Thursday, May 28, 2009
Abu Ghraib Abuse Photos 'Show Rape'
May 28, 2009 - The Telegraph/UK
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Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.
by Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent and Paul Cruickshank
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.
Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President's attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.
Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President's decision, adding: "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.
"I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.
"The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it."
In April, Mr Obama's administration said the photographs would be released and it would be "pointless to appeal" against a court judgment in favour of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.
Earlier this month, he said: "The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger."
It was thought the images were similar to those leaked five years ago, which showed naked and bloody prisoners being intimidated by dogs, dragged around on a leash, piled into a human pyramid and hooded and attached to wires.
Mr Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: "I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib."
The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Mr Obama said the individuals involved had been "identified, and appropriate actions" taken.
Maj Gen Taguba's internal inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, included sworn statements by 13 detainees, which, he said in the report, he found "credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses."
Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: "I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn't covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid's ***.... and the female soldier was taking pictures."
The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US.
Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman's "stick" all of which were apparently photographed.
Damaged Ecosystems Not Lost Forever
Marina Litvinsky
May 27, 2009 by Inter Press Service
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Most polluted or damaged ecosystems worldwide could recover within a single lifetime if societies commit to their cleanup or restoration, according to researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
The report, 'Rapid Recovery of Ecosystems,' states that biotic and biophysical conditions of ecosystems become degraded from exploitation by humans to meet rising demands for resources and environmental services, or from accidents.
In theory, ecosystems could recover gradually at a rate proportional to the degree to which the problem is abated. However, it is speculated that such recovery would take centuries if not millennia given the scales of current human impact.
Researchers found that forest ecosystems recovered in 42 years on average, while ocean bottoms recovered in less than 10 years. When examined by disturbance type, ecosystems undergoing multiple, interacting disturbances recovered in 56 years, and those affected by either invasive species, mining, oil spills or trawling recovered in as little as five years.
Most ecosystems took longer to recover from human-induced disturbances than from natural events, such as hurricanes.
"The damages to these ecosystems are pretty serious," said Oswald Schmitz, an ecology professor at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and co-author of the meta-analysis with Yale Ph.D. student Holly Jones. "But the message is that if societies choose to become sustainable, ecosystems will recover. It isn't hopeless."
The Yale analysis focused on seven ecosystem types, including marine, forest, terrestrial, freshwater and brackish, and addresses recovery from major anthropogenic disturbances: agriculture, deforestation, eutrophication, invasive species, logging, mining, oil spills, overfishing, power plants and trawling and from the interactions of those disturbances.
Major natural disturbances, including hurricanes and cyclones, are also accounted for in the analysis.
"We recognise that humankind has and will continue to actively domesticate nature to meet its own needs," said Jones. "The message of our paper is that recovery is possible and can be rapid for many ecosystems, giving much hope for a transition to sustainable management of global ecosystems."
The researchers analysed data derived from 240 peer-reviewed studies conducted over the past century that examined the recovery of large ecosystems following the cessation of a disturbance. The studies measured 94 variables that were grouped into three categories: ecosystem function, animal community and plant community.
The recovery of each of the variables was quantified in terms of the time it took for them to return to their pre-disturbance state as determined by the expert judgment of each study's author. The findings "show that there may be much hope to restore even heavily degraded ecosystems."
The analysis found that 83 studies demonstrated recovery for all variables; 90 reported a mixture of recovered and non-recovered variables; and 67 reported no recovery for any variable.
Schmitz said 15 percent of all the ecosystems in the analysis are beyond recovery. Also, it was determined that 54 percent of the studies that reported no recovery likely did not run long enough to draw definitive conclusions.
In addition, the analysis suggests that an ecosystems recovery may be independent of its degraded condition. Aquatic systems, the researchers noted, may recover more quickly because species and organisms that inhabit them turn over more rapidly than, for example, forests whose habitats take longer to regenerate after logging or clear-cutting.
Recovery following agricultural activities and multiple perturbations was significantly slower than all other perturbation types
The researchers pointed out that a potential pitfall of the analysis is that the ecosystems may have already been in a disturbed state when they were originally examined. Many ecosystems across the globe that have experienced extinctions and other fundamental changes as a result of human activities, combined with the ongoing effects of climate change and pollution, are far removed from their historical, natural pristine state. Thus, ecologists measured recovery on the basis of an ecosystem's more recent condition.
Because historical reference sites are often not representative of ecosystem states that humans aspire to restore, many restoration projects have moved away from the idea of restoring back to 'natural' or pre-human states and instead use contemporaneous reference systems as restoration targets.
Three explanations could account for lack of recovery in almost half of the systems and response variables. First, a particular study may not have been conducted over a long enough time scale to detect recovery. To assess this possibility, the researchers compared the average recovery times for those ecosystems that were found to be fully recovered with the duration of those studies reporting that variables had not yet recovered.
Second, systems may have entered into alternative states, thereby precluding recovery. Five percent of the total studies conclusively reported that the ecosystems were irreversibly entrained into alternative states.
Third, while some studies did rely on either a pre-perturbation or undisturbed control as an objective benchmark, this was not universally so. Of the 240 studies, only 20 percent used pre-perturbation data and 58 percent used undisturbed reference sites.
The Yale analysis points out the need for the development of objective criteria to decide when a system has fully recovered.
The analysis rebuts speculation that it will take centuries or millennia for degraded ecosystems to recover and justifies an increased effort to restore degraded areas for the benefit of future generations.
"Restoration could become a more important tool in the management portfolio of conservation organisations that are entrusted to protect habitats on landscapes," said Schmitz.
"Our results are not intended to give license to exploit ecosystems without regard to sustainability," said the report. "But, with even the best sustainable practices unforeseen outcomes and damages can happen accidentally. The message of our paper is that recovery is possible and can be rapid for many ecosystems, giving much hope for humankind to transition to sustainable management of global ecosystems."
Land of the Weak and the Wussy
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May 26, 2009 - Dave Lindorff's blog
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There may have perhaps have been a time when America was a land of at least some brave people. although arguably a nation that celebrates as heroic a history that features lots of people with modern guns and cannons conquering and destroying another people who were living in the stone age and fighting back with bows and arrows, and that built its economy on the backs of men and women held in chains certainly has a tough case to make. What is clear though is that there is nothing brave about modern-day America.
Whatever we were, we have degenerated into a nation that finds glory in deploying the most advanced high-tech, high-explosive weaponry against some of the world's poorest people, that justifies killing women and children, even by the dozens, even if by doing so it manages to kill one alleged "enemy" fighter. A nation that exalts remote-controlled robot drone aircraft that can attack targets in order to avoid risking soldiers' lives, even though by doing so, it is predictable that many, many innocent people will be killed. A nation that is proud to have developed weapons of mass slaughter, from shells laden with phosphorus that burns to death, indiscriminately, those who are contacted by the splattered chemical to elaborately baroque anti-personnel fragmentation bombs that spread cute little colored objects designed to look like everything from toys to food packages, but which upon contact explode, releasing whirling metal or plastic fleschettes which
shred human flesh on contact.
The Marines who battled their way up the hillsides of Iwo Jima, or the soldiers who struggled ashore under withering fire on the beaches of Normandy would be appalled at what passes for heroic behavior in today's American military. But that's not the worst of it.
The worst of it is back home in the USA, where millions of citizens who bitch about their taxes and who pay as little attention as possible to the fact that their nation is deeply mired in two wars, routinely refer to those who do their fighting for them as heroes, but then want nothing to do with the consequences of those wars (or for that matter the people who actually fight them).
One particularly telling consequence of those wars is that the US now has several hundred prisoners, mostly at the prison camp on the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, whom the American people don't want to have moved to their shores. And why won't we Americans accept the responsibility for incarcerating and trying these captives? Because we are so afraid that their comrades will strike back at us with acts of terrorism if we bring them here.
First of all, a moment of rational thought, please. Does anyone seriously think that the radical Islamic groups and independence fighters who are battling American forces in places like Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan are so symbolically obsessed that they would only attack places in America where their fellows are actually being held? Do people actually think that such people would not attack some place in the continental US right now if they could, in retaliation for people being held at the inaccessible base in Guantanamo?
Please. Let's get real.
Moving captives from Guantanamo to prisons in the US, pending trial, would merely make the job of agencies like the FBI easier by narrowing the list of likely terrorist targets in the US from thousands to dozens. But even then, is there any reason to think that a prospective terrorist group would be more likely to bomb Leavenworth Prison or the town of Leavenworth than the White House or the Pentagon to protest the holding of people at Leavenworth? Of course not.
The goal of a terrorist action is to cause as much fear and disruption as possible, and bombing some remote commuity where a federal prison is located isn't going to do that. You want to bomb a transportation or communications hub, or a major population center. So bringing prisoners to the US from Guantanamo doesn't really do anything to raise the risk for anybody.
But we Americans are irrational, panicky cowards. We worry that the terrorists will come and get us.
My guess is that a lot of this is mass guilt. Whether people admit it or not, I suspect most people know on some subconscious level that we Americans have been living off the rest of the world's misery. We know we're stealing oil from the people of nations like Iraq and Nigeria. We know that our toys, our electronics devices and our fancy name-brand running shoes are being made by people who cannot afford to buy them themselves. We know that for decades we have been overthrowing elected governments and propping up fascist dictatorships to keep the exploitation going so that we can buy cheap goods and extract cheap resources (As Marine Medal of Honor hero Smedley Butler long ago admitted, that's what our "heroes" in uniform are generally doing overseas).
The whole thing is sickening--a kind of nausea-inducing feeling that comes on me whenever I hear the last screeched line of the "Star-Spangled Banner"--but there is something particularly pathetic about this latest bout of collective wussiness on the part of the American people.
I mean, even if you bought all the tripe about our soldiers having to kill and occasionally die in Iraq and Afghanistan so we can "fight the terrorists there instead of here," even the charlatans in the White House and the Pentagon are claiming that keeping captives in Guantanamo is generating hatred abroad and putting US troops at greater risk, so you'd think it would be the least that this "home of the brave" could do to close that base and accept some of the added risk--if there even were any--of bringing those prisoners here.
If we can't even handle that, we're simply going to have to write a new ending for the national anthem:
"...Oh say may that Star-Spangled Banner yet flap
O'er the land of the weak, and the home of the sap."
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Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's new book is "The Case for Impeachment," co-authored by Barbara Olshansky.
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