Column: IT DID HAPPEN HERE

Here’s this week’s column, available for comment:

American Citizen Tortured, Convicted of Thought Crime

NEW YORK–“Just about everyone agrees that the recent conviction of Abdullah al-Muhajir, a.k.a. Jose Padilla, is a good thing,” wrote right-wing pundit Neil Kressel in The New York Post. Indeed, just about everyone did. “It is hard to disagree with the jury’s guilty verdict against Jose Padilla, the accused, but never formally charged, dirty bomber,” opined the liberal editorial board of The New York Times. (They went on to criticize the way the Bush Administration denied Padilla due process.)

Meet Mr. Not Everyone.

Padilla, a 36-year-old American citizen born in Brooklyn who converted to Islam, was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare airport in May 2002. Using the bombastic “1984”-style rhetoric of the post-9/11 era, then-attorney general John Ashcroft announced that Padilla had participated in an “unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb.” Padilla’s arrest, Ashcroft ranted, would have caused “mass death and injury” in an American city.

But there wasn’t any evidence. Or there wasn’t enough to convict him in court. Which was, under the system of justice citizens of Western countries have lived under for eight centuries, the same thing.

Before 9/11 and “preventative detention” and legal torture and scary new laws like the USA-Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act eliminated habeas corpus, Padilla would have sat in jail a day or two. He might have gotten roughed up. Then he’d have walked.

That was under democracy. In Bush’s neofascist security state, Padilla rotted in solitary confinement–in a military brig–for three and a half years. (Read Henry Charriere’s classic prison memoir “Papillon” if you doubt that solitary confinement is a form of torture.) No family visits. No lawyer. They subjected him to sensory deprivation, covering his eyes and ears to make him lose his mind.

And still no trial. Because the government knew Padilla was innocent.

By 2006 Bush was unpopular. Federal judges had begun to regrow their ‘nads, ruling that the Administration had to charge Padilla or release him. So the Bushies came up with a clever dodge whose narrow legalism was worthy of depends-on-the-meaning-of-is: they transferred Padilla to the civilian justice system and charged him with something else.

Or, to be specific, something less. They added Padilla to a case against two Middle Eastern men on trial for “conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people in a foreign country” and “material support” for Islamic terrorism. Padilla had met the two in Florida and, prosecutors say, traveled to Afghanistan in 2000 to join Al Qaeda. The key evidence presented was Padilla’s supposed Al Qaeda application form, which fingerprints proved he had handled.

Padilla’s public defenders claimed that their client was forced to pick up the “Al Qaeda form” in the brig. Who knows what happened while he was “disappeared” during those three and a half years?

“There is no need to show any particular violent crime [in a conspiracy trial],” said law professor Robert Chesney, of Wake Forest University. “You don’t have to specify the particular means used to carry out the crime.” Nevertheless, Padilla faces the possibility of life in prison.

Of course, the United States wasn’t at war with Afghanistan in 2000. Before 9/11 the Clinton and Bush Administrations both sent millions of dollars to the Taliban. The vast majority of Muslims who trained at Al Qaeda camps never plotted against the U.S. They planned to fight in places like Chechnya, Kosovo and Xinjiang. Padilla’s membership in Al Qaeda, even if proven, doesn’t prove anti-Americanism.

Post-9/11 conspiracy prosecutions are de facto attempts to make anti-Americanism–the mere thought, not any action–illegal.

“It is a pretty big leap between a mere indication of desire to attend a camp and a crystallized desire to kill, maim and kidnap,” said Peter Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University. The conspiracy count against Padilla, Margulies continued, “is highly amorphous, and it basically allows someone to be found guilty for something that is one step away from a thought crime.”

The charge was laughable and the standard of proof rock-bottom. But the masters of Padilla’s show trial didn’t miss a chance to cheese up the proceedings.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier never presented evidence that Padilla actually joined or was accepted by Al Qaeda. Nevertheless, reported the Associated Press, he “mentioned Al Qaeda 91 times in his opening statement and more than 100 times in his closing, according to court transcripts.” Padilla had nothing to do with 9/11. To link him to the attacks in jurors’ minds, Frazier had them watch a seven-minute video clip of Osama bin Laden. (There’s no evidence that Padilla ever watched the 1997 CNN interview.)

Padilla’s lawyers asked the judge in the case to dismiss the case because he had been denied a speedy trial. Marcia Cooke said no–and ordered them not to talk to the jury about the three and a half years the defendant had spent being tortured and deprived of his rights.

Reporters’ eyes rolled as Frazier said that government wiretappers heard Padilla and his two co-defendents use code words like “football” to mean jihad and “eggplant” and “zucchini” for weapons. “They wanted to recruit, fund and train fighters,” he told the jury. “Playing this kind of football was more important than anything else to these men. What they were doing was no game.” But, reported the AP, Padilla’s “voice was only picked up on seven of the FBI intercepts, [and] he never talked in code.” He shouldn’t have been convicted–even on those lame-ass conspiracy charges.

Osama bin Laden is an ends-justifies-the-means kind of guy. So, apparently, is Uncle Sam. Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University, said after the verdict: “It’s kind of a dirty victory because of the way the case came about, but still it’s a victory nonetheless.” Yeah. But for whom?

(Ted Rall is the author of the new book “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?,” an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America’s next big foreign policy challenge.)
COPYRIGHT 2007 TED RALL

This Week’s Column

Here’s this week’s column. Feel free to post comments here.

SHAME: CHINA’S MOST VALUABLE EXPORT

Zhang Shuhong was a nice boss to the end. On the last day of his life the fiftyish entrepreneur greeted his employees as they arrived at his factory and wished them a good shift. Then he went to the company warehouse and hanged himself.

Zhang was co-owner of the Lee Der Industrial Company, the Chinese company that made toys for Mattel using toxic levels of lead paint. Mattel issued a recall expected to cost the company in the neighborhood of $30 million.
Poor guy–he probably didn’t even know the paint his workers were slathering on nearly a million toys for preschoolers was dangerous. “The boss and the company were harmed by the paint supplier, the closest friend of our boss,” reported the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper.

“It is not uncommon for Chinese executives to commit suicide after suffering damage to their reputation,” noted the UK Telegraph.

Zhang’s death followed the July execution of Zheng Xiaoyu, 62, head of China’s State Food and Drug Administration from 1994 to 2005. Zheng was convicted of accepting $850,000 in bribes from eight pharmaceutical companies in exchange for approving fake and substandard drugs. An antibiotic involved in the case killed at least 10 people.

The Xinhua news agency didn’t say how Zheng was killed, but most Chinese executions are carried out with a single gunshot to the back of the head. Shortly afterward a policeman notifies the condemned man’s family by presenting them with a bill for the cost of the bullet.

Now that’s accountability. Can we import some of that too?

The late Mssrs. Zhang and Zheng oversaw corruption and incompetence that pales next to catastrophes for which no American has yet been held to account. Thousands died in hurricane Katrina because officials all the way up to George “Heckuva job, Brownie!” Bush made a conscious decision not to help. Two years later, what’s left of New Orleans is dying, murdered by an appalling political calculus: It is (was) black. It was Democratic. Shouldn’t government officials face a firing squad for killing a major city?

What about Iraq? It wouldn’t bring back the million dead civilians or the thousands of dead soldiers, but watching Wolfy and Rummy and Cheney hold hands as they leapt off the tallest building in D.C. might brighten the day of their grieving relatives.

The same goes for the war against Afghanistan, which state-controlled media has finally conceded is a lost cause. (Lead story in the August 12th New York Times: “How the ‘Good War’ in Afghanistan Went Bad.”) Save some rope for the Democratic politicians and the phony journalists who insisted that Bush had “taken his eye off the ball in Afghanistan” to invade Iraq. The blood splattered by every errant Hellfire missile, every blown-up wedding party and the bullet wounds in Pat Tillman’s body are their responsibility.

If execution is good enough for Cao Wenzhuang, a Chinese FDA official accused of taking $307,000 in bribes, how about his American counterparts? As cancer patients drop like flies, U.S. FDA bureaucrats delay approval of drugs that could have saved their lives.

Eloxatin, a drug used to treat advanced colorectal cancer, has been approved in at least 29 countries–but the FDA rejected it anyway. Under pressure from terminally ill patients, the agency then approved it. But they dragged their feet for more than two years. Some 40,000 Americans died during the delay.

“Twelve drugs–had they been available to people denied entry to clinical trials–might have helped more than one million mothers, fathers, sons and daughters live longer, better lives,” say the founders of the Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs.

I’m not sure I’d want to live somewhere as uptight as China. At its border with Tajikistan recently, a white-gloved policeman stood ramrod straight, sweating under a blazing sun, waiting to direct traffic. Because the border was closed for lunch, however, there was no traffic. Even when vehicles began moving, he had no traffic to direct–it was a straight road, not an intersection. Some official thought the border needed a traffic cop, so there he was.

Still, the Chinese get some things right. “Corruption in the food and drug authority has brought shame to the nation,” says Yan Jiangying, deputy policy director of China’s FDA. We could use some shame here in America.

(Ted Rall is the author of the new book “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?,” an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America’s next big foreign policy challenge.)
COPYRIGHT 2007 TED RALL

Lambda Legal

The gay-rights advocacy group Lambda Legal has awarded me second prize in its Life Without Fair Courts cartoon contest. Also worth noting: fellow CWA (Cartoonists With Attitude) member Matt Bors took third place.

First place went to Greg Fox.

Cartoon Comments on Double Secret Probation

If the low volume of commentary about the cartoons posted here continues through next week, I will likely stop posting them here in the . You will, of course, be able to continue reading them in their usual spot in the cartoon section.

They Pay Wankers, Don’t They?

Never before in my lifetime has the American people been more poorly served by its pundit class. I’ve previously written about the neo-con pseudointellectuals who got us into two losing wars against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq: Bill Kristol, Christopher Hitchens, David Brooks, Tom Friedman, etc. Because there is no God or at least no American culture of enforced accountability, all continue to draw paychecks for their worthless, discredited opinions.

But wankdom isn’t confined to neo-cons. Michael Kinsley, currently writing a column for Time magazine, exposes the sloppy thinking that repeatedly gets the world’s richest (and in some ways its coolest) into one utterly avoidable fiasco after another. Consider his column in the August 13th issue:

There is grim fun to be had, and many are having it, by reviewing what the pundits said back in 2002 and 2003 about the notion of going to war in Iraq and comparing it with what they are saying as they survey the results today. They’ve all changed their tunes, a little or a lot, with various degrees of contrition.

Not “all.” Some of us got it right. Back in 2003 and 2002 and even 2001, the left—the real left, not the squishy soft liberals who play the left on TV—called Bush on his dictatorial tendencies, his lack of planning and the low odds of success in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Politicians, too, are under pressure to recant anything nice they may have said about the Iraq war–or, if they were Senators at the time, to apologize for their votes in favor. Some, like John Edwards, have done so. But one important voice was as wrong as any of them and now is among the most censorious about the way things have turned out. Yet this voice has never acknowledged its previous errors. In fact, no one expects it to do so, even though it is more responsible than any pundit for U.S. policy in Iraq. This is the voice of the citizenry, the American people.

Americans are unhappy with President George W. Bush right now. In the New York Times/CBS News poll, his approval rating dipped to 29% during July before nosing back up a point. Approval of Bush’s handling of what is delicately called “the situation in Iraq” is only 25%. By 53% to 39%, we disapprove of the way he is handling the war on terrorism. “Looking back,” 51% say that the U. S. “should … have stayed out” of Iraq, while only 42% think the invasion was “the right thing.” Two-thirds of Americans think our “efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq” are going somewhat or very badly, and the same fraction think we should withdraw in part or completely.

Dislike of opinion polls is one of the great clichés of American politics, but it’s not clear exactly what people dislike. They dislike politicians who follow the opinion polls, and they dislike politicians who fail to follow the will of the people, as revealed in opinion polls. But the real problem with opinion polls is different: they reinforce the impression that everything is a matter of opinion, and all opinions are equally valid.

Although–or perhaps because–I manufacture opinions for a living, I am always amazed at the things people are willing to express opinions about.

I’m writing this early, and my coffee may not have kicked in quite as nicely as I might like, but there’s something mighty hilarious about Kinsley claiming that he “manufactures” opinions. Maybe he thinks that’s his job. But he’s supposed to express opinions. It would also be nice if his opinions of what was going on were supplemented by largely accurate predictions of what was going to happen. That’s his job too.

Is the “surge” working? Is there likely to be a terrorist attack in the next few months? Are “most of the insurgents in Iraq today … under the command of Osama bin Laden”? These are not matters of opinion. The correct answer may be unknown (e.g., the success of the surge), or it may be known perfectly well (e.g., bin Laden does not control most of the Iraqi insurgents), but one thing the correct answer is not is a matter of opinion.

Even when getting it right, Kinsley gets it wrong. Bin Laden doesn’t control any of Iraq’s insurgents. According to everyone, even the Pentagon, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia doesn’t take orders from Al Qaeda, the Pakistani-based umbrella group for various Islamist groups. The Iraqis took the name to fuck with us.

But in opinion polls, citizens are treated like gods, dispensing or withholding their “approval” on any basis they wish or none at all. They may give a President a green light to go to war (not that Bush needed it) and then condemn him for going when it turns out badly. Just after 9/11, Bush’s approval rating was as high as 90%. Only 5% disapproved. In the spring of 2003, when Bush launched the war, deposed Saddam Hussein, occupied Iraq and declared victory, public approval of his conduct of the Iraq “situation” rarely dipped below 70%. As the “situation” went south, so did Bush’s poll numbers, until now he faces snarling or sullen disapproval from two-thirds of the electorate.

Ninety percent of the electorate once approved of Bush’s “handling” of terrorism. Now only 39% approve. That means at least 51%, or more than half of all Americans, used to support Bush on terrorism but don’t anymore. You might say they have decided they were wrong, but opinion-poll democracy requires no such self-criticism. Political opinions are like old-fashioned airline tickets, with no change penalty.

The American people haven’t “decided they were wrong” about Iraq. They’ve decided they were lied to. And they’re right. I’m not going to recite all the Bush Administration quotes about mushroom clouds and anthrax and fighting “them” “there” and linking 9/11 to Saddam—something Bush continues to do all these years later. If you read the , you know all that stuff. Criticize the American public for trusting their government to tell them the truth. Honestly, after Watergate and a million other examples, there’s no reason for anyone to believe what a politician says. But let’s not pretend that the public changed its mind because it’s fickle and because the war is going badly. The war going badly is what proves that we were lied to; that was the very thing that was not supposed to happen.

The U.S. is now despised around the world because of the Iraq “situation.” Thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead as the result of our deliberate decision to invade and occupy another country with no immediate provocation. We reduced that country to ruin and chaos, and now we care only about how and how quickly we can get out of this mess we created.

This is not all the fault of the pundits or of “Washington” or of politicians. Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq was scandalously unilateral, but it did in fact have the support of most American citizens, which surely egged him on.

Chicken, meet egg. The Bushists manufactured support for their stupid-ass wars (use the plural! there are two!) by repeatedly lying about WMDs and being greeted as liberators and claiming we’d be getting even with the mofos who carried out 9/11. Which, of course, they did use to claim a mandate. But is that the people’s fault?

. The ensuing disaster is partly the fault of those Americans who told pollsters back in 2002 and 2003 that they supported Bush’s war and then in 2004 voted to re-elect him, which he took, quite reasonably, as an endorsement of his policies.

Whoa, pony! “Re-elect”? Even a squishy pseudo-liberal like Kinsley oughta know Bush lost the 2000 election—shit, he lost Florida by thousands of votes! And, of course, the U.S. Supreme Court didn’t have jurisdiction to rule in Bush v. Gore. (States run elections, so state courts—not federal ones—handle disputes over their outcomes.) If you think Bush won in 2004, he was at best elected, not re-elected. But there’s plenty of doubt about the bullshit that went down in Ohio. And even if you allow that Ohio was legitimately a Republican state in 2004, Bush was running for “re-election” using a phony and illegitimate incumbency.

Millions of Americans now apparently regret those opinions. But unlike the politicians and the pundits, they do not face pressure to recant or apologize. American democracy might be stronger if they did.

How exactly, Mr. Kinsley, are “millions of Americans” supposed to “recant” or “apologize”? I share his annoyance at those morons who, had they only bothered to scratch the surface, should have known that Bush was a serial liar. But I don’t expect them to apologize. An apology, after all, isn’t going to bring back the million Iraqis and 3,000 soldiers and trillion dollars that have gone down the sinkhole. No, what I expect from the American people is to remember how all this went down the next time some two-bit huckster tries to sell them a line of shit, and to activate their skepticism chip.

Hopefully the professional opinion “manufacturers” will lead rather than blame the people.

Column for Tuesday, August 7

Here is today’s column.

PERVERTED JUSTICE
The Criminalization of Thought
NEW YORK–“This is not a crime about thought,” says the assistant U.S. attorney. Then what is it?
Mahmud Faruq Brent, a 30-year-old D.C. taxi driver, is about to spend the next 15 years behind bars for “conspiring to support a terrorist organization.” No one, not even prosecutors, believes that the Ohio-born Brent planned to attack the United States. Brent was convicted of supporting Lakshar-e-Taiba, an Islamist group in Pakistan, and of attending one of its training camps.
“This defendant took action and he offered himself to a terrorist organization,” explains the prosecutor. But all the “action” took place in the would-be jihadi’s brain. There was no terrorist act. There was no crime.
Based in Pakistan, Lakshar-e-Taiba has attacked India, which it seeks to drive out of Kashmir. It has also carried out terrorist acts in Pakistan as part of its campaign to oust the military junta of General Pervez Musharraf. It’s easy to see why Musharraf is afraid of the group. One could understand why the U.S., as Musharraf’s ally, might honor Pakistan’s request to extradite one of its members. But Lakshar-e-Taiba has never attacked a target in the United States, the West–anywhere outside the Asian subcontinent. Why are American taxpayers footing the bill to lock this man up for 15 years?
Abdulrahman Farhane, a Brooklyn bookstore owner accused with Mahmud Brent of supporting the Pakistani group Lakshar-e-Taiba, received 13 years in federal prison. Two others charged in the case are awaiting sentencing.
As the government breaks up one alleged “plot” after another (Columbine-type massacre narrowly avoided as high school kid nabbed with “hit list” of fellow students! Crazy Muslim radicals caught with camera full of digital photos of tourist attractions!) it’s easy to see that anyone–yes, even you–can get swept up by hysterical grand inquisitors wielding dubious legal logic as naïve journalists dutifully report the latest victory against imminent danger.
“The government is arresting individuals on terrorism charges based on what individuals have said or thought–not on actual, concrete plans,” editorialized the Daytona Beach News-Journal- about Hamid Hayat, one of countless Muslims nabbed after 9/11 for “providing material support or resources to terrorists.” The feds “only proved that he did things that sometimes precede acts of terrorism. It was pre-emptive justice, but was also speculative justice.”
Most people have indulged in theoretical discussions about how to rob a bank or even how to get away with murder. They obviously don’t intend to carry out their “plots.” Yet any of us could fall victim to the recent tendency to equate crimes of intent to crimes of action.
Jack McClellan, 45, is a self-described pedophile who runs a blog that advocates sex with children. “If you look at things he has posted, he clearly is a pedophile,” says Lt. Thomas Sirkel of the Sheriff’s Department in Los Angeles, where McClellan lives. As far as we know, however, he has never acted on it. His record is clean.
Local mothers are plotting–er, organizing–to “to push lawmakers in Sacramento to legislate Mr. McClellan out of business,” reports The New York Times. “Just the idea that this person could get away with what he was doing and no one could press charges has made me angry,” Jane Thompson of East Los Angeles told the paper. Of course, what really angers her is that he’s getting away with what he’s thinking.
I don’t blame her. But McClellan hasn’t done anything. Do we really want to live in a culture that penalizes violent and impure thoughts?
Thoughtcrime pours big bucks into CBS Television, broadcaster of the take-a-bath-after-viewing program “To Catch a Predator.” No one cares about entrapped suckers like the guy “in a SpongeBob SquarePants jacket, armed with a bottle of K-Y Jelly.” Like dozens of other would-be pervs, the 21-year-old man thinks he’s going to meet a 14-year-old girl for sex, only to find Dateline’s Chris Hansen and a passel of cops waiting to arrest him.
Run your neighborhood through your state’s Megan’s Law database and you’ll likely conclude that sex offenders are all over the place. One is too many, but the problem isn’t as widespread as we’ve been led to believe. Many of the registrants are statutory rapists like the 17-year-old Georgia boy doing hard time for consensual sex with a 15-year-old girl.
“Anti-predator stings involving decoys may actually outnumber crimes involving real victims,” reports Rolling Stone. “To Catch a Predator” claims there are 50,000 child molesters online. But “a study conducted by the University of New Hampshire estimated that there were fewer than 2900 arrests for online sexual offenses against minors in a single year. What’s more, only 1152 involved victims who were approached by strangers on the Internet–and more than half this number were actually cops posing as kids.”
In other words, most men who fantasize about sex with children don’t actually do it. Judeo-Christian tradition rewards those who deny temptation; we throw them in jail. Perverted Justice, the group that trolls chat rooms to set up stings for “To Catch a Predator,” has a fitting name.
Ari Fleischer warned us to watch what we say. Now we’d better watch what we think.
COPYRIGHT 2007 TED RALL

Centiheads

While researching a cartoon I encountered the dorkiest Internet discussion thread ever. It’s actually quite sweet, but more than that it’s…just dorky.

A classic post:

Caco is right, its a good idea to know locals who are interested in pedes, as Im highly interested, we can all share knowledge together and hopefully one day have pedes that we can breed together, and catch some pedes.

But, even in the world of centiheads, there’s gotta be a wiseass who derails the discussion with talk of millipedes:

I’m personally more into millipedes, and I’ve just been starting to find some nice ones after the weeks of rain. I just found a huge soil millipede (sorry for the lack of a more scientific name) the other day, and it seems like there are tiny red centipedes under every log. Hopefully this will be a good spring for collecting.

All this “centihead” talk got me thinking about the whole -“head” suffix to address a hobby. State Route 114 outside Sag Harbor NY has its highway cleaning sponsored by the “Metro Parrothead Club,” which I believe is a club for Jimmy Buffett fans. Why aren’t people into George Bush called Bushheads? What about people into heads–would they be headheads?

Where did the “-head” suffix to indicate interest or fandom originate? William Safire, call your office.

Privatizing the Bridges
posted by TheDon

Live in New York Tonight!

If you’re in New York City, be advised that I’ll be the guest of comedian Lynn Winstead at her “Shoot the Messenger” show in the East Village. It’s at 8 pm at the Ace of Clubs, below Acme on Great Jones Street. See you there!