Month: August 2011

One of the many unfortunate consequences of all the breaking news from the Obama administration’s war in Libya, is that many of the details that expose the contradictions of US empire get crowded out in the media. How many know, for example, that the Bahraini Arab Spring is still in full throttle with major protests almost every day? See this al Jazeera segment on a 14 year old boy just killed when Bahraini security forces shot him in the head with a tear gas canister:

According to the New York Times, the Bahraini government is denying its security forces were even involved in today’s crackdown in Sitra that resulted in this boy’s death. They are even offering “a reward of more than $26,000 for information about those responsible for his death.”

The dead boy’s uncle, Isa Hassan, who was also at Wednesday’s morning march, described a small group of protesters assembling after morning prayers and then being confronted by the police, who fired tear gas at them from roughly 20 feet away.

“They are supposed to lob the canisters of gas, not shoot them at people,” Mr. Hassan told The Associated Press. “Police used it as a weapon.”

Surprisingly, the Times even notes the following:

Activists say that because Bahraini government is a strategic ally of the United States — the Navy’s Fifth Fleet is based there — and of Saudi Arabia, the violent suppression of protests has not received the same attention from the international community as the brutal crackdowns in Syria and, before that, Libya.

Even without the extended time on the tube taken up by Libya and Syria coverage, Western media is reluctant to cover the crimes of US allies and clients. What is absurd is that strategic concerns about “regional stability” (read: suppressing democracy in subservience to US demands) and supposed Iranian influence passes as legitimate justifications for the ongoing US support for repression in Bahrain.

Today’s Washington Post reports details on a guy who the FBI hired to provide expert anti-terrorism training:

William G. Hillar billed himself as a hero and a patriot, a 28-year veteran of the Army Special ­Forces who shared his knowledge of counterterrorism by holding training sessions for federal agents and local police.

The 66-year-old Millersville man told people that he was an expert in human trafficking and drug trafficking. He said that his daughter had been kidnapped, forced into sex slavery and killed by her captors before he could rescue her. He said the movie “Taken,” starring Liam Neeson, was based on that experience.

Turns out it was all a sham. Hillar pled guilty and was sentenced to 21 months in prison by a federal judge yesterday.

Hillar has no experience in counterterrorism, emergency medicine, human trafficking or psychological warfare, as he claimed, prosecutors wrote. He has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in special education. He did consult on organizational issues for hospitals and stress management.

At some point, Hillar began billing himself as an expert lecturer. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he capitalized on the desire of law enforcement agencies and others to receive counterterrorism training, Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo J. Wise wrote in a sentencing memo.

The fraud was not unmasked by the FBI: they might have continued using this guy for a few more decades. A Special Forces vet became suspicious and did the digging that brought the roof down on this fraud.

No wonder that one commentor on the Post website suggests that FBI actually stands for “Famous But Incompetent.”

The Associated Press brings to our attention a morbid 1940s medical experiment on Guatemalans (apparently considered less than human at that time), in which hundreds of people were unknowingly infected with venereal diseases:

From 1946-48, the U.S. Public Health Service and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau worked with several Guatemalan government agencies to do medical research — paid for by the U.S. government — that involved deliberately exposing people to sexually transmitted diseases.

The researchers apparently were trying to see if penicillin, then relatively new, could prevent infections in the 1,300 people exposed to syphilis, gonorrhea or chancroid. Those infected included soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners and mental patients with syphilis.

The commission revealed Monday that only about 700 of those infected received some sort of treatment. Also, 83 people died, although it’s not clear if the deaths were directly due to the experiments.

…But panel members concluded that the Guatemala research was bad even by the standards of the time. They compared the work to a 1943 experiment by Cutler and others in which prison inmates were infected with gonorrhea in Terre Haute, Ind. The inmates were volunteers who were told what was involved in the study and gave their consent. The Guatemalan participants — or many of them — received no such explanations and did not give informed consent, the commission said.

Unfortunately, this was just the precursor of the constant horrors inflicted on Guatemalans by the US empire, from the 1954 overthrow of the democratically elected government on…

Democracy Now:

There are various reports of a vast torture regime in Libya under Muammar Gadhafi, including this graphic CNN report on some in Gadhafi’s immediate family throwing boiling hot water on their nanny. It is always useful to maintain a skeptical eye when the US media reveals some widespread horror committed by an official US enemy, especially one we’ve just gone to war with. Initial claims about Gadhafi handing out viagra for his loyalists to better rape their victims turned out to be false, recalling earlier propaganda regarding incubators and meat grinders meant to demonize Saddam Hussein.

True or not, these reports should never be used to justify the US-NATO intervention, because they very obviously had nothing to do with it, just as protecting civilians had nothing to do with the motivation to intervene.

The US currently gives around $3 billion a year to the corrupt government of Pakistan, where, as described in a recent Human Rights Watch report entitled ‘We Can Torture, Kill, or Keep You for Years’: Enforced Disappearances by Pakistan Security Forces in Balochistan,” torture is widespread. Many captives are merely executed.

“Pakistan’s security forces are engaging in an abusive free-for-all in Balochistan as Baloch nationalists and suspected militants ‘disappear,’ and in many cases are executed,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The national government has done little to end the carnage in Balochistan, calling into question its willingness or ability to control the military and intelligence agencies.”

…“Pakistani security services are brazenly disappearing, torturing, and often killing people because of suspected ties to the Baloch nationalist movement,” Adams said. “This is not counterinsurgency – it is barbarism and it needs to end now.”

…They beat me all over my body and on the soles of my feet with their fists and feet. They hit me for around one to two hours continuously in the morning, then again in the evening. At night they would not let me sleep or lie down, I was forced to stand. If I started to fall asleep they would hit me on the back and shoulders to keep me awake.

So that’s Pakistan. Our friend and ally.

What about Bahrain, another of Obama’s favorites? US support for the Bahraini dictatorship has been steadfast throughout the recent uprisings which were met with horrible government violence, including opening fire on crowds of peaceful protesters. These are worse than torture, but just to keep this as analogous as possible, there have also been reports of widespread torture in Bahrain as well. Another report from Human Rights Watch went into detail about the torture and physical abuse the government unleashes, mostly on Shiites. This was actually acknowledged by the US State Department, as revealed in a diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. The cable displays the utter passivity US officials exhibit in the face of these reports of torture.

We can go on like this. Egypt’s Mubarak was our closest ally, supported enthusiastically by Obama until the very last second, and had elaborate and professionalized programs for torture. The government under Saleh’s Yemen has a disgusting record of torture, complete with acid, electricity, and starvation.This only scratches the surface of US support for crimes and torture at least comparable to those now being reported on about Gadhafi. Yet, we don’t see graphic CNN reports about all this, do we?

But of course that is not the end. The US doesn’t just support others who engage in torture. They engage in it themselves. Despite vowing to end the practice, reports continued to come out of serious detainee abuse under the Obama administration, including “sleep deprivation, holding detainees in cold cells, forced nudity, physical abuse, detaining individuals in isolation cells for longer than 30 days, and restricting the access of the International Committee of the Red Cross.” Two teenagers, Issa Mohammad, then 17, and Abdul Rashid, who said he was younger than 16, told the Washington Post that they were subjected to all of these abuses, including being punched and slapped in the face. One prisoner at a black cite adjacent to Abu Ghraib, which the US military denied even existed, lost an entire row of teeth from being hit in the face with the butt of gun by an American soldier while in custody.

In addition, Obama has veiled all of the torture and abuse of the Bush administration, which was more widespread by most accounts, in a protective barrier of immunity. He also continues to indefinitely hold prisoners without charge or trial, violating one of the most fundamental pillars of a just society ever concocted.

There are some irresponsible choices for the media, given all this, when it comes to Gadhafi’s alleged torture (which I don’t really doubt, but have been trained to be skeptical about given past instances of opportunistic propaganda campaigns mentioned above). Much of what I’ve seen has been going that irresponsible route: exposing torture of a stated US enemy, while white-washing the comparable crimes perpetrated by the US and its clients. Context is everything sometimes.