippines that began in 1898. As the U.S. encountered armed resistance by the liberation army of Filipino General Emilio Aguinaldo, and sank into a 12-year quagmire on the archipelago, U.S. officers routinely resorted to what they called "the water cure." Professor Stuart C. Miller's study of the Philippine war, Benevolent Assimilation, reveals this sordid story through Congressional testimony, letters from soldiers, court martial hearings, words of critics and defenders, and newspaper accounts. The pro-imperialist media of the day justified the "water cure" as necessary to gain information; the anti-imperialist media denounced its use by the U.S or any other civilized nation.Fresh from their recent victories in the Indian wars, the Philippine invasion of 1898 began with a big war whoop. U.S. forces landed in the Philippines in 1898 led by American officers such Pershing, Lawton, Smith, Shafter, Otis, Merritt, and Chafee, who had fought "treacherous redskins." At least one officer had taken part in the infamous 1891 massacre of 350 Lakota men, women and children at Wounded Knee. A U.S. media that had supported the Army's brutal Indian campaigns rhapsodized about this new opportunity for distant racial warfare. The influential San Francisco Argonaut spoke candidly: "We do not want the Filipinos. We want the Philippines. The islands are enormously rich, but unfortunately they are infested with Filipinos. There are many millions there, and it is to be feared their extinction will be slow." The paper's solution was to recommend several unusually cruel methods of torture it believed "would impress the Malay mind."
President William McKinley dispatched Admiral Dewey to the Philippines with a pledge to bestow civilization and Christianity on its people, and promise eventual independence. Perhaps he was unaware that most Filipinos were Catholics. Perhaps he did not know that General Aguinaldo and his 40,000 troops were poised to remove Spain from the islands. Dewey supplied Aguinaldo with weapons and encouraged him, but that soon changed.
From the White House and the U.S. high command to field officers and lowly enlistees the message became "these people are not civilized" and the United States had embarked on a glorious overseas adventure against "savages." Officers and enlisted men - and the media - were encouraged to see the conflict through a "white superiority" lens, much as they viewed their victories over Native Americans and African Americans. The Philippine occupation unfolded at the high tide of American segregation, lynching, and a triumphant white supremacy ideology. Officers of the occupying Army routinely characterized the foe as "gooks," "redskins," and "N______s."
U.S. officers ordered massacres of entire villages and conducted a host of other shameful atrocities as the Philippine quagmire dragged on. "A white man seems to forget that he is human," wrote a white soldier from the Philippines.
Atrocities abounded. To produce "a demoralized and obedient population" in Batangas, General Franklin Bell ordered the destruction of "humans, crops, food stores, domestic animals, houses and boats." He became known as the "butcher" of Batangas. General Jacob Smith, who had been wounded fighting at Wounded Knee, said his overseas campaigns were "worse than fighting Indians." He promised to turn Samar province into a "howling wilderness." Smith defined the enemy as anyone "ten years and up" and issued these instructions to Marine Commander Tony Waller: "I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me." He became known as "Howling Jake" Smith.
The "water cure" was probably first instituted when U.S. forces encountered local resistance. Professor Miller states that General Frederick Funston in 1901 may have used it to capture the Filipino General Emilio Aguinaldo. A New York World article described the "water cure" as forcing "water with handfuls of salt thrown in to make it more efficacious, is forced down the throats of patients until their bodies become distended to the point of bursting . . .." This may have been only one on the versions used.The water cure became front-page news when William Howard Taft, appointed U.S. Governor of the Philippines, testified under oath before Congress and let the cat out of the bag. The "so called water cure," he admitted, was used "on some occasions to extract information." The Arena, an opposition paper, called his words "a most humiliating admission that should strike horror in the mind of every American." Around the same time as Taft's admission a soldier boasted in a letter made public that he had used the water cure on 160 people and only 26 had survived. The man was compelled by the War Department to retract his damaging confession. But then another officer stated the "water cure" was being widely used when he reported, "the problem of the 'water cure' is in knowing how to apply it." Such statements leave unclear how often the form of torture was used for interrogation and how often it became a way to exhibit racial animosity or display contempt.
During a triumphal U.S. speaking tour General Frederick Funston, bearing a Congressional Medal of Honor and harboring political ambitions, bellicosely promoted total war. In Chicago he boasted of sentencing 35 suspects to death without trial and enthusiastically endorsed torture and civilian massacres. He even publicly suggested that anti-war protestors be dragged out of their homes and lynched.
Funston's words met far more applause than criticism. In San Francisco he suggested that the editor of a noted anti-imperialist paper "ought to be strung up to the nearest lamppost." At a banquet in the city he called Filipinos "unruly savages" and (now) claimed he had personally killed fifty prisoners without trial. Captain Edmond Boltwood, an officer under Funston, confirmed that the general had personally administered the water cure to captives, and had told his troops "to take no prisoners."
President Theodore Roosevelt reprimanded Funston and ordered him to cease his inflammatory rhetoric. Facing a political challenge from General Nelson Miles based in the Philippines, TR, who rode into the White House on his heroic exploits at San Juan Hill, did not intend to nourish more competition. The President privately assured a friend the water cure was "an old Filipino method of mild torture" and claimed when Americans administered it "no body was seriously damaged." But publicly TR was silent about the "water cure."
In an article, "The 'Water Cure' from a Missionary Point of View," Reverend Homer Stunz justified the technique. It was not torture, he said, since the victim could stop it any time by revealing what his interrogators wanted to know. Besides, he insisted, it was only applied to "spies." The missionary also justified instances of torture by pointing out that U.S. soldiers "in lonely and remote bamboo jungles" faced stressful conditions.Mark Twain, a leading anti-imperialist voice, offered this view of the water cure:
"Funston's example has bred many imitators, and many ghastly additions to our history: the torturing of Filipinos by the awful 'water- cure,' for instance, to make them confess - what? Truth? Or lies? How can one know which it is they are telling? For under unendurable pain a man confesses anything that is required of him, true or false, and his evidence is worthless. Yet upon such evidence American officers have actually - but you know about those atrocities which the War Office has been hiding a year or two...."U.S. military trials for what are now known as war crimes all resulted in convictions. Waller was acquitted because he followed the orders of Smith, and later retired with two stars. "Howling Jake" Smith was convicted, but he returned to a tumultuous citizens' welcome in San Francisco. When the convicted U.S. war criminals received only slaps-on-the-wrist U.S. prestige abroad sunk to new lows.
A San Francisco park was named after General Funston. TR appointed General Bell of Batangas infamy as his chief of staff. And the President continued to wave the banner of aggressive imperialism. In 1903 he flagrantly seized a broad swath of Columbia's Isthmus of Panama so he could link the Pacific and Atlantic oceans under U.S. control. This boosted his popularity and splintered the anti-imperialist movement. TR also worked to undermine efforts to grant the Philippines independence, which finally took place after World War II.
TR easily won a return to the White House in 1904, and in 1908 he chose Taft as his successor. By the time Taft left the White House in 1913, military resistance in the Philippines had ended, and so presumably had the "water cure." TR had become a Mount Rushmore-size American icon.
The "water cure" was accepted as a necessary embarrassment in wartime. Appeals to muscular patriotism had exonerated the "water cure" and reduced a crime of torture to a misdemeanor. Is the U.S. headed the same way in 2007?
Demands of a thief by Gideon Levy
The public discourse in Israel has momentarily awoken from its slumber. "To give or not to give," that is the Shakespearean question - "to make concessions" or "not to make concessions." It is good that initial signs of life in the Israeli public have emerged. It was worth going to Annapolis if only for this reason - but this discourse is baseless and distorted. Israel is not being asked "to give" anything to the Palestinians; it is only being asked to return - to return their stolen land and restore their trampled self-respect, along with their fundamental human rights and humanity. This is the primary core issue, the only one worthy of the title, and no one talks about it anymore.
No one is talking about morality anymore. Justice is also an archaic concept, a taboo that has deliberately been erased from all negotiations. Two and a half million people - farmers, merchants, lawyers, drivers, daydreaming teenage girls, love-smitten men, old people, women, children and combatants using violent means for a just cause - have all been living under a brutal boot for 40 years. Meanwhile, in our cafes and living rooms the conversation is over giving or not giving.
Lawyers, philosophers, writers, lecturers, intellectuals and rabbis, who are looked upon for basic knowledge about moral precepts, participate in this distorted discourse. What will they tell their children - after the occupation finally becomes a nightmare of the past - about the period in which they wielded influence? What will they say about their role in this? Israeli students stand at checkpoints as part of their army reserve duty, brutally deciding the fate of people, and then some rush off to lectures on ethics at university, forgetting what they did the previous day and what is being done in their names every single day. Intellectuals publish petitions, "to make concessions" or "not to make concessions," diverting attention from the core issue. There are stormy debates about corruption - whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is corrupt and how the Supreme Court is being undermined. But there is no discussion of the ultimate question: Isn't the occupation the greatest and most terrible corruption to have taken root here, overshadowing everything else?
Security officials are terrified about what would happen if we removed a checkpoint or released prisoners, like the whites in South Africa who whipped up a frenzy of fear about the "great slaughter" that would ensue if blacks were granted their rights. But these are not legitimate questions: The incarceration must be ended and the myriad of political prisoners should be released unconditionally. Just as a thief cannot present demands - neither preconditions nor any other terms - to the owner of the property he has robbed, Israel cannot present demands to the other side as long as the situation remains as it is.
Security? We must defend ourselves by defensive means. Those who do not believe that the only security we will enjoy will come from ending the occupation and from peace can entrench themselves in the army, and behind walls and fences. But we have no right to do what we are doing: Just as no one would conceive of killing the residents of an entire neighborhood, to harass and incarcerate it because of a few criminals living there, there is no justification for abusing an entire people in the name of our security. The question of whether ending the occupation would threaten or strengthen Israel's security is irrelevant. There are not, and cannot be, any preconditions for restoring justice.
No one will discuss this at Annapolis. Even if the real core issues were raised, they would focus on secondary questions - borders, Jerusalem and even refugees. But that would be escaping the main issue. After 40 years, one might have expected that the real core issue would finally be raised for honest and bold discussion: Does Israel have the moral right to continue the occupation? The world should have asked this long ago. The Palestinians should have focused only on this. And above all, we, who bear the guilt, should have been terribly troubled by the answer to this question.
The Real Price of Sugar by Ben Terrall
The Price of Sugar is a powerful documentary about the plight of Haitians toiling on sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic. These workers cross the border from Haiti to labor in conditions that the film's central protagonist, Father Christopher Hartley, calls "quasi-slavery." They are housed in sugar company towns called bateyes. Stripped of identification papers, they cannot legally travel elsewhere in the country.Hartley is a Spanish priest who came to the Dominican Republic in 1997 and wound up advocating for the cane cutters in his parish. The film gives him plenty of time to voice a thorough, articulate critique of the system which exploits the Haitians. Hartley names the superrich Vicini family as controlling the bateyes; the Vicinis have taken legal action against the film to prevent it from being screened.
It is not surprising that elites profiting from such a system would want the information in this documentary suppressed. According to the 2006 U.S. Department of State Dominican Republic Country Report on Human Rights Practices, "Most bateyes lacked schools, medical facilities, running water, and sewage systems and had high rates of disease. Company-provided housing was sub-standard. Most sugarcane workers were Haitian or of Haitian descent." A worker says on camera that "you just watch your children die of hunger and you can't do anything about it."
A Dominican journalist interviewed by the filmmakers explains, "what the Vicini want, no President's going to deny them." As with a certain Australian media mogul and a network called Fox News, the sugar barons dominate TV and radio airwaves via adverstising dollars and direct ownership of outlets. Wealthy elites have used the mass media to spread divide-and-conquer demonization of Haitians, and the high-profile human rights advocate Father Hartley (who tells his parish that according to the second Vatican Council, workers have a right to strike). Poor Dominicans fall for that line, partly, in the words of Father Hartley, because Haitians are "a little bit poorer and a little bit blacker."
Given his humility and solidarity with the poorest of the poor, I suspect Hartley might be uncomfortable with his pre-eminent role in the film. He is certainly a worthy subject and is clearly serious about his commitment to solidarity with the poorest of the poor, and to speaking up for social justice.
But while the film shows Hartley's parents, sister, and brother discussing his childhood and path toward a life in the priesthood, it would have helped to have more context about where his Haitian parishoners came from. Instead, all we are told of Haiti comes via Paul Newman's voiceover narration, which explains, "Haiti is one of the most dysfunctional countries in the world, rife with poverty and violence." As Haiti specialist Paul Farmer explains in thorough detail in his masterful book The Uses of Haiti, since Haitians defeated Napoleon's army in the only successful slave revolution in history, Washington has made sure that Haiti remained a "dysfunctional" state "rife with poverty and violence."
In the late 1980s a grassroots Haitian peoples movement forced an end to the reign of the U.S.-backed father and son dictatorships of "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier. Liberation theologian Jean-Bertrand Aristide emerged as part of this movement and surprised the U.S. by winning the overwhelming majority of the popular vote in 1990. The George H. W. Bush Administration subsequently backed right wing military and paramilitary forces behind the 1991 coup which forced Aristide into exile; in 2004 the George W. Bush Administration orchestrated (with France and Canada) a bloody coup against the second democratically-elected Aristide government.
U.S.-trained paramilitaries launched attacks that began the 2004 coup from safe havens in the Dominican Republic. An April, 2004 St. Petersburg Times article on the paramilitaries explained, "They enjoyed the tacit support of the Dominican armed forces. Ever since Aristide had done away with the military in Haiti in 1994, some Dominican generals were worried about their own job security. Without an army next door in Haiti, the traditional enemy of the Dominican Republic, calls were growing in Santo Domingo to slash the size of their own notoriously bloated and corrupt armed forces. The Dominican generals believed that recreating the old military threat next door would boost their relevance."
As with the 1991 coup, thousands of Aristide supporters were killed under the "interim" anti-Aristide government, and unemployment soared, driving scores of peasants across the border into the D.R.
In Aristide's 1992 autobiography, a passage on his first government's pro-poor agenda clarifies another reason why Dominican rightists wanted him gone: "we could no longer tolerate the unspeakable banishments, the flagrant violations of the most elementary rights that were the lot of Haitians in the Dominican Republic. The government of that country had to come to realize that the very recent era in which Jean-Claude Duvalier had sold Haitians like a gang of slaves had been overturned. Never again would our sisters and brothers be exported like merchandise, their blood changed into bitter sugar."
Pressure on the church succeeded in getting Father Hartley reassigned to Ethiopia in August. Anyone seeing this film will come away extremely concerned about what will happen to the destitute Haitians whose lives Hartley's high visibility protected while they campaigned with him for better conditions in the Bateyes.
