[FACT comments: It’s so hard to remember what we’re warring for!]
America’s War in Afghanistan Becomes America’s Drug War in Afghanistan
Drug War Chronicle: June 19, 2009
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/590/afghanistan_drug_war
As summer arrives in Afghanistan, it’s not just the temperature that is heating up. Nearly 20,000 additional US troops are joining American and NATO forces on the ground, bringing foreign troop totals to nearly 90,000, and an insurgency grown wealthy off the opium and heroin trade is engaging them with dozens of attacks a day across the country. But this year, something different is going on: For the first time, the West is taking direct aim at the drug trafficking networks that deliver hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the insurgents.
Last week, hundreds of British and Afghan troops backed by US and Canadian helicopters and US jets engaged in a series of raids in southern Helmand province, the country’s largest opium producing and heroin refining region, seizing 5,500 kilograms of opium paste, 220 kilos of morphine, more than 100 kilos of heroin, and 148 kilos of hashish. They also uncovered and destroyed heroin labs and weapons caches, fending off Taliban machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade attacks as they did so.
“This has been an important operation against the illegal narcotics industry and represents a significant setback for the insurgency in Helmand Province,” said Lt. Col. Stephen Cartwright, commanding officer of some of the British troops. “The link between the insurgents and the narcotics industry is proven as militants use the money derived from the drug trade as a principle source of funding to arm themselves with weapons and conduct their campaign of intimidation and violence. By destroying this opium and the drug making facilities we are directly target their fighting capability. The operation has been well received by the Afghan people.”
It wasn’t the first Western attack on the Afghan drug trade this year, and it certainly won’t be the last. Operating since last fall on new marching orders, Western troops and their Afghan allies are for the first time engaging in serious drug war as part of their seemingly endless counterinsurgency. And they are drawing a sharp response from the Taliban, which must be seen not so much as a monolithic Islamic fundamentalist movement, but as an ever-shifting amalgam of jihadis, home-grown and foreign, competing warlords, including the titular head of the movement, Mullah Omar, disenchanted tribesmen, and purely criminal drug trafficking organizations collectively called “the Taliban.”
So far this year, 142 NATO and US troops have been killed in the fighting, putting 2009 on a pace to be the bloodiest year yet for the West in the now nearly eight-year-old invasion, occupation, and counterinsurgency aimed at uprooting the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies. Also dead are hundreds, if not more, Taliban fighters, and an unknown number of Afghan civilians, victims of Western air strikes, twitchy trigger fingers, and unending Taliban attacks on security forces and public places.
There will be “tough fighting” this summer and beyond in Afghanistan, top US commander Gen. David Petraeus said Wednesday in remarks to reporters in Tampa. As US and NATO troops go on the offensive “to take back from the Taliban areas that they have been able to control, there will be tough fighting,” he said. “Certainly that tough fighting will not be concluded just this year. Certainly there will be tough periods beyond this year,” he added, noting that the Taliban insurgency is at its bloodiest levels since 2001.
That rising insurgency, financed in large part by drug trade profits, has sparked a rethinking of Western anti-drug strategy, as well as the deployment of nearly 20,000 additional troops, with some 7,000 of them headed for Helmand, which, if it were a country, would be the world’s largest opium producer.
Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, laid out the new thinking in testimony to the Senate last month. The West is losing the battle against opium production, he said, so instead of merely going after Taliban militants it is time to “go after” the powerful drug lords who control the trafficking and smuggling networks in Afghanistan.
“With respect to the narcotics — the threat that is there — it is very clearly funding the insurgency. We know that, and strategically, my view is that it has to be eliminated,” Mullen said. “We have had almost no success in the last seven or eight years doing that, including this year’s efforts, because we are unable to put viable livelihood in behind any kind of eradication.”
While the new approach — de-emphasized eradication of farmers’ fields and targeting the drug trade, especially when linked to the insurgency — is better than the approach of the Bush years, it is still rife with problems, obstacles, and uncertainties, said a trio of experts consulted by the Chronicle.
“We are seeing a clear shift away from eradication being the dominant focus and a clear emphasis on rural development as a way to proceed, and that is a major positive development,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a scholar of drugs and insurgency at the Brookings Institution. “Interdiction was always nominally part of the package, but there is now a new mandate.
Since October, NATO countries can participate in the interdiction of Taliban-linked traffickers. Certainly, the US and the UK are planning to vastly engage in this mission.”
“The whole policy has changed,” agreed Raheem Yaseer, assistant director of the Afghanistan Studies Center at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. “There was lots of criticism about the troops not going after the drug leaders and the trafficking. They were concentrating on the terrorists, but now they realize the opium traffic has actually been used to finance their activities, so now they are trying to eliminate the traffickers and promoters of the trade,” he explained.
“There is more emphasis on reconstruction,” said Yaseer. “There will be some compensation for people who are giving up the poppy, and shifting from poppy to saffron, things like that. Still, security is key, and there are some problems with security,” he added in a masterful use of understatement.
“The administration appears at least to understand that eradication should target cartels rather than poor local farmers,” said Malou Innocent, a foreign policy analyst with the libertarian leaning Cato Institute. “I hope they continue down that path; it’s the best of many horrible options. The best policy would be legalization,” she said, adding wistfully that she would prefer a more sensible drug policy.
“I have a feeling this is going to be a very bloody summer,” said Malou.
“There will be more violence because of the Afghan elections this August, as well as the Taliban’s annual spring and summer offensive, which this year is going to be a sort of counteroffensive to the Western surge.”
What the new emphasis on going after traffickers will accomplish remains to be seen, said Felbab-Brown. “Interdiction could provide a good reason for the Taliban to insert itself more deeply into the drug trade, or it could encourage traffickers to join the Karzai government,” she said.
The effect of the new campaign on security in the countryside also remains to be seen, Felbab-Brown said. “Our reconstruction capacity is so weak after decades of neglect and a systematic effort to destroy those projects,” she noted. “At bottom, though, the effectiveness of rural development programs depends on security. Without security, there is no effective program.”
Western military forces also have some image-building to do, said Yaseer. “Because of wrong policies of the past and high civilian casualties, the original favorable perception of the foreign troops has changed from favorable to antagonistic. It will take some time to get back the good image.”
Yaseer also had doubts about the utility of the massive foreign, mainly US, troop increase now underway. “Unless the sources of the problem, which lie in Pakistan, are attacked, adding more troops will not be very useful,” he said. “They will just make the region more volatile and create more resentment, and they will provide the insurgents with a larger target than before,” he said.
“The new administration’s desire to change the policy makes one a bit optimistic, but again, time will tell whether the West is serious about them,” Yaseer continued. Progress will depend on the nature of the operations and whether the new policies are actually implemented, whether this is real.”
For Malou, the clock is ticking, and Western soldiers have no good reason to be remaining in Afghanistan for much longer. “We haven’t found bin Laden in eight years, and most of the high-level Al Qaeda we’ve captured have been the result of police detective work, not military force. The foreign military presence in Afghanistan is perceived as a foreign occupation by many people in the region on both sides of the border, and that’s poisoning the well even further,” she said.
The US needs to be planning an exit strategy, said Malou. “When you look strategically and economically, the US just doesn’t have a vital interest impelling us to stay in the region indefinitely,” she said. “We need a timeframe for withdrawal within the next several years. We need to narrow our objectives to training security forces. I don’t see any reason why we need to stay in this region any longer.”
12 States Sign World’s First Treaty On Access To Information
- What About The Other 35 Council Of Europe Member States?
Article 19 / Access Info Europe: June 19, 2009
12 European countries – Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Hungary, Lithuania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Slovenia, and Sweden – today became the first states to sign the world’s first treaty on access to information – the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents – at a meeting of Ministers of Justice held in Tromso, Norway.
Access Info Europe and ARTICLE 19 today welcomed the leadership shown by these 12 countries, and called the Council of Europe’s other 35 Member States to demonstrate their commitment to government transparency by signing and ratifying the Convention.
“Countries like the UK, France, Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands were all present during the negotiation of the treaty. Responding to civil society concerns about the treaty, they argued that a minimum-standard Convention would attract more signatures. Why then have they not signed? Where is their commitment to the public’s right to know?” said Helen Darbishire, Executive Director of Access Info.
NSA Secret Database Ensnared President Clinton’s Private E-mail
Kim Zetter
Wired: June 17, 2009
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/pinwale
A secret NSA surveillance database containing millions of intercepted foreign and domestic e-mails includes the personal correspondence of former President Bill Clinton, according to the New York Times.
An NSA intelligence analyst was apparently investigated after accessing Clinton’s personal correspondence in the database, the paper reports, though it didn’t say how many of Clinton’s e-mails were captured or when the interception occurred.
The database, codenamed Pinwale, allows NSA analysts to search through and read large volumes of e-mail messages, including correspondence to and from Americans. Pinwale is likely the end point for data sucked from internet backbones into NSA-run surveillance rooms at AT&T facilities around the country.
Those rooms were set up by the Bush administration following 9/11, and were finally legalized last year when Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act. The law gives the telecoms immunity for cooperating with the administration; it also opens the way for the NSA to lawfully spy on large groups of phone numbers and e-mail addresses in bulk, instead of having to obtain a warrant for each target.
The NSA can collect the correspondence of Americans with a court order, or without one if the interception occurs incidentally while the agency is targeting people “reasonably believed” to be overseas. But in 2005, the agency “routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants,” according to the Times, through this loophole. The paper reports today that the NSA is continuing to over-collect e-mail because of difficulties in filtering and distinguishing between foreign and domestic correspondence.
If an American’s correspondence pops up in search results when analysts sift through the database, the analyst is allowed to read it, provided such messages account for no more than 30 percent of a search result, the paper reported.
The NSA has claimed that the over-collection was inadvertent and corrected it each time the problem was discovered. But Rep. Rush Holt (D-New Jersey), chairman of the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, disputed this. “Some actions are so flagrant that they can’t be accidental,” he told the Times.
Holt and other congressional reps have been holding closed-door meetings on the issue. Holt’s office said there are no current plans to hold a hearing on the matter, but the investigation is on-going.
Whorley revisited
Jeff Trexler
Newsarama: June 20, 2009
http://blog.newsarama.com/2009/06/20/whorley-revisited/
As many of you no doubt have read, a federal appeals court has refused to grant the petition for rehearing in the Dwight Whorley case. Whorley had been convicted of possessing child porn, receiving obscene manga and sending obscene email.
The court ruled 10-1 against rehearing the case, but the focus of attention has been the lengthy dissent, in which Judge Roger Gregory urged Whorley to take the case to Supreme Court. Among other things, Gregory argues that Whorley’s conviction violated the First Amendment insofar as it punished speech pertaining to “imaginary children.”
Judge Gregory’s may have struck a chord in the comics & manga communities, but odds are that it will not make a similar impression on a majority of Supreme Court Justices, let alone appellate judges in his or any other federal circuit. The Court established years ago that fiction and drawings can be obscene. There is no split among the federal circuits regarding that issue, and the Supreme Court is not likely to view protecting pornographic depictions of children as a compelling reason to overturn decades of established obscenity jurisprudence.
Anti-censorship advocates, including Judge Gregory, have been wont to quote passages from the 2002 Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition decision regarding the unconstitutionality of banning virtual images, but these passages don’t prove what people think they do. In short, the quotes are being taken out of context–the Aschroft case dealt with a statute that banned virtual images regardless of whether they were obscene, a constitutional problem that current law arguably corrects.
There are equally substantive issues with Judge Gregory’s argument that obscenity communicated over the Internet should be regarded as personal, akin to private thoughts or matter read in one’s home, rather than connected to interstate commerce and thus a legitimate subject of federal law. This blog is not the place for an extensive analysis of Commerce Clause jurisprudence and the regulation of electronic communications, but suffice it to say that for Whorley to prevail on this point, the Supreme Court would essentially be nullifying precedent that provides the basis for much of Congress’s present legislative authority, let alone analogous principles that have enabled Congress to regulate obscenity sent by mail or through Customs.
Still, if people want to file appeals claiming that the Internet is intrinsically private or that images of fictional children cannot be obscene, that’s their right–it is, after all, a free country, at least in regard to the freedom to pay lawyers to make quixotic arguments.
Appeals Court Backs Prison for E-Mail Obscenity
David Kravets
Wired: June 17, 2009
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/email-obscenity/
Sharing an obscene sexual fantasy over e-mail is a federal crime that enjoys no protection under the First Amendment, a federal appeals court said Monday, in a decision that drew sharp dissent from one judge and potentially set the stage for a Supreme Court appeal.
In a 10-1 decision, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rehear the case of Dwight Whorley, a Virginia man whose criminal trial marked two firsts for the American justice system: the first conviction for possession of obscene Japanese manga, and the first for authoring pornographic fiction and sending it over e-mail.
U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Roger Gregory warns of “government regulation of private thoughts.”
“Whorley violated criminal statues regulating obscenity,” Judge Paul Niemeyer wrote for the majority, “and his convictions may not be forgiven because his conduct was prompted by his sexual fantasies.”
But in a lengthy dissent, Judge Roger Gregory urged the Supreme Court to take up the case and reverse it.
“I am hard-pressed to think of a better modern day example of government regulation of private thoughts than what we have before us in this case: convicting a man for the victimless crime of privately communicating his personal fantasies to other consenting adults,” Gregory wrote.
Whorley was convicted in 2006 and sentenced to 20 years in prison, in part for possessing genuine child pornography. But the Justice Department — perhaps sensing a chance to smuggle bad law onto the back of an unsympathetic defendant — also charged Whorley for having unsavory manga under the recently-enacted Protect Act, which outlaws obscene cartoons depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
More surprisingly, prosecutors charged him under an older statute outlawing the possession of “any obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy book, pamphlet, picture, motion-picture film, paper, letter, writing, print or other matter of indecent character” as defined by a jury. That violation was for writing out his sexual fantasies involving children, and e-mailing them to like-minded internet friends. Though Whorely is apparently a pedophile, the law applies to any obscene content.
A three-judge panel voted (.pdf) 2-1 to uphold the manga and e-mail convictions last December, with Gregory dissenting (.pdf) . The judge repeated and expanded on his dissent this week, when the full court rejected Whorley’s rehearing request.
Gregory, a President George W. Bush appointee, also argued that it was wrong to convict a man for manga art depicting children having sex. Obscenity laws, he wrote, should not apply to “images of purely imagined children.” But he was particularly alarmed over the e-mail convictions.
In 1969, the Supreme Court ruled that Americans have the right to possess obscene material in the privacy of their own homes. But trafficking in such goods through interstate commerce — which today includes the internet — is illegal under that ruling.
Gregory argued that the law has not kept up with technology and should be changed.
“This is a difficult case. The e-mails were admittedly transmitted and received through channels of interstate commerce and were found by a jury to be obscene,” Gregory said. He added that, “In today’s world, our e-mail inbox, just as much as our home, has become the place where we store the memorabilia of our thoughts and dreams.”
Following Whorley’s conviction, federal authorities convicted an Iowa man last month of possessing manga art depicting children having sex. But unlike Whorley, the defendant did not also have any real, obscene pictures of nude children having sex.
[FACT comments: It is so appropriate that the aged author of Fahrenheit 451 thinks libraries better than universities.]
A Literary Legend Fights for a Local Library
Jennifer Steinhauer
The New York Times: June 19, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/us/20ventura.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
When you are pushing 90, have written scores of famous novels, short stories and screenplays, and have fulfilled the goal of taking a simulated ride to Mars, what’s left?
“Bo Derek is a really good friend of mine and I’d like to spend more time with her,” said Ray Bradbury, peering up from behind an old television tray in his den.
An unlikely answer, but Mr. Bradbury, the science fiction writer, is very specific in his eccentric list of interests, and his pursuit of them in his advancing age and state of relative immobility.
This is a lucky thing for the Ventura County Public Libraries — because among Mr. Bradbury’s passions, none burn quite as hot as his lifelong enthusiasm for halls of books. His most famous novel, “Fahrenheit 451,” which concerns book burning, was written on a pay typewriter in the basement of the University of California, Los Angeles, library; his novel “Something Wicked This Way Comes” contains a seminal library scene.
Mr. Bradbury frequently speaks at libraries across the state, and on Saturday he will make his way here for a benefit for the H. P. Wright Library, which like many others in the state’s public system is in danger of shutting its doors because of budget cuts.
“Libraries raised me,” Mr. Bradbury said. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”
Property tax dollars, which provide most of the financing for libraries in Ventura County, have fallen precipitously, putting the library system roughly $650,000 in the hole. Almost half of that amount is attributed to the H. P. Wright Library, which serves roughly two-thirds of this coastal city about 50 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
In January the branch was told that unless it came up with $280,000 it would close. The branch’s private fund-raising group, San Buenaventura Friends of the Library, has until March to reach its goal; so far it has raised $80,000.
Enter Mr. Bradbury. While at a meeting concerning the library, Berta Steele, vice president of the friends group, ran into Michael Kelly, a local artist who runs the Ray Bradbury Theater and Film Foundation, a group dedicated to arts and literacy advocacy. Mr. Kelly told Ms. Steele that he could get Mr. Bradbury up to Ventura to help the library’s cause.
On Saturday, the two organizations will host a $25-a-head discussion with Mr. Bradbury and present a screening of “The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit,” a film based on his short story of the same name.
The fund-raiser’s financial goal is not a long-term fix. That would come only if property taxes crawl back up or voters approve a proposed half-cent increase in the local sales tax in November, some of which would go to libraries.
Fiscal threats to libraries deeply unnerve Mr. Bradbury, who spends as much time as he can talking to children in libraries and encouraging them to read.
The Internet? Don’t get him started. “The Internet is a big distraction,” Mr. Bradbury barked from his perch in his house in Los Angeles, which is jammed with enormous stuffed animals, videos, DVDs, wooden toys, photographs and books, with things like the National Medal of Arts sort of tossed on a table.
“Yahoo called me eight weeks ago,” he said, voice rising. “They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’
“It’s distracting,” he continued. “It’s meaningless; it’s not real. It’s in the air somewhere.”
A Yahoo spokeswoman said it was impossible to verify Mr. Bradbury’s account without more details.
Mr. Bradbury has long been known for his clear memory of some of life’s events, and that remains the case, he said. “I have total recall,” he said. “I remember being born. I remember being in the womb, I remember being inside. Coming out was great.”
He also recalled watching the film “Pumping Iron,” which features Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in his body-building days, and how his personal recommendation of the film for an Academy Award helped spark Mr. Schwarzenegger’s Hollywood career. He remembers lining his four daughters’ cribs with Golden Books when they were tiny. And he remembers meeting Ms. Derek on a train in France years ago.
“She said, ‘Mr. Bradbury.’ I said, ‘Yes.’ She said: ‘I love you! My name is Bo Derek.’ ”
Ms. Derek’s spokeswoman, Rona Menashe, said the story was true. She said her client would like to see some more of Mr. Bradbury, too.
Mr. Bradbury’s wife, Maggie, to whom he was married for over five decades, died in 2003. He turns 89 in August.
When he is not raising money for libraries, Mr. Bradbury still writes for a few hours every morning (“I can’t tell you,” is the answer to any questions on his latest book); reads George Bernard Shaw; receives visitors including reporters, filmmakers, friends and children of friends; and watches movies on his giant flat-screen television.
He can still be found regularly at the Los Angeles Public Library branch in Koreatown, which he visited often as a teenager.
“The children ask me, ‘How can I live forever, too?’ ” he said. “I tell them do what you love and love what you do. That’s the story on my life.”
[FACT comments: It is quite beyond us why anybody needs to buy guns. But, let’s face it, they’re Americans, a million of whom are now being “watched” as potential terrorists.]
On Terrorist Watch List, but Allowed to Buy Guns
Eric Lichtblau
The New York Times: June 20, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/us/politics/20watch.html?ref=todayspaper
People on the government’s terrorist watch list tried to buy guns nearly 1,000 times in the last five years, and federal authorities cleared the purchases 9 times out of 10 because they had no legal way to stop them, according to a new government report.
In one case, a person on the list was able to buy more than 50 pounds of explosives.
The new statistics, compiled in a report from the Government Accountability Office that is scheduled for public release next week, draw attention to an odd divergence in federal law: people placed on the government’s terrorist watch list can be stopped from getting on a plane or getting a visa, but they cannot be stopped from buying a gun.
Gun purchases must be approved unless federal officials can find some other disqualification of the would-be buyer, like being a felon, an illegal immigrant or a drug addict.
“This is a glaring omission, and it’s a security issue,” Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, the New Jersey Democrat who requested the study, said in an interview.
Mr. Lautenberg plans to introduce legislation on Monday that would give the attorney general the discretion to block gun sales to people on terror watch lists.
The government’s consolidated watch list, used to identify people suspected of links to terrorists, has grown to more than one million names since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It also has drawn widespread criticism over the prevalence of mistaken identities and unclear links to terrorism.
A report in May from the Justice Department inspector general found that the list kept by the Federal Bureau of Investigation carried the names of 24,000 people included on the basis of outdated or sometimes irrelevant information.
Gun rights advocates said showing up on a terrorist watch list should not be grounds for being denied a gun.
“We’re concerned about the quality and the integrity of the list,” said Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association. “There have been numerous studies and reports questioning the integrity, and we believe law-abiding people who are on the list by error should not be arbitrarily denied their civil rights” under the Second Amendment.
Mr. Lautenberg introduced a similar gun-control measure in 2007, but it stalled after opposition from the N.R.A. The senator attributed the outcome to “knuckling under to the gun lobby.”
Mr. Arulanandam said the gun lobby would have to examine the details of the newest proposal before taking a position. But he added: “Senator Lautenberg has always been on the wrong side of the Second Amendment. His approach is not in the interests of public safety.”
The G.A.O. study found an increase in the last few years in the number of gun purchase requests and approvals for people on the terrorist watch list.
From February 2004 through February 2009, the report found, there were 963 requests for gun purchases through the federal system by people on the list. Of that group, 865 purchases — or 90 percent — were approved after a three-day review by the F.B.I. failed to turn up any other disqualifying factors.
A narrower study by the G.A.O. in 2005 first drew public attention to the issue. The Justice Department took some limited steps to address the issue, centralizing the review of gun purchases by those on watch lists to ensure that all possible disqualifiers were being considered.
Nonetheless, the rate of approval for requests to buy a gun went up from 80 percent in 2005 to the new study’s 90 percent. Officials were searching for explanations for the increase, which might reflect the overall growth in both the number of people on the watch list and of gun purchases.
The names of the people on the watch list are secret, and Mr. Lautenberg said he was frustrated by the F.B.I.’s refusal to disclose to investigators details and specific cases of gun purchases beyond the aggregate data.
The senator said that getting a better understanding of who is being allowed to buy guns and how people are connected to terrorism would help assess the need for legislative remedies.
The G.A.O. reported that the Justice Department in the Obama administration, however, was “noncommital” about whether it would develop guidelines if Congress moved to give the attorney general discretion to block such gun sales.
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Agent Orange Continues to Poison Vietnam Professor Marjorie Cohn Global Research, June 14, 2009 |
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13974
http://marjoriecohn.com
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From 1961 to 1971, the U.S. military sprayed Vietnam with Agent Orange, which contained large quantities of Dioxin, in order to defoliate the trees for military objectives. Dioxin is one of the most dangerous chemicals known to man. It has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen (causes cancer) and by the American Academy of Medicine as a teratogen (causes birth defects).
Between 2.5 and 4.8 million people were exposed to Agent Orange. 1.4 billion hectares of land and forest – approximately 12 percent of the land area of Vietnam – were sprayed.
The Vietnamese who were exposed to the chemical have suffered from cancer, liver damage, pulmonary and heart diseases, defects to reproductive capacity, and skin and nervous disorders. Children and grandchildren of those exposed have severe physical deformities, mental and physical disabilities, diseases, and shortened life spans. The forests and jungles in large parts of southern Vietnam have been devastated and denuded. They may never grow back and if they do, it will take 50 to 200 years to regenerate. Animals that inhabited the forests and jungles have become extinct, disrupting the communities that depended on them. The rivers and underground water in some areas have also been contaminated. Erosion and desertification will change the environment, contributing to the warming of the planet and dislocation of crop and animal life.
The U.S. government and the chemical companies knew that Agent Orange, when produced rapidly at high temperatures, would contain large quantities of Dioxin. Nevertheless, the chemical companies continued to produce it in this manner. The U.S. government and the chemical companies also knew that the Bionetics Study, commissioned by the government in 1963, showed that even low levels of Dioxin produced significant deformities in unborn offspring of laboratory animals. But they suppressed that study and continued to spray Vietnam with Agent Orange. It wasn’t until the study was leaked in 1969 that the spraying of Agent Orange was discontinued.
U.S. soldiers who served in Vietnam have experienced similar illnesses. After they sued the chemical companies, including Dow and Monsanto, that manufactured and sold Agent Orange to the government, the case settled out of court for $180 million which gave few plaintiffs more than a few thousand dollars each. Later the U.S. veterans won a legislative victory for compensation for exposure to Agent Orange. They receive $1.52 billion per year in benefits.
But when the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange sued the chemical companies in federal court, U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein dismissed the lawsuit, concluding that Agent Orange did not constitute a poison weapon prohibited by the Hague Convention of 1907. Weinstein had reportedly told the chemical companies when they settled the U.S. veterans’ suit that their liability was over and he was making good on his promise. His dismissal was affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The chemical companies admitted in their filing in the Supreme Court that the harm alleged by the victims was foreseeable although not intended. How can something that is foreseeable be unintended?
On May 15 and 16 of this year, the International Peoples’ Tribunal of Conscience in Support of the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange convened in Paris and heard testimony from 27 victims, witnesses and scientific experts. Seven people from three continents served as judges of the Tribunal, which was sponsored by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL).
Testimony given by the witnesses showed the following:
Mai Giang Vu, a member of the Army of South Vietnam, carried barrels of the chemicals on his back. His two sons could not walk or function normally, their limbs gradually “curled up” and they could only crawl. They died at the ages of 23 and 25.
Pham The Minh, whose parents also served in the South Vietnamese Army, showed the Tribunal his severely deformed, crooked, skinny legs; he has great difficulty walking, as well as digestive and pulmonary diseases.
To Nga Tran is a French Vietnamese who worked as a journalist during the spraying. Her daughter weighed 6.6 pounds at the age of three months. Her skin began shredding and she could not bear to have skin contact or simple demonstrations of love. She died at 17 months, weighing 6.6 pounds. Ms. To described a woman who gave birth to a “ball” with no human form. Many children are born without brains; others make inhuman sounds.
Rosemarie Hohn Mizo is the widow of George Mizo, who served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam in 1967. He slept on contaminated ground and consumed food and drink that were also contaminated. George refused to serve after he was wounded for the third time; he was court-martialed and sentenced to 2-1/2 years in prison and a dishonorable discharge. George helped found the Friendship Village where Vietnamese victims live in a supportive environment. He died from conditions related to his exposure to Agent Orange.
Georges Doussin, co-founder of the Friendship Village , visited a dormitory where he saw 50 highly deformed “monsters,” who produced inhuman sounds. One man whose parent had been exposed to Agent Orange had four toes on each foot. Doussin said Agent Orange creates “total anarchy in evolution.”
Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, from Tu Du Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City ( Saigon ), sees many children born without arms and/or legs, without heads or faces, and without a brain chamber. According to the World Health Organization, only 1 – 4 parts per trillion (PPT) of Dioxin in breast milk can cause severe deformities in fetuses and even death. But up to 1450 PPT are found in maternal milk in Vietnam .
Dr. Jeanne Stellman, who wrote the seminal article about Agent Orange in the magazine Nature, testified that “this is the largest unstudied environmental disaster in the world (except for natural disasters).”
Dr. Jean Grassman, from Brooklyn College at City University of New York, testified that Dioxin is a potent cellular disregulator which alters a variety of pathways to disrupt many systems. Children, she said, are very sensitive to Dioxin; the intrauterine or post natal exposure to Dioxin may result in altered immune, neurobehavioral, and hormonal functioning. Women pass their exposure to their children both in utero and through the excretion of Dioxin in breast milk.
Many ecosystems have been destroyed and Dioxin continues to poison Vietnam , especially in the several “hot spots.”
Chemist Dr. Pierre Vermeulin testified that it was estimated that $1 billion would be required to restore one hectare of land in Vietnam . The cost of caring for the victims, many of whom need 24-hour care, is enormous.
In 1973, President Richard Nixon promised $3.25 billion in reconstruction aid to Vietnam “without any preconditions.” That aid was never granted.
There are only 11 Friendship Villages in Vietnam ; 1000 are needed to care for the child victims of Agent Orange.
Last week, the Bureau of the IADL, meeting in Hanoi , presented President Nguyen Minh Triet of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam with the final decision of the Tribunal. The judges found the U.S. government and the chemical companies guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ecocide during the illegal U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam . We recommended that the Agent Orange Commission be established in Vietnam to assess the damages suffered by the people and destruction of the environment, and that the U.S. government and the chemical companies provide compensation for the damage and destruction.
I told the President that it always struck me that even as U.S. bombs were dropping on the people of Vietnam , they always distinguished between the American government and the American people. The President responded, “We fought the forces of aggression but we always reserved our love for the people of America . . . because we knew they always supported us.”
An estimated 3 million Vietnamese people were killed in the war, which also claimed 58,000 American lives. For many other Vietnamese and U.S. veterans and their families, the war continues to take its toll.
Several treaties the United States has ratified require an effective remedy for violations of human rights. It is time to make good on Nixon’s promise and remedy the terrible wrong the U.S. government perpetrated on the people of Vietnam . Congress must pass legislation to compensate the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange as it did for the U.S. Vietnam veteran victims.
Our government must know that it cannot continue to use weapons that target and harm civilians. Indeed, the U.S. military is using depleted uranium in Iraq and Afghanistan , which will poison those countries for incalculable decades.
Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild, served as a judge on the International Peoples’ Tribunal of Conscience in Support of the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange. She is a member of the Bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and co-author of “Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent.” |
Australia gaols refugee children-AI
20-06-09
Christmas Island is no place to detain children
Amnesty International: June 19, 2009
This morning, dozens of children – under the watchful eye of the Australian Government – were escorted to school by guards. This evening the children will return to a fenced facility on a remote island and do their homework in demountable buildings, while they ponder their plight. Sound like fiction?
Sadly, there are families and children on Christmas Island who experience this heartbreak daily.
When I visited the new Christmas Island Detention Centre last year I was horrified to see the prison-like conditions that people applying for asylum in Australia must live in. We were told that children would not be detained in the new detention centre. What we have discovered is that the alternative detention arrangements for the 68 children, including 41 unaccompanied minors held on the island are little better, and in many respects worse.
The “alternative” detention arrangements are inappropriate for even the briefest period. A fenced-in facility which currently holds the 68 children consists mostly of metal, concrete and gravel, tiny demountable buildings, with small claustrophobic bedrooms. The children are under guard and not free to leave the fenced perimeter of the facilities. This is unacceptable — if children were detained under these conditions on the mainland there would be outrage in the Australian community.
No child seeking asylum should be detained on Christmas Island. Please take action now
While the Federal Government committed to no longer keeping children in detention centres – instead they are exiled to an environment where the conditions and the lack of services have similar detrimental psychological impacts. This is a betrayal of the Government’s commitment to a more humane immigration policy — and for the sake of 68 young children we must call for this to end.
[CJ Hinke of FACT comments: Many years ago, a friend sent me a practical joke of a book titled “Who is Guru Maharaj-ji?” about the teenage guru. Seems he’s back!]
Lord of the Universe’ loses Wikiland grip
Guru disciple re-retired
The Register: June 16, 2009
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/16/wiki_bans_fresco/
“The Lord of the Universe” has undoubtedly lost his grip on Wikipeda.
Back in February 2008, we told you the epic Wikitale of Jossi Fresco, who had worked his way into the site’s inner circle to guard the Wikimage of his guru and apparent employer, Prem Rawat. Formerly known as Guru Maharaj Ji, Rawat once fostered a worldwide religious movement styling himself as the “Perfect Master” and encouraging followers to call him “Lord of the Universe.”
Time Magazine lists his Divine Light Mission among the mega-cults of the 1970s, the heyday of the mega-cult.
In December, Fresco suddenly retired from Wikiland. But it seems this was a retirement in name only. He reappeared as someone calling himself “Pergamino” and promptly returned to his role as Rawat’s Wikiprotectorinchief.
And now he’s gone again. Site admins have instituted a kind of forced retirement, banning “Pergamino” for sockpuppeting.
Fresco has acknowledged that he works for an organization “related” to Prem Rawat, and according to an ex-Rawat-follower and former friend, he served on the guru’s personal staff, building his first website.
Wikipedia sees itself a “neutral” encyclopedia. But for years, Jossi Fresco maintained strict control over the site’s Prem Rawat article and countless related articles. When our initial story appeared, Wikipedia’s Prem Rawat article did not include the word cult.
But in the wake of our story, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales called Fresco “a great Wikipedian.”
