Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Fw: Tis the Season -- Man of the Year



Illustration: Time Magazine just named its man of the year. He is cited as improving his countries stature abroad, improving its economy, his contribution to civil rights, and its security. Now, guess which one it is.
(This also works well as our illustrator just might do some more illustrations for us, eventually, if we run this photo enough times. -- ed.)
______________________________
This issue attempts to express "Goodwill towards Men" (naturally, in the gender-neutral sense of the word) by reprinting in it's entirety a transcript for the Radio and Television show called Democracy Now. It is aired on over 500 radio stations world-wide and can be seen on Free Speech TV and Link TV on either satellite provider. This was aired yesterday. Today, there was another full-hour discussing another Blackwater case and still another private contractor, all of which is done in our name, and, of course, after careful consultation with God who reportedly said "Yeah, good idea -- go get 'em George". The transcript of today's show can be found at their website.
I just want to take the opportunity to point out that, despite all the criticism and his resignation, Gonzales was the best Attorney General we had since Aschcroft, author of the book Never Again.
In addition, for those on the list, I'm attatching a song I've sent before. I'm addressing it to the married males on the list in the interest of facilitating marital harmony at this time of the year. Follow his example. Desperate times call for congitive measures.
Here is the unexpurgated transcript. It should be an eye-opener as it is the only testimony I know of coming from someone who survived our "secret prisons" overseas.
Listen/Watch </listen_watch> Donate </contribute/donate_money>
A daily TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez,
airing on over 650 stations, pioneering the largest community media
collaboration in the U.S.
Amy Goodman's Public Events <http://tour.democracynow.org/>
DAILY UPDATES </subscribe>
Boletin diario </es/suscribase>
Pacifica: Radio With Vision <http://www.pacifica.org/>
Rush Transcript
Related Links
* Surviving the Darkness: Testimony from the U.S. "Black Sites"
(Download 63-page pdf)
<http://www.chrgj.org/projects/docs/survivingthedarkness.pdf>
* More documents relating to Bashmilah's case
<http://www.chrgj.org/#testimony>
* Salon's article: Inside the CIA's notorious "black sites"
<http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/12/14/bashmilah>
*AMY GOODMAN: *Today, a /Democracy Now!/ broadcast exclusive. A victim
of the CIA rendition program-kidnapped, held in secret jails and
tortured-speaks out in his own words. His name is Mohamed Farag Ahmad
Bashmilah, one of hundreds of men to have passed through the CIA's
so-called "black sites." Today, he tells his story.
A citizen of Yemen, Mohamed came to Jordan with his wife in the fall of
2003 to arrange surgery for his ailing mother. He was living in
Indonesia at the time. Jordanian authorities took him into custody
shortly after seizing his passport. There, he says he was tortured,
threatened and forced to sign a false confession. He was turned over to
the CIA within days and flown to a secret prison he later found out was
in Kabul, Afghanistan.
In CIA custody, Mohamed says he was held in a freezing-cold cell,
interrogated, shackled, force-fed, subjected to sleep deprivation and
loud music for days. He attempted suicide at least three times. He talks
about his interrogators and the American psychiatrists or psychologists
who also played a role.
Mohamed has brought a lawsuit against a Boeing subsidiary accused of
abetting his kidnapping. The American Civil Liberties Union is suing
Jeppesen Dataplan on behalf of Mohamed and four other victims of CIA
kidnapping and torture. The lawsuit accuses Jeppesen of providing direct
logistical support for the CIA flights.
Yesterday, I spoke to Mohamed Bashmilah on the phone from his home in
Yemen, in his first broadcast interview. We're going to play that
interview in a moment, but first I want to turn to Meg Satterthwaite.
She is director of the International Human Rights Clinic at New York
University Law School. She's Mohamed Bashmilah's attorney, joining us
from Washington, D.C. Welcome to /Democracy Now!/, Meg Satterthwaite.
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *Thank you very much.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Talk about the significance of what Mohamed Bashmilah
describes happened to him.
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *So, one of the reasons that Mohamed Bashmilah's
story is so important is that he is one of a very small number of
individuals to have actually come out of the so-called "high-value
detainee" program. This is a program that targeted individuals who were
suspected of being quote/unquote "high-level al-Qaeda" members or had
associations with such members. Mohamed is one of very few people who
was later released from that program, rather than being sent to
Guantanamo. And for that reason, he is able to tell about some of the
black sites that, really, we haven't heard much about from any
perspective outside of the US government perspective.
*AMY GOODMAN: *He was never charged and then ultimately released, after
being-
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *That's correct.
*AMY GOODMAN: *-held in-the last jail was in Yemen for ten months, he
says, at the behest of the Americans.
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *Right. So he was never charged by the Americans in
any way. In fact, he still doesn't know to this day why the Americans
picked him up and why they requested his transfer from Jordan. He was
charged finally by the Yemeni government. When he was transferred to
Yemen, the Yemeni government has said that they were told to hold him on
behalf of the US government. They later received a file from the US
government, and essentially they felt that they didn't have any evidence
that he was a terrorist, so they interviewed him and they found that he
admitted to using a false identity document at one point when he was in
Indonesia, and they charged him with forgery. They then sentenced him to
time served, and they counted the time that he spent in secret prisons
abroad.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Meg Satterthwaite, why is he and the other men who you're
representing suing this Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen?
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *So the Jeppesen suit, which was brought by the
American Civil Liberties Union, is a suit that challenges corporate
complicity in the rendition and secret detention program. And the point
here is to show and to try to stop the complicity of regular
corporations in the secret detention and forced disappearance program.
*AMY GOODMAN: *We're talking to Meg Satterthwaite, director of
International Human Rights Clinic at New York University Law School. And
what is the Boeing subsidiary's response-Jeppesen?
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *Well, we actually haven't had a response from the
defendant, Jeppesen, in this case. What has happened instead is that the
US government has made a motion to intervene, and they've also at the
same time made a motion to dismiss the lawsuit or to get a summary
judgment granted in their favor on the basis of the state secrets
doctrine. So the idea is the US government needs to come in and say,
"Wait, we can't forward with this case. We can't even go forward to have
a response from the defendant, because the issues in the case are so
linked to national security that the entire case must be dismissed on
the basis of state secrets."
*AMY GOODMAN: *Meg Satterthwaite, we'd like you to stay with us. We're
going to turn now to the interview that I did with Mohamed Bashmilah.
Fuad Yahya provided the translation. I spoke to Mohamed at his home in
Yemen. He began by talking about his initial capture in Jordan before he
was turned over to the CIA.
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] It was approximately
six days, but what I endured there is worth years. They took me
there, and in the evening they started their interrogations
process. They started putting some psychological pressure on me.
They wanted me to confess to having some connections to some
individuals of al-Qaeda. They tried several times to get me to
confess, and every time I said no, I would get either a kick, a
slap or a curse. Then they said that if I did not confess, they
will bring my wife and rape her in front of me. And out of fear
for what would happen to my family, I screamed and I fainted.
After I came to, I told them that, "Please, don't do anything to
my family. I would cooperate with you in any way you want."

*AMY GOODMAN: *CIA torture and rendition victim, Mohamed Farag Ahmad
Bashmilah. He was speaking to me yesterday from his home in Yemen. We'll
come back to this interview in a moment.
[break]
*AMY GOODMAN: *We return now to this broadcast exclusive, the interview
with CIA torture and rendition victim, Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah. I
spoke to him at his home in Yemen late yesterday and asked him to talk
about his transfer to CIA custody after his detention in Jordan.
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] They took me at 1:30
in the morning out of the detention facility. I was told that I
was being released. I was cautiously optimistic, because how could
someone be released at 1:30 in the morning?
They took me to the room where I deposited my belongings. And my
belongings consisted of my passport, $200, an ID card and my
wedding ring. I signed receipt of these items, but they were not
given to me. They were put inside an envelope. In addition, they
put also the paper that I had signed, the confession, which was
essentially a false confession.
While we were walking out, I asked one of the guards where I was
being taken and where is my family? At that time, my heart was in
distress. I felt there was something wrong, there was some kind of
a conspiracy regarding my fate.
At that time, the guard lifted the blindfold partially so that I
would speak to the interrogator, and I saw another man who had a
Western look. He was white and somewhat overweight and had dark
glasses on. I realized then that they were probably handing me
over to some other agency, because during the interrogations I had
with the Jordanians, one of the threats was that if I did not
confess, they will hand me over to American intelligence. At that
time, I did not take that threat seriously, because they had
threatened me before that they would rape my wife, so I thought
this was just psychological pressure. But at this moment, I
realized I was being handed over to some other parties.
When we left the building and we got into the vehicle and the
vehicle started to move, so I realized if the vehicle turned left
and then turned right, that would mean that I was being taken to
the airport, and that could mean that I would be handed over to
some other parties. On the other hand, if the vehicle turned left
and then turned left again, then that would mean that we were
going to the city center, and that could mean that I was being
released. I could not see or hear, but I could feel the movement,
and the vehicle went into the direction toward the airport. I
became increasingly afraid, increasingly worried, because I was
being handed over to some other parties, and I didn't understand why.
When we arrived at the airport, they took me to a hall. And
without any precautions or anything, I felt that I was being
pulled violently by some other people. They took me to another
room. They started tearing down my clothes, from above all the way
down. And I was being stripped completely naked. They started
taking pictures from all directions. And they also started to beat
me on my sides and also my feet. And then they put me in a
position similar to the position of prostration in Muslim prayer,
which is similar to the fetal position. And in that position, one
of them inserted his finger in my anus very violently. I was in
terrible pain, and I started to scream. When they started taking
pictures, I could see that they were people who were masked. They
were dressed in black from head to toe, and they were also wearing
surgical gloves.
And then, they started in the process of preparing me for travel,
and that consisted of putting a diaper on me. And then they put
pants, which went down to below the knee, and a top with the
sleeve to the middle of the forearm. And then, they also put some
gauze on my eyes. And then they put what looked like headphones on
my ears-sorry, these were not headphones; they were like little
plugs inside the ears, plastic. And then they put gauze on that,
on the ears. And then they taped that with very strong adhesive
tape. And then they put a hood over my head. And then, on top of
that, they put a headphone. This is as far as the top of my body
was. And then they handcuffed me with a chain, and also they
chained my ankles. Then they put a belt above the pants, and then
they tied the hands and the ankles to that belt. This was after
being slapped and kicked until I almost fainted.
And then they took me into an aircraft, and they had me lie down
on the floor of the airplane. Then they strapped my legs at my
chest so that I wouldn't move right or left. The aircraft flew for
about two-and-a-half to three hours. And I was in such a terrible
psychological state, only God could determine. There was a lot of
physical pain because of what I had endured, and also all the
thoughts regarding what might happen to my wife and my mother.
This is knowing that my mother was seriously ill, and my wife
could not speak Arabic very well so she could be of much help to
my mother. And so, throughout this flight, I was in some kind of a
coma, and I would come to and I would faint and come to. And so,
during those times when I was thinking of my wife and mother, I
would be distracted from the pain, and then the pain would
distract me from the thoughts to my wife and mother.
About three hours later, we landed somewhere. And then some
[inaudible], and they handled me very roughly. They took me to a
detention center. I was in a very poor psychological state. Then
they took me to a room where they took my weight, and they
examined my eyes and my ears. Then they put me in a solitary cell.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Were you beaten in this place?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] In this place, I was
not beaten. They did not seem to have anything that indicated that
I should be treated that way. In addition to that, they could see
that I was in a terrible psychological state. It did not make any
sense to pressure me in interrogations.
I was terribly agitated, and I was crying inconsolably, thinking
of my mother and my wife. Also, I was thinking what they were
thinking-why would they take me from one detention center to
another? And I remained in this cell for three months, during
which I had no relief at all, despite the fact that they brought a
number of psychiatrists, in addition to the general practice
physician there.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Mohamed, who were you being held by here?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] Based on what the
Jordanians had told me, that they would hand me to American
intelligence, in addition to the interrogators in this place who
came to see me with interpreters, I realized quite certainly that
I was being held by American intelligence.
*AMY GOODMAN: *What clues did you have? Why did you think American?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] Some of the
interrogators would come to me and interrogate me in the
interrogation room, and they would tell me, "You should calm down
and be comforted, because we'll send all this information to
Washington." And they would say that in Washington, they will
determine whether my answers are truthful or not.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, speaking to us from Yemen,
CIA torture and rendition victim. We'll come back to this conversation
with him in a minute.
[break]
*AMY GOODMAN: *We return to the last part of my interview with Mohamed
Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, the CIA torture and rendition victim. In the
previous excerpt, he described his ordeal while he was sent to the
secret CIA prison in Afghanistan. I asked him to talk about the
conditions at that prison.
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] In the beginning, it
was totally dark. It was as if you were inside a tomb. Then, after
that, they would turn a light on. Above the door, there was a
camera. And there was constant loud music.
*AMY GOODMAN: *What kind of music?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] It was loud Western
music, and it was very noisy.
*AMY GOODMAN: *In English?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] After a while, they
switched to Arabic music.
*AMY GOODMAN: *How loud was it?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] It was loud enough
so that you could not hear what happens in the other cells when
the doors opened and closed.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Did you hear other prisoners?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] Yes, I heard other
people very clearly, because sometimes there would be power
outage, and during that time the music would stop and you could
hear the other people.
*AMY GOODMAN: *What did you hear?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] Sometimes I would
hear a call for prayer, and sometimes I hear them conversing about
this new person who has just arrived, and that's me, because I
didn't talk. So I would hear them once in a while.
*AMY GOODMAN: *What language were your guards and the
interrogators speaking?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] The guards would not
speak a single word, but the interrogators spoke in English, and
they had interpreters with them.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Did you try to hurt yourself in this cell?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] During these three
months in this cell, I tried hurting myself three times, because I
could not take it in that place, because I had not done nothing
wrong.
The first time, I tried to pull some thread from the blanket,
trying to fashion a rope to hang myself. I tied it to the window
that was opposite to the door, where the sound of music would
come. I think they saw me through the camera, so the guards came
and stopped me.
After a while, I collected some of the medicine that they were
giving to me every day. I kept a number of these pills, about
twenty, and then I dissolved them in a cup of water. But it just
happened that at that time, the guards came, and it was just the
wrong time.
And the third time was, I tried to slash my veins with a piece of
metal that I had. But this piece of metal was not sharp enough, so
I injured myself, but the wound was not deep enough.
Because of the recurrence of these incidents, then they started
having the psychiatrists see me. And what these psychiatrists did
was just give me the opportunity to speak and express myself. And
the therapy mainly consisted of trying to look at my thoughts and
try to interpret them for me, and in addition to some
tranquilizers whenever they thought I needed some.
There was one time also when I started beating my head against
wall. And then what happened was, they brought me a helmet,
similar to what people wear when they play golf. So all of my
attempts were unsuccessful.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Mohamed, why did you try to commit suicide three times?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] The main thing was
that I had not done anything that would call for being transferred
from one prison to another and to endure such suffering. In
addition to that, knowing that my mother was seriously ill, and
she and my wife were in a foreign country-imagine any mother
having her son snatched away from her and taken away, even for
just one week. Imagine what this person would suffer and how the
mother would suffer also. This made me want to have nothing to do
with life anymore.
*AMY GOODMAN: *How long were you held in Yemen?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] Ten months.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Were you tortured there?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] I was not tortured.
I was questioned about the places where I had been detained,
which, of course, I didn't know. There was no need to torture me
or even ask me about anything else in terms of violations of the
law or anything. My detention in Yemen, as far as I could
determine from what was written in the press, was at the behest of
the Americans.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Can you describe finally being released to your family?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] My joy was
indescribable. I could not believe that I was going to be
released. As much as I was happy to be released and to be reunited
with my wife and mother, I was also worried about what my wife and
mother had endured during my absence. I did not tell them what I
had suffered in Jordan or elsewhere.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Do you have a message for the American people?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] I believe that the
American people are helpless during the administration of George
Bush. When I was in detention, I would speak to the interrogators,
and I told them that the policies of George Bush was wrong,
especially sending American people to areas where they don't
belong. And I told them that it seems that the policy consisted of
addressing wrongs with wrongs. I didn't know that one day when I
would be released, I would find out that there are American
victims of this policy, as well.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Mohamed, did they ever charged you with anything?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] I was not charged
with anything. This is what I have found. I was handed to Yemen,
and they asked them to detain me.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Did you have any communication with your family?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] And there were no
charges against me.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Did you have any communication with your family
from Jordan to the time you were released?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] I could not contact
my family or any human rights organization or the Red Cross or any
agency, other than my interrogators, the doctors and the
psychiatrists.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Did the Red Cross ever visit you?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] They never did. I
wished they did.
*AMY GOODMAN: *So you did not speak to your family, even when you
were ten months in Yemen in jail?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] After a month and a
half of being in Yemen, I was able to communicate with my family.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Why did the Yemen authorities hold you?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] They said this was
at the behest of the US authorities.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Do you have any message for other prisoners who are
held at places like Guantanamo or the same prisons you were held
in, who remain there?
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] I want to tell all
prisoners in all places that one day truth and justice will
prevail. They want to be released, but their jailers want to keep
them, and God has a plan for them.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Mohamed, I want to thank you for taking this time
to tell us your story.
*MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] You're welcome. It
is my duty to sit here and express what has happened to me and
also to hope that no one else will endure the same.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Mohamed Bashmilah, he was a victim of CIA rendition,
imprisoned at black sites run by the CIA. I spoke to him at his home in
Yemen, telling his story for the first time in a broadcast interview. He
was translated by Fuad Yahya.
Mohamed Bashmilah's lawyer, Meg Satterthwaite, is still with us from
Washington, D.C. You have brought a suit on his behalf. You are not,
though, suing the US government. You are suing Jeppesen for being part
of extraordinary rendition, is that right, Meg?
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *That's right. First, I'd just like to clarify that
the suit was actually brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, and
I'm co-counsel in the case, representing Mohamed Bashmilah. The case is
against Jeppesen Dataplan for its complicity and essentially for
enabling some of the flights that were used to take individuals into the
rendition and secret detention program. This is a program that could not
exist without corporate complicity. Jeppesen is a crucial example here.
The CIA used purportedly civilian planes to avoid certain procedures
that they normally would need to use if they used, for example, military
planes or official government planes. So the corporate complicity is
actually a crucial part of the CIA program.
*AMY GOODMAN: *And why not the US government, as well, a suit against
the government?
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *There has been, of course, several suits against
the government for the rendition and secret detention program. The most
recent one that viewers and listeners may be familiar with is the case
of Khaled el-Masri, also a suit brought by the ACLU. In that suit, the
suit was dismissed on the basis of the state secrets doctrine,
essentially for the reason that-the CIA and the US government was able
to forward the argument that the case was so sensitive it should be
dismissed, because it had to do with state secrets.
The point in this case is to say the government has already acknowledged
the program's existence, the President and other high officials have
given lots of details about the program when it suited them, so it can't
be that the very basis and fact of the program is still a state secret.
It cannot be that that is enough to get rid of a lawsuit about basic
human rights and the violation of those basic human rights.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Meg Satterthwaite, were the interrogations of Mohamed
videotaped?
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *We don't know. What we do know is that there were
video cameras in his cells and also in interrogation rooms. I would like
to know, of course, if my client was videotaped. We have filed a Freedom
of Information Act request seeking all records, which would include
videotapes, if they existed, or transcripts. And all we've gotten from
the CIA is the claim that they can neither confirm nor deny having any
records of my client.
*AMY GOODMAN: *Meg Satterthwaite, I want to thank you for being with us,
director of the International Human Rights Clinic at New York University
Law School.
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *Thank you very much.
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Tis the Season -- Man of the Year

 
 
 
Illustration:  Time Magazine just named its man of the year.  He is cited as improving his countries stature abroad, improving its economy, his contribution to civil rights, and its security.  Now, guess which one it is. 
 
(This also works well as our illustrator just might do some more illustrations for us, eventually, if we run this photo enough times. -- ed.)
 
______________________________
 
 
 
    This issue attempts to express "Goodwill towards Men" (naturally, in the gender-neutral sense of the word) by reprinting in it's entirety a transcript for the Radio and Television show called Democracy Now.  It is aired on over 500 radio stations world-wide and can be seen on Free Speech TV and Link TV on either satellite provider.  This was aired yesterday.  Today, there was another full-hour discussing another Blackwater case and still another private contractor, all of which is done in our name, and, of course, after careful consultation with God who reportedly said "Yeah, good idea -- go get 'em George".  The transcript of today's show can be found at their website.
 
    I just want to take the opportunity to point out that, despite all the criticism and his resignation, Gonzales was the best Attorney General we had since Aschcroft, author of the book Never Again
 
    Here is the unexpurgated transcript.  It should be an eye-opener as it is the only testimony I know of coming from someone who survived our "secret prisons" overseas.
 
 
 
Listen/Watch </listen_watch>   Donate </contribute/donate_money>
A daily TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez,
airing on over 650 stations, pioneering the largest community media
collaboration in the U.S.
 
 
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Boletin diario </es/suscribase>
 
 
 
Pacifica: Radio With Vision <http://www.pacifica.org/>
 
      Rush Transcript
 
      Related Links
 
    * Surviving the Darkness: Testimony from the U.S. "Black Sites"
      (Download 63-page pdf)
      <http://www.chrgj.org/projects/docs/survivingthedarkness.pdf>
    * More documents relating to Bashmilah's case
      <http://www.chrgj.org/#testimony>
    * Salon's article: Inside the CIA's notorious "black sites"
      <http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/12/14/bashmilah>
 
*AMY GOODMAN: *Today, a /Democracy Now!/ broadcast exclusive. A victim
of the CIA rendition program-kidnapped, held in secret jails and
tortured-speaks out in his own words. His name is Mohamed Farag Ahmad
Bashmilah, one of hundreds of men to have passed through the CIA's
so-called "black sites." Today, he tells his story.
 
A citizen of Yemen, Mohamed came to Jordan with his wife in the fall of
2003 to arrange surgery for his ailing mother. He was living in
Indonesia at the time. Jordanian authorities took him into custody
shortly after seizing his passport. There, he says he was tortured,
threatened and forced to sign a false confession. He was turned over to
the CIA within days and flown to a secret prison he later found out was
in Kabul, Afghanistan.
 
In CIA custody, Mohamed says he was held in a freezing-cold cell,
interrogated, shackled, force-fed, subjected to sleep deprivation and
loud music for days. He attempted suicide at least three times. He talks
about his interrogators and the American psychiatrists or psychologists
who also played a role.
 
Mohamed has brought a lawsuit against a Boeing subsidiary accused of
abetting his kidnapping. The American Civil Liberties Union is suing
Jeppesen Dataplan on behalf of Mohamed and four other victims of CIA
kidnapping and torture. The lawsuit accuses Jeppesen of providing direct
logistical support for the CIA flights.
 
Yesterday, I spoke to Mohamed Bashmilah on the phone from his home in
Yemen, in his first broadcast interview. We're going to play that
interview in a moment, but first I want to turn to Meg Satterthwaite.
She is director of the International Human Rights Clinic at New York
University Law School. She's Mohamed Bashmilah's attorney, joining us
from Washington, D.C. Welcome to /Democracy Now!/, Meg Satterthwaite.
 
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *Thank you very much.
 
*AMY GOODMAN: *Talk about the significance of what Mohamed Bashmilah
describes happened to him.
 
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *So, one of the reasons that Mohamed Bashmilah's
story is so important is that he is one of a very small number of
individuals to have actually come out of the so-called "high-value
detainee" program. This is a program that targeted individuals who were
suspected of being quote/unquote "high-level al-Qaeda" members or had
associations with such members. Mohamed is one of very few people who
was later released from that program, rather than being sent to
Guantanamo. And for that reason, he is able to tell about some of the
black sites that, really, we haven't heard much about from any
perspective outside of the US government perspective.
 
*AMY GOODMAN: *He was never charged and then ultimately released, after
being-
 
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *That's correct.
 
*AMY GOODMAN: *-held in-the last jail was in Yemen for ten months, he
says, at the behest of the Americans.
 
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *Right. So he was never charged by the Americans in
any way. In fact, he still doesn't know to this day why the Americans
picked him up and why they requested his transfer from Jordan. He was
charged finally by the Yemeni government. When he was transferred to
Yemen, the Yemeni government has said that they were told to hold him on
behalf of the US government. They later received a file from the US
government, and essentially they felt that they didn't have any evidence
that he was a terrorist, so they interviewed him and they found that he
admitted to using a false identity document at one point when he was in
Indonesia, and they charged him with forgery. They then sentenced him to
time served, and they counted the time that he spent in secret prisons
abroad.
 
*AMY GOODMAN: *Meg Satterthwaite, why is he and the other men who you're
representing suing this Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen?
 
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *So the Jeppesen suit, which was brought by the
American Civil Liberties Union, is a suit that challenges corporate
complicity in the rendition and secret detention program. And the point
here is to show and to try to stop the complicity of regular
corporations in the secret detention and forced disappearance program.
 
*AMY GOODMAN: *We're talking to Meg Satterthwaite, director of
International Human Rights Clinic at New York University Law School. And
what is the Boeing subsidiary's response-Jeppesen?
 
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *Well, we actually haven't had a response from the
defendant, Jeppesen, in this case. What has happened instead is that the
US government has made a motion to intervene, and they've also at the
same time made a motion to dismiss the lawsuit or to get a summary
judgment granted in their favor on the basis of the state secrets
doctrine. So the idea is the US government needs to come in and say,
"Wait, we can't forward with this case. We can't even go forward to have
a response from the defendant, because the issues in the case are so
linked to national security that the entire case must be dismissed on
the basis of state secrets."
 
*AMY GOODMAN: *Meg Satterthwaite, we'd like you to stay with us. We're
going to turn now to the interview that I did with Mohamed Bashmilah.
Fuad Yahya provided the translation. I spoke to Mohamed at his home in
Yemen. He began by talking about his initial capture in Jordan before he
was turned over to the CIA.
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] It was approximately
      six days, but what I endured there is worth years. They took me
      there, and in the evening they started their interrogations
      process. They started putting some psychological pressure on me.
      They wanted me to confess to having some connections to some
      individuals of al-Qaeda. They tried several times to get me to
      confess, and every time I said no, I would get either a kick, a
      slap or a curse. Then they said that if I did not confess, they
      will bring my wife and rape her in front of me. And out of fear
      for what would happen to my family, I screamed and I fainted.
      After I came to, I told them that, "Please, don't do anything to
      my family. I would cooperate with you in any way you want."
 

*AMY GOODMAN: *CIA torture and rendition victim, Mohamed Farag Ahmad
Bashmilah. He was speaking to me yesterday from his home in Yemen. We'll
come back to this interview in a moment.
 
[break]
 
*AMY GOODMAN: *We return now to this broadcast exclusive, the interview
with CIA torture and rendition victim, Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah. I
spoke to him at his home in Yemen late yesterday and asked him to talk
about his transfer to CIA custody after his detention in Jordan.
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] They took me at 1:30
      in the morning out of the detention facility. I was told that I
      was being released. I was cautiously optimistic, because how could
      someone be released at 1:30 in the morning?
 
      They took me to the room where I deposited my belongings. And my
      belongings consisted of my passport, $200, an ID card and my
      wedding ring. I signed receipt of these items, but they were not
      given to me. They were put inside an envelope. In addition, they
      put also the paper that I had signed, the confession, which was
      essentially a false confession.
 
      While we were walking out, I asked one of the guards where I was
      being taken and where is my family? At that time, my heart was in
      distress. I felt there was something wrong, there was some kind of
      a conspiracy regarding my fate.
 
      At that time, the guard lifted the blindfold partially so that I
      would speak to the interrogator, and I saw another man who had a
      Western look. He was white and somewhat overweight and had dark
      glasses on. I realized then that they were probably handing me
      over to some other agency, because during the interrogations I had
      with the Jordanians, one of the threats was that if I did not
      confess, they will hand me over to American intelligence. At that
      time, I did not take that threat seriously, because they had
      threatened me before that they would rape my wife, so I thought
      this was just psychological pressure. But at this moment, I
      realized I was being handed over to some other parties.
 
      When we left the building and we got into the vehicle and the
      vehicle started to move, so I realized if the vehicle turned left
      and then turned right, that would mean that I was being taken to
      the airport, and that could mean that I would be handed over to
      some other parties. On the other hand, if the vehicle turned left
      and then turned left again, then that would mean that we were
      going to the city center, and that could mean that I was being
      released. I could not see or hear, but I could feel the movement,
      and the vehicle went into the direction toward the airport. I
      became increasingly afraid, increasingly worried, because I was
      being handed over to some other parties, and I didn't understand why.
 
      When we arrived at the airport, they took me to a hall. And
      without any precautions or anything, I felt that I was being
      pulled violently by some other people. They took me to another
      room. They started tearing down my clothes, from above all the way
      down. And I was being stripped completely naked. They started
      taking pictures from all directions. And they also started to beat
      me on my sides and also my feet. And then they put me in a
      position similar to the position of prostration in Muslim prayer,
      which is similar to the fetal position. And in that position, one
      of them inserted his finger in my anus very violently. I was in
      terrible pain, and I started to scream. When they started taking
      pictures, I could see that they were people who were masked. They
      were dressed in black from head to toe, and they were also wearing
      surgical gloves.
 
      And then, they started in the process of preparing me for travel,
      and that consisted of putting a diaper on me. And then they put
      pants, which went down to below the knee, and a top with the
      sleeve to the middle of the forearm. And then, they also put some
      gauze on my eyes. And then they put what looked like headphones on
      my ears-sorry, these were not headphones; they were like little
      plugs inside the ears, plastic. And then they put gauze on that,
      on the ears. And then they taped that with very strong adhesive
      tape. And then they put a hood over my head. And then, on top of
      that, they put a headphone. This is as far as the top of my body
      was. And then they handcuffed me with a chain, and also they
      chained my ankles. Then they put a belt above the pants, and then
      they tied the hands and the ankles to that belt. This was after
      being slapped and kicked until I almost fainted.
 
      And then they took me into an aircraft, and they had me lie down
      on the floor of the airplane. Then they strapped my legs at my
      chest so that I wouldn't move right or left. The aircraft flew for
      about two-and-a-half to three hours. And I was in such a terrible
      psychological state, only God could determine. There was a lot of
      physical pain because of what I had endured, and also all the
      thoughts regarding what might happen to my wife and my mother.
      This is knowing that my mother was seriously ill, and my wife
      could not speak Arabic very well so she could be of much help to
      my mother. And so, throughout this flight, I was in some kind of a
      coma, and I would come to and I would faint and come to. And so,
      during those times when I was thinking of my wife and mother, I
      would be distracted from the pain, and then the pain would
      distract me from the thoughts to my wife and mother.
 
      About three hours later, we landed somewhere. And then some
      [inaudible], and they handled me very roughly. They took me to a
      detention center. I was in a very poor psychological state. Then
      they took me to a room where they took my weight, and they
      examined my eyes and my ears. Then they put me in a solitary cell.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *Were you beaten in this place?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] In this place, I was
      not beaten. They did not seem to have anything that indicated that
      I should be treated that way. In addition to that, they could see
      that I was in a terrible psychological state. It did not make any
      sense to pressure me in interrogations.
 
      I was terribly agitated, and I was crying inconsolably, thinking
      of my mother and my wife. Also, I was thinking what they were
      thinking-why would they take me from one detention center to
      another? And I remained in this cell for three months, during
      which I had no relief at all, despite the fact that they brought a
      number of psychiatrists, in addition to the general practice
      physician there.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *Mohamed, who were you being held by here?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] Based on what the
      Jordanians had told me, that they would hand me to American
      intelligence, in addition to the interrogators in this place who
      came to see me with interpreters, I realized quite certainly that
      I was being held by American intelligence.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *What clues did you have? Why did you think American?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] Some of the
      interrogators would come to me and interrogate me in the
      interrogation room, and they would tell me, "You should calm down
      and be comforted, because we'll send all this information to
      Washington." And they would say that in Washington, they will
      determine whether my answers are truthful or not.
 

*AMY GOODMAN: *Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, speaking to us from Yemen,
CIA torture and rendition victim. We'll come back to this conversation
with him in a minute.
 
[break]
 
*AMY GOODMAN: *We return to the last part of my interview with Mohamed
Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, the CIA torture and rendition victim. In the
previous excerpt, he described his ordeal while he was sent to the
secret CIA prison in Afghanistan. I asked him to talk about the
conditions at that prison.
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] In the beginning, it
      was totally dark. It was as if you were inside a tomb. Then, after
      that, they would turn a light on. Above the door, there was a
      camera. And there was constant loud music.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *What kind of music?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] It was loud Western
      music, and it was very noisy.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *In English?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] After a while, they
      switched to Arabic music.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *How loud was it?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] It was loud enough
      so that you could not hear what happens in the other cells when
      the doors opened and closed.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *Did you hear other prisoners?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] Yes, I heard other
      people very clearly, because sometimes there would be power
      outage, and during that time the music would stop and you could
      hear the other people.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *What did you hear?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] Sometimes I would
      hear a call for prayer, and sometimes I hear them conversing about
      this new person who has just arrived, and that's me, because I
      didn't talk. So I would hear them once in a while.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *What language were your guards and the
      interrogators speaking?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] The guards would not
      speak a single word, but the interrogators spoke in English, and
      they had interpreters with them.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *Did you try to hurt yourself in this cell?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] During these three
      months in this cell, I tried hurting myself three times, because I
      could not take it in that place, because I had not done nothing
      wrong.
 
      The first time, I tried to pull some thread from the blanket,
      trying to fashion a rope to hang myself. I tied it to the window
      that was opposite to the door, where the sound of music would
      come. I think they saw me through the camera, so the guards came
      and stopped me.
 
      After a while, I collected some of the medicine that they were
      giving to me every day. I kept a number of these pills, about
      twenty, and then I dissolved them in a cup of water. But it just
      happened that at that time, the guards came, and it was just the
      wrong time.
 
      And the third time was, I tried to slash my veins with a piece of
      metal that I had. But this piece of metal was not sharp enough, so
      I injured myself, but the wound was not deep enough.
 
      Because of the recurrence of these incidents, then they started
      having the psychiatrists see me. And what these psychiatrists did
      was just give me the opportunity to speak and express myself. And
      the therapy mainly consisted of trying to look at my thoughts and
      try to interpret them for me, and in addition to some
      tranquilizers whenever they thought I needed some.
 
      There was one time also when I started beating my head against
      wall. And then what happened was, they brought me a helmet,
      similar to what people wear when they play golf. So all of my
      attempts were unsuccessful.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *Mohamed, why did you try to commit suicide three times?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] The main thing was
      that I had not done anything that would call for being transferred
      from one prison to another and to endure such suffering. In
      addition to that, knowing that my mother was seriously ill, and
      she and my wife were in a foreign country-imagine any mother
      having her son snatched away from her and taken away, even for
      just one week. Imagine what this person would suffer and how the
      mother would suffer also. This made me want to have nothing to do
      with life anymore.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *How long were you held in Yemen?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] Ten months.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *Were you tortured there?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] I was not tortured.
      I was questioned about the places where I had been detained,
      which, of course, I didn't know. There was no need to torture me
      or even ask me about anything else in terms of violations of the
      law or anything. My detention in Yemen, as far as I could
      determine from what was written in the press, was at the behest of
      the Americans.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *Can you describe finally being released to your family?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] My joy was
      indescribable. I could not believe that I was going to be
      released. As much as I was happy to be released and to be reunited
      with my wife and mother, I was also worried about what my wife and
      mother had endured during my absence. I did not tell them what I
      had suffered in Jordan or elsewhere.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *Do you have a message for the American people?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] I believe that the
      American people are helpless during the administration of George
      Bush. When I was in detention, I would speak to the interrogators,
      and I told them that the policies of George Bush was wrong,
      especially sending American people to areas where they don't
      belong. And I told them that it seems that the policy consisted of
      addressing wrongs with wrongs. I didn't know that one day when I
      would be released, I would find out that there are American
      victims of this policy, as well.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *Mohamed, did they ever charged you with anything?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] I was not charged
      with anything. This is what I have found. I was handed to Yemen,
      and they asked them to detain me.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *Did you have any communication with your family?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] And there were no
      charges against me.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *Did you have any communication with your family
      from Jordan to the time you were released?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] I could not contact
      my family or any human rights organization or the Red Cross or any
      agency, other than my interrogators, the doctors and the
      psychiatrists.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *Did the Red Cross ever visit you?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] They never did. I
      wished they did.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *So you did not speak to your family, even when you
      were ten months in Yemen in jail?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] After a month and a
      half of being in Yemen, I was able to communicate with my family.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *Why did the Yemen authorities hold you?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] They said this was
      at the behest of the US authorities.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *Do you have any message for other prisoners who are
      held at places like Guantanamo or the same prisons you were held
      in, who remain there?
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] I want to tell all
      prisoners in all places that one day truth and justice will
      prevail. They want to be released, but their jailers want to keep
      them, and God has a plan for them.
 
      *AMY GOODMAN: *Mohamed, I want to thank you for taking this time
      to tell us your story.
 
      *MOHAMED FARAG AHMAD BASHMILAH: *[translated] You're welcome. It
      is my duty to sit here and express what has happened to me and
      also to hope that no one else will endure the same.
 
*AMY GOODMAN: *Mohamed Bashmilah, he was a victim of CIA rendition,
imprisoned at black sites run by the CIA. I spoke to him at his home in
Yemen, telling his story for the first time in a broadcast interview. He
was translated by Fuad Yahya.
 
Mohamed Bashmilah's lawyer, Meg Satterthwaite, is still with us from
Washington, D.C. You have brought a suit on his behalf. You are not,
though, suing the US government. You are suing Jeppesen for being part
of extraordinary rendition, is that right, Meg?
 
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *That's right. First, I'd just like to clarify that
the suit was actually brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, and
I'm co-counsel in the case, representing Mohamed Bashmilah. The case is
against Jeppesen Dataplan for its complicity and essentially for
enabling some of the flights that were used to take individuals into the
rendition and secret detention program. This is a program that could not
exist without corporate complicity. Jeppesen is a crucial example here.
The CIA used purportedly civilian planes to avoid certain procedures
that they normally would need to use if they used, for example, military
planes or official government planes. So the corporate complicity is
actually a crucial part of the CIA program.
 
*AMY GOODMAN: *And why not the US government, as well, a suit against
the government?
 
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *There has been, of course, several suits against
the government for the rendition and secret detention program. The most
recent one that viewers and listeners may be familiar with is the case
of Khaled el-Masri, also a suit brought by the ACLU. In that suit, the
suit was dismissed on the basis of the state secrets doctrine,
essentially for the reason that-the CIA and the US government was able
to forward the argument that the case was so sensitive it should be
dismissed, because it had to do with state secrets.
 
The point in this case is to say the government has already acknowledged
the program's existence, the President and other high officials have
given lots of details about the program when it suited them, so it can't
be that the very basis and fact of the program is still a state secret.
It cannot be that that is enough to get rid of a lawsuit about basic
human rights and the violation of those basic human rights.
 
*AMY GOODMAN: *Meg Satterthwaite, were the interrogations of Mohamed
videotaped?
 
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *We don't know. What we do know is that there were
video cameras in his cells and also in interrogation rooms. I would like
to know, of course, if my client was videotaped. We have filed a Freedom
of Information Act request seeking all records, which would include
videotapes, if they existed, or transcripts. And all we've gotten from
the CIA is the claim that they can neither confirm nor deny having any
records of my client.
 
*AMY GOODMAN: *Meg Satterthwaite, I want to thank you for being with us,
director of the International Human Rights Clinic at New York University
Law School.
 
*MEG SATTERTHWAITE: *Thank you very much.
 
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Thursday, December 13, 2007

New Books from Tom Dispatch -- Comment by Robert Fisk


Illustration: Tis the Season
****************************************************
First a listing and discussion of some good current events books, then an article by Robert Fisk.
From Tom-Dispatch:
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From: "TomDispatch" <tomdispatch@nationinstitute.org>
To: stanford_charles@yahoo.com
Subject: Tom's Review of Books, A TomDispatch Special
Date: Wed, 12 Dec 2007 09:09:59 -0800
TomDispatch
a project of the Nation Institute <http://www.nationinstitute.org/>
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tom's Review of Books
Dear Tomdispatch Reader,
For 30 years, I've been a book editor in -- or at the edge of --
mainstream publishing. I still co-run and co-edit a series I helped
launch back in 2003, The American Empire Project
<http://www.americanempireproject.com/> (out of Henry Holt's
Metropolitan Books). I've often written back to readers who wanted me to
check out their books (or favorite books of theirs) that the saddest
response a long-time book editor is this: I have so desperately little
time to read books these days. And it's true... it really is...
Nonetheless, in those wee hours after I've put Tomdispatch to bed, taken
my bleary eyes off the next still-to-be-edited manuscript page, and
turned off /The Daily Show/ or those interminable late night reruns of
/Scrubs/ and /Seinfeld/, I still pick up a book and paw through a few
pages. These days, I escape into fiction far less often (and miss that
feeling of being swept into another universe); but, when it comes to
nonfiction, I still have that urge to travel the world, peek into other
cultures and universes, plunge into history, and, above all, look for
new ways to frame our own puzzling, unnerving moment. More than
anything, I'm still moved by the generosity of writers willing to travel
where I wouldn't dare go (or couldn't even book passage), who have seen
things I never will, who understand things I haven't grasped -- and want
to take me along.
Anyway, like some old addiction I haven't kicked, it seems that I just
can't keep away from the world of books. Next year, Tomdispatch will be
spinning off books at -- for a tiny website -- a prodigious rate. New
works that first began at the site will include: Nick Turse's The
Complex, How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805078967/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>
and a book on America's Iraq by Michael Schwartz, based on his running
commentaries at TD. (Both are due in the spring of 2008.) In May, The
World According to Tomdispatch
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1844672573/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>,
an imperial reader, will be published by Verso Books!
With all that in mind, I thought I'd try my hand at a little Tomdispatch
extra for subscribers -- a /Tom's Review of Books/ newsletter that won't
be posted at the main screen of the site. So, if I don't hear cries of
pain, horror, or outrage from you, perhaps I'll do two to four of these
little book letters a year, recommending works I've liked, some
connected to Tomdispatch, some not. And, of course, the holidays seem
like a reasonable time to begin -- that classic moment when, if you're
like me, you enter a bookstore stocked with a staggering array of titles
and only a faint idea of what in the world you should be picking up for
gifts.
So here goes -- and please excuse the self-interested beginning. Think
of it as dealer's choice.
In an era when an American culture of triumph returned to our world,
only to crash and burn in Iraq, my own book, The End of Victory Culture
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/155849586X/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>,
might be worth a pit stop. Written in the mid-1990s, it's just been
reissued, updated to the present moment, and offering a perspective not
found elsewhere. Of course, I've written about the book before at the
site (and crib from it regularly for my own pieces). If you want to
learn a little about its more serious side, just click here
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/p/victory>. In the meantime, let me suggest
its charms as a secret cultural history of our times by offering the
following five trivia questions - and answers - drawn from the book.
(You'll be able to answer hundreds more after reading it!):
*1.* What was the great commercial triumph of cowboy hero Hopalong
Cassidy with his "spine-tingling episodes never before shown on TV!"?
(/Answer: Marketing his signature black shirt to one million children
soon after World War II, at a time when black was still associated with
mourning or Italian fascism./)
*2.* What did Desi Arnaz tell the studio audience of the top-rated TV
comedy /I Love Lucy/ in 1953, after Lucy was accused of being a
communist by gossip columnist Walter Winchell? (/Answer: "And now I want
you to meet my favorite wife -- my favorite redhead -- in fact, that's
the only thing red about her, and even that's not legitimate."/)
*3.* When did the first interracial kiss make it onto television?
(/Answer: November 22, 1968, in outer space. Star Trek's Captain Kirk
had to turn his back to the camera to simulate placing that kiss on
Lieutenant Uhuru./)
*4.* From what movie did junior officers at the Army Command and General
Staff at Fort Leavenworth, responsible for planning some of the ground
campaign in the first Gulf War, choose a nickname -- and what was it?
(/Answer: Star Wars and it was "Jedi Knights."/)
*5.* When, on May 1, 2003, George W. Bush made his carefully timed, late
afternoon landing on, and strut across, the deck of the /USS Abraham
Lincoln/, to announce that "major combat operations" had ended in Iraq
against the backdrop of that infamous "Mission Accomplished" banner,
what term did his advance men use for the photogenic moment chosen?
(/Answer: "Magic hour light."/)
Now, on to those all those other books.
At the top of my 2007 list is the new paperback of Mike Davis' Planet of
Slums
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1844671607/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>.
Talk about a single book taking you on a wild ride across a planet you
hardly knew was there! It's not just a matter of wholesale global
urbanization, which is stunning enough in itself. (After all, since the
late 1970s, in China alone, more than 200 million people have moved from
the countryside into cities, with another 250-300 million expected to
follow in the coming decades.) Nor is it just the impoverishment of so
many new city dwellers. It's also the de-linking of the city in whole
regions of the globe from all industrial processes, meaningful jobs, or
well-being of almost any kind. Not the city /with/ slums, in other
words, but the city /as/ slum. And Davis, typically, was there first.
"Instead of cities of light soaring toward heaven," he writes, "much of
the twenty-first century urban world squats in squalor... Indeed, the
one billion city dwellers who inhabit postmodern slums might well look
back with envy at the ruins of the sturdy mud homes of Catal Huyuk in
Anatolia, erected at the very dawn of city life nine thousand years
ago." To wield a phrase from the 1960s, this book is mind-blowing. Davis
is one of a kind. If you haven't met him on the page, start here.
The World Without Us
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0312347294/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20> by
Alan Weisman hardly needs me to recommend it. It was, after all, a
bestseller. But once you accept Weisman's premise -- that, by some
unknown means, in a single historical moment (this one, to be exact),
humans were removed wholesale from the planet, the book is anything but
downbeat. It's a riveting exploration of how the traces of the heavy
hand of humanity would slowly disappear and, everywhere, nature would
return. As a dyed-in-the-wool city boy, I have to admit that there was
something moving about that return of nature -- you can't help rooting
for it -- and gripping about the way Weisman describes the dismantling
of my home town, New York City, starting with those flooded subway
tunnels almost the moment the power -- and so those 753 underground
water pumps goes dead. Imagine! Sooner or later, Second Avenue, on which
I took a bus to school so many mornings as a child, will be a river.
This book is, in fact, an infernally clever way to grapple with climate
change, without claiming to be about it at all.
Even here, by the way, put Mike Davis at the head of the class. In the
final chapter of his 1999 book Dead Cities
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1565848446/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>,
he began dismantling a great city, London, in what would become the
Weisman-ian manner. Of course, to my mind, the single greatest literary
dismantling of a city (and a civilization) takes place violently in H.
G. Wells' 1898 novel, The War of the Worlds
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0141441038/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>.
With gusto, Wells turned the task of taking London apart over to his
"Martian" invaders. (I first read that book under the covers, after
curfew by flashlight, at about age 12 or 13, and practically scared
myself to death.). After hearing a heartless discussion about the
British extermination of the Tasmanians, Wells reputedly decided to turn
the tables, fictionally at least, on imperial Britain. In the process,
he invented most of the tropes of the invader-from-outer-space sci-fi
novel. Ever since then, we humans have been imagining scenarios in which
implacable aliens with superweapons arrive to devastate our planet. What
if, as Davis and Weisman might both agree, it turned out that the
implacable aliens were us?
Speaking of that, I noticed that one of my favorite (tiny) "travel"
books -- ostensibly by bus deep into Africa, but in fact by research
deep into European colonial history -- was reissued this year by the New
Press: Sven Lindqvist's "Exterminate All the Brutes."
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1565843592/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>
(The title, of course, is taken from Kurtz's mad scrawl in Conrad's
/Heart of Darkness/). What a ride through the planetary past Lindqvist
takes you on as "progress" and "extermination" leave Europe hopelessly
intertwined, cut a swath across four continents, and arrive back home as
the god of slaughter, machine gun in hand, in August 1914. In a sense,
you could think of this book as the story of how the Jews of the
Holocaust were essentially the Africans of Europe. Read it and weep, as
they say. (Or check out my old /Nation/ review of it by clicking here
<http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20001023&s=engelhardt>.)
And talking about cutting a swath of destruction across a country, don't
miss Dahr Jamail's first book, Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an
Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1931859477/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20> --
and, while you're reading it, think of us as the invading Martians. I
hardly need to extol Jamail to Tomdispatch readers, but his book offers
a remarkably fresh glimpse at what those "Martians" looked like and felt
like through Iraqi eyes. This book should outlast the war it recorded
(even given Washington's urge to remain in Iraq forever).
On more purely American ground, not to say Ground Zero, stands Susan
Faludi's The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805086927/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>,
which explores the full range of bizarre responses to the 9/11 attacks
-- the set of fantasies that Americans, the media, and especially the
right-wing and the Bush administration conjured up in about 30 seconds.
It offers a genuinely original window into the American psyche, for
those brave enough to peek. Where did all those fantasies of manly men
and women-in-need-of-protection come from anyway in a nation that mainly
watched 9/11 on TV? Faludi is convincing when she argues that they
emerged from an American mythology whose origins are as old as the
Puritans and which has been etched, almost like a genetic code, into our
national consciousness. /The Terror Dream/ has largely been reviewed as
a 9/11 book, but, believe me, it's so much more fascinating and deeper
than that.
Oh, not that I haven't recommended it before, but if you're in that
classic, history-can't-repeat-itself-can-it mood, Juan Cole's Napoleon's
Egypt: Invading the Middle East
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1403964319/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20> is
the book to cure you. Yes, Virginia, it all happened before. The
invasion bringing "liberation" and "democracy," behind which were the
grandiose dreams of a "Greater Middle East." The miscalculations, the
unexpected, bitter guerrilla war that followed, the full fiasco. The
difference? Napoleon's disaster took a mercifully short three years to
unfold and he, at least, brought along a corps of scientists, rather
than private security cops and crony corporations, and some of them
found the Rosetta Stone. Cole, who runs the Informed Comment website
<http://www.juancole.com/> (my daily bread) is just a barrel of energy
and so has set up a separate blog <http://napoleonsegypt.blogspot.com/>
for his book, which is fascinating in its own right.
In Soldier's Heart, Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West
Point
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0374180636/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>,
Elizabeth Samet takes us into an otherwise no-admission world -- that of
the officer-corps-in-the-making for our all-volunteer Army. As that
force has become ever less a citizen's army, and so ever less connected
to all of American society, it becomes ever more important for the rest
of us to understand it. Samet offers what, on the face of it, might seem
an unlikely vantage point for illuminating military culture. She teaches
literature and poetry to West Point cadets, but she's canny and
eagle-eyed -- and the ways the young almost-officers she deals with
every day grapple with literature (especially war poetry) turn out to be
telling. "Like their teacher," she points out -- like most of us, in
fact -- "most of my students first encountered war and military life
through the stories of their fathers and from the movies... The signal
difference is that they have actually agreed to turn make-believe into
real life." Not surprisingly, "owning war" -- wresting the right to
write about and interpret it from civilians -- "is one of the things for
which they will fight hardest." The book is peppered with insights into
these young men (and women) and what drives (and confuses) them, while
introducing the civilian reader to a culture that is the best and worst
of small town life. Samet even takes time to consider that almost
all-purpose military exclamation -- nobody really knows where it came
from or exactly what it means -- "hooah" (which she finally bans from
her classroom).
Near the top of the must-read stack of books by my bedside, along with
Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0805079831/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>
(my next stop actually) and an account of the great Arab conquests in
the century after Mohammed's death, is Studs Terkel's new autobiography,
Touch and Go
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1595580433/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>.
Our premier oral historian -- and all-around amazing character -- he is
now 95 years old, but don't you dare say that this is his last book! He
continues to defy the odds. Until I read this one, let me recommend two
slightly older Terkel gems, both perfect paperback purchases: Hope Dies
Last, Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/156584937X/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20> is
his oral history of activists, from the 1930s into the twenty-first
century. It's filled with stirring testimony and a reminder that, in bad
times, to dispel the gloom, hoping is not enough. Only acting -- even
taking the smallest step toward change -- engenders actual hope and a
sense of optimism. I'd like to urge on you as well Will the Circle Be
Unbroken? Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0345451201/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20>,
Stud's oral history of death. For those of us of a certain age, it is, I
guarantee you, a strangely upbeat, genuinely uplifting book. I edited it
once upon a time and I have to admit that some of the interviews moved
me so that I found myself tearing up even as I marked the pages. I'm
unlikely ever to forget the mother who forgave her son's killer (to his
face) or the touching fantasy of the Chicago sanitation worker who
donated part of his liver to a man he didn't know.
Okay, consider the book "review" part of this letter officially over.
Whatever minimal authority or expertise I may have has now fled the
premises. But that won't stop me -- not before I wax enthusiastic about
two plays I've seen recently. If you're not already in New York or not
coming soon, you can stop here and holiday good speed to you. If you
are, or you will be, then rush for the phone (212-352-3101) or onto the
Internet
<http://www.cultureproject.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=61>
and order tickets to Howard Zinn's /Rebel Voices/ at the Culture
Project, which has just added shows through December 18th (and will soon
be adding more for January). In it, six young actresses and actors (and
the odd guest reader) work energetic magic with passages from the
Zinn/Anthony Arnove book Voices of a People's History of the United
States
<http://www.amazon.com/dp/1583226281/ref=nosim/?tag=nationbooks08-20> as
well as stirring songs. I have to say that it's a distinctly feel-good
event.
And, if that isn't enough for you, pick up that phone again
(212-967-7555), you mad fool, or grab that credit card one last time for
David Henry Hwang's fabulous new play, /Yellow Face/, at the Public
Theater <http://www.publictheater.org/> only until December 23rd (unless
extended). It's a very personal, inventive, and superbly acted farce of
mistaken racial casting and identity, of father, sons, and American
dreams (as well as nightmares -- sometimes the two can't be told apart),
of anti-Chinese hysterias and other strange phenomena of our American
world.
And with that, to all a good night and -- let's hope -- a happier New
Year of reading and everything else. /Tom/
*Note:* /If you want your friends to read *Tom's Review of Books* and
don't want to forward the letter, you can always send them to the
Tomdispatch site, where it's posted on a separate page. The url is:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/p/book_review_12_11_2007 or just click here.
<http://www.tomdispatch.com/p/book_review_12_11_2007> /
**************************************************************************************
Independent.co.uk Online Edition: Home <http://www.independent.co.uk/>

Robert Fisk: A different venue, but the pious claims and promises are
the same

Published: 29 November 2007
Haven't we been here before? Isn't Annapolis just a repeat of the White
House lawn and the Oslo agreement, a series of pious claims and promises
in which two weak men, Messrs Abbas and Olmert, even use the same words
of Oslo.
"It is time for the cycle of blood, violence and occupation to end," the
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday. But don't I
remember Yitzhak Rabin saying on the White House lawn that, "it is time
for the cycle of blood... to end"?
Jerusalem and its place as a Palestinian and Israeli capital isn't
there. And if Israel receives acknowledgement that it is indeed an
Israeli state ? and in reality, of course, it is ? there can be no
"right of return" for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled (or
whose families fled) what became Israel in 1948.
And what am I to make of the following quotation from the full text of
the joint document: "The steering committee will develop a joint work
plan and establish and oversee the work of negotiations (/sic/) teams to
address all issues, to be headed by one lead representative from each
party." Come again?
We went through all these steering committees before ? and they never
worked. True we've got a date of 12 December for the first session of
this so-called "steering committee" and we have the faint hope from Mr
Bush, embroidered, of course, with all the usual self-confidence, that
we're going to have an agreement by 2008. But how can the Palestinians
have a state without a capital in Jerusalem? How can they have a state
when their entire territory has been chopped up and divided by Jewish
settlements and the settler roads and, in parts, by a massive war?
Yes of course, we all want an end to bloodshed in the Middle East but
the Americans are going to need Syria and Iran to support this ? or at
least Syrian support to control Hamas ? and what do we get? Bush
continues to threaten Iran and Bush tells Syria in Annapolis that it
must keep clear of Lebanese elections, or else...
Yes, Hizbollah is a surrogate of Iran and is playing a leading role in
the opposition to the government of Lebanon. Do Bush and Condoleezza
Rice (or Abbas or Olmert for that matter) really think they're going to
have a free ride for a year without the full involvement of every party
in the region? More than half of the Palestinians under occupation are
under the control of Hamas.
Reading the speeches ? especially the joint document ? it seems like an
exercise in self-delusion. The Middle East is currently a hell disaster
and the President of the United States thinks he is going to produce the
crown jewels from a cabinet and forget Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran ?
and Pakistan, for that matter. The worst element of the whole Annapolis
shindig is that once again millions of people across the Middle East ?
Muslims, Jews and Christians ? will believe all this and will then turn
? after its failure ? with fury on their antagonists for breaking these
agreements.
For more than two years, the Saudis have been offering Israel security
and recognition by Arab states in return for a total withdrawal of
Israeli forces from the occupied territories. What was wrong with that?
Mr Olmert promised that "negotiations will address all the issues which
thus far has been evaded". Yet the phrase "withdrawal of Israeli forces
from occupied territories" simply doesn't exist in the text.
Like most people who live in the Middle East, I would like to enjoy
these dreams and believe they are true. But they are not. Wait for the
end of 2008.
Interesting? Click here to explore further

Also in this section
* Robert Fisk: Darkness falls on the Middle East
<http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3191532.ece>
* Robert Fisk: Holocaust denial in the White House
<http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3146418.ece>
* Robert Fisk: Warning... this film could make you angry
<http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3124292.ece>
* Robert Fisk: King Abdullah flies in to lecture _us_ on terrorism
<http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3109869.ece>
* Robert Fisk: Executed at dawn. But who was he?
<http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3078962.ece>
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Peace Summit
* Former Nato military chief appointed Middle East envoy
<http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article3204053.ece>
* Abbas loyalists open fire at funeral march, injuring 26
<http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3204052.ece>
* Adrian Hamilton: Annapolis's sole purpose is to serve the Bush
agenda
<http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/adrian_hamilton/article3204028.ece>
Editor's Choice
Fancy lots from Tracey Emin, Alex James or Mark Hix? Now's your chance
to bid for some unique experiences!
Where to buy, what to share and who to watch
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Sunday, December 09, 2007

More Primary Idiocy

 
 
 
 
 
Illustration:  A more recent view of my backyard.  I'll have to rake the leaves some day.
 
-----------------------------------------------
 
Mitt Romney recently gave a speech on him Mormonism.  One would have expected something like JFKs speech on his Catholocism and separation of Church and State, but no.  Essentially, what he said is that nobody should be elected until he attends church and is a Christian.  If these damn churches want to influence government policy, why not have them pay property taxes and the preachers income taxes?  Especially the Pat Rebertsons, etc.  I mean, this place was colonized by people escaping a state with an official religion.  That's what we complain about in Iran and criticize in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and, some, Israel.  Romney warns about "creeping secularism," and boy, ya better watch out, better not pout, Jesus is coming to town.  I am hereby reinstituting my church of secular humanism, I declare myself pope, and you can join.  $50 to be a monk, $150 a Bishop, $350 an Arch-Bishop, and $1,000 to be a Cardinal.  If you want to join, just leave a comment.  I will bill you, no CODs, and when your check clears, I'll send you a certificate.  For an extra $50, it will be in color.
 
___________________________
 
Sorry, had enough.
 
 

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

National Intelligence Estimate & Co.


I TOLD YOU SO!

National Intelligence Estimate

This is a report compiled by our sixteen spy agencies. I understand it was submitted to the Administration about six months age. It states that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons interests in 2003 (as it said it did). A few days ago, the Decider, our President, may God have mercy on him, warned that Iran's work towards a nuclear war might lead to World War III. More recently, he said he hadn't read the report until last week.

Now there are people who think he is lying about this, but I think it is clear from his ACT scores and GPA that he never really developed good study or reading habits, so who are we to judge?

He also claims that the report supports everything he said about World War III and Israel agrees. Nobody else anywhere else does, but they are just poor sports.

He also thinks we need that missle battery and radar sites along the Russian border. Why? Well, to help avoid World War III started by Iran. You should know that.

So stop criticizing the poor guy. As he himself said, with respect to himself and his personality and deciding, 'PSYCHOLOGY 101 DOESN'T WORK." (He did not say which year's version of the DSM he had in mind or the year of the course, but take him at his word.) This stiuation is reserved for a course called Abnormal Psychology with is at least an advanced undergraduate course in the field. (I am reluctant to get and deeper into that issue concerning the Decider without some test results).

The Domestic Scene in Politics

Some of you have asked why I don't comment more on the primaries. Well, they haven't started yet, for one thing. Not a single vote has been cast nor a single delegate chosen. However, here are a few factiods:

  • Guliani has been loosing ground, aminly because of his love nest next to ground zero at the 911 site.
  • Huckabee has emerged as a Republican with at least one good statement. He is a fundamentalist Babtist minister and was asked what Jesus would think of the death penality. He managed to keep both his conservative credentials and avoid answereng the main question by saying "Jesus was too smart to ever run for elective office."
  • Obama has been under attack by the Clinton campaign as too ambitious. They even pointed out that he has written an essay in Kindergarten saying he wanted to be President. Well, when asked about it, Obama said "No, no comment -- I understand she quoted something said by my kindergarten teacher in the Phillipines. I think we should stick with current -- well, no comment."
Mexico Invades
Lou Dobbs of CNN points out the Mexico wants to claim Utah. I say, let them have it.
Latest in Sports
One of you has been kind enough to forward the following account of the last Olympics, which I had entirely missed. They have changed so much lately that they loose interest. Isn't the next one going to be in China?
Here is the account ot the main wrestling competition.

Our stoTOlympics, specifically the wrestling event. It is narrowed down to the Russian or the American for the gold medal. Before the final match, the American wrestler's trainer came to him and said, "Now don't forget all the research we've done on this Russian.

He's never lost a match because of this "pretzel" hold he has. Whatever you do, don't let him get you in this hold! If he does, you're finished!"

The wrestler nodded in agreement. Now, to the match: The American and the Russian circled each other several times looking for an opening. All of a sudden the Russian lunged forward, grabbing the American and wrapping him up in the dreaded pretzel hold!

A sigh of disappointment went up from the crowd, and the trainer buried his face in his hands for he knew all was lost. He couldn't watch the ending.

Suddenly there was a horrible scream, and a resounding cheer from the crowd. The trainer raised his eye just in time to see the Russian flying up in the air. The Russian's back hit the mat with a thud, and the American weakly collapsed on top of him, getting the pin and winning the match.

The trainer was astounded! When he finally got the American wrestler alone, he asks, "How did you ever get out of that hold? No one has ever done it before!"

The wrestler answered, "Well, I was ready to give up when he got me in that hold, but at the last moment, I opened my eyes and saw this pair of balls right in front of my face. I thought I had nothing to lose, so with my last ounce of strength I stretched out my neck and bit those babies just as hard as I could. You'd be amazed how strong you get when you bite your own balls!"