brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

November 3, 2007

The Global Debate on the Death Penalty

Filed under: General,government,human rights,usa — admin @ 6:43 am

Many human rights organizations and intergovernmental organizations, such as the European Union, see the death penalty as one of the most pressing human rights issues of our time and have taken an active role in persuading countries to halt executions.

The debate over capital punishment in the United States—be it in the courts, in state legislatures, or on nationally televised talk shows—is always fraught with emotion. The themes have changed little over the last two or three hundred years. Does it deter crime? If not, is it necessary to satisfy society’s desire for retribution against those who commit unspeakably violent crimes? Is it worth the cost? Are murderers capable of redemption? Should states take the lives of their own citizens? Are current methods of execution humane? Is there too great a risk of executing the innocent?

We are not alone in this debate. Others around the world—judges, legislators, and ordinary citizens—have struggled to reconcile calls for retribution with evidence that the death penalty does not deter crime. They have argued about whether the death penalty is a cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. They have weighed its costs against the need for an effective police force, schools, and social services for the indigent. National leaders have engaged in these discussions while facing rising crime rates and popular support for capital punishment. Yet, while the United States has thus far rejected appeals to abolish the death penalty or adopt a moratorium, other nations have—increasingly and seemingly inexorably—decided to do away with capital punishment.

Indeed, the gap between the United States and the rest of the world on this issue is growing year by year. In June 2007, Rwanda abolished the death penalty, becoming the one hundredth country to do so as a legal matter (although eleven of these countries retain legislation authorizing the death penalty in exceptional circumstances, most have not executed anyone in decades). An additional twenty-nine countries are deemed to be abolitionist in practice since they have either announced their intention to abolish the death penalty or have refrained from carrying out executions for at least ten years. As a result, there are now at least 129 nations that are either de facto or de jure abolitionist.

According to Amnesty International, there are sixty-eight countries that retain the death penalty and carry out executions. But even this number is misleading. In reality, the vast majority of the world’s executions are carried out by seven nations: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Pakistan, Yemen, and Vietnam. Many Americans know that the nations comprising Europe (except Belarus) and South America are abolitionist. But how many are aware that of the fifty-three nations in Africa only four ( Uganda, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan) carried out executions in 2005? Even in Asia, where many nations have long insisted that the death penalty is an appropriate and necessary sanction, there are signs of change. The Philippines abolished the death penalty in 2006, and the national bar associations of Malaysia and Japan have called for a moratorium on executions.

The international trend toward abolition reflects a shift in the death penalty paradigm. Whereas the death penalty was once viewed as a matter of domestic penal policy, now it is seen as a human rights issue. There are now three regional human rights treaties concerning the abolition of the death penalty: Protocols 6 and 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by 160 nations (including the United States), restricts the manner in which the death penalty may be imposed and promotes abolition. Many human rights organizations and intergovernmental organizations, such as the European Union, see the death penalty as one of the most pressing human rights issues of our time and accordingly have taken an active role in persuading countries to halt executions.

The Supreme Court’s View of International Law

As the international chorus of abolitionist voices swells, domestic courts and policy makers have engaged in a heated debate over the role of international law in U.S. death penalty cases. The debate came to a head in mid-2005 after the Supreme Court held in Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), that the execution of juvenile offenders violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy observed that although international law did not control the Court’s analysis, it was both “instructive” and “significant” in interpreting the contours of the Eighth Amendment.

The Roper Court noted that only seven countries had executed juvenile offenders since 1990: Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and China. But even those countries had disavowed the practice in recent years, leaving the United States as “the only country in the world that continues to give official sanction to the juvenile death penalty.” Id. at 575. The Court looked to treaties that prohibit the execution of juvenile offenders, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has been ratified by every country in the world apart from the United States and Somalia. After examining these sources and reviewing international practice, the Court concluded that the “overwhelming weight of international opinion” was opposed to the juvenile death penalty.

The Court’s majority opinion prompted a scathing dissent by Justice Antonin Scalia. After noting that the Court’s abortion jurisprudence was hardly consistent with the more restrictive practices of most foreign nations, he commented: “I do not believe that approval by ‘other nations and peoples’ should buttress our commitment to American principles any more than . . . disapproval by ‘other nations and peoples’ should weaken that commitment.” Id. at 628. Conservative commentators and legislators likewise attacked the Court’s citation of foreign law.

What many critics of Roper failed to recognize, however, is that the Court has long looked to the practices of the international community in evaluating whether a punishment is cruel and unusual. In Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U.S. 130 (1879), the Court cited the practices of other countries in upholding executions by firing squad. And in its oft-cited opinion in Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86 (1958), the Court declared that banishment was a punishment “universally deplored in the international community of democracies.” Since then, the Court has frequently referred to international law in a series of death penalty cases interpreting the meaning of the Eighth Amendment.

The Court’s attention to international practice in death penalty cases is undoubtedly related to the flexible and evolving character of the Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. In Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349 (1910), the Court held that the “cruel and unusual punishments” clause “is not fastened to the obsolete, but may acquire meaning as public opinion becomes enlightened by a humane justice.” Id. at 378. In Trop, the Court reaffirmed that the clause “must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” 356 U.S. at 100. The Eighth Amendment involves nothing more, and nothing less, than evaluating whether a punishment violates human dignity.

Courts around the world have wrestled with these same questions. When South Africa’s Constitutional Court decided that the death penalty was an unconstitutionally cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, it surveyed the decisions of several foreign courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Like that Court, the South African court did not consider foreign sources to be controlling. Nevertheless, it observed that “international and foreign authorities are of value because they analyse [sic] arguments for and against the death sentence and show how courts of other jurisdictions have dealt with this vexed issue. For that reason alone they require our attention.” State v. Makwanyane, Constitutional Court of the Republic of South Africa, 1995, Case No. CCT/3/94, ¶ 34, [1995] 1 LRC 269. The high courts of India, Lithuania, Albania, the Ukraine, and many others have likewise cited international precedent in seminal decisions relating to the administration of the death penalty.

In light of this history, the practice of citing international precedent hardly seems to warrant the storm of controversy surrounding it. But whether one agrees or disagrees with the Court’s approach, a majority of the current justices favors consideration of international law. In the next few years, a number of capital cases will once again offer the Court an opportunity to look beyond U.S. borders and survey international law and the practices of foreign states.

Execution of Persons Who Did Not Kill

Article 6(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) provides that the death penalty may only be imposed for the “most serious crimes.” T he United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee, which interprets the ICCPR’s provisions, has observed that this provision must be “read restrictively to mean that the death penalty should be a quite exceptional measure.” Human Rights Committee, General Comment 6, Art. 6 (Sixteenth session, 1982) ¶ 7; Compilation of General Comments and General Recommendations Adopted by Human Rights Treaty Bodies, U.N. Doc. HRIGEN1Rev.1 at 6 (1994). In a death penalty case from Zambia, where the prisoner received a death sentence for participating in an armed robbery, the committee held that the sentence was not compatible with Article 6(2) because the petitioner’s use of firearms did not cause death or injury to any person.

The UN Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty, adopted by the UN Economic and Social Council in 1984, defines “ most serious crimes” as “intentional crimes with lethal or other extremely grave consequences.” Referring to those safeguards, the UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions has concluded that the term “intentional” should be “equated to premeditation and should be understood as deliberate intention to kill.” United Nations, Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/79/Add.85, 19 Nov. 1997, ¶ 13.

Yet in the United States, several states authorize the death penalty for persons who are “major participants” in a felony, such as burglary or robbery, even if they never killed, intended to kill, or even contemplated that someone would be killed while committing the crime. In California and Georgia, persons may be sentenced to death for accidental killings during a felony or attempted felony.

Moreover, Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and North Carolina allow for the imposition of a death sentence in some cases for the rape of a minor, even if the victim did not die. These laws will be subject to strong legal challenges in coming years, although this will not be an easy battle, as demonstrated by the recent Louisiana supreme court decision upholding a death sentence against an offender who was convicted of raping a child. Louisiana v. Kennedy, No. 05-KA-1981 ( La. May 22, 2007).

Available data indicate that prosecutors rarely seek the death penalty against “non-triggermen,” and executions of these persons are few and far between. These two factors alone indicate that the imposition of the death penalty on persons who have committed nonlethal crimes may be ripe for challenge. In the event that the Supreme Court examines the issue, it is highly likely it will consider international practice. In Enmund v. Florida, 458 U.S. 782 (1982), a case involving a defendant sentenced to death under the felony-murder rule, the Court noted that international norms were “not irrelevant” to its analysis, observing that the doctrine of felony murder had been abolished in England and India, severely restricted in Canada and a number of other Commonwealth of Nations countries, and was unknown in continental Europe.

Execution of the Severely Mentally Ill

Although the Supreme Court has held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of the mentally incompetent, state and federal courts have routinely concluded that severely mentally ill prisoners are sufficiently competent that they may lawfully be executed. Consequently, dozens of prisoners suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other incapacitating mental illnesses have been executed in the United States during the last ten years. In June 2007, however, the Court overturned a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, holding that the court had used an overly restrictive definition of incompetence. Panetti v. Quarterman, 127 S. Ct. 2842 (2007). This decision may encourage state and federal courts to take greater care in evaluating the mental status of those facing imminent execution, but it does not prohibit courts from sentencing severely mentally ill prisoners to death, nor does it guarantee that severely mentally ill prisoners will not be executed in the future.

In Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), in which the Court struck down the execution of the mentally retarded, the Court cited an amicus curiae brief submitted by the European Union (EU) as evidence that “within the world community, the imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed by mentally retarded offenders is overwhelmingly disapproved.” Id. at 316 (citing in n.21 Brief for European Union as Amicus Curiae at 4). The current Court likely would be open to considering similar amicus briefs in a future case challenging the execution of the severely mentally ill.

A substantial body of international precedent exists regarding the execution of the severely mentally ill. The UN Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty prohibit imposing the death penalty “on persons who have become insane.” In 1989, the UN Economic and Social Council expanded this protection to cover “persons suffering from . . . extremely limited mental competence, whether at the stage of sentence or execution.” United Nations Economic & Social Council, Implementation of the Safeguards Guaranteeing Protection of Rights of those Facing the Death Penalty, E.S.C. Res. 1989/64, U.N. Doc. E/1989/91 (1989), at 51, ¶ 1(d).The UN Commission on Human Rights has urged countries not to impose the death penalty on persons suffering from any form of mental disabilities. And the EU has consistently asserted that executions of persons suffering from severe mental disorders “are contrary to internationally recognized human rights norms and neglect the dignity and worth of the human person.” EU Memorandum on the Death Penalty (Feb. 25, 2000), at 4, www.eurunion.org/legislat/deathpenalty/eumemorandum.htm.

Racial and Geographic Disparities

Arbitrariness in capital sentencing was one of the factors that led the Supreme Court to strike down existing state death penalty laws in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). Four years later, in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), the Court’s decision to uphold the newly revised laws was based on its determination that the statutes minimized the risk of arbitrary sentencing by channeling the discretion of capital juries. But thirty years later, factors such as race and geography continue to lead to great disparities in capital sentencing. These disparities have led to a different sort of arbitrariness, one that may not be consistent with international norms.

Studies have repeatedly shown that race matters when determining who is sentenced to death. It has been said that, as a statistical matter, race is more likely to affect death sentencing than smoking affects the likelihood of dying from heart disease. In Philadelphia, the odds that an offender will receive a death sentence are nearly four times higher when the defendant is black. A 2006 study confirmed that defendants’ skin color and facial features play a critical role in capital sentencing. And over the last twenty years, social scientists have repeatedly observed that capital defendants are much more likely to be sentenced to death for homicides involving white victims.

Enormous geographical disparities arise as well. This derives, in part, from the lack of uniform standards to guide the discretion of state prosecutors in seeking the death penalty. Prosecutors are almost always elected officials, and their support or opposition to the death penalty in a given case is often influenced by the level of popular support for capital punishment within a given community. In San Francisco, for example, the local prosecutor never seeks the death penalty because she is morally opposed to it. In Tulare County, located in California’s conservative Central Valley, the chief prosecutor is a zealous advocate of capital punishment. As a result, two persons who commit the same crime, and who are ostensibly prosecuted under the same penal code, may be subject to two radically different punishments.

Article 6(1) of the ICCPR provides that nations may not “arbitrarily” take life. The term is not defined in the text of the treaty, nor has the UN Human Rights Committee had an opportunity to elaborate on its meaning in the context of an otherwise lawfully imposed capital sentence. In evaluating “arbitrary arrest and detention,” however, that committee concluded that arbitrariness encompasses elements of inappropriateness, injustice, and lack of predictability. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a human rights body of the Organization of American States, has found that geographic disparities in the application of the death penalty in the United States can result in a “pattern of legislative arbitrariness” whereby an offender’s death sentence depends not on the crime committed but on the location where it was committed. In Roach and Pinkerton v. United States, Case 9647, Annual Report of the IAHCR 1986–87, the Inter-American Commission concluded that such geographic disparities constituted an arbitrary deprivation of the right to life and subjected the petitioners to unequal treatment before the law in contravention of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.

These sources are generally considered to be nonbinding. But that does not mean that they are not persuasive. Five justices of the Supreme Court—like many judges throughout the world—find it a worthwhile endeavor to consider international norms in evaluating whether the application of the death penalty comports with basic human dignity, whether it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, and whether it is consistent with contemporary standards of decency. As the community of nations continues to debate the pros and cons of capital punishment, the United States should take a seat at the table, listen, and learn.

October 29, 2007

Kenya: Country Should Stamp Out Sex Tourism And Child Prostitution

Filed under: General,kenya,usa,wealth — admin @ 5:53 am

IT IS UNFORTUNATE THAT Labour minister Newton Kulundu’s faux pas at the launch of a report hosted by the US embassy last week got more media attention than the contents of the report being launched.

The minister accused the United States and the United Kingdom of being “the greatest violators of human rights, democracy and transparency” while the visibly perturbed US ambassador, Micheal Ranneberger, looked on.

Mr Kulundu forgot one basic principal of diplomacy – do not spit in the face of your host, even if you do not agree with him.

But this lapse in judgment on the part of the minister is not a good enough reason for the media to deflect attention from the contents of the shocking report.

The report, Trafficking in Persons from a Labour Perspective: The Kenyan experience, published by the American Centre for International Labour Solidarity, highlights a problem that seems to have escalated in the last few years – the buying and selling of human beings for the purpose of exploitation.

The International Labour Organisation estimates that at any given time, 12 million women, men and children worldwide are coerced into bonded labour, involuntary servitude, or sexual slavery. This modern form of slavery is the second-most lucrative business for international crime syndicates, after trafficking in weapons.

A study by the Kenyan Institute of Policy Analysis and Research (IPAR) has found that Kenya is a major source, transit and destination country for trafficked women, men and children who are forced into unpaid work or forced prostitution.

Kenyan victims are trafficked to other countries mostly through bogus employment agencies that deceive victims into going abroad for work. Unsuspecting victims are then sent to Europe, Australia, North America or the Middle East/Gulf region, where they end up as bonded labour or prostitutes. Some African countries, such as South Africa and Bostswana, are also recipients of these modern-day slaves.

But while the international aspect of the trade receives the most attention, it is worth noting that internal trafficking of women and children in particular is a growing problem in Eastern Africa.

Counter-trafficking activists believe that many children from Kenya, Burundi and Rwanda are trafficked to Kenya’s coastal areas for sexual exploitation in the growing sex tourism industry.

It is estimated that in the coastal town of Mtwapa alone, between 10,000 and 20,000 children are trafficked for the purpose of sex tourism.

A recent Unicef report shows that while Italian, German and Swiss men form the bulk of the foreign tourists who sexually exploit children at the coast, a large proportion – 39 per cent – of the perpetrators are local Kenyan men.

Many of the children being exploited are not from the coast region but are imported from rural areas from around the country.

You don’t have to spend a lot of time at the Kenyan coast to know that child prostitution and sex tourism are rampant there. In Mombasa and Malindi, it is common to see aging white men well into their 70s and 80s with girls young enough to be their granddaughters.

Locals tolerate this type of sexual exploitation because, as one put it to me recently, “nothing gets a family out of poverty faster than a daughter who has a white boyfriend.”

In many cases, girls are encouraged by none other than their parents and relatives to look for older white men who will not only pay the girl for her services, but her family as well.

The Unicef report also found that witchdoctors are commonly engaged by sex workers to ensure a steady supply of foreign tourists who can support them. (The allure of the foreign tourist is greater than that of a local tourist as he is often able to pay more, and is likely to be a seasonal client, thereby allowing the women and girls to have more than one “boyfriend” in a given year.)

Many of the girls (and some boys) are the source of income to impoverished parents living in deprived rural areas. Others make a lot of money for middlemen and traffickers who supply children and women to tourists looking for sex while on holiday.

The sad thing is that despite the passing of the Sexual Offences Bill and the publication of damning reports that confirm that Kenya is fast becoming a preferred destination for sex tourists, no one has either been arrested or deported for engaging in sex tourism or paedophilia.

Tourism may be a leading revenue earner for Kenya, but it is about time we vetted the tourists who come into this country.

Known paedophiles and sex tourists must not be given a visa to enter the country. Their records must be entered into every immigration and security database in the world, including Interpol. Parents, relatives and middlemen forcing children into servitude or prostitution must be arrested and prosecuted.

More importantly, we must create the economic and social conditions that prevent parents, relatives, middlemen and traffickers from condemning our children to lives of sexual slavery.

October 28, 2007

Size and Scope of Dirty Money Laundering by Big US Banks

Filed under: General,government,usa,wealth — admin @ 5:27 am

James Petras,
La Jornada (May 19 2001)

There is a consensus among US Congressional Investigators, former bankers and international banking experts that US and European banks launder between $500 billion and $1 trillion of dirty money annually, half of which is laundered by US banks alone.

As Senator Levin summarizes the record: “Estimates are that $500 billion to $1 trillion of international criminal proceeds are moved internationally and deposited into bank accounts annually. It is estimated half of that money comes to the United States.”

Over the decade between $2.5 and $5 trillion criminal proceeds are laundered by US banks and circulate in the US financial circuits. Senator Levin’s statement however, only covers criminal proceeds, according to US laws. It does not include illegal transfers and capital flows from corrupt political leaders, and tax evasion by overseas businesses. A leading US scholar who is an expert on international finance associated with the prestigious Brookings Institute estimates that “the flow of corrupt money out of developing (Third World) and transitional (ex-Communist) economies into Western coffers at $20 to $40 billion a year and the flow stemming from mis-priced trade at $80 billion a year or more. My lowest estimate is a $100 billion per year by these two means which we facilitated a trillion dollars in the decade, at least half to the United States. Including other elements of illegal flight capital would produce much higher figures.” The Brookings expert did not include illegal shifts of real estate and securities titles, wire fraud, et cetera.

In other words an incomplete figure of dirty money (laundered criminal and corrupt money) flowing into US coffers during the 1990s amounted to $3 – $5.5 trillion. This is not the complete picture but it gives us a basis to estimate the significance of the “dirty money factor” in evaluating the US economy. In the first place, it is clear the combined laundered and dirty money flows cover part of the US deficit in its balance of merchandise trade which ranges in the hundreds of billions annually. As it stands, the US trade deficit is close to $300 billion. Without the “dirty money” the US economy external accounts would be totally unsustainable, living standards would plummet, the dollar would weaken, the available investment and loan capital would shrink and Washington would not be able to sustain its global empire. The importance of laundered money is forecast to increase. Former private banker Antonio Geraldi, in testimony before the Senate Subcommittee projects significant growth in US bank laundering. “The forecasters also predict the amounts laundered in the trillions of dollars and growing disproportionately to legitimate funds”. The $500 billion of criminal and dirty money flowing into and through the major US banks far exceeds the net revenues of all the IT companies in the US, not to speak of their profits. These yearly inflows surpass all the net transfers by the major US oil producers, military industries and airplane manufacturers. The biggest US banks, Bank of America, J P Morgan, Chase Manhattan and particularly Citibank derive a high percentage of their banking profits from serving these criminal and dirty money accounts. The big US banks and key institutions sustain US global power via their money laundering and managing ofillegally obtained overseas funds.

US Banks and The Dirty Money Empire

Washington and the mass media have portrayed the US in the forefront of the struggle against narco trafficking, drug laundering and political corruption: the image is of clean white hands fighting dirty money from the Third world (or the ex-Communist countries). The truth is exactly the opposite. US banks have developed a highly elaborate set of policies for transferring illicit funds to the US, investing those funds in legitimate businesses or US government bonds and legitimating them. The US Congress has held numerous hearings, provided detailed exposés of the illicit practices of the banks, passed several laws and called for stiffer enforcement by any number of public regulators and private bankers. Yet the biggest banks continue their practices, the sums of dirty money grows exponentially, because both the State and the banks have neither the will nor the interest to put an end to the practices that provide high profits and buttress an otherwise fragile empire.

First thing to note about the money laundering business, whether criminal or corrupt, is that it is carried out by the most important banks in the USA. Secondly, the practices of bank officials involved in money laundering have the backing and encouragement of the highest levels of the banking institutions – these are not isolated cases by loose cannons. This is clear in the case of Citibank’s laundering of Raul Salinas (brother of Mexico’s ex-President) $200 million account. When Salinas was arrested and his large scale theft of government funds was exposed, his private bank manager at Citibank, Amy Elliott told her colleagues that “this goes in the very, very top of the corporation, this was known … on the very top. We are little pawns in this whole thing” (page 35).

Citibank, the biggest money launderer, is the biggest bank in the US, with 180,000 employees world-wide operating in 100 countries, with $700 billion in known assets and over $100 billion in client assets in private bank (secret accounts) operating private banking offices in thirty countries, which is the largest global presence of any US private bank. It is important to clarify what is meant by “private bank”.

Private Banking is a sector of a bank which caters to extremely wealthy clients ($1 million deposits and up). The big banks charge customers a fee for managing their assets and for providing the specialized services of the private banks. Private Bank services go beyond the routine banking services and include investment guidance, estate planning, tax assistance, off-shore accounts, and complicated schemes designed to secure the confidentiality of financial transactions. The attractiveness of the “Private Banks” (PB) for money laundering is that they sell secrecy to the dirty money clients. There are two methods that big Banks use to launder money: via private banks and via corresponding banking. PB routinely use code names for accounts, concentration accounts (concentration accounts co-mingles bank funds with client funds which cut off paper trails for billions of dollars of wire transfers) that disguise the movement of client funds, and offshore private investment corporations (PIC) located in countries with strict secrecy laws (Cayman Island, Bahamas, et cetera).

For example in the case of Raul Salinas, PB personnel at Citibank helped Salinas transfer $90 to $100 million out of Mexico in a manner that effectively disguised the funds’ sources and destination thus breaking the funds’ paper trail. In routine fashion, Citibank set up a dummy offshore corporation, provided Salinas with a secret code name, provided an alias for a third party intermediary who deposited the money in a Citibank account in Mexico and transferred the money in a concentration account to New York where it was then moved to Switzerland and London.

The PICs are designed by the big banks for the purpose of holding and hiding a person’s assets. The nominal officers, trustees and shareholder of these shell corporations are themselves shell corporations controlled by the PB. The PIC then becomes the holder of the various bank and investment accounts and the ownership of the private bank clients is buried in the records of so-called jurisdiction such as the Cayman Islands. Private bankers of the big banks like Citibank keep pre-packaged PICs on the shelf awaiting activation when a private bank client wants one.The system works like Russian Matryoshka dolls, shells within shells within shells, which in the end can be impenetrable to a legal process.

The complicity of the state in big bank money laundering is evident when one reviews the historic record. Big bank money laundering has been investigated, audited, criticized and subject to legislation; the banks have written procedures to comply. Yet banks like Citibank and the other big ten banks ignore the procedures and laws and the government ignores the non-compliance. Over the last twenty years, big bank laundering of criminal funds and looted funds has increased geometrically, dwarfing in size and rates of profit the activities in the formal economy. Estimates by experts place the rate of return in the PB market between 20% and 25% annually. Congressional investigations revealed that Citibank provided “services” for four political swindlers moving $380 million: Raul Salinas – $80 to $100 million, Asif Ali Zardari (husband of former Prime Minister of Pakistan) in excess of $40 million, El Hadj Omar Bongo (dictator of Gabon since 1967) in excess of $130 million, Abacha sons of General Abacha ex-dictator of Nigeria – in excess of $110 million. In all cases Citibank violated all of its own procedures and government guidelines: there was no client profile (review of client background), determination of the source of the funds, nor of any violations of country laws from which the money accrued. On the contrary, the bank facilitated the outflow in its prepackaged format: shell corporations were established, code names were provided, funds were moved through concentration accounts, the funds were invested in legitimate businesses or in US bonds, et cetera. In none of these cases – or thousands of others – was due diligence practiced by the banks (under due diligence a private bank is obligated by law to take steps to ensure that it does not facilitate money laundering). In none of these cases were the top banking officials brought to court and tried. Even after arrest of their clients, Citibank continued to provide services, including the movement of funds to secret accounts and the provision of loans.

Correspondent Banks: The Second Track

The second and related route which the big banks use to launder hundreds of billions of dirty money is through “correspondent banking” (CB). CB is the provision of banking services by one bank to another bank. It is a highly profitable and significant sector of big banking. It enables overseas banks to conduct business and provide services for their customers – including drug dealers and others engaged in criminal activity – in jurisdictions like the US where the banks have no physical presence. A bank that is licensed in a foreign country and has no office in the United States for its customers attracts and retains wealthy criminal clients interested in laundering money in the US. Instead of exposing itself to US controls and incurring the high costs of locating in the US, the bank will open a correspondent account with an existing US bank. By establishing such a relationship, the foreign bank (called a respondent) and through it, its criminal customers, receive many or all of the services offered by the US big banks called the correspondent. Today, all the big US banks have established multiple correspondent relationships throughout the world so they may engage in international financial transactions for themselves and their clients in places where they do have a physical presence. Many of the largest US and European banks located in the financial centers of the world serve as correspondents for thousands of other banks. Most of the offshore banks laundering billions for criminal clients have accounts in the US. All the big banks specializing in international fund transfer are called money center banks, some of the biggest process up to $1 trillion in wire transfers a day. Through June 1999, the top five correspondent bank holding companies in the United States held correspondent account balances exceeding $17 billion; the total correspondent balances of the 75 largest US correspondent banks was $34.9 billion. For the billionaire criminals an important feature of correspondent relationships is that they provide access to international transfer systems – that facilitate the rapid transfer of funds across international boundaries and within countries. The most recent estimates (1998) are that sixty offshore jurisdictions around the world licensed about 4,000 offshore banks which control approximately $5 trillion in assets.

One of the major sources of impoverishment and crises in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Russia and the other countries of the ex-USSR and Eastern Europe, is the pillage of the economy and the hundreds of billions of dollars which are transferred out of the country via the corresponding banking system and the Private Banking system linked to the biggest banks in the US and Europe. Russia alone has seen over $200 billion illegally transferred in the course of the 1990s. The massive shifts of capital from these countries to the US and European banks has generated mass impoverishment and economic instability and crises. This in turn has created increased vulnerability to pressure from the IMF and World Bank to liberalize their banking and financial systems leading to further flight and deregulation which spawns greater corruption and overseas transfers via private banks as the Senate reports demonstrate.

The increasing polarization of the world is embedded in this organized system of criminal and corrupt financial transactions. While speculation and foreign debt payments play a role in undermining living standards in the crises regions, the multi-trillion dollar money laundering and bank servicing of corrupt officials is a much more significant factor, sustaining Western prosperity, US empire building and financial stability. The scale, scope and time frame of transfers and money laundering, the centrality of the biggest banking enterprises and the complicity of the governments, strongly suggests that the dynamics of growth and stagnation, empire and re-colonization are intimately related to a new form of capitalism built around pillage, criminality, corruption and complicity.

October 27, 2007

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Filed under: General,government,media,military,police,usa,wealth — admin @ 7:23 am

In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world– through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts…. New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters — to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.

Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.

The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas though our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine, among them: Pinochet’s coup in Chile in 1973, the Falklands War in 1982, the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Asian Financial crisis in 1997 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998.

October 22, 2007

As Bangkok slowly sinks, Thailand hunts for solutions

Filed under: General,global islands,nicaragua,thailand,usa,weather — admin @ 4:35 am

KHUN SAMUT CHIN, Thailand — At Bangkok’s watery gates, Buddhist monks cling to a shrinking spit of land around their temple as they wage war against the relentlessly rising sea.

During the monsoons at high tide, waves hurdle the breakwater of concrete pillars and the inner rock wall around the temple on a promontory in the Gulf of Thailand. Jutting above the water line just ahead are remnants of a village that already has slipped beneath the sea.

Experts say these waters, aided by sinking land, threaten to submerge Thailand’s sprawling capital of more than 10 million people within this century. Bangkok is one of 13 of the world’s largest 20 cities at risk of being swamped as sea levels rise in coming decades, according to warnings at the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change held here.

The city, built on clay rather than bedrock, has been sinking as much as 4 inches annually as its teeming population and factories pump some 2.5 million cubic tons of cheaply priced water, legally and illegally, out of its aquifers. This compacts the layers of clay and causes the land to sink.

Everyone — the government, scientists and environmental groups — agrees Bangkok is headed for trouble, but there is some debate about when.

Once known as the “Venice of the East,” Bangkok was founded 225 years ago on a swampy floodplain along the Chao Phraya River. But beginning in the 1950s, on the advice of international development agencies, most of the canals were filled in to make roads and combat malaria. This fractured the natural drainage system that had helped control Bangkok’s annual monsoon season flooding.

Smith Dharmasaroja, chair of the government’s Committee of National Disaster Warning Administration, urges that work start now on a dike system of more than 60 miles — protective walls about 16 feet high, punctured by water gates and with roads on top, not unlike the dikes long used in low-lying Netherlands to ward off the sea. The dikes would run on both banks of the Chao Phraya River and then fork to the right and left at the mouth of the river.

Oceanographer Anond Snidvongs, a leading scientist in the field, says other options must also be explored, including water-diversion channels, more upcountry dams and the “monkey cheeks” idea of King Bhumibol Adulyadej. The king, among the first to alert Bangkokians about the yearly flooding, has suggested diverting off-flow from the surges into reservoirs, the “cheeks,” for later release into the gulf.

As authorities ponder, communities like Khun Samut Chin, 12 miles from downtown Bangkok, are taking action.

The five monks at the temple and surrounding villagers are building the barriers from locally collected donations and planting mangrove trees to halt shoreline erosion.

The odds are against them. About half a mile of shoreline has already been lost over the past three decades, in large part due to the destruction of once-vast mangrove forests. The abbot, Somnuk Attipanyo, says about one-third of the village’s original population was forced to move.

Endangered cities

Cities around the world are facing the danger of rising seas and other disasters related to climate change. Thirty-three cities are predicted to have at least 8 million people by 2015. According to studies by the United Nations and others, these 18 are among those considered to be highly vulnerable:

City Country

Dhaka Bangladesh
Buenos Aires Argentina
Rio de Janeiro Brazil
Shanghai, Tianjin China
Alexandria, Cairo Egypt
Mumbai, Calcutta India
Jakarta Indonesia
Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe Japan
Lagos Nigeria
Karachi Pakistan
Bangkok Thailand
New York, Los Angeles U.S.

October 20, 2007

Vernon Bellecourt: a visionary of the Native movement

Filed under: General,global islands,government,military,nicaragua,usa — admin @ 5:26 am

In memory

Vernon Bellecourt, WaBun-Inini, a member of the Anishinabe/Ojibwe Nation and longtime leader in the American Indian Movement, died on Oct. 13 of pneumonia at the age of 75.

Bellecourt, one of 12 children and older brother of AIM co-founder Clyde Bellecourt, was born on the White Earth Chippewa Reservation in Minnesota in 1931. It is estimated that unemployment on the reservation was 95 percent when the Bellecourt children were growing up.

Dennis Banks and Clyde Bellecourt co-founded the American Indian Movement in 1968 in Minneapolis, an organization of and for Native people that was inspired by the Black Panther Party. AIM sought to defend the community against police brutality, racism, poverty and oppression.

Vernon soon joined and was a lifelong activist in the organization. By its militant example and defense of Native peoples trying to stop the theft of their land and resources, AIM helped instill a renewed pride across the Native nations of the United States.

AIM led a 71-day takeover of the town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation beginning Feb. 27, 1973, after U.S. marshals laid siege to a community meeting that sought AIM’s assistance against the repressive and corrupt tribal government. More than 300 federal agents surrounded the camp with armored personnel carriers, over 130,000 rounds of ammunition, and constant gunfire. Two AIM activists were murdered by government agents.

For this, the American Indian Movement leaders, including the Bellecourts and Banks, were severely repressed. Over 60 people on the reservation were murdered by police and vigilantes in the next two years, culminating in the June 26, 1975, shoot-out at Pine Ridge, where two FBI agents were killed after raiding the reservation.

The most egregious injustice against AIM activists was the frame-up and persecution of Leonard Peltier. Because two AIM members, Dino Butler and Bob Robideau, were acquitted of the FBI deaths by a federal jury in Iowa by reason of self-defense, the FBI decided the only remaining defendant charged but not yet tried had to pay. Leonard Peltier had sought refuge in Canada and was therefore not tried along with Butler and Robideau, or he also would have been acquitted.

The FBI falsified evidence to get Peltier extradited. Despite a lack of evidence, witness coercion by the FBI, and numerous irregularities, Peltier was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. To this day, he remains in a U.S. federal prison at Lewisburg, Penn., despite international and national demands for his freedom.

It is in this context of extreme U.S. government repression of the American Indian Movement that the continued resistance of leaders like the Bellecourts, Banks, Bill Means and many other Indigenous leaders is best appreciated.

An internationalist

Bellecourt was an internationalist, supporting the Palestinian, Irish, Venezuelan, Cuban, Libyan, Nicaraguan and many other causes.

When the CIA intensified its counterrevolutionary war in Nicaragua in the mid-1980s by recruiting Indigenous Miskito leaders who had joined the Contra forces, Bellecourt traveled to the country to defend the Nicaraguan revolution.

He prided himself on his uncompromising anti-imperialist stance, and recently returned from Venezuela where he traveled to express appreciation to Hugo Chávez for the Bolivarian revolution’s heating-fuel deliveries to Native communities in Minnesota.

In recent years, Bellecourt was nationally known as a spokesperson in the campaign against racist anti-Indian symbols of sports teams through the National Coalition on Racism in Sports and Media.

In 1997, he drew national attention to this anti-racist fight when he, Juan Reyna and Juanita Helphrey and other coalition members set fire to an effigy of the extremely offensive Cleveland baseball team’s Chief Wahoo, during the baseball World Series at Cleveland’s Jacobs Field. He was arrested but charges were later dropped.

In a 1995 interview with Sinn Fein, Bellecourt stated, “AIM sees the Washington Redskins, the Atlanta Braves basketball team, Kansas City Chiefs and Cleveland Indians baseball teams with their grinning buck-toothed mascot Chief Wahoo as demeaning the beautiful culture of the Indigenous nations of the Americas. We are a living people with a vibrant culture and we refuse to have our identity trivialized and degraded. Indians are people, not mascots for America’s fun and games.”

Bellecourt was a strong opponent of the U.S. genocide and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he spoke at several ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) anti-war rallies since 2003 in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation extends its deepest condolences to his family, comrades and friends. We pledge our continued solidarity with the Native struggle for self-determination and justice.

Vernon Bellecourt, presente!

The Bellecourt family is collecting donations to help pay for medical and burial costs. Donations and cards can be sent to:

Clyde Bellecourt
3953 14th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55407

October 12, 2007

US Income Gap Widens, Richest Share Hits Record

Filed under: General,government,usa,wealth — admin @ 1:43 pm

Washington – The gap between America’s richest and poorest is at its widest in at least 25 years, with the wealthiest taking home a record share of the nation’s income that exceeds even the previous high in 2000.1012 07

According to recent data from the Internal Revenue Service, the richest 1 percent of Americans earned 21.2 percent of all U.S. income earned in 2005. That is a significant increase from 2004 when the top 1 percent earned 19 percent of the nation’s income.

The previous high over the past 25 years, when such data were compiled, was in 2000 when a bull market brought the figure up to 20.81 percent.

The Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan tax research group based in Washington, said the wealthy benefited in 2005 from a healthy, growing economy and higher-than-average price inflation.

The IRS data included all of the 132.6 million tax returns filed in 2005 with a positive adjusted gross income, or AGI, also including people who did not earn enough to owe taxes.

AGI is a figure used to calculate an individual’s income tax liability and includes all gross income adjusted by certain allowed deductions, such as moving expenses, health savings account deductions, alimony paid and retirement contributions.

In 2005, 90.6 million people who filed tax returns paid taxes into the Treasury, and 42 million with a positive AGI used exemptions, deductions and tax credits to reduce their federal income tax liability to zero.

Democratic U.S. presidential candidates have raised the widening income gap as a campaign issue, proposing to raise taxes on wealthier Americans to pay for programs that would benefit lower-income families.

To make the top 1 percent of wealthiest Americans in 2005, a taxpayer had to earn at least $364,657. That figure is an increase from 2004, when the cut-off point stood at $328,049.

In 2005, the top 50 percent of American earners brought in 87.17 percent of the nation’s income, also an all-time high for the data available.

The previous high for that figure was also in 2000, when the richest 50 percent of Americans earned 87.01 percent of the income.

2,002 die in police custody in 3 years

Filed under: General,government,police,usa — admin @ 11:24 am

WASHINGTON – More than 2,000 criminal suspects died in police custody over a three-year period, half of them killed by officers as they scuffled or attempted to flee, the government said Thursday.

The study by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics is the first nationwide compilation of the reasons behind arrest- related deaths in the wake of high-profile police assaults or killings involving Abner Louima and Amadou Diallo in New York in the late 1990s.

The review found 55 percent of the 2,002 arrest-related deaths from 2003 through 2005 were due to homicide by state and local law enforcement officers. Alcohol and drug intoxication caused 13 percent of the deaths, followed by suicides at 12 percent, accidental injury at 7 percent and illness or natural causes, 6 percent. The causes of the deaths for the remaining 7 percent were unknown.

The highly populated states of California, Texas and Florida led the pack for both police killings and overall arrest-related deaths. Georgia, Maryland and Montana were not included in the study because they did not submit data.

Most of those who died in custody were men (96 percent) between the ages of 18 and 44 (77 percent). Approximately 44 percent were white; 32 percent black; 20 percent Hispanic; and 4 percent were of other or multiple races.

“Keep in mind we have 2,000 deaths out of almost 40 million arrests over three years, so that tells you by their nature they are very unusual cases,” said Christopher J. Mumola, who wrote the study.

“Still, they do need to be looked at to determine whether police training can be better or practices can be better,” he said.

State laws and police department policy typically let officers use deadly force to defend themselves or others from the threat of death or serious injury. Deadly force also is allowed to prevent the escape of a suspect in a violent felony who poses an immediate threat to others.

The Justice Department study released Thursday suggests that most of the police killings would be considered justified, although it does not make that final determination. About 80 percent of the cases involved criminal suspects who reportedly brandished a weapon “to threaten or assault” the arresting officers.

Another 17 percent involved suspects who allegedly grabbed, hit or fought with police. More than one-third of the police killings, or about 36 percent, involved a suspect who tried to flee or otherwise escape arrest.

The report was compiled at the request of Congress in 2000 after the 1997 struggle between New York police and Louima, a black security guard who left the precinct house bleeding after officers jammed a broken broomstick into his mouth and rectum. A few years later, two police shootings of unarmed black men followed, including Diallo, who was shot 41 times after he reached into his pocket for a wallet.

Since then, following police sensitivity training, New York has seen a few killings involving suspects and officers, including last year’s shooting of Sean Bell, an unarmed black bridegroom-to-be whom police say they believed was reaching for a gun.

Other findings:

Among law enforcement, 380 officers were killed in the line of duty over the three-year period and 174,760 were reportedly assaulted, according to FBI data. Most of the deaths were accidental (221), while 159 were homicides.

Blacks were disproportionately represented in arrest-related deaths due to alcohol or drug intoxication (41 percent vs. 33 percent for whites); accidental injury (42 percent vs. 37 percent for whites); and unknown causes (46 percent vs. 39 percent for whites)

October 10, 2007

ACLU Suit Alleges Deportees Were Drugged

Filed under: General,government,usa — admin @ 9:49 am

LOS ANGELES — Two immigrants were held down and forcibly injected with sedatives by immigration officials who were attempting to deport them, the American Civil Liberties Union charged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The class-action complaint targets the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Division of Immigration Health Services, an agency of the U.S. Public Health Service that contracts with ICE to provide medical services. The division is already facing lawsuits charging that it provides inadequate medical care to detained immigrants.

Both plaintiffs in Tuesday’s lawsuit claim they declined sedatives that were offered to them when immigration officials sought to deport them, but they were injected with a powerful antipsychotic anyway.

According to the lawsuit, Raymond Soeoth, a 38-year-old Indonesian national, was in a Los Angeles area immigrant detention center in December 2004 when the authorities told him he was about to be deported. Soeoth asked to call his wife and make arrangements in Indonesia but was denied, said his attorney, Ahilan Arulanantham.

A note in Soeoth’s medical records states that Soeoth said, “I’m not ready to go,” and told officers he would not board an airplane. Another note indicates that Soeoth may have been a suicide risk, which his lawyer says is untrue.

Immigration agents injected him with the sedative, antipsychotic drug Haldol, according to his medical records. Soeoth’s deportation was canceled by airline security because they had not been notified by immigration authorities, records show.

The other plaintiff, Senegalese immigrant Amadou Diouf, 31, was put on a commercial flight at Los Angeles International Airport in handcuffs, his medical records show. Diouf protested that he should not be deported, then asked a flight attendant in French to speak to the captain. Medical escorts wrestled him to the floor of the airplane and injected him, the lawsuit states.

The captain asked them to leave, and Diouf was sent back to detention. Both men are now free while their immigration cases are on appeal, their attorney said.

Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for ICE, said decisions about immigrants’ medical care are made by the U.S. Public Health Service, which “does not involuntarily pre-medicate or sedate a detainee solely to facilitate removal efforts, unless authorized by a judge’s removal order.”

She added: “When ICE is carrying out the removal order of an immigration judge, our officers are responsible for the safety of the alien and members of public who come into contact with the alien on a commercial flight.”

Torture Endorsed, Torture Denied

Filed under: General,government,usa — admin @ 6:16 am

The April 2004 publication of grotesque photographs of naked Iraqis piled on top of each other, forced to masturbate, and led around on leashes like dogs, sent shock waves around the world. George W. Bush declared, “I shared a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated.” Yet less than a year later, his Justice Department issued a secret opinion endorsing the harshest interrogation techniques the CIA has ever used, according to an October 4, 2007 report in the New York Times. These include head slapping, frigid temperatures, and water boarding, in which the subject is made to feel he is drowning. Water boarding is widely considered a torture technique. Once again, Bush is compelled to issue a denial. He insists, “This government does not torture people.”

This was not the first time the Bush administration had officially endorsed torture, however. John Yoo, writing for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, penned an August 2002 memorandum that rewrote the legal definition of torture to require the equivalent of organ failure. This memo violated the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, a treaty the United States ratified, and therefore part of U.S. law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

In December 2002, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved interrogation methods that included the use of dogs, hooding, stress positions, isolation for up to 30 days, 20-hour interrogations, deprivation of light and sound, and water boarding. U.S. Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora told William Haynes, the Pentagon’s general counsel, that Rumsfeld’s “authorized interrogation techniques could rise to the level of torture.” As a result, Rumsfeld rescinded some methods but reserved the right to approve others, including water boarding, on a case-by-case basis.

When Bush maintained earlier this week that his government doesn’t torture prisoners, he stressed the need for interrogation to “protect the American people.” Notwithstanding the myth perpetuated by shows like “24,” however, torture doesn’t work. Experts agree that people who are tortured will say anything to make the torture stop.

One of the first victims of the Bush administration’s 2002 torture policy was Abu Zubaydah, whom they called “chief of operations” for al Qaeda and bin Laden’s “number three man.” He was repeatedly tortured at the secret CIA “black sites.” They water boarded him, withheld his medication, threatened him with impending death, and bombarded him with continuous deafening noise and harsh lights.

But Zubaydah wasn’t a top al Qaeda leader. Dan Coleman, one of the FBI’s leading experts on al Qaeda, said of Zubaydah, “He knew very little about real operations, or strategy … He was expendable, you know, the greeter . . . Joe Louis in the lobby of Caeser’s Palace, shaking hands.” Moreover, Zubaydah was schizophrenic; according to Coleman, “This guy is insane, certifiable split personality.” Coleman’s views were echoed at the top levels of the CIA and were communicated to Bush and Cheney. But Bush scolded CIA director George Tenet, saying, “I said [Zubaydah] was important. You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” Zubaydah’s minor role in al Qaeda and his apparent insanity were kept secret.

In response to the torture, Zubaydah told his interrogators about myriad terrorist targets al Qaeda had in its sights: the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statute of Liberty, shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, and apartment buildings. Al Qaeda was close to building a crude nuclear bomb, Zubaydah reported. None of this was corroborated but the Bush gang reacted to each report zealously.

Likewise, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, considered the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, was tortured so severely – including by water boarding – that the information he provided is virtually worthless. A potentially rich source of intelligence was lost as a result of the torture.

Bush’s insistence that his administration doesn’t torture rings hollow. He lied about weapons of mass destruction and a Saddam-al Qaeda connection in Iraq. He lied when he assured us his officials would not wiretap without warrants. As evidence of secret memos detailing harsh interrogation policies continues to emerge, we can’t believe Bush’s denials about torture.

Democrats in Congress have demanded they be allowed to see the memos, but Bush said the interrogation methods have been “fully disclosed to appropriate members of Congress.” Senator John D. Rockefeller IV was unmoved. “I’m tired of these games,” he said. “They can’t say that Congress has been fully briefed while refusing to turn over key documents used to justify the legality of the program.”

It is incumbent upon the Senate Judiciary Committee to vigorously interrogate Michael Mukasey during his attorney general confirmation hearing. As AG, Mukasey would oversee the department that writes interrogation policy. Mukasey should know the Convention Against Torture prohibits torture in all circumstances, even in times of war.

Torture is a war crime. Those who commit or order torture can be convicted under the U.S. War Crimes Statute. Techniques that don’t rise to the level of torture but constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment also violate U.S. law. Congress should provide for the appointment of a special independent counsel to fully investigate and prosecute all who are complicit in the torture and mistreatment of prisoners in U.S. custody.

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