Libya's Rebels: Yesterday We Tortured Them, Today We Arm Them

There's no doubt that NATO, primarily the UK, France and the US, inserted themselves into the Libyan uprising as a means of gaining control over the course of the Arab Spring. In the case of France, it's clear that expanding the control of Libya's oil - most notably at the expense of Italy - was also part of the reason for Sarkozy's newfound enthusiasm for democracy when only a few weeks earlier he was rather more enthusiastic for keeping the Tunisian dictator in power. Reasserting hegemony in Africa also played no small part in the Libyan adventure.

Nonetheless it is always important to keep in mind that when imperialist powers insert themselves into an insurgency - particularly against a recent ally like Gaddafi - they are at risk of not only unleashing forces that they cannot control but of being exposed for what they really are: double-dealing hypocrites.

To be honest, it doesn't appear to me likely that there will be open resistance to the overall imperial agenda as it is expressed through the new government that is coming into being, led by the NTC. The oil contracts have been signed, the backroom deals have been struck - and NATO's deeply penetrating role in the war against Gaddafi has ensured that the rebel soldiers are dependent upon them for military success of any sort. Over the coming weeks the most likely scenario is that the rebel volunteers will be demobilized or incorporated into the national military. That military and most of the governmental apparatus will remain essentially unchanged from the Gaddafi regime - the police who kept order in Tripoli under Gaddafi will be the same police who keep order under the NTC. The generals who ran the Gaddafi military will run the NTC military. And economic and social policy will be guided by people like Mahmoud Jibril, who was the head of the Gaddafi agency charged with the responsibility of selling off state assets, probably to mostly foreign buyers or other former-Gaddafi officials.

That said, I would be glad to be mistaken. There is a reason why one of the NTC's first acts is to demobilize the rebel soldiers and to clear them out of the capital. People fought for freedom and will be less likely to accept Gaddafi-ism without Gaddafi if they have guns and are organized into fighting units. And with the armed phase of Gaddafi's overthrow all but passed, it is still possible that the remnants of the revolutionary councils that dominated the early phase of the insurgency will re-emerge to challenge the NTC's policy of business-as-usual minus the Brother Leader and some of the more odious aspects of a police state.

But in the initial days it's good to see that, at the very least, some of the duplicity of the United States and Britain are being revealed. The discovery of documents in the Interior Ministry building that show the level of cooperation between the CIA and the Gaddafi regime are something of an embarrassment. As is the fact that the new commander of Tripoli was a victim of CIA torture and the extraordinary rendition program that sent him back to Libya for several years of brutal incarceration. Abdul Hakim Belhaj, a former commander of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group has been undergoing something of a renovation, with a fluff piece in the New York Times, which I covered the other day. He may be claiming that he is now grateful for the support of NATO and the USA - but he hasn't forgotten what was done to him and some reporters have cottoned on to this.

The result is that the British spy agency MI6 is now exposed as having cooperated - perhaps illegally - with the American rendition program and facilitated torture. In some ways nobody ought to be surprised by this but the fact that it is coming out in public at a moment when the UK is jockeying for fat reconstruction and oil contracts is sweet. These revelations are undermining one of the domestic goals of the intervention in Libya - to rehabilitate the idea of humanitarian intervention by demonstrating that the UK, USA and NATO really do have good intentions, even if sometimes they get the details wrong. Let's hope that the revelations keep on coming. There is a sweet irony in the possibility that the countries of NATO will be more fully exposed as having aided Gaddafi in crushing the revolt that they ended up opportunistically supporting.

MI6 knew I was tortured, says Libyan rebel | World news | The Guardian

Fort Hood Allegations Build On Racist Mythology

THIS MORNING I READ THAT SOME ANONYMOUS SPOOK told ABC news that the CIA knew Hasan was trying to contact al Qaeda (do they have a mailing address?). However, they did nothing about it, told no one, refuse to officially say anything and really only decided to send out an anonymous and widespread rumour now, when it is useful for propaganda purposes. Now, either the CIA are thoroughly incompetent or this is simply an attempt to massage the message in order to get the best spin for the purposes of the war effort. With Italy offering two dozen CIA agents an extended tour in an Italian jail for kidnapping and delivering a "Muslim suspect" to a third country for torture you will excuse me if I think that the timing is convenient for the CIA.
Of course, this whole dissection is a totally absurd case of politically motivated character assassination as a means to avoid the more troubling political implications of his action. Let's unpack some of this racist nonsense for a moment, shall we. What does it mean that he was trying to contact al Qaeda? The article never says and nobody is accountable for this anonymous rumour. So there is no way to verify any of its claims. Did he go to an Islamist website? Did he order an al Qaeda decoder ring in the mail? My guess is that this is nothing but spin based on something very flimsy, else there would be more than an abstract suggestion.
Then there is the article that claims Hasan visited a local strip club to have lap dances. Hasan is becoming, like Osama bin Laden, an Emmanuel Goldstein. Goldstein was the invented boogeyman used to frighten the population into line with the policies of Big Brother in the book 1984. Everyone will now have seen him - at the corner store, at strip clubs, at the mosque, in the cafeteria. And every story will take incidental events that were apropos of nothing and inflate them out of all proportion to create an image appropriate to a secondary figure in the anti-Islamic demonology of America. If he said he opposed the war and thought it was a war against Islam - the second belief being one that is regularly promoted by conservative figures - this is proof that he is a supporter of al Qaeda. The logical corollary that is being implied in all this is, of course, that all Muslims support al Qaeda. Not only is this untrue but because the western media has so thoroughly de-intellectualized al Qaeda - a product of US guns and money during the Afghan war against Soviet occupation - that there's no way to understand the organization or sympathy for it except in the terms of good vs evil. Bush put it clearly in his address to Congress following 9/11:

"Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what they see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other. They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. They want to drive Israel out of the Middle East. They want to drive Christians and Jews out of vast regions of Asia and Africa. These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us, because we stand in their way."

In a psychopathological passive-aggressive projection the United States, the world's most powerful empire, with bases in dozens of countries around the world, with a military budget higher than the rest of the world's countries combined, has become a victim of envy. It is not that the US "overthrows existing government in many Muslim countries", including democratically elected ones, unlike those used without irony in the Bush speech. It is not that the US military and government has consistently opposed the very freedoms listed by Bush in almost every country in the developing world. It is simply that a small, despised and underground movement, hidden in mountains and caves - like western fantasies about some Ali Baba - is an evil force trying to destroy our way of life. This logic must lead to racism for the simple reason that once you eliminate all the real world complexities of cause and effect, of history and political decisions, all you have left are mystical explanations about some evil character within Islam. Sure, there's some good Muslims - but they are only good insofar as they "moderate" their Islam, they become, in the words of Pat Robertson, "Islam lite". As for the rest:

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have to recognize that Islam is not a religion. It is a worldwide political movement meant on domination of the world. And it is meant to subjugate all people under Islamic law."

And Hasan has gone from being a real world man, deeply troubled and socially isolated, not least for being a Muslim in an army rife with Islamophobia, to being a "terrorist". We can now use him to scare the children, mobilize the troops for a renewed effort to defend our way of life and publicly lynch him to purge ourselves of the fears that have weakened the national resolve. We will sleep better again knowing that these wars aren't destroying the minds and bodies of the soldiers sent to prosecute them. Any that develop psychological disorders will simply have "gone native", "become increasingly radical", gone over to the dark side. We will be safe once again in our ignorance, until the next act of mass murder forces us to revise our mythology and add a new demon to the pantheon.

CIA Aren't Just Thugs - They're Funny Too

So, I came across this article in the New York Post about the CIA's purchase of a couple of Russian helicopters in the weeks following 9/11, as the USA prepared to invade Afghanistan. What's interesting about this story is just how incompetent and corrupt are all the people who were involved. It is a story reminiscent of some of the other CIA torture stories coming out at the moment - the European supply station chief who gave contracts to his friend's company to soak up all those counter-insurgency dollars (and who is now in jail for doing so - like two of the key men behind this fiasco).

Awash in dollars and itching for a fight with big, bad Afghanistan (with a GDP less than a box store mall in suburban Ohio) these mooks - most of whom had never left Texas, let alone been to Russia (including the translator) - found themselves in a remote Siberian city, surrounded by volcanoes, 30 degree below zero temperatures and suspicious officials ("oh, these military helicopters are just for tourist reasons and fishing. Honest."). They're hotel rooms were cold and bugged. The Army guys along for the ride spent their time drunk. When members of the civilian air crew who flew them there expressed concern about their behaviour, the Army man in charge threatened to shoot their airplane out of the sky (they subsequently slipped out in the middle of the night and flew to Japan to get away). The CIA goes got sick of the Army guys' drunken antics and sent them home and then somebody else outbid the CIA for the helicopters.

They did eventually get the copters but there was a trail of fraud, mayhem and stupidity longer than a Russian novel.

It all just goes to show you that whether they know what they're doing or not, whether they do their job well or poorly, the CIA are always a danger to humanity.

Breaking Records For A Crappy Day

Some records to help you sleep tonight:

* Just over two-thirds of the way through the year and, with today's death of four US soldiers, the number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan has broken the record.

* Breaking the record for craven bureaucratic nastiness, the CIA report detailed the intricate and specific rules that Washington expected CIA agents to follow when torturing suspects. They ought to receive the Kafka Award.

* I'll let this quote about America's debt speak for itself: "The government’s total debt would roughly triple by 2019 to $17.5 trillion under the new estimate, almost $2 trillion more than the White House estimated in May. Measured as a share of the nation’s economic output, public debt would hit 76.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2019 — by far the highest percentage in the past half-century — from about 56 percent this fiscal year. This year will be the first time the number has exceeded 50 percent since World War II. The previous estimate was about 67 percent."

* Our Liberal and Tory parties are breaking the record for being totally indistinguishable, while still existing as two separate parties. Both support the war in Afghanistan. Both support neo-liberalism. Both have leaders with bad hair. Both are filled with whack-jobs, seat-warmers, and outright criminals. Both have the same level of popular support (OK, this isn't a real record but I felt like I needed to meet my Canadian content quota).

* According to Nouriel "Dr. Doom" Roubini, the infamous economist who predicted the crisis while all those investment bankers (now deceased - the banks that is, not the bankers) were slugging back the bubbly, is saying it ain't over yet. "In summary, the recovery is likely to be anaemic and below trend in advanced economies and there is a big risk of a double-dip recession." What's the record here: a record recession. Worst since the 1930s.

Sweet dreams!

Iggy Got His Wish: The CIA Tortured Lots of People

There’s lots of heads that are going to roll over the CIA abuse scandal. Though, likely, most of them will just be disposable flunkies. The real brains behind the use of “coercive interrogation”, like Dick Cheney won’t have any mud flung at them to slide off their oily, Teflon skin.
(GW Bush, of course, can’t be said to be the brains behind anything except maybe brushing his teeth before bed.)
The report that was released Monday, details CIA abuses, including threatening a suspect with a power drill, extensive use of “waterboarding”, threatening to kill another suspect’s children, mother and female relatives, along with numerous deaths in CIA custody.
These sickos were still such consummate bureaucrats that when some CIA goon innovated a new torture technique called water dousing, they sent it into headquarters for specific approval. In true bureaucrat fashion, they came up with acceptable guidelines for tormenting a suspect:
“A return cable explained that a detainee ‘must be placed on a towel or sheet, may not be placed naked on the bare cement floor, and the air temperature must exceed 65 degrees if the detainee will not be dried immediately.’”
Of course, this is just the piece de resistance of a whole unraveling of the former Bush administration’s neo-conservative global lunacy. These guys thought that they would be in the right to burn your house down if you bought a dog because it might, at some point in the future, attack the child that they were planning on having, if only they could find someone crazy enough to marry them.
In 2008, the CIA’s former executive director, and the man behind setting up a string of CIA secret prisons (read: torture facilities), Dusty Foggo, pleaded guilty to fraud related to kick-backs from his buddy who got the contracts to build the prisons. Dusty is now spending 3 years in jail. The real story is that he was a casualty in the internecine war that erupted in America’s military and security institutions between the neo-con crazies and the old school scumbags when the whole PNAC wet dream started to go belly up.
A couple of other jackals who led the interrogation program (read: torture training) and made a bundle out of their independent torture consulting firm, had the plug pulled on their CIA contracts after Obama took office. Hopefully he lost that $800 000 house in Florida, bought out of the proceeds of war crimes.
The CIA, Dick Cheney and all the other creepy crawlies can be expected to stand up for torture in response to the investigation into abuses. Already the CIA has hit back by releasing previously classified documents on the interrogation program, lauding its ‘many successes.’ It is called, in one of the documents “a pillar of counter-terrorism”. I wonder if they’ll also stand up for the CIA’s contracting out of contract killing to Blackwater, that pinnacle of ethical corporate behaviour. Probably not, since Blackwater failed to actually knock off any leading members of Al Qaeda and the contract was cancelled. Their specialty really doesn’t extend beyond killing untrained and defenseless civilians.
Of course, there’s a big, fat question that no one is asking, least of all the Obama Administration as they ramp up the death machine in Afghanistan. Why is it OK to bomb weddings, schools and farms from the sky while, on the other hand, simulating drowning (or threatening to kill suspects’ family members) is in poor taste. It seems to me that one leads to the other. Torture, military occupation, secret prisons, and forms of resistance that require the vicious fist of repression, all go together with imperialism. You can either get rid of foreign military adventures or you end up with torture on the ground and death from the sky. Simple as that.
That’s why it’s not a big surprise that Obama fully intends to continue the policy of extraordinary renditions. Of course, only as long as the country in question promises to be nice when they interrogate the prisoner. Sort of like Syria promised to be nice to Maher Arar.
But there’s another side to this that you won’t read about in the New York Times and which it’s unlikely any Canadian newspapers will bring up. It’s the role of Michael Ignatieff in all this. Iggy was an avid promoter of “coercive interrogation”, including on national television (see below, what an asshole – and he has ridiculous hair). This guy is slated to be Canada’s next Prime Minister, though the Liberals haven’t been able to pick anybody who wasn’t a spineless fuck-up since that Shawinigan mobster what’s-his-face Chretien. Lucky for Iggy, our present PM Stephen Harper is leader of a party of tinfoil hat-wearing, whack-jobs only kept in line with Harper’s iron fist. Whenever the batteries run out on the Tasers of the Tory party whips, the MPs start to open their mouths and the Tories drop in the polls.
You won’t catch me crying in my beer if the Tories get their asses whupped in the next election, probably this fall. But remember, when you go to put an X next to Iggy’s Liberals, their leader publicly stumped for a policy that even the US ruling class finds revolting. Do you really think he’s an alternative?