Challenging American Exceptionalism

Marjorie Cohn

President Barack Obama stood behind the podium and apologized for inadvertently killing two Western hostages – including one American – during a drone strike in Yemen. Obama said, “one of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional, is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.” In his 2015 state of the union address, Obama described America as “exceptional.” When he spoke to the United Nations General Assembly in 2013, he said, “Some may disagree, but I believe that America is exceptional.”

American exceptionalism reflects the belief that Americans are somehow better than everyone else. This view reared its head after the 2013 leak of a Department of Justice White Paper that describes circumstances under which the President can order the targeted killing of U.S. citizens. There had been little public concern in this country about drone strikes that killed people in other countries. But when it was revealed that U.S. citizens could be targeted, Americans were outraged. This motivated Senator Rand Paul to launch his 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination for CIA director.

It is this double standard that moved Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu to write a letter to the editor of the New York Times, in which he asked, “Do the United States and its people really want to tell those of us who live in the rest of the world that our lives are not of the same value as yours?” (When I saw that letter, I immediately invited Archbishop Tutu to write the foreword to my book, “Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.” He graciously agreed and he elaborates on that sentiment in the foreword).

Obama insists that the CIA and the U.S. military are very careful to avoid civilian casualties. In May 2013, he declared in a speech at the National Defense University, “before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured – the highest standard we can set.”

Nevertheless, of the nearly 3,852 people killed by drone strikes, 476 have reportedly been civilians. The Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), which examined nine drone strikes in Yemen, concluded that civilians were killed in every one. Amrit Singh, a senior legal officer at OSJI and primary author of the report, said “We’ve found evidence that President Obama’s standard is not being met on the ground.”

In 2013, the administration released a fact sheet with an additional requirement that “capture is not feasible” before a targeted killing can be carried out. Yet the OSJI also questioned whether this rule is being followed. Suspected terrorist Mohanad Mahmoud Al Farekh, a U.S. citizen, was on the Pentagon’s “kill list” but he was ultimately arrested by Pakistani security forces and will be tried in a U.S. federal court. “This is an example that capturing can be done,” according to Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The fact sheet also specifies that in order to use lethal force, the target must pose a “continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons.” But the leaked Justice Department White Paper says that a U.S. citizen can be killed even when there is no “clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.” This renders the imminency requirement a nullity. Moreover, if there is such a low bar for targeting a citizen, query whether there is any bar at all for killing foreigners.

There must also be “near certainty” that the terrorist target is present. Yet the CIA did not even know who it was slaying when the two hostages were killed. This was a “signature strike,” that targets “suspicious compounds” in areas controlled by “militants.” Zenko says, “most individuals killed are not on a kill list, and the [U.S.] government does not know their names.” So how can one determine with any certainty that a target is present when the CIA is not even targeting individuals?

Contrary to popular opinion, the use of drones does not result in fewer civilian casualties than manned bombers. A study based on classified military data, conducted by the Center for Naval Analyses and the Center for Civilians in Conflict, concluded that the use of drones in Afghanistan caused 10 times more civilian deaths than manned fighter aircraft.

Moreover, a panel with experienced specialists from both the George W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations issued a 77-page report for the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank, which found there was no indication that drone strikes had advanced “long-term U.S. security interests.”

Nevertheless, the Obama administration maintains a double standard for apologies to the families of drone victims. “The White House is setting a dangerous precedent – that if you are western and hit by accident we’ll say we are sorry,” said Reprieve attorney Alka Pradhan, “but we’ll put up a stone wall of silence if you are a Yemeni or Pakistani civilian who lost an innocent loved one. Inconsistencies like this are seen around the world as hypocritical, and do the United States’ image real harm.”

It is not just the U.S. image that is suffering. Drone strikes create more enemies of the United States. While Faisal Shahzad was pleading guilty to trying to detonate a bomb in Times Square, he told the judge, “When the drones hit, they don’t see children.”

Americans are justifiably outraged when we hear about ISIS beheading western journalists. Former CIA lawyer Vicki Divoll, who now teaches at the U.S. Naval Academy, told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer in 2009, “People are a lot more comfortable with a Predator [drone] strike that kills many people than with a throat-slitting that kills one.” But Americans don’t see the images of the drone victims or hear the stories of their survivors. If we did, we might be more sympathetic to the damage our drone bombs are wreaking in our name.

Drone strikes are illegal when conducted off the battlefield. They should be outlawed. Obama, like Bush before him, opportunistically defines the whole world as a battlefield.

The guarantee of due process in the U.S. Constitution as well as in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights must be honored, not just in its breach. That means arrest and fair trial, not summary execution. What we really need is a complete reassessment of Obama’s continuation of Bush’s “war on terror.” Until we overhaul our foreign policy and stop invading other countries, changing their regimes, occupying, torturing and indefinitely detaining their people, and uncritically supporting other countries that illegally occupy other peoples’ lands, we will never be safe from terrorism. 

Widespread Use of Torture by Ukrainian Army and Security Services

Roger Annis

Reviewing: ‘War Crimes of the Armed Forces and Security Forces of Ukraine: Torture and Inhumane Treatment’, published on March 1, 2015 by The Foundation for the Study of Democracy, 144 page, in Russian and English, ISBN 978-5-903882-05-2. Online here.

A report issued on March 1, 2015 by the Moscow-based Foundation for the Study of Democracy contains chilling descriptions of the widespread use of torture and other inhumane treatment of prisoners by the Ukrainian army and paramilitary forces and by its Ukraine’s national security police. The report is titled, ‘War Crimes of the Armed Forces and Security Forces of Ukraine: Torture and Inhumane Treatment’. It is 144 pages long, half in Russian and half in English.

The information in the report is the result of interviews with over 200 prisoners released by the Ukrainian side of the war that has raged in eastern Ukraine for the past year. The interviews were conducted by researchers of the Foundation from 25 August 2014 to 20 January 2015.

The Foundation for The Study of Democracy is a civil organization in Russia (Russian-language website here). Its director is Maxim Grigoriev. The report on torture and prisoner abuse was prepared in cooperation with the Russian Public Council for International Cooperation and Public Diplomacy, presided by S. Ordzhonikidze, while assistance was provided by the Russian Peace Foundation (L. Slutsky, Y. Sutormina) and by S. Mamedov, I. Morozov, E. Tarlo, D. Savelyev, A. Chepa and other members of the Committee for Public Support of the Residents of Southeastern Ukraine.

The media tour to Donetsk, eastern Ukraine in mid-April, 2015 in which I participated met with Mr. Grigoriev in Moscow at the outset of our tour.

“Human rights are one of the key issues of concern for our foundation,” Grigoriev explained. As reports of prisoner abuse and torture became widespread last spring and summer, his Foundation decided to investigate the accusations more formally. Its first report was published on November 24 of last year.[1] The second report published on March 1 of this year includes data gathered in the first one.

“It was not difficult to gather information,” Grigoriev explains. “Once the prisoner exchanges began to take place [just prior to the ceasefire of September 5, 2014], any researcher or journalist could speak to those released prisoners who were willing to talk.”

Prisoners who were released beginning last August have reported being subjected to electric shock and cruel beatings lasting multiple days in a row using objects such as iron bars, baseball bats, sticks, rifle butts, bayonet knives and rubber batons. Techniques widely used by the Ukrainian armed forces and security forces include waterboarding, strangling with a garrote and other types of strangulation. In some cases, prisoners were sent to minefields for the purposes of intimidation and were run over with military vehicles, causing death.

Other torture methods included breaking of bones, stabbing and cutting with knives, branding with red-hot objects, and shooting different body parts with small arms. Prisoners were kept for days at freezing temperatures and with no access to food or medical assistance. They were often forced to take psychotropic substances causing agony.

An absolute majority of prisoners are put through mock firing squads and suffered death and rape threats to their families. Women report being raped.

Many of those tortured are not members of the self-defense forces of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR). Those who are members are identified as such in the Foundation’s reports.

Further is an outline of the findings published in the Foundation’s report of March 1, 2015.

The Foundation notes in its report that the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits in absolute terms torture, irrespective of other circumstances. Article 3 of the convention reads, ‘No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.’

Moreover, it is assumed in the law of the European Union that ‘the State is responsible for the actions of all of its agencies, such as the police, security forces, other law enforcement officials, and any other State bodies who hold an individual under their control, whether they act under orders, or on their own accord.’

Unlike other clauses of the Convention related to rights, Article 3 makes no provision for derogation (reservations) in the event of a war or any other emergency threatening national security. Article 15 (2) explicitly states that there can be no derogation from Article 3 within the Convention.

The March, 2015 report of the Foundation for the Study of Democracy concludes, “The information collected by the [Foundation] gives grounds to believe that the Ukrainian armed forces (VSU), the National Guard and other military units of the Ministry of the Interior of Ukraine, as well as the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), systematically and on purpose violate the European Convention on Human Rights. The extent to which torture is being used and the fact that this is done systematically prove that torture is an intentional strategy of the said institutions, authorized by their leadership.

“The information gathered provides grounds to conclude that torture and inhumane treatment inflicted by the Security Forces of Ukraine (SBU), the Ukrainian armed forces, the National Guard and other formations within the Interior Ministry of Ukraine, as well as by illegal armed groups such as Right Sector, are routine and are even gaining in scale and becoming systematic.”

Ukrainian as well as international human rights agencies have apparently paid scant attention to the evidence of torture practices in Ukraine. Maxim Grigoriev says he personally gave his two reports to the Ombudsman of Ukraine, Mrs. Valeriya Lutkovska. “She told me that she cannot do anything to stop those practicing torture because it is difficult for her to investigate the allegations.”

What about international agencies? The European Court of Human Rights has received the documentation and it said it would investigate, Grigoriev says.

Human Rights Watch also received the materials and said it would respond. “That was two months ago.”

“Amnesty International said it would use the findings,” he says.

Neither agency has issued a statement on the findings of six months of prisoner testimonials.

An Amnesty International report in July 2014 reported briefly on accusations of torture, saying that it was occurring and that both sides in the conflict were responsible. That implicitly equated the responsibilities of the Ukrainian government with those of rebel forces, whose governing structures, to this day, the governments of Ukraine and the European Union refuse to formally recognize.

A second report by Amnesty, in October 2014, was again brief and again equated the responsibilities of the two sides in the conflict.

Amnesty has issued reports documenting what it calls “war crimes” by one of the extreme-right militias allied with the Kyiv government, the Azov Battalion. One report was issued in September 2014. In December,Amnesty denounced the blockading of humanitarian convoys into eastern Ukraine from Ukraine proper by forces allied to Kyiv.

Human Rights Watch has documented the use of cluster weapons against civilians in eastern Ukraine by Ukrainian armed forces but has published little on the use of torture.

Western media has largely been silent on the subject. A few outlets, such as the UK Telegraph, have probed the extreme-right battalions allied with Kyiv.

Grigoriev rejects drawing an equal sign between the actions of Ukrainian forces and those of the rebels. “That is wrong. Ukraine forces use torture or prisoner abuse fifty to 100 times more than rebel forces, and they are much more cruel.”

Reports of torture and prisoner abuse are widespread in print and online news outlets in Ukraine and Russia. This includes victim testimonies that are video recorded and posted online. When can we expect Western media to report on this, and Western governments to acknowledge what it taking place?

No time soon. A great deal of political, economic and military capital is invested in defeating the rebel movement of eastern Ukraine and weakening and isolating the Russian government and people. ‘Inconvenient truths’ that get in the way of the ‘blame Russia’ narrative for this war are the last thing that is wanted.

Think of the media and government silence last October when Human Rights Watch reported widespread use of cluster weapons by Ukrainian forces. Or the investigation into the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight 17 on July 17, 2014, which is dragging on interminably while unfounded accusations of ‘Russian missiles’ downing the plane continue to run rampant.

During all wars–Vietnam comes to mind–it is the concerted actions of groups like The Foundation for the Study of Democracy which forces the truth about war crimes to come to the fore. Protests, tribunals, gaining the support of social and political organizations such as trade unions and political parties–these are the tried and true methods of human and social rights advocacy that are urgently needed today.

Notes:[1] ‘War Crimes of the Armed Forces and Security Forces of Ukraine: Torture of the Donbass region’, published by The Foundation for the Study of Democracy, Nov. 24, 2014, 49 pages in English (pdf online here).

* * *

Outline of ‘War crimes of the armed forces and security forces of Ukraine: Torture and inhumane treatment’ (March 2015)

Part 1, sub-titled, ‘Methods and circumstances of torture committed by the Ukrainian armed forces and security forces':

An overwhelming majority of prisoners held by the Ukrainian side are brutally and systematically beaten.

Many of the torture victims report marathon beatings inflicted by the Ukrainian armed forces and security forces.

The captured women are frequently raped.

According to accounts by the victims, the Ukrainian army, the National Guard, various units of the Ministry of the Interior and the Security Service of Ukraine employ a whole range of torture techniques. Many of the victims say that they were stabbed and cut with a knife.

Thus, a large number of victims assert that the torture techniques used include burning skin with the gas burners or burning-hot objects and burning various inscriptions into the skin of the prisoners.

The torture victims indicate that the Ukrainian army and law enforcement bodies systematically employ a torture technique called ‘waterboarding’. Previously, this method was used by the American secret services.

The victims indicate that the Ukrainian armed forces and security forces use other torture techniques as well, for example suffocation with plastic bags, gas masks, etc.

The so-called ‘Banderist garrotte’ is used as a weapon – both for intimidation and torture.

Electric shock is a common torture tool used by the Ukrainian armed forces and divisions of the Ministry of the Interior.

A large number of the people interviewed said that the Ukrainian troops were sending some of the prisoners to minefields. For

Almost everyone says that the Ukrainian army and punishment battalions kneecap and run over feet with military vehicles. A mock firing squad is also a common practice.

The vast majority of people detained by the Ukrainian armed forces and security forces receive threats of murder, torture, and harm to their families during interrogations.

Those detained by the Ukrainian side suffer torture at various stages: directly when taken prisoner, during transportation, after being handed over to this or that unit, under preliminary or principal interrogations, in detention facilities, in courts, etc. When asked to define the entity carrying out the torture, victims name the National Guard, various groups under the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Right Sector, various units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU).

Some of the victims say that they were subjected to excruciating torture right after being wounded or directly in hospitals. Practically everybody attests that medical help is either unavailable or insufficient.

Vast majority of the detainees questioned tell that by means of torture and threats the Ukrainian authorities made them sign confessions stating that they were agents of Russian secret service organisations. Overall majority of civilians captured by the Ukrainian Armed Forces could not endure the torture and threats, and signed any accusations relating to them.

A large number of the victims questioned point out specific places where the National Guard and the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been using torture on a massive scale or give code names of the people who subjected them to torture.

Also mentioned frequently are the Mariupol airport where detainees are kept in the industrial cold storage and subjected to torture, and the Kramatorsk airport.

The victims interviewed also state that the Ukrainian side intentionally for long periods of time does not register its detainees and violates the procedure prescribed by law.

Based on the information collected by the Foundation, a clear conclusion can be drawn that most of the torture victims are not members of the Donetsk or Lugansk People’s Republics’ self-defense forces, but civilians. A ‘reason’ for arrest and torture of civilians by the Ukrainian side can be as simple as involvement in anti-Euromaidan rallies, participation in Russian TV shows, expression of your opinion on the Internet, involvement in pro-DPR rallies, participation in the referendum, ‘possession of a telephone number of a Russian journalist’, ‘Caucasian names – Aslan, Uzbek’ in the personal phone contacts, a phone conversation with people from ‘the Donetsk People’s Republic’, ‘receiving medical assistance in the DPR’, etc. The same absurdity and lack of substantial evidence is characteristic of the other accusations.

In a large number of cases the Ukrainian authorities – to be able to exchange prisoners – would arrest citizens who have not committed any offence.

In many cases Ukrainian civilians are also subjected to beatings and death threats to their families.

The Ukrainian armed forces and security forces quite often torture and inject people with psychotropic drugs at the same time.

A number of victims, subjected to torture by the Ukrainian armed forces and security forces, also claim to have been robbed.

Part II, sub-titled ‘Torture and inhuman treatment: Victims’ testimonies’
(This section consists of detailed stories of the people who were subjected to torture by servicemen of the National Guard, the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and the SBU.)

One More Dagger in the Heart of Labor

David Macaray

Riddle: When does a polemicist know he’s pretty much reached the end of his string? Answer: When he is convinced that a polemic is definitely in order—that somebody needs to be raked over the coals—but can’t determine who that “somebody” is.

And so it was with President Bush’s 2002 U.S. steel tariff. With nearly thirty U.S. steel companies having declared bankruptcy in the years leading up to it, and with organized labor and self-respecting Democrats pleading for action, the staunchly Republican, anti-union, free trade advocate George W. Bush placed tariffs of between 8% and 30% on steel imports.

Because steel tariffs at the time were between zero and 1%, Bush’s tariffs (even though U.S. steel manufacturers, the United Steel Workers, and Congressman Richard Gephardt, among others, felt the restrictions weren’t severe enough) stood out as mind-numbingly radical. It should be noted that Canada and Mexico were exempt due to penalties that would have been imposed on the U.S. by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The responses were predictable. U.S steel manufacturers and organized labor generally rejoiced, figuring it was about time the government addressed the “dumping” of foreign steel on the U.S. market.

Predictably, conservatives and free trade fundamentalists felt betrayed and confused. Academic observers feared that access to cheap steel would result in businesses failing and workers losing their jobs. And of course, cynics accused the move of being “politically motivated,” which it undoubtedly was.

In regard to the politics, two possible “swing states” in the 2004 election, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, would clearly benefit from the tariffs. But Bush argued that not only had his father and Ronald Reagan both imposed limits on foreign steel, he himself had made the move to save the American steel industry, which everyone except Wall Street considered worth saving. The tariffs became reality on March 20, 2002, and were set to stay in effect until 2005.

In addition to the domestic controversy, there was international outrage as well. The European Union (EU) threatened to launch a full-blown a trade war against the U.S. by imposing “retaliatory” tariffs of its own, and filed a formal protest with the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Not surprisingly, the WTO, in November of 2003, came out against the tariffs, claiming they violated provisions of the WTO’s tariff agreement. Accordingly, the WTO threatened to impose $2 billion in sanctions against the United States (the most expensive penalty ever authorized by the WTO against a member nation) if the tariffs weren’t immediately revoked.

Unwilling to appear intimidated, Bush refused to rescind them. In response to Bush’s defiance, the EU, indicating just how savvy it was in regard to American politics, threatened to impose tariffs on oranges grown in Florida and automobiles manufactured in Michigan. Florida and Michigan—two critical states in any presidential election. Bush backed down. The tariffs were withdrawn in December of 2003.

So who’s the villain here? At whom do we direct our polemics? Protectionism? Trade agreements? Globalization? Innovation? Smoke-stack industries (as opposed to “new technology”)? What about the “amoral” stock market itself? As the middle-class continues to be eroded, the stock market continues to set all-time records.

One reason for the stock market’s astonishing success is the fact that, with the world shrinking and the economic lines between “Us vs. Them” blurring, investors all over the world are rooting for the success of those rapidly growing foreign industries.

Alas, while there may be a “global economy,” there’s no such thing as a “global address.” Working people don’t live “globally.” They live at home and work nearby. Wiping out a few thousand factories, and relying on foreign labor to fill the void, may stimulate the stock market, but it ain’t doing the American worker any favors.

India’s Shame, and the World’s

Mel Gurtov

A democracy is supposed to have the advantage of affording people of any social class, gender, or religious or ethnic group the opportunity to advance.  In contrast with authoritarian political orders, democracies should be superior in their openness to change, to everyone’s participation in politics, and to equality before the law.  In a word, democracies are based on the politics of hope and the virtues of transparency.  Or so the theory goes.

India defies these expectations.  Though it has democratic institutions and vigorous political competition, at least among elites, when it comes to human development and human security, India falls very short—embarrassingly so when compared with China.  The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which measures human development and reports annually on conditions in nearly all countries documents the comparison.  Overall, among 177 countries for which data are available, India ranks 135th (in company with Tajikistan, Bhutan, and Cambodia), whereas China ranks 91st (along with Thailand, Armenia, and Fiji).  In fact, there are very few categories of human development in which India does better on average than China, which surely explains why developing countries (and many Indian specialists!) looking for economic models are far more likely to choose China than India.

Statistically, among the most telling indicators of human development are those affecting children and women.  Infant mortality is exceptionally high in India (44 percent, compared with China’s 12 percent), and life expectancy for children is lower than in the poorest African country.  Poor nutrition and sanitation, and limited access to health care, are the observable reasons.  Child labor in India, at 12 percent for ages 5 to 14, is also uncommonly high.

Equally shameful is the low status of India’s women, a fact recently brought home in two very different ways.  One is the film (produced in Britain), India’s Daughter, which explores the culture of rape, based on the well publicized incident last December in which a young woman was gang-raped on a public bus in New Delhi.  The woman died of her injuries, the rapists were not the least bit repentant, and the government has banned the film on the specious argument that it will encourage more such assaults.  The low status of Indian women is also the key factor in their limited access to prenatal and other health care.  As a result, they are, as the article puts it, dangerously underweight.

In short, India is one of the worst places in the world to be a woman.  Never mind Sonia Gandhi and other successful Indian women.  For the overwhelming majority of Indian women, degrading treatment, sexual violence, and last-in-line access to the means of well being are the norm.  (China is hardly a model here, but the status of women is certainly higher in China than in India.)

India’s shame is also the world’s.  The latest UN report on the status of women presents the first “Platform for Action” since the landmark 1995 international conference in Beijing.  The report finds that although women have advanced globally by some measures, such as political office holding and education, violence against women is pervasive everywhere.  In the words of the report:

“Recent global estimates show that 35 per cent of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. While there is some variation across regions, all regions have unacceptably high rates of violence against women.”

In India, according to the UNDP, more women than men (54 percent to 51 percent) believe wife beating is justified. Though few countries can match the depth of violence against women that characterizes Indian society, global and regional averages suggest that violence, and acceptance by men and many women of its legitimacy, cut across income levels.

When it comes to preventing violence against women and girls, the UN ECOSOC report repeats all the well-known reforms that are needed—in law, education, community awareness, and police enforcement—but accepts that cultural norms run deep. Thus the report notes that “although States are increasingly recognizing the importance of prevention, very few have introduced long-term, coordinated and cross-cutting prevention strategies, with the vast majority reporting on short-term piecemeal activities.”  This is bad news for women and girls everywhere, and nowhere more so than in India.

Genocidal Indonesia Executing Drug Convicts

Andre Vltchek

Indonesia, the country which did not earnestly punish one single top military brass for the genocides in East Timor and not one single person for horrendous and ongoing genocide in Papua, is now ready to execute another nine people for drug trafficking. In January 2015 it already slayed six drug convicts including five foreigners, sparking international indignation.

AFP reported:

“Indonesia on Sunday signaled it was determined to push ahead with the execution of eight foreign drug convicts, despite a growing wave of global condemnation led by United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon.

Authorities on Saturday gave formal notice to the eight — from Australia, Brazil, Nigeria and the Philippines — that they would be executed by firing squad imminently, along with an Indonesian prisoner.”

It is hard to overlook the hypocrisy of these trials and executions.

Indonesia is one of the most corrupt nations on earth, where the rich are holding high government positions, openly and shamelessly robbing the poor. But they would never face the firing squad, because they are above the law.

East Timor lost 30 percent of its population during the Indonesian occupation, which amounted to one of the most brutal genocides of the 20^th Century. The Indonesian military (TNI) is responsible for killing of between 150,000 (the lowest estimates of the Western-based human rights agencies) and 500,000 Papuans, a country that is brutally occupied and plundered; its agony sustaining the highlife of thousands of Indonesian “elites” in Jakarta. Yet, not one Indonesian soldier is rotting in jail for committing barbarities, and not one politician or business oligarch is facing a firing squad for ordering this unprecedented plunder and extermination campaign. On the contrary: previous and present administrations are full of top commanders who served in East Timor and Papua.

It has to be an underprivileged mother from the Philippines, a schizophrenic Brazilian man, and several poor Nigerians, who have to die, in order to show the world how “moral” and righteous Indonesia really is!

The thugs, mass murderers who killed, with their bare hands, between 1 million and 3 millions of leftists and intellectuals of Indonesia, in 1965/66, are still bragging about their deeds, recalling gross details in the television studios, being applauded by brainwashed and blood thirsty crowd. Nobody in the wildest dreams thinks about throwing them against the wall and executing them for treason and for having served foreign (Western) interests.

The murder rate in Indonesia, is on a per capita basis much higher than even in the United States. The country is sunk in violence. Rape, child abuse (I was recently told that in Surabaya, girls are forced into prostitution at the age of 5 and many of them are thrown to the gutter for being “too old” when they reach the age of 12), mob justice; it is allbiasa, normal.

But it has to be a bunch of deranged foreigners, smuggling few kilos of heroin, who are made to face the wall and the bullets!

The religious leaders, mainly Christians but also Muslims (and others), are literally robbing the congregations. To become a preacher, or to become Imam in Indonesia, is the best imaginable job, if one is lazy, stupid and ambitious. Imams are pimping their wives in the Gulf and everybody knows it. Protestant preachers are robbing their followers of tens of millions dollars in Surabaya and other cities, while Catholic priests, like everywhere else in the world, are molesting children. Almost all religious leaders in Indonesia are right-wing bigots and supporters of turbo-capitalism and the pro-Western Indonesian regime. But none of them goes to prison, or if they go, they get out in just a few weeks or months. To steal from the poor is fine! To fool believers is absolutely acceptable. But dare to smuggle few kilograms of drugs (especially if you are a poor foreigner), and you would be hanged!

Public lynching is fine; it is common, all across Indonesia.

To murder more than half of poor animals in the Surabaya Zoo is fairly acceptable, especially if several big business interests are behind the killing.

And above all to ignore, to rob and to humiliate poor fellow citizens (the great majority of Indonesian people is dirt-poor, but it has no voice whatsoever) is truly laudable, something that the rich and famous of Indonesia are always proud of doing!

And nothing changed with this new administration. And nobody is suggesting that the President go to jail for fooling the nation, for mocking the poor, for raping hope!

Driving Range Rovers and Ferraris through the potholes of Jakarta, in full few of those who were mugged of everything so these vehicles could be purchased by corporate mafia and by government officials, is considered glorious in Indonesia.

To have Gucci and Prada boutiques built right near some open sewage where the children from slums are playing is not only “moral”, it is fabulous.

Nobody is facing a firing squad for bringing the country to this level.

And drugs? Elites and their kids do coke and other “recreational” and hard drugs. Everybody knows it. But nobody in Indonesia, in their sane mind, would touch the “elites”, the military or the government officials and their families. You touch them, and you get burned to ashes. After all, it is no secret that Indonesia, since 1965, is a lawless country governed by thugs. Gangs and their leaders cannot be touched.

Therefore, it is just those few foreigners who will have to be “sacrificed”, slaughtered like goats, periodically, in order for Indonesians to feel that they live in a “moral” and lawful society.

Those Problematic Cuban Dissidents

Translator’s note: Rafael Hernández edits Temas, a Cuban journal of social sciences and the humanities. Books he has authored or edited include:  Cuba and the Caribbean and United States-Cuban Relations in the Nineties, 1989; Looking at Cuba -Essays on Culture and Civil Society (2003); the History of Havana (2006); and Shall We Play Ball? – Debating U.S.-Cuban Relations (2011). Hernández has taught at the University of Havana, and at Colombia and Harvard Universities in the United States.

Try to imagine a US political party calling for conversion to a political, economic, and social system similar to that of the People’s Republic of China. Let that party or grouping have no stable or defined leadership, or a coherent ideology other than opposition to the prevailing order in the United States and embracing the model of the PRC.

And maybe it defines itself as the genuine representative of North American society, yet stands for no real interest of any one social sector in particular. Let’s further suppose that the Chinese government, as part of its official foreign policy, granted this grouping hundreds of millions of yuan in order to promote a so-called project of “peaceful evolution” toward a model whereby the country builds intimate relations with China.

Finally, imagine that the People’s Republic was located exactly where Canada is today, with a population 30 times bigger and an economy 233 times stronger than that of the United States, which, for half a century, in this scenario, has had very bad relations with this country. And maybe this imaginary Chinese president insisted on being photographed with the leaders of such a grouping.

How would the US government react? Would it put this group in prison at the Guantanamo Naval Base, without any right to a trial or to legal protection? Would it regard the group as a peaceful protest movement because it doesn’t incite armed rebellion?

Perhaps the U.S. government would limit itself to charging the group with collaborating with a foreign power, thus exposing the group only to several life sentences. Or might it be possible to identify the group as a legitimate opposition organization, proposing to exercise its civil rights as it protests the established order, cultivates free thought, and its members behave like good citizens?

Would North Americans see the group as defenders of democracy and pluralism, capable of engaging in dialogue and respecting those who don’t share their ideas? Would they view members of the group as standard-bearers of freedom of expression, by virtue of their means of communication that are neither partisan nor dedicated to disowning the system, but rather to playing a role of providing information that is balanced and independent of any political tendency?

Would the U.S. government recognize the group’s political and intellectual leaders as capable of leading the country along the road of human development, independence, and citizen democracy?

If all of the above is taken into consideration in a spirit of equanimity –even if one may eventually disagree with the Cuban policy towards the dissidents–, it must be appreciated also that there’s more involved than simple ideological impulsiveness, incompetence in dealing with dissenters, mental fog, or just plain evil.

Naturally, the explanation does not rest on the assumption that these people themselves pose a real threat to Cuba’s national security. They are not the problem. Rather, it’s Washington’s policy of giving them support.

We still hear about “bringing democracy and human rights to Cuba”,  which means much more than  objecting “the Castros” and “the export of revolution”. Instead, it’s about transforming the social, economic, and political order of the country in their image and likeness (“promote our values,” as Obama said on December 17).

Beginning with Brigade 2506 (Cuban exiles defeated militarily at the Bay of Pigs in 1961) until today, Cubans on the island have regarded Cuban political exiles as a function of North American policy dealing with the revolution. In that regard, December 17, 2014 showed that it wasn’t the tail wagging the dog, but ultimately the dog doing the deciding.

In terms of realpolitik, the main question after December 17 (17D, as it is called in Cuba) left behind the option of confronting the dissidents as subversives (putting them in prison); using them as a bargaining chip when the time comes to negotiate with the United States (that country always requires things in exchange, for example, in case they consider returning the Guantanamo base), or applying the full extent of current Cuban law to them.  In all these alternatives, we would end up turning them into victims, or for some of the Western media, into heroes. The question now is whether or not this opposition is really contributing to Obama’s policy of December 17.

We need to understand that the new policy is already hooked into another logic, that of dialogue and negotiation. Pressure, ideological confrontation, and coercion are not excluded, but they come into play differently. The media on the island tirelessly harps on the idea that the United States has not given up on its objectives. That highlights an obvious truth for Cubans: they must not trust that powerful neighbor. It remains as imperialist as ever and has only “changed its methods.” However, if one thoroughly examines all this about “changed methods,” the new policy harbors large-scale implications.

In effect, the strategic formulation of 17D is aimed at opening up a highway for communicating with the heart of the Cuban political system. This new strategy represents an alternative to a half-century of ineffective brute force.

For example, to influence young people, it’s not so much the hip-hop groups (who haven’t unleashed revolutions anywhere), but rather government leaders, provincial  Communist Party officials, the armed forces and the state security, the technocrats, and the scientific, educational, and cultural institutions.

To get in touch with the economy evolving out of Raul Castro’s reforms the main targets are not just private businessmen who own paladars and food marketing services, but to the broad layer of managers, heading up the new public sector, anxious to gain efficiency in production and business methods.

This policy is aimed to reach, [out] not only to artists and filmmakers fashioning provocative creations, but mainly to the thousands of social communicators and journalists who work in the government media system. They are more adept with the internet than what is said, therefore they complain, with reason, about limited access to broadband and free wifi. They even admire (in known cases) CNN or Discovery channel as a model.

Will entry onto this information highway be left in the hands of the dissidents, many of whom are somewhat opposed to the politics of 17D? As for those Cuban-American congresspersons famous in the United States for their ultra-conservative persuasion, and who support dissidents on the island: will they be the bridge between Cuban entrepreneurs on either side of the Florida Straits?

And what about the Ladies in White, who let down the attempted mediation role the Catholic Church tried to play? It is hard to believe that advisors to the President of the United States could be so clueless about Cuba’s real civil and political society as to take the delegation of provocateurs that descended on Panama (to attend the Summit of the Americas) for actual emissaries of dialogue about democracy and freedom in Cuba.

Nevertheless, we must not forget that politics is mostly a strange kind of grand theater. Marti used to say that, in such a production, the most real thing is what is unseen. A former US Interests Section Chief, in the intimacy of a report to the State Department, observed astutely that “there are few if any dissidents who have a political vision that could be applied to future governance……it is unlikely that they will play any significant role in whatever government succeeds the Castro brothers.”

This wouldn’t be the first time that these two paths have diverged, that of the North American government and that of this peculiar Cuban opposition. The Missile Crisis had hardly cooled down when President John Kennedy accepted the flag of Brigade 2506 members, and promised to return it as soon as they triumphantly entered a “free Havana.” More than 52 years after President Kennedy’s speech in Miami’s Orange Bowl stadium, almost 300,000 Cuban-Americans, including descendants of those Brigade members, continue to arrive on the island, although not precisely to the tunes of war.

Those average Cubans, embracing their cousins in Havana’s Terminal 2, aren’t up there on the dissidents’ wagon, nor are they still waving that flag (a current property of the Kennedy Library),  but rather, another kind of banner: one that expresses their peaceful return to the land where they were born. They are going back to a Havana that is being revitalized little by little – or to a beach where they will retire, now that they see the promise of normalization floating over Cuba.

Obama’s Big Trade Failure

Dean Baker

The Obama administration is doing its full court press, pulling out all the stops to get Congress to approve the fast-track authority that is almost certainly necessary to get the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) through Congress. One of the biggest remaining stumbling blocks is that the deal will almost certainly not include provisions on currency. This means that parties to the agreement will still be able to depress the value of their currency against the dollar in order to gain a competitive advantage. This is a really big deal, which everyone thinking about the merits of the TPP should understand.

The value of the dollar relative to other currencies is by far the main determinant of our balance of trade. We can talk about better education and training for our workforce, improving our infrastructure and better research, all of which are important for the economy.

But anyone who claims that improvements in these areas can offset the impact of a dollar that is overvalued against another currency by 15 to 20 percent is out of touch with reality. If the dollar is overvalued by 20 percent against another country’s currency, it has the same effect as imposing a 20 percent tariff on US exports and giving a government subsidy of 20 percent to imports.

This is the direct effect when other countries deliberately buy up U.S. assets to prop up the dollar against their currency. This is the main reason the United States is currently running a trade deficit of more than $500 billion a year.

This trade deficit creates a huge gap in demand. It has the same impact as if households were taking $500 billion a year out of their paychecks and stuffing the money under their mattress. There is no obvious way to make up this gap in demand. In principle we could fill the gap with large budget deficits, but this is a political non-starter. Based on a dubious reading of the data from the second half of last year, some analysts had thought the economy was booming again, despite the large trade deficit.

More recently, reality and arithmetic have reasserted themselves and most economists now recognize that the economy is not growing fast enough to fill the demand gap. In fact, the only way we know to fill the sort of gap in demand created by the trade deficit is with an asset bubble like the stock bubble in the 1990s or the housing bubble in the last decade. Not many would advocate going down that path again, which means that we can look forward to the persistence of high unemployment and a weak labor market, unless we address the trade deficit.

If we recognize the need to address the trade deficit, and the centrality of the value of the dollar, then it is mind-boggling that the Obama administration would not have sought to include rules on currency in the TPP. After all, the Obama administration has been in office more than six years and allowed large trade deficits to persist. If they don’t address currency rules in the TPP, where exactly do they expect to do it?

Much of the discussion now has the same sort of children’s table character that is usually shown toward issues that primarily concern working people. The rules about investment, about environmental and safety regulation, and patent and copyright protection are all right there front and center in the trade agreement. These affect the adults, aka big business. But issues about currency and trade deficits, that can mean millions of jobs and trillions in lost output over the next decade, well that’s kid stuff. The Obama administration will promise to set up a little table and do a little dance to humor the people who care about such things. But they must be kept out of the TPP.

Finally, it is worth noting that sums at stake over currency issues are an order of magnitude larger than any potential gains from the rest of TPP. We already have very low barriers with most of the parties in the TPP. Removing the remaining barriers will have a very limited economic impact, which could easily be outweighed by the increase in barriers in the form of stronger patent and copyright protection.

Neither the Obama administration nor anyone else has a politically viable path back to full employment with a trade deficit equal to 3% of GDP. Full employment is incredibly important to ensure that those at the middle and bottom of the income distribution have the bargaining power needed to share in the gains from economic growth. If insisting on currency rules risks delaying or even destroying the TPP, it would be a risk well worth taking.

Stress and speedup in German GM-Opel plants

Marianne Arens

In mid-April, GM-Opel worker Viktor Uselmann was acquitted of charges of assault before the Rüsselsheim district court. Just one day earlier, the Darmstadt Labour Court had upheld his unfair dismissal claim.

Over three hundred of his colleagues had signed a petition calling for Uselmann to be reinstated. Uselmann has worked at Opel, the German subsidiary of General Motors, for 25 years and is an elected shop steward.

An incident on 18 September 2014 led to his dismissal. On that morning, a worker in his team was missing due to illness and Uselmann and the “team spokesman”, George Lippok, got into a dispute over who should take over his work on the shift.

A team spokesperson is a sort of foreman with monitoring functions, including meeting production targets. He or she must ensure that personnel and equipment are in the proper place, and if someone is missing, take over his or her duties until a replacement arrives on the assembly line.

Lippok should have taken on the work of the missing worker. Instead, he had a heated argument with Uselmann during the shift change, which, according to witnesses, led to a brief exchange of blows.

Two days later, the company’s legal department took up the incident and immediately suspended Uselmann. A month later, on October 21, he was fired by Opel. At the same time, Lippok was encouraged to sue Uselmann for assault.

In civil proceedings on April 15, the prosecutor argued before the Rüsselsheim district court for an acquittal because no evidence of injury had been presented during two days of legal proceedings. The day before, the Darmstadt Labour Court ruled in Uselmann’s favour. Consequently, Opel was ordered to rehire the sacked steward in Rüsselsheim and pay him for lost earnings since October 2014.

The legal proceedings, however, provided a glimpse of the severe stress and increasing strain that GM-Opel workers are subjected to at the Rüsselsheim plant. “There seems to be a harsh work climate at Opel,” the prosecutor said, in a gross understatement, in her presentation to the court.

A master craftsman who testified at length provided details of the conditions on the production line. This includes so-called “swine stations”, i.e., jobs that are the most stressful and demanding. Workers often drop out for health reasons and workers who retire are not replaced. Instead, open positions are filled with temporary and contract workers who are poorly trained and highly exploited.

These appalling conditions are not limited to Opel Rüsselsheim. The situation at Opel has steadily worsened in recent years as a result of factory closures, layoffs and breaking down work rules in what is known as “optimisation”.

This is the way the Opel Group is seeking to maintain its position in the highly competitive auto market. The closure of its plant in Antwerp in 2010 was followed at the end of 2014 by the closure of Opel’s Bochum plant with 3,000 layoffs. Since then, Rüsselsheim workers have had to build both the Insignia and the Zafira models partly on the same production line.

The competitive struggle is being conducted on the backs of the workers. Work on the production line is carried out standing up, with prolonged noise and under time pressure. This leads to sleep disorders, illness and other maladies, which particularly affect older workers. A recent study by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) found that older shift workers in car production often suffer significantly more illnesses than other workers.

The undermining of workers’ work conditions and health is the direct result of the collaboration of the IG Metall trade union and works council with Opel management. Far from defending workers, these pro-management institutions fully share the cost-cutting objectives of the Opel board.

This is especially true for the current Group Works Council chairman, Dr. Wolfgang Schäfer-Klug. “Our growth strategy has always been a key demand of the works council and IG Metall,” he recently told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in an interview headlined, “We are again the winners”. Dr. Schäfer-Klug has nothing but flattery and enthusiastic praise for Opel Chief Executive Officer Karl-Thomas Neumann. Under his management, things had “decisively changed for the positive”, the works council chairman said, adding, “We employees notice this personally.”

IG Metall and their works council representatives divide workers by playing one location against another. They supported the closure of the Bochum plant as part of the so-called “master collective agreement”, suppressing any resistance by workers. The growing pressure on Rüsselsheim workers is a direct result of the drive to boost profits by IG Metall, which works as a direct tool of management.

Former CIA head Petraeus gets wrist-slap sentence for leaking classified material

Tom Hall

Former CIA director and four-star general David Petraeus was given a wrist-slap sentence in federal court Thursday for giving binders of highly-classified information to his biographer and mistress, Paula Broadwell, in 2011.

Petraeus avoided jail time, receiving only two years of probation and a $100,000 fine for “mishandling classified information,” a misdemeanor. Even so, this was a stiffer sentence than had been recommended by federal prosecutors, who suggested only a $40,000 fine. Judge David Kessler elected to raise the sentence, arguing that the punishment recommended by prosecutors was “unscientific” and arrived at arbitrarily. “This constitutes a serious lapse of judgment,” he told the court in the hour-long proceedings on Thursday.

Broadwell began interviewing Petraeus in late 2011, shortly before he assumed his post as CIA director, for a fawning biography entitled, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus, which was published in 2012. As part of the research for the book, Petraeus provided her with binders, later referred to in the media as “black books,” containing highly classified information, including the names of covert officers, code words, intelligence capabilities and information relating internal deliberations within the White House National Security Council.

The FBI first became aware of the incident in May 2012 after investigating complaints by Jill Kelley, a wealthy socialite from Tampa, Florida and friend of the Petraeus family, who reported that she had been receiving threatening emails from an anonymous source, which later turned out to be Broadwell. Petraeus repeatedly lied to investigators about the incident, including giving a falsified sworn, written statement.

The investigation was initially carried out in unusual secrecy. Neither Congress nor the White House was informed until after the 2012 elections. Members of various Congressional intelligence committees told the press that they were blindsided by both the investigation and Petraeus’ eventual resignation in November 2012. Indicating the potentially explosive nature of the investigation, General John Allen, the then-top US commander in Afghanistan and nominee for the top military post at NATO, was implicated over “inappropriate communications”—consisting of some 20-30,000 pages of emails—with Kelley. He has since been cleared of wrongdoing.

There is a marked double standard at work in the ruling elite’s kid-glove treatment of Petraeus. The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than every other administration combined. Yet Petraeus has avoided jail time despite knowingly handing Broadwell top-secret information, including the names of operatives, for purely personal gain.

Chelsea Manning is currently serving a 35-year prison sentence in a military prison for leaking evidence of American war crimes and diplomatic skullduggery to WikiLeaks. Before the sentencing, Manning was stripped naked and subjected to 23 and one half hours of solitary confinement every day, vindictive measures that attorneys described as torture.

Earlier this year former CIA analyst John Kiriakou was released from prison, after serving a two-year sentence for revealing the use of torture by the CIA during a 2007 interview with ABC News. Shortly after his release, Kiriakou told Russia Today, “But what really bothers me, is that there is no prosecution of CIA officers who obviously violated the law…I have no idea why there is no outrage, and why those officers are not being prosecuted.”

Former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling is currently awaiting sentencing after being found guilty of providing information about the agency’s operations against Iran to New York Times journalist James Risen; prosecutors are arguing for a prison sentence between 19 and 25 years.

And of course, there are the ongoing operations to extradite Julian Assange via trumped up sex charges in Sweden, for which a secret jury has already been convened in Northern Virginia, and against NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who fled to Russia in the summer of 2013.

Yet in the case of David Petraeus, the Justice Department under Eric Holder allowed him to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges and avoid spending a day in jail, despite the fact that he had repeatedly lied to investigators, including in a sworn statement. The administration’s fawning over Petraeus was so blatant it apparently angered some within the FBI itself, according to anonymous sources who spoke to the New York Times.

The essential difference in Petraeus’s case is that he has served as an integral and valued organizer of Washington’s war crimes, rather than an opponent of them. Prior to his year-long stint as CIA Director, Petraeus was the much-lauded architect of “the surge” of US troops while in command of the international occupation force in Iraq. He later served as commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM) and as the head of the occupation in Afghanistan.

In a real sense, the ruling elite’s light treatment of Petraeus reflects gratitude for services rendered. Several senators, high-ranking military brass and even world leaders went so far as to submit letters to the court attesting to Petraeus’ character.

John McCain (Republican-Arizona), one of the US senators closest to the military-industrial complex, sorrowfully declared in March, after Petraeus was found guilty, that “it is time to consider this matter closed…Petraeus will continue to provide his outstanding service and leadership to our nation, as he has throughout his distinguished career.”

Dianne Feinstein (Democrat-California), vice-chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, pleaded publicly with the Justice Department not to indict Petraeus. “This man has suffered enough in my view,” she told CNN in January. “[He] made a mistake…But…it’s done, it’s over. He’s retired. He’s lost his job. How much does the government want?” Far from “suffering” as a result of the trial, Petraeus has been allowed to enjoy the luxurious lifestyle of a semi-retired government official, replete with cushy sinecures from universities and private corporations. The $100,000 fine is less than half of the $220,000 annual payout from his US Army pension. In addition, Petraeus has held a non-resident senior fellowship at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs since October 2013, after the FBI investigation began.

In 2013, Petraeus was hired by the $73 billion investment fund KKR to chair its KKR Global Institute. According to Forbes magazine, the newly formed institute “will deal with macro-economic issues like the role of central banks in the world since the [2008 financial] crisis, changes in public policy and other areas where KKR has interests like environmental and social issues that would influence its investment decisions.”

Incredibly, even the White House has continued to consult with Petraeus on national security issues throughout the investigation and trial. It is not yet clear how Petraeus’ sentencing will affect this relationship, according to news reports.

The entire Petraeus affair demonstrates, once again, that two forms of “justice” exist in the United States. For the ruling elite and government officials at every level, from the head of the CIA to local police, no crime is too severe to warrant serious punishment, and when they are forced to press charges, it is done with tearful reluctance. For the rest, there is the standard of justice increasingly redolent of a police state, in which political opponents of the ruling elite are railroaded on trumped up charges.

Doonesbury cartoonist attacked for criticizing Charlie Hebdo

Patrick Martin

Garry Trudeau, the creator of the Doonesbury comic strip, has come under attack from right-wing editorialists and media pundits for publicly criticizing anti-Muslim cartoons appearing in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, calling them a form of hate speech.

Trudeau’s brief remarks were delivered at Long Island University April 10, where he received the George Polk Career Award for his more than four decades of work as a cartoonist, in the course of which he has frequently had to battle censorship of his outspoken liberal views. Only three years ago, 50 newspapers refused to carry his strip during a week when he bitingly attacked Republican politicians who oppose abortion rights even in the case of rape or incest.

The central point made by Trudeau is that Charlie Hebdo was engaged, not in satirizing the powerful, but in vilifying the most oppressed section of the French population, Muslim immigrants, who face the highest levels of unemployment, poverty, police harassment and imprisonment.

Trudeau was of course horrified by the bloody massacre in January at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, when an attack by two Islamist gunmen left 12 people dead, include most of the magazine’s senior cartoonists. He contributed to an online tribute to the murdered cartoonists. His refusal to go along with the retrospective glorification of the content of the cartoons, despite the enormous wave of media propaganda that has followed, is an act of intellectual and moral courage.

For that very reason, his statement has been vilified as an attack on the victims of terrorism, in a series of columns by right-wing pundits, including David Frum of The Atlantic, Cathy Young of Reason magazine, and Ross Douthat of the New York Times.

Frum made the most sweeping attack, citing the killings at Charlie Hebdo, the related attack on a kosher bakery in Paris, and a subsequent attack in Copenhagen, Denmark, and declaring, “For this long record of death and destruction—and for many other deaths as well—Garry Trudeau blamed the people who drew and published the offending cartoons.”

The right-wing pundit claims that Trudeau applied “privilege theory” to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, justifying it because the victims were from the white elite, while the gunmen were from the immigrant Muslim underclass. “To fix the blame for the killing on the murdered journalists, rather than the gunmen, Trudeau invoked the underdog status of the latter,” Frum writes.

He goes on to claim that news organizations in the United States that reported on the anti-Islam cartoons in Charlie Hebdo did not reprint them because they were afraid of terrorist attack, drawing the conclusion, “Violence does work.”

Trudeau offered a different explanation for the non-publication of the anti-Muslim cartoons in an interview Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where he addressed the right-wing attack on his Long Island University remarks. US editors did not reprint the cartoons because they were demeaning and racist, he maintained. If similar cartoons had targeted African-Americans, they would be universally denounced and repudiated.

Douthat and Young both cite Frum’s column approvingly in their own shorter diatribes, echoing his claim that Trudeau had based his remarks on an extreme version of identity politics. These criticisms are baseless slanders, as can be easily demonstrated by looking at what Trudeau actually said. The cartoonist cited the example of the great satirists of the French Enlightenment.

“Traditionally, satire has comforted the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful. Great French satirists such as Molière and Daumier always punched up, holding up the self-satisfied and hypocritical to ridicule. Ridiculing the non-privileged is almost never funny—it’s just mean.

“By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech…”

The same issue was raised in a perspective published on the World Socialist Web Site immediately after the attack on Charlie Hebdo. WSWS Chairman David North rejected the claim by British historian Simon Schama that the French magazine was in the tradition of the great satirists of the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, writing:

Schama places Charlie Hebdo in a tradition to which it does not belong. All the great satirists to whom Schama refers were representatives of a democratic Enlightenment who directed their scorn against the powerful and corrupt defenders of aristocratic privilege. In its relentlessly degrading portrayals of Muslims, Charlie Hebdo has mocked the poor and the powerless.

North explained that the orgy of praise for Charlie Hebdo, summed up in the slogan “I am Charlie,” raised at demonstrations in Paris, was an effort to provide an ideological justification for US and French imperialism:

The killing of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and editors is being proclaimed an assault on the principles of free speech that are, supposedly, held so dear in Europe and the United States. The attack on Charlie Hebdo is, thus, presented as another outrage by Muslims who cannot tolerate Western “freedoms.” From this the conclusion must be drawn that the “war on terror”—i.e., the imperialist onslaught on the Middle East, Central Asia and North and Central Africa—is an unavoidable necessity.

These efforts are doubly hypocritical, given the onslaught on democratic rights, including freedom of the press, in all the Western countries, especially the United States. The Obama administration has targeted more journalists for surveillance and more whistleblowers for prosecution than any other in US history, singling out those who have played major roles in exposing the crimes of the US government, like Bradley (Chelsea) Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange.

Trudeau is not an avowed opponent of imperialism, but rather a liberal who apparently supports the Obama administration, albeit with some disappointment. That does not detract from the principled character of his public repudiation of the right-wing efforts to whip up anti-Muslim prejudice.