Monthly Archives ⇒ November 2004

It’s Official: US Abuse at Gitmo

November 30, 2004
· Martin Kelley

While the images of U.S. solid­ers tor­tur­ing iraqi pris­on­ers at Al Grahib Prison in Badg­dad have been broad­cast around the world, US offi­cials have fre­quent­ly reas­sured us that con­di­tions at the U.S. deten­tion camp in Guan­ta­mano Bay, Cuba, were accept­able and in accord with the Gene­va Con­ven­tion’s rules for treat­ment of pris­on­ers. As proof the Pen­ta­gon and Bush Admin­is­tra­tion have fre­quent­ly cit­ed the fact that the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross reg­u­lar­ly inspects prison con­di­tions at Guan­ta­mano. They for­got to tell us what they’ve seen.
A con­fi­den­tial report pre­pared by the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross this sum­mer found that con­di­tions at Guan­ta­mano Bay were “tan­ta­mount to tor­ture.” Strong words from a cau­tious inter­na­tion­al body. Because of the way the IRC works, its reports are not made avail­able to the pub­lic but instead pre­sent­ed to the accused gov­ern­ment, in the hope that they will cor­rect their prac­tices. In pred­i­ca­ble fash­ion, the Bush Admin­stra­tion pri­vate­ly denied any wrong­do­ing and kept the IRC find­ings secret. In a dis­play of incred­i­ble audac­i­ty it then defend­ed itself _from oth­er accu­sa­tions of torture_ by cit­ing the IRC’s pres­ence at Guan­tanamo, con­ve­nient­ly omit­ting the IRC’s strongly-worded crit­i­cisms. Amaz­ing really.
The IRC report is still secret. We only know of it second-hand, from a memo obtained by the _Times_ that quotes from some of its find­ings (“Red Cross Finds Detainee Abuse in Guantanamo“http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/politics/30gitmo.html, Nov 29). What kind of stuff is going on there? The _Times_ recent­ly inter­viewed British pris­on­ers who had been detained in Afghanistan and iraq and sent to Guan­tanamo Bay. Here’s one story:
bq. One one reg­u­lar pro­ce­dure was mak­ing unco­op­er­a­tive pris­on­ers strip to their under­wear, hav­ing them sit in a chair while shack­led hand and foot to a bolt in the floor, and forc­ing them to endure strobe lights and loud rock and rap music played through two close loud­speak­ers, while the air-conditioning was turned up to max­i­mum levels.
It’s not nee­dles under fin­ger­nails or elec­trodes to the pri­vates, but it is indeed “tan­ta­mount to tor­ture.” While it was hard to believe these pris­on­ers’ sto­ries when they were first pub­lished a few months ago, they become much more cred­i­ble in light of the IRC conclusions.
We still don’t know about what’s hap­pen­ing in the camp. The Bush Admin­is­tra­tion has the pow­er, not to men­tion the duty, to imme­di­ate­ly release Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross reports. But the Unit­ed States has cho­sen to sup­press the report. No tor­tur­ing gov­ern­ment has ever admit­ted to its actions. Sad­dam Hus­sein him­self denied wrong­do­ing when _he_ ran the Al Grahib prison and used it for tor­ture. We rely on bod­ies like the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross to keep us honest.
There are those who defend tor­ture by appeal­ing to our fears, many of which are indeed ground­ed in real­i­ty. We’re at war, the ene­my insur­gents are play­ing dirty, Osama bin Laden broke any sort of inter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions when he sent air­lin­ers into the World Trade Cen­ter. Very true. But the Unit­ed States has a mis­sion. I believe in the ide­al­is­tic notion that we should be a bea­con to the world. We should always strive for the moral high ground and invite the world com­mu­ni­ty to join us. We haven’t been doing that late­ly. Yes it’s eas­i­er to fol­low the lead of some­one like Sad­dam Hus­sein and just tor­ture any­one we sus­pect of plot­ting against us. But do we real­ly want him as our role model?

Selling Quakerism to The Kids

November 23, 2004
· Martin Kelley

A few weeks ago I got a bulk email from a promi­nent sixty-something Friend, who wrote that a pro­grammed New Age prac­tice pop­u­lar in our branch of Quak­erism over the last few years has been a “cru­cial spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence for a great many of the best of our young adult Friends to whom [Lib­er­al Friends] must look for its future” and that they rep­re­sent­ed the “ris­ing gen­er­a­tion of ded­i­cat­ed young adult Friends.” Real­ly? I thought I’d share a sam­pling of emails and posts I’ve got­ten over just the last cou­ple of days.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

New Pacifist Introductions

November 22, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Clark Han­jian has recent­ly writ­ten “A Paci­fist Primer”:/issues/pacifist_primer.php, a great intro­duc­tion to clas­sic pacifism.
bq. For all of my adult life, I have been a paci­fist and asso­ci­at­ed with paci­fists. We are a minor­i­ty, large­ly mis­un­der­stood, and often dis­par­aged. In light of our pre­car­i­ous stand­ing, I would like to clar­i­fy what many of us mean when we say “I am a pacifist.”
New­ly dis­cov­ered: the “Bruder­hof Peace­mak­ers Guide”:http://www.peacemakersguide.org/. From their description:
bq. Any­one can be a peace­mak­er. The Bruder­hof Peace­mak­ers Guide was cre­at­ed to inspire and empow­er you to work for peace, and to arm you with liv­ing proof of the pow­er of non­vi­o­lence to effect change and resolve con­flicts. Some of the peace­mak­ers fea­tured on this web­site are famous, oth­ers obscure, but all have ded­i­cat­ed their lives to build­ing a more peace­ful and just world through non­vi­o­lent means. For each you will find a short biog­ra­phy, an orig­i­nal por­trait, and links to fur­ther reading.

Yasser Arafat Death: Yes, It is That Important

November 12, 2004
· Martin Kelley

The Pales­tin­ian pres­i­dent “Yass­er Arafat”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arafat died a few days ago, after weeks of dete­ri­o­rat­ing health. As the most rec­og­niz­able face of the Pales­tin­ian strug­gle for the last fifty years, Yas­sir Arafat was undoubt­ed­ly one of the most impor­tant world lead­ers of the Twen­ti­eth Cen­tu­ry. While he did­n’t deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, he was far from the first archi­tect of mur­der to walk off with it (our own Hen­ry Kissinger comes to mind), and he is one of a few men who could legit­i­mate­ly claim to have defined war and peace in our age.
There’s a say­ing in my reli­gious tra­di­tion that some prob­lems can only be resolved after a cer­tain amount of funer­als have passed. It’s been hard to imag­ine how a last­ing peace could be built in the Mid­dle East while he and his coun­ter­parts in the Israeli geron­toc­ra­cy remained in pow­er. The twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry saw plen­ty of auto­crat­ic lead­ers who came to per­son­i­fy their nation and whose decades-long tenure came to rep­re­sent the stale­mate to real change or last­ing peace. When the death of Zaire’s icon­ic strong­man “Mobu­tu Sese Seko”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobuto_Sese_Seko in 1997 opened up pos­si­bil­i­ties for peace­ful realign­ments in the region, even though war was the first result. For the death of strong-willed lead­ers does­n’t always bring about peace. When Yugoslavi­a’s “Josip Broz Tito”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tito died, the pow­er vac­u­um implod­ed the coun­try and set the stage for decades of civ­il wars. The atroc­i­ties and chaos brought the word “eth­nic cleans­ing” into our vocabulary.
Per­haps the sad­dest com­men­tary on all this was one I heard on the street. Two men were talk­ing loud­ly about hav­ing a TV show inter­rupt­ed the day before, only five min­utes before a sched­uled pro­gram break. “It’s not like it’s that impor­tant that you can’t wait five min­utes” repeat­ed the one, over and over. Yes, my friend, Arafat’s death is that important.

Johan Maurer: More about boldness

November 12, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Johan has a great post about “Quak­er evan­ge­liz­ing in Russia”:http://maurers.home.mindspring.com/2004/11/more-about-boldness.htm that real­ly applies to Quak­ers reach­ing out any­where. My favorite paragraph:
bq. I per­son­al­ly have a hard time with hob­by­ist Quak­erism, espe­cial­ly when defined in terms of ultra­finicky pre­scrip­tions of how “we” do things, “our” spe­cial pro­ce­dures and folk­ways, or any­thing else that detracts from Jesus being in the cen­ter of our com­mu­ni­ty life. How can we present some­thing so stilt­ed and crab­by and cul­tur­al­ly spe­cif­ic as an answer to spir­i­tu­al bondage? It is just anoth­er form of bondage!

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Torture Apologist Nominated as Attorney General?

November 10, 2004
· Martin Kelley

Pres­i­dent Four More Years, George W. him­self, thinks the best pick for the nation’s top law-enforcement offi­cial should be a lawyer who advo­cat­ed throw­ing away the Gene­va Con­ven­tion. The U.S. Attor­ney Gen­er­al nom­i­nee, Alber­to Gon­za­les, work­ing as a senior White House lawyer said in Jan­u­ary of 2002 that the war against terrorism:
bq. “in my judg­ment ren­ders obso­lete Geneva’s strict lim­i­ta­tions on ques­tion­ing of ene­my prisoners.”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/10/politics/10cnd-ashc.html
The man who would enforce U.S. laws thinks that the most impor­tant inter­na­tion­al law in human his­to­ry should be chucked. In argu­ing that the law against tor­ture of ene­my sol­diers was now irrel­e­vant, Gon­za­les helped set the stage for the “Abu Ghraib prison atrocities”:http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact. Instead of being tried in inter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal courts as a war crim­i­nal, Gon­za­les is being pro­mot­ed to a senior Unit­ed States cab­i­net posi­tion. When lib­er­ty for all fails, destroy their cities: watch Fal­lu­ja burn. When jus­tice for all fails, tor­ture the bas­tards: away with the Gene­va Convention.
What? For­got­ten what tor­ture looks like? The folks at anti​war​.com have a “col­lec­tion of Abu Ghraib images”:http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444

Of Theo, threats and selective press quoting

November 8, 2004
· Martin Kelley

The Baby Theo blog got a men­tion in today’s Philadel­phia Inquir­er, It’s almost as good as being there, by Kathy Boc­cel­la. They missed out on a huge rat­ings bonan­za by not pick­ing Theo for their pic­tures. Stranger was that two inter­views pro­duced only one off-topic sub­stan­tive line: “Mar­tin Kel­ly [sic] expe­ri­enced the worst of it when some­one threat­ened his infant son on his Baby Theo Web page [via Archive​.org, as it appeared around the time this arti­cle was written].

Above: Theo on learn­ing he was­n’t going to be the fea­tured baby pho­to in the Inquir­er piece… Real pho­to cap­tion: This week­end Julie Theo and I took a mini vaca­tion to the Penn­syl­va­nia coal regions. One of the stops was the beau­ti­ful­ly restored Tamaqua train sta­tion, where Theo’s great great grand­fa­ther, the first Mar­tin John Kel­ley, worked as a Read­ing Rail­road con­duc­tor. We woke the lit­tle guy up from a car nap to see the sta­tion and snap this pic­ture, cru­el par­ents that we are.

The Baby Theo site has been a lot of fun and it’s had great com­ments and emails of sup­port. It’s real­ly a shame that the arti­cle only used it to strike that tired old refrain about the pos­si­ble dan­ger lurk­ing on the internet.

The threat had noth­ing to do with Theo or with the baby blog. I’ve run a promi­nent anti­war web­site (closed, was at non​vi​o​lence​.org) through two wars now, and in the nine years of its exis­tence I’ve amassed quite a col­lec­tion of abu­sive emails. I try not to take them too seri­ous­ly: most come from sol­diers or from the fam­i­lies of solid­ers, peo­ple desparate­ly afraid of the future and sure­ly torn by the acts they’re being asked to com­mit. The inter­net pro­vides the psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tance for oth­er­wise good peo­ple to demo­nize the “com­mie Saddam-loving peacenik cow­ard.” You could get mad at a Pres­i­dent that active­ly mis­leads the coun­try into war but it’s eas­i­er to turn your anger on some schmuck who runs an anti­war web­site in his spare time. Send­ing threat­en­ing emails is itself cow­ard­ly and anti-democratic, of course, and as I’ve writ­ten on Non​vi​o​lence​.org, it’s ter­ri­bly inap­pro­pri­ate for “mil­i­tary per­son­nel to use gov­ern­ment com­put­ers to threat­en the free speech” of a dis­sent­ing Amer­i­can cit­i­zen. But it hap­pens. And because it hap­pens and because South Jer­sey has its share of pro-war hot­heads, you won’t see our spe­cif­ic town men­tioned any­where on the site. When I asked the Inquir­er reporter if they could not men­tion our town, she asked why, which led to the threat­en­ing emails, which led to the ques­tion whether Theo specif­i­cal­ly had been threatened.

And yes, there was a retired Lieu­tenant Colonel who sent a par­tic­u­lar­ly creepy set of emails (more on him below). The first email did­n’t men­tion Theo. It was just one of those every­day emails wish­ing that my fam­i­ly would be gang-raped, tor­tured and exe­cut­ed in front of me. I usu­al­ly ignore these but respond­ed to him, upon which I received a sec­ond email explain­ing that he was mak­ing a point with his threat (“You, your orga­ni­za­tion and oth­ers like you rep­re­sent the ‘flab­by soft white under­bel­ly’ of our Nation. This is the tis­sue of an ani­mal that is the tar­get of preda­tors.” Etc., etc., blah, blah, blah). This time he searched the Non​vi​o​lence​.org site more thor­ough­ly and specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned Theo in his what-if sce­nario. This was one email out of the thou­sands I receive every month. It was an inap­pro­pri­ate rhetor­i­cal argu­ment against a political/religious stance I’ve tak­en as a pub­lic wit­ness. It was not a cred­i­ble threat to my son.

Still, pre­cau­tion is in order. I men­tioned this sto­ry to the Inquir­er reporter only to explain why I did­n’t want the town list­ed. When I talked about the blog, I talked about old friends and dis­tant rel­a­tives keep­ing up with us and shar­ing our joys via the web­site. I talked about how the act of putting togeth­er entries helped Julie & I see Theo’s changes. I told Kathy how it was fun that friends who we had met via the inter­net were able to see some­thing beyond the Quak­er essays or polit­i­cal essays. None of that made it through to the arti­cle, which is a shame. A request to not pub­lish our home town became a sen­sa­tion­al­ist cau­tion­ary tale that is now being repeat­ed as a rea­son not to blog. How stupid.

The cau­tion­ary les­son is only applic­a­ble for those who both run a baby blog and a heav­i­ly used polit­i­cal web­site. When your web­site tops 50,000 vis­i­tors a day, you might want to switch to a P.O. Box. End of lesson.

For­tu­nate­ly with the inter­net we don’t have to rely on the fil­ter of a main­stream press reporters. Vis­i­tors from the Inquir­er arti­cle have been look­ing around the site and pre­sum­ably see­ing it’s not all about inter­net dan­gers. Since the Inquir­er arti­cle went up I’ve had twice as many vis­its from Google as I have from Philly​.com. Viva the web!

More:
For those inter­est­ed, the freaky retired Lieu­tenant Colonel is the chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of a pri­vate avi­a­tion com­pa­ny based in Flori­da, with con­tracts in three African nations that just hap­pen to be of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to the U.S. State Depart­ment. Although the com­pa­ny is named after him, his full name has been care­ful­ly excised from his web­site. I don’t sus­pect that he real­ly is retired from U.S.-sponsored mil­i­tary ser­vice, if you know what I mean… Here’s your tax dol­lars at work.

A few news­pa­per web­sites have repub­lished up the Inky arti­cle and two blog­ging news sites have picked up on it:

  • Yet Anoth­er Baby Blog­ging sto­ry uncov­ers dan­ger — but it’s not true ran in Blog​ging​Ba​by​.com: “When some­one threat­ened his son on his Baby Theo Web page, he took the site down; but left up a pic on his home page. Well, that is, accord­ing to the arti­cle, which some­how man­aged to not check its facts (maybe, ummm – go to the link you includ­ed in your arti­cle?) and dis­cov­er that, in fact, Baby Theo’s page is alive and well. We’re glad, Theo’s a cutie.”
  • Baby blog­gers ran in Net­fam­i­lynews. “The $64,000 question(s) is: Is this a shift of think­ing and behav­ior or, basi­cal­ly, a mis­take?.. Mar­tin Kel­ly, whose baby was threat­ened by some­one who vis­it­ed his baby page, would lean toward the mis­take side of the ques­tion.” (No I would­n’t, as I explained to the web­mas­ter later)