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FOCUS | US Foreign Policy: Killing People to Save Them |
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Wednesday, 12 October 2016 12:03 |
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Khan writes: "What we have seen is the Middle East and large parts of North Africa on the receiving end of death, destruction, and displacement over the last 15 years."
FA-18 Hornet Navy fighter takes off from an aircraft carrier. (photo: AP)
US Foreign Policy: Killing People to Save Them
By Dr. Arshad M. Khan, teleSUR
12 October 16
What we have seen is the Middle East and large parts of North Africa on the receiving end of death, destruction and displacement over the last 15 years.
 he 15th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan — a war with no foreseeable end in sight — quietly passed by unnoticed Friday by major U.S. media.
The number of troops due to remain in Afghanistan has been raised 50 percent to 8,400. Drones based in Pakistan continue to play their deadly role. On the anniversary date, attacks on security checkpoints in the Chashma area of Maiwand district in the southern part of Kandahar province resulted in a gun battle lasting several hours. Afghan officials concede three soldiers died and four were wounded. The Taliban claim the surrender of an entire battalion and one tank.
As incongruous as it might appear in hindsight, there was much talk of “nation building” in the Bush years. What we have seen instead are a Middle East and large parts of North Africa on the receiving end of death, destruction and displacement, on a scale unheard of since the World War II. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, even Ukraine are fractured states, the ensuing misery for their citizens a natural consequence.
Iraq is back in the news again not just for the reinsertion of U.S. forces, but also for a new planned battle to recapture Mosul from the Islamic State group — a battle likely to be another hell for its Sunni citizens who probably do not relish a return of the now essentially Shia Iraqi military.
Sectarianism, Balkanization of states, a rendering of the delicate fabric of these multi-ethnic, multi-religious societies may not have been the stated aim but are certainly the aftermath. The fact is when the same scenario is repeated time and again, many see it as the goal of U.S. policy disguised in platitudes. Hence the ill-will toward U.S. citizens across a wide swathe of lands running from North Africa to India. It is a sobering prospect in an inter-connected world.
The most troubling aspect of the Afghanistan war is one basic irrefutable fact: Neither the Afghan people nor their government had any involvement in the 9/11 attack. Yes, Osama bin Laden was a guest in the country, but only because he had helped in repelling the Soviet invasion. The Afghan government requested evidence, the U.S. reply: surrender him or else. To neighboring Pakistan Richard Armitage delivered the notorious line, “we'll bomb you back into the stone age,” according to then President Pervez Musharraf.
Were there no other alternatives to full-scale war? How about a police action targeting bin Laden's group? Or, for a peaceful solution, how about the possibility of surrender to an international tribunal that would have guaranteed no death penalty. He claimed to be a leader conducting war, and, it is fair to say, many other wartime leaders have ordered far worse. A guest in a world where honor is important might have been obliged to accept such surrender terms, but certainly not the demands of a revanchist superpower intent on his execution.
The war made enemies out of friends, and left nuclear armed Pakistan considerably less stable by importing religious extremism — bombings and terror attacks, once almost unheard of are now quite common.
Based on lies, as the Chilcot report in Britain affirms, the Iraq war was even more egregious and has left unimagined problems in its wake. Given these experiences and Libya to boot, one would have thought arming jihadi groups — wasn't the Osama bin Laden experience enough — was playing with fire. But here we are again: the U.S. fighting a secular government in Syria that was never a threat, and trying to replace it with jihadis who harbor a visceral hatred toward it.
The logic that prevails is also of powerful Washington insiders, who, too, harbor visceral hatreds but cloak their arguments. Who ever heard of killing people to save them?
Dr. Arshad M Khan (http://ofthisandthat.org/index.html) is a former Professor, whose comments over several decades have appeared in a wide-ranging array of print and electronic media including The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, Dawn (Pakistan), Forth Worth Star Telegram, Asia Times Online, Countercurrrents, Counterpunch, Pambazuka News, teleSUR, and many others.
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FOCUS: Experience RIKERS, Face to Face |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=15946"><span class="small">Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company</span></a>
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Wednesday, 12 October 2016 10:38 |
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Moyers writes: "Over the years I have landed at New York's LaGuardia Airport knowing that the island just off and below the tip of the right wing was Rikers, the city's largest jail, isolated in the East River within sight of the Manhattan skyline and separated from the borough of Queens by a single bridge. Looking across at the stark jumble of buildings, I had often thought of Alcatraz, on the other side of the continent: penal colonies framing America's gateways."
Inmates file out of the prison bakery at the Rikers Island jail after working the morning shift, in New York. (photo: Bebeto Matthews/AP)
Experience RIKERS, Face to Face
By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company
12 October 16
For the first time in an extended documentary former detainees at Rikers Island talk directly into camera about their experience in New York City’s largest and most notorious jail. RIKERS premieres on Nov. 15 at 10 p.m. on THIRTEEN.
 ver the years I have landed at New York’s LaGuardia Airport knowing that the island just off and below the tip of the right wing was Rikers, the city’s largest jail, isolated in the East River within sight of the Manhattan skyline and separated from the borough of Queens by a single bridge. Looking across at the stark jumble of buildings, I had often thought of Alcatraz, on the other side of the continent: penal colonies framing America’s gateways.
Alcatraz, however, has long been closed and is now a favorite tourist destination. Rikers remains chock full of detainees awaiting their day in court (if it ever comes) or, once convicted, a bus trip to an upstate prison. From time to time reports of abuse and cruelty against inmates, or of violent confrontations between them and their guards, or brawls among gangs – aroused curiosity among the “mainland” public, but rarely for very long. Then, in recent years, the trickle of reports became a torrent. Some brilliant journalism by The New York Times, The New Yorker, New York magazine and the New York Daily News, among others, coupled with growing awareness and outrage by local activists, including the advocacy group #CloseRikers, prompted attention from the city’s independent commission, a federal investigation and intimations of reform. But reports persist of terrible things happening there, in our name, with our tax dollars, reputedly for our “safety.” As I have followed the news, some research revealed that television had given no extended attention to what was happening on Rikers and that my medium could add an important dimension to the coverage by giving the public a chance to hear directly from the inmates themselves, face to face.
I reached out to some longtime colleagues — the independent and oft-awarded filmmakers Marc Levin and Mark Benjamin at Brick City TV, joined now by producer Rolake Bamgbose — who were soon at work, identifying scores of former detainees and interviewing many of them on camera for hours. The result is a vivid arc of life on Rikers as told by the people who experienced it — from the trauma of entry, the conflicts with other inmates and corrections officers, the stabbings and beatings, and the torture of solitary confinement to the psychological challenges of returning to the outside world.
Our work is done. RIKERS will premiere on THIRTEEN on Nov. 15 at 10 p.m. ET.
We have screened the film for a handful of people who have spent years advocating for reform of America’s criminal justice system, including Bryan Stevenson, the civil rights activist and acclaimed author of the best-selling book Just Mercy. He said, “No one understands the crisis created by mass incarceration and excessive punishment like the survivors who have endured the horrors created by our criminal justice policies. We cannot be responsible citizens, voters or decision-makers without understanding the stories these men and women share. Watch this film.”
See for yourself: Watch the trailer above and tune in next month. National broadcasts on PBS will be announced in the Spring of 2017.
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Donald Trump's Open Disdain for the Rule of Law |
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Wednesday, 12 October 2016 08:31 |
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Dunlap writes: "Trump acts like he's running to be America's dictator rather than the president of a nation of laws."
Donald Trump has made putting Hillary Clinton in jail a theme of his presidential campaign, including at Sunday's debate. (photo: Jason Connolly/AFP/Getty Images)
Donald Trump's Open Disdain for the Rule of Law
By Bridgette Dunlap, Rolling Stone
12 October 16
Trump acts like he's running to be America's dictator rather than the president of a nation of laws
 t the presidential debate Sunday night, Donald Trump came right out and said that if he becomes president, he'll use the Department of Justice to take down his political opponent. It was an astonishingly open admission of his disregard for our legal system and fundamental constitutional principles. But it wasn't even the scariest indication in the last week that Trump thinks he's running to be America's dictator rather the president of a nation of laws.
In response to Hillary Clinton's rather banal statement that Trump owes Barack Obama an apology for claiming he wasn't an American citizen for years, Trump responded with a string of non-sequiturs that ended with a promise to get a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton for using a private e-mail server when she was secretary of state. Clinton has already been the subject of a massive FBI investigation that ended with both a revered Republican FBI director and a Democratic attorney general concluding there was no case against her. But if he were president, Trump told Clinton, "you'd be in jail."
As I have explained previously, those who think what Clinton did should be illegal should be looking to amend the law to make it illegal. We don't prosecute people for things we haven't outlawed.
But Trump thinks Clinton should be locked up because "people in this country are furious," and "it's a disgrace." Those are the words of an aspiring dictator, not someone who respects the fundamental principle that the state can't deprive a person of their freedom without being able to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they broke a law.
Trump made a further attack on our basic legal protections at the debate when he tried to shame Clinton for doing her job when she was an attorney appointed by a judge to represent an alleged rapist. We have an "adversarial" legal system in this country, in which we expect justice to be served by opposing sides battling over the facts or negotiating the punishment. Whether the truth generally prevails in our adversarial system, or whether "inquisitorial" systems – in which everyone has an obligation to share what they know, and the goal is finding an appropriate punishment – serve justice better than our all-or-nothing approach is irrelevant. The system we have, and have always had, requires protection of defendants' constitutional right not to incriminate themselves and right to an attorney. Defense attorneys are obligated to vigorously represent the interests of their clients – even if they are factually guilty. Trump's debate attack on Clinton for representing her client is an attack on the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.
But Trump's most shocking rejection of our Constitution and basic principles of fairness went largely unnoticed last week. In a statement to CNN, he doubled down on his claims regarding the guilt of the Central Park Five – the black and Latino teenagers who were wrongfully convicted of a 1989 rape and imprisoned for years before being exonerated by DNA evidence. Trump has expressed pride in how politically incorrect it was for him to attack the settlement they received from the city for depriving them of their freedom for years.
But Trump's involvement in the case goes back even further. Two weeks after their arrest, he responded by taking out full-page ads in multiple newspapers calling for the death penalty to be reinstated – so the teens could be executed, it was implied – and for more police, mocking the idea that police brutality was a problem. Trump likely bears some blame for their wrongful conviction, because he used his money and influence to exacerbate the lynch mob mentality in New York at the time and to poison the jury pool with his presumption of guilt.
The teens were found guilty despite the fact that DNA found on the victim didn't match any of them. After the actual perpetrator admitted to the crime years later, the five were exonerated, and the city eventually compensated them for the injustice they'd experienced. Trump wrote an op-ed criticizing the $41 million settlement in which he seemed to imply that even if they were innocent, they shouldn't have received any money because they "do not exactly have the pasts of angels."
It was a stunning display of Trump's racism and autocratic disdain for the law. Not depriving innocent people of their freedom is the most basic responsibility of government. But Trump believes he has the right to say who is or isn't guilty, facts and law be damned. It's no big deal if people he considers undesirable are deprived of their freedom. In Trump's world, black lives don't matter, and political opponents should be punished.
Meanwhile, Trump has been completely dismissive of questioning about whether he has sexual assaulted women, despite being caught on tape bragging that he has. Trump doesn't think the law applies to him. Completely unrepentant about that fact that five innocent teenagers would have been executed if he'd had his way, Trump tells us that only certain kinds of people can be criminals. And he's the guy to tell us who they are.
Watch WTF moments from the off-the-rails second presidential debate.
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Divest From Prisons, Invest in People - What Justice for Black Lives Really Looks Like |
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Wednesday, 12 October 2016 08:24 |
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Bayless writes: "Instead of addressing the roots of uncomfortable issues such as drug addiction, mental illness, and poverty, we've come to accept policing and incarceration as catch-all solutions. This disproportionally affects African Americans."
'No Justice. No Peace.' (photo: Joe Brusky/Flickr)
Divest From Prisons, Invest in People - What Justice for Black Lives Really Looks Like
By Liza Bayless, YES! Magazine
12 October 16
Instead of addressing the roots of drug addiction, mental illness, and poverty, we’ve come to accept policing and incarceration as catch-all solutions. It’s time for a change.
This article is the second part of a series of conversations with contributors to the demands of the Movement for Black Lives. Part One was on reparations.
 n July 2015, more than 2,000 members of The Movement for Black Lives—a group composed of more than 50 racial justice organizations—convened in Cleveland to recognize the violence committed against Black people in this country and around the world. At the assembly, participants decided the Movement needed to form a coalition that articulated concrete ways to build a more equitable society. Six legislative platforms emerged that covered issues like economic justice, reparations, political empowerment, and divestment from policing and incarceration. In their Invest-Divest platform, the authors called instead for investment in programming, like restorative justice initiatives, that would decrease incarceration and strengthen communities.
According to the Brookings Institution, White Americans are equally likely to use and more likely to deal drugs, while African Americans are more likely to be arrested, convicted, and sentenced harshly. For U.S. residents born in 2001, the Bureau of Justice Statistics predicts that 1 in 111 White women will go to prison in her lifetime, while 1 in 18 Black women will. For White men, the likelihood is 1 in 17; for Black men, 1 in 3.
“At the heart of the Invest-Divest demand is the recognition that our city, state, and federal budgets reflect the dehumanization, and the degradation of Black life through lack of investment in anything besides Black incarceration or surveillance,” says Marbre Stahly-Butts, co-author of demands from the Invest-Divest platform that call for reallocating government funds from law enforcement to long-term safety, and decriminalizing drug and prostitution crimes.
Stahly-Butts, a facilitator of the Cleveland convening and deputy director of racial justice at the Center for Popular Democracy, explains that our current criminal justice system is based on a premise of comfort, rather than of safety: Instead of addressing the roots of uncomfortable issues such as drug addiction, mental illness, and poverty, we’ve come to accept policing and incarceration as catch-all solutions. This disproportionally affects African Americans.
Here she discusses why divestment from the prison and military industries is as critical to a just future as investment in public institutions.
The following interview has been lightly edited.
Liza Bayless: How does the Invest-Divest platform play into the Movement for Black Lives?
Marbre Stahly-Butts: The call for Invest-Divest has been at the center of organizing and activism work for at least the last decade, if not more. Since slavery, but especially in the age of mass incarceration in the last 30 or so years, [there has been an] incredible increase in the amount of spending that goes to police departments—to cages, prisons and jails, corrections offices, military equipment, and surveillance equipment. At the same time, [there has been] divestment from the social safety net, from social services and education to affordable housing.
What makes our communities safe is not more guns, more police, or more cages, but employment opportunities, safe housing, jobs, education, restorative justice. To live in the world we’re envisioning requires a real investment—both by private parties, but also by public dollars.
Bayless: In August, the Department of Justice announced it would end use of private prisons. How significant is this step?
Stahly-Butts: It’s an important step and in many ways a symbolic step, but I think it’s essential that states follow suit. The caging of our people actually happens on a local level, and so the same week that the Department of Justice made that announcement, I believe in Florida they decided to continue contracts with local prisons and, in fact, expand them.
Most of our people are kept in public facilities, so there’s a real need to decarcerate and not just de-profitize. It would matter a lot if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did it, because that’s, in fact, where most of the [prison] beds are.
A month [after the announcement], the Department of Justice released guidelines around its increased funding of police officers and officers in schools. So it’s important to realize that the criminalization—and the incarceration—of our people really is something that the government has not divested from, and in some ways has actively continued.
There’s a lot of work to be done, but I was pleased about implications of ending those contracts.
Bayless: Usually we hear from organizations about investment more than divestment. What makes the concept of divestment so important to this platform?
Stahly-Butts: I think that we see a general narrative on the left around the need to increase infrastructure and investment. Obama, Clinton, and other progressives constantly affirm their commitment to investment strategies, whether it’s health care, job programs, or educational funding. But the divestment piece is essential to a conversation around the livelihood, wealth, health, and survival of Black, brown, and poor communities.
If we continue to lock up and put one of every three Black men under police control; if we continue to incarcerate Black women at the highest-growing rates; and continue surveillance and denying people [driver’s] licenses and housing opportunities when they are out of incarceration, [then] we’re undermining our investments if we’re not also divesting from these systems that have led to this mass criminalization of folks for behaviors that often have nothing to do with public safety.
Bayless: The topic of mass incarceration has been at the forefront of the country’s conversations about racial injustice. Is there something missing from that discussion?
Stahly-Butts: It’s essential that we talk about the entire purview of things that don’t belong under the criminal code, from the way poverty is criminalized to the ways homelessness is criminalized. Even in Florida, wearing saggy pants [has been criminalized].
There has to be a conversation about real solutions to incarceration, and not just changing the practices of putting people in cages, but also changing the entire orientation for communities that criminalize them en masse, that have police in schools, that believe that the only answer to mental health and other issues is cages and handcuffs. There’s a real need for cultural change and a social conversation about the roots of the system, and other ways to deal with these issues that is not state violence.
Bayless: By focusing on decriminalization of certain crimes—in this case, nonviolent ones such as drug and prostitution crimes—as fundamentally different from “violent” crimes, is there a risk people convicted of the latter could end up with harsher sentences?
Stahly-Butts: There’s a false dichotomy between violent and nonviolent crimes. We often talk about it as if there’s some fine line, but in fact every state, every city defines that differently. Whether we’re talking about crimes that hurt people or impact property, or crimes that are about mental health or drug addiction, the idea of investment is key to all of them.
If we use the money that we’re currently using to cage people, and take the literally trillions of dollars to invest in the well-being of our people—in jobs, education, trauma-informed services, restorative justice—we would see a real addressing of all sorts of social issues, including the ones that make people less safe.
Bayless: Anything else you’d like to add about this platform?
Stahly-Butts: Folks are working locally to realize what it means to build alternative structures to criminal justice, to divest from policing and invest in communities. Despite the past two years—where we’ve seen literally dozens of Black folks be killed on video, and uprisings in communities from Baltimore to Ferguson—we’ve seen incredible movement and energy.
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