U.S. Senate's Torture Report
The Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on torture carried out by the CIA in the years after the 9/11 attacks. The report concludes that the CIA repeatedly misled the public, Congress and the White House about the agency’s aggressive questioning of detainees — including waterboarding, confinement in small spaces and shackling in stress positions — after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, minimizing the severity of the interrogations and exaggerating the usefulness of the information produced. [Politico, Dec. 9] Just about every media outlet has a summary of the key findings or a list of the "most shocking" revelations: "The Most Gruesome Moments in the CIA ‘Torture Report’ " [Daily Beast], "10 Craziest Things in the Senate Report on Torture" [Rolling Stone], "America’s Shame: What’s in the Senate Torture Report?" [The New Yorker], etc. The Guardian had this lead in its December 10 post on world reaction to the report's findings: The UN has led international condemnation of the CIA’s interrogation and detention programme laid bare by the Senate’s intelligence committee. Its special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights has called for the criminal prosecution of Bush-era officials involved.
This is not what the United States is supposed to be about. The report is an indictment of what happens when we allow fear to cloud our reasoning. It's what happens when we allow a distorted sense of exceptionalism to destroy our democratic ideals and to refuse to grant "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." It looks like, for now at least, there will be no prosecutions for these crimes. Thanks to Congressional interference, the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison remains open nearly six years after President Obama pledged to close it. Nearly all of the 136 remaining prisoners are being held without charges. And extrajudicial killings by US drones continue. Torture may have been stopped when Obama came into office but we have a long way to go. Let's hope that making the report public will be seen as a beginning, a return to our country's true values. This may require legislation from a soon-to-be-even-more-dysfunctional Congress since a future President would be able to reverse Obama's executive order.
Related
"From Bush to Obama, Eyes Wide Shut: the same memo Bush used to wall himself off from the details of CIA torture is keeping Obama’s drone war alive." [Foreign Policy, Dec. 12]
Sunday Round-Up - May 19, 2013 "Guest Op-Ed"
Ebola
The number of probable, confirmed and suspected deaths from the Ebola virus stood at 6,388 as of December 7. The World Health Organization has declared the outbreaks in Nigeria and Senegal officially over. The number of reported cases is slightly increasing in Guinea but falling in Liberia, the country reporting the most deaths from the outbreak. Health officials in Sierra Leone have discovered scores of bodies in a remote diamond-mining area, raising fears that the scale of the Ebola outbreak may have been underreported. The World Health Organization said they uncovered a "grim scene" in the eastern district of Kono. A WHO response team had been sent to Kono to investigate a sharp rise in Ebola cases. [BBC News, Dec. 11]Related
Time Magazine announced its person of the year award - very rightfully given to the local and international Ebola fighters, the men and women with "the hero's heart" who are fighting the disease at great personal risk.
Occupied Palestinian Territory
With the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks earlier this year and after the widespread devastation and civilian death toll in Gaza during the Israeli attacks this summer, European states are beginning to seriously debate recognition of a Palestinian State. As Richard Youngs writes in a post for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Considerable momentum has built up behind the idea that giving formal recognition to a Palestinian state is now the only way forward in attempts to reach some form of peace settlement. The advantages of recognition would be many. With formal recognition, the Palestinians could have the possibility of taking legal action against Israeli human rights abuses. Support could be given for the Palestinian Authority to join the International Criminal Court as a means of bringing legal cases against Israeli soldiers. Yet, crucially, debates on recognition will not be sufficient and we should not expect that they can address all current challenges. One key area for Europe to rethink its current policy is that the EU must start to engage with Hamas. The EU appears to be counting on the Palestinian Authority regaining control of Gaza, but Hamas cannot simply be side-lined without risking major instability – that would set back the Palestinian cause even if formal statehood were recognised. Some form of engagement is necessary if the EU is to help the fragile unity government merge the different institutional structures of Gaza and the West Bank into a single political space. Youngs warns that the EU must also focus on short-term imperatives to prevent another period of violence. Recognition cannot become a pretext for European governments pulling back from a stronger engagement on the ground in the Occupied Territories.
John Lennon
Last Monday marked the anniversary of the death of John Lennon. Hard to believe it's been 34 years since the life of this peaceful, creative genius was snuffed out by a crazed gunman. I was a young father then and remember well the huge gathering on the campus of Louisiana State University. Our sons wandered through the friendly crowd while my wife and I listened to the musical tributes and remembered this great man who meant so much to our generation. "Imagine all the people living life in peace." We could use some political leaders today that have the insight, consciousness and compassion of John Lennon. We miss you, John.
Related
Hong Kong protesters to rebuild 'Lennon Wall' [Daily Mail, Dec. 12]
Lima Climate Conference
Negotiators went into overtime and worked through Friday night trying to work out differences among the 195 countries attending the climate change conference in Lima, Peru, for the past two weeks. As negotiations continued, National Geographic presented 5 takeaways:
1. The big question of whether the agreement will be binding is still unresolved.
2. Vulnerable countries want to be compensated for damage from global warming.
3. Environmental groups want a 100 percent phaseout of fossil fuels by 2050.
4. Many cities will start measuring their emissions.
5. The UN's Green Climate Fund has raised ten billion dollars. The US commitment to the fund is 3 billion dollars but Republicans in Congress have attached a rider to the recently passed $1.1 trillion budget that would block the government from spending the money.
One of the key areas of contention is the divide between industrialized and developing nations. The US and other industrialised countries require all countries to cut greenhouse gas emissions. That would be a departure from the original UN classification of the 1990s – which absolved China, India and other developing countries which are now major carbon polluters – of cutting their emissions. Developing countries are suspicious that the text being developed in Lima is an attempt to rewrite those old guidelines. [The Guardian, Dec. 12] Times change and as countries become major carbon polluters, they need to recognize their obligations to join in the fight against global warming. The recent bilateral agreement between the United States and China should serve as a model for a way forward. This is the last major climate conference before the critical Paris conference in December, 2015 and the frustration with the draft text is widespread. The proposals, still under discussion on Saturday, a day after the talks were scheduled to end, were too weak to keep global warming to the agreed limit of two degrees above preindustrial levels, setting the world on course to a climate disaster...“We are on a path to three or four degrees with this outcome,” said Tasneem Essop, international climate strategist for WWF. She said the final draft text, a five-page document put forward for approval on Saturday, offered little assurance of cutting emissions fast enough and deeply enough to curb warming. [The Guardian, Dec. 13]
Mars
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| Depiction of a lake partially filling Mars' Gale Crater Image Credit:NASA/JPL/ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/MSSS |
Related
"Could Ancient Mars Have Supported Life? Water Isn't the Only Key" [space.com, Dec. 11]
In Brief/Links
Other Image Credits
John Lennon Quote is from the InkTank website.
Imagine Peace Tower, Reykjavick, Iceland is from the Imagine Peace website.
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