Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 755
June 8, 2016
Thai king marks 70 years on the throne – from hospital bed
BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world’s longest-reigning monarch, on Thursday marked his 70th year on the throne — from his hospital bed, immobile and wracked by a variety of age-related ailments that have made Thais wonder what their world would be like without him.
There was a time when Bhumibol (pronounced “Poo-me-pon”) would lead his aides on treks through swamps and over mountains to learn what was on the minds of his subjects in the most far-flung areas of his realm. But the 88-year-old guest of honor is unlikely to make a public appearance this week.
For most of the past decade the king has lived in a hospital — in a new wing built for him— for treatment of various problems, according to regular palace statements on his health. The ailments have sapped his strength and taken him gradually out of the public eye. On Tuesday, he underwent an operation to clear an artery; doctors said the results were satisfactory.
“I really can’t think about the country without the king … it’s just impossible to do so,” said Nonthawit Kanlapanayut, a 23-year-old trader at Thailand’s biggest food processing conglomerate. “The monarchy is at the core for Thai people.”
Ten years ago, the ceremonies for his 60th diamond jubilee were splendid. Golden royal barges glinted in a twilight procession, gliding down the Chao Phraya River, for an audience that included representatives of 25 of the world’s royal families, who also attended an opulent banquet the next day. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Thais jammed Bangkok’s Royal Plaza to hear their king — wearing a gold brocade robe and flanked on a palace balcony by his family — deliver a short speech calling for national unity.
This year’s 70th anniversary will not go unmarked. On Thursday morning, 770 monks were ordained during religious ceremonies at a newly built throne hall in the palace temple complex, and fireworks will accompany a candlelight gathering near the ceremonial Grand Palace. Long lines formed outside banks to buy for 100 baht a special commemorative 70-baht banknote, worth about $2 — encased in a yellow paper frame, the color of the royalty. Commuter trains were packed with people wearing yellow shirts.
Bhumibol took the throne in 1946 as a teenage boy under difficult circumstances: His 20-year-old brother, King Ananda, had been shot dead in his palace bedroom.
The absolute monarchy had been ended by an army coup in 1932, leading to a series of military dictatorships. Old royalists slowly but successfully helped the young Bhumibol regain power and influence for the monarchy.
Their efforts were aided in no small part by the king’s charisma, rectitude and genuine devotion to seeing his nation develop. Admirers and critics alike credit the king with steering the nation through the turbulent decades of the 1960s and ’70s, when neighboring countries fell prey to war and totalitarian rule.
“Being king for so long is an accomplishment,” Thai studies scholar Kevin Hewison wrote in recently published comments. He noted that the monarchy was in poor political and economic shape when Bhumibol took over, but he and advisers were “able to make it ‘great’ again, not to say wealthy, politically powerful and part of the what the elite likes to think is the fabric of Thai society.”
The royal palace doesn’t talk about the king much and it didn’t respond to calls for comment on this article. The king is widely loved by his people, but open discussion of the monarchy is an extremely sensitive because strict lese majeste laws make criticism of the royal family punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
The king is known to be the wealthiest monarch in the world with net wealth assessed by Forbes to be more than $30 billion, although most of it is owned by the crown as an institution, including land, a bank and an industrial conglomerate.
However, the past decade has taken a toll not only on the king’s health, but also on Thailand’s body politic. When Bhumibol spoke at his 60th anniversary in 2006 and called for unity, Thailand was sliding into crisis. A billionaire populist politician, Thaksin Shinawatra, had become prime minister, and his popularity and political power — rooted in electoral democracy — rubbed traditional royalist power-holders the wrong way.
Just three months after the king’s balcony speech, the army deposed Thaksin in a coup, setting off a sustained and sometimes violent political conflict that has left the country socially and politically polarized between Thaksin’s supporters — many of them poor rural residents — and opponents.
The barely concealed involvement of palace circles in the army takeover also dragged the monarchy down to the level of a political player, tarnishing its image as an honest broker above the fray. Thaksin’s opponents ostentatiously touted their royalist credentials. Bhumibol was still widely admired, but the consensus that used to value a royally-supervised democracy over popular democracy was severely eroded.
Weakened by age and ill health, Bhumibol meanwhile was unable or unwilling to exercise his personal prestige to promote reconciliation, which he had often done in the past during coups and political conflicts.
Now there was a void. In 2014, the army stepped in again, and declared that it would be calling the shots, even if a promised 2017 election established a facade of democratic rule.
It also started enforcing vigorously a law that makes criticism of the monarchy a crime. Critics say the law’s loose interpretation has allowed the military government to detain even those criticizing the junta. Calls to the junta spokesman were not returned.
“Much of the old reverence is gone; even among royalists, it has been replaced by a politics of intolerance and persecution,” says Michael Montesano, a Thailand expert who works with Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. “At the same time, younger members of the royal family have, not least because the times have changed, been unable to play anything like the role that the king played decades ago.”
The accelerating decline in the king’s health underlines another concern: How smooth a succession can be arranged in a country where the vast majority of people have known no other king?
The king’s only son and heir apparent, 63-year-old Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, is a controversial figure, even among royalists. He does not command the same respect and affection as his father.
“Under the best of circumstances, the monarchy will in the future play a purely ceremonial, rather passive role. The tensions and rhetoric of the past decade, along with the emergence of a more politically aware electorate, mean that the widely accepted unifying role that the monarchy played in the past is probably over,” says Montesano.
In the absence of a unifying figure, there is fear that Thailand will descend into political turmoil as the rural supporters of Thaksin — already given a taste of their electoral power — will be emboldened to take on the so-called royalists who want to maintain the status quo and their power in what one expert defines as “royal democracy.”
“Royal democracy is only possible because of him. It is not an exaggeration to say that without him, royal democracy might not survive,” said Thongchai Winichakul, a Thai scholar and professor of history at University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Thailand’s political future is highly uncertain.”
Donald Trump may be finished: Republicans are turning on their nominee en masse
Donald Trump (Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)
Republicans are finally beginning to question Donald Trump as their 2016 presidential nominee, saying Trump’s doubling down on attacking a federal judge with Mexican heritage was one of the more overtly racist statements from the GOP in years.
“If anybody was looking for an off-ramp, this is probably it,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, told the New York Times. “There’ll come a time when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary.”
“There are a lot of people who want to be loyal to the Republican Party, including me,” Graham told NBC on Tuesday. “There’ll come a point in time where we’re gonna have to understand that it’s not just about the 2016 race, it’s about the future of the party, and I would like to support our nominee: I just can’t.”
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said Trump’s statements that Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is overseeing a lawsuit brought by Trump University students who say they were ripped off, should recuse himself because of his ethnic heritage are “textbook racism.”
“Claiming a person can’t do their job because of their race is sort of like the textbook definition of a racist comment,” Ryan said Tuesday, at a Washington press conference to feature his latest anti-poverty plan. “It’s absolutely unacceptable.”
Whether the Republican Party will coalesce around the need to pick another nominee is a big and open question. Some Republican National Committee members have said the party’s rules allow its national convention delegates to break with results from primaries and caucuses. However, that would have to be the first order of business when the convention convenes in late July.
In the meantime, the question of how far Trump can go before being rejected by the GOP is escalating. Trump knows that disclosures surrounding his predatory business practices as part of the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in California are exceptionally damaging. It is his pattern to ramp up the rhetoric to distract from coverage he dislikes. However, in this case, Trump’s racist attacks appear to be crossing a line even among Republicans, who for years have pursued many policies alienating communities of color.
On Tuesday afternoon, apparently bowing to pressure, his campaign issued a statement in which Trump did not apologize and again said the judge should be removed, but added he would not be commenting further.
Below is a list of comments from more than a dozen Republicans who have slammed Trump’s attacks but not rejected his candidacy. The comments were compiled by the Clinton campaign, which issued a release saying, “While it’s striking that so many Republicans have called out their nominee for his attacks on Judge Curiel, many Republicans are continuing to stand by their endorsement of Trump, seemingly unconcerned about the power a President Trump would have to actually nominate judges and justices.”
• Sen. Ben Sasse [R-NE]: “Saying someone can’t do a specific job because of his or her race is the literal definition of racism.”
• Sen. Susan Collins [R-ME]: “Donald Trump’s comments on the ethnic heritage and religion of judges are absolutely unacceptable. His statement that Judge Curiel could not rule fairly because of his Mexican heritage does not represent our American values. Mr. Trump’s comments demonstrate both a lack of respect for the judicial system and the principle of separation of powers.”
• Rep. Jason Chaffetz [R-UT]: “I think people are disturbed that you would want to try to dismiss a judge based on his ethnicity. You can have qualms with how he’s ruling in the case, you can have qualms about his political affiliation, I think that’s fair game. But why doesn’t he say, look it’s up to the attorneys, it’s in the court, and leave it at that?”
• Sen. Marco Rubio [R-FL]: “That man [Curiel] is an American, born in the U.S., a judge who has earned that position. I don’t think it reflects well in the Republican Party. I don’t think it reflects wells on us as a nation.”
• Ohio Governor John Kasich: “Attacking judges based on their race and/or religion is another tactic that divides our country. More importantly, it is flat-out wrong.”
• Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich: “I don’t know what Trump’s reasoning was, and I don’t care. His description of the judge in terms of his parentage is completely unacceptable.”
• Brian Walsh, former communications director for Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn: “I don’t care if [Trump’s] the nominee— Republicans should loudly condemn this racist, nonsensical rhetoric by Trump.”
• Sen. Rob Portman [R-OH]: “The fact that the judge has a Mexican American heritage has nothing to do with how you should describe his judicial ability. The guy was born in Indiana. He’s as American as I am.”
• Rep. Jackie Walorski [R-IN]: “Questioning a judge’s impartiality based on his ethnicity is not only inappropriate, it has no place in American society.”
• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell [R-KY]: “I couldn’t disagree more.” [with Trump’s remarks]
• Sen. Bob Corker [R-TN]: “I don’t condone the comments.”
• Sen. Jeff Flake [R-AZ]: “His statements this week on the judge—that’s a new level… Because it’s not just… ill-informed or ignorant statements, but they suggest that when he’s president, you know, after November, that… perhaps he ought to go after that judge. That’s a whole new level. So that’s—it’s very disturbing.”
• Alberto Gonzales, U.S. Attorney General under President George W. Bush: “I’m not supporting Donald Trump’s comments. … The call for a recusal of a judge based solely on ethnicity in my judgment is wrong and to do it publicly in my judgment demeans the judge and really does hurt the reputation of the judiciary, and I just think it was inappropriate the way that Donald Trump did it in this case.”
Bush and Cheney belong in jail: America must answer for its illegal war on terror
(Credit: Reuters/Jim Young)
“The cold was terrible but the screams were worse,” Sara Mendez told the BBC. “The screams of those who were being tortured were the first thing you heard and they made you shiver. That’s why there was a radio blasting day and night.”
In the 1970s, Mendez was a young Uruguayan teacher with leftist leanings. In 1973, when the military seized power in her country (a few months before General Augusto Pinochet’s more famous coup in Chile), Mendez fled to Argentina. She lived there in safety until that country suffered its own coup in 1976. That July, a joint Uruguayan-Argentine military commando group kidnapped her in Buenos Aires and deposited her at Automotores Orletti, a former auto repair shop that would become infamous as a torture site and paramilitary command center. There she was indeed tortured, and there, too, her torturers stole her 20-day-old baby, Simón, giving him to a policeman’s family to raise.
Mendez was an early victim of Operation Condor, a torture and assassination program focused on the region’s leftists that, from 1975 to 1986, would spread terror across Latin America’s southern cone. On May 27th, an Argentine court convicted 14 military officers of crimes connected with Operation Condor, issuing prison sentences ranging from 13 to 25 years. Among those sentenced was Reynaldo Bignone, Argentina’s last military dictator, now 88. (He held power from 1982 to 1983.)
Those convictions are deeply satisfying to the surviving victims and their families, to the legal teams that worked for more than a decade on the case, and to human rights organizations around the world. And yet, as just as this outcome is, it has left me with questions — questions about the length of time between crime and conviction, and about what kinds of justice can and cannot be achieved through prosecutions alone.
Operation Condor
Operation Condor was launched by the security forces of five military dictatorships: Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia. Brazil soon joined, as did Ecuador and Peru eventually. As a Cold War anti-communist collaboration among the police, military, and intelligence services of those eight governments, Condor offered an enticing set of possibilities. The various services could not only cooperate, but pursue their enemies in tandem across national borders. Indeed, its reach stretched as far as Washington, D.C., where in 1976 its operatives assassinated former Chilean ambassador to the U.S. Orlando Letelier and his young assistant, Ronni Moffitt, both of whom then worked at the Institute for Policy Studies, a left-wing think tank.
How many people suffered grievously or died due to Operation Condor? A definitive number is by now probably beyond recovery, but records from Chile’s secret police suggest that by itself Argentina’s “dirty war” — the name given to the Argentine junta’s reign of terror, “disappearances,” and torture — took the lives of 22,000 people between 1975 and 1978. Thousands more are thought to have died before that country’s dictatorship ended in 1983. It’s generally believed that at least another 3,000 people died under the grimmest of circumstances in Chile, while thousands more were tortured but lived. And although its story is less well known, the similar reign of terror of the Uruguayan dictatorship directly affected the lives of almost every family in the country. As Lawrence Wechsler wrote in a 1989 article in the New Yorker:
“By 1980, one in every fifty Uruguayans had been detained at some point, and detention routinely involved torture; one in every five hundred had received a sentence of six years or longer under conditions of extreme difficulty; and somewhere between three hundred thousand and four hundred thousand Uruguayans went into exile. Comparable percentages for the United States would involve the emigration of thirty million people, the detention of five million, and the extended incarceration of five hundred thousand.”
And what was the U.S. role in Operation Condor? Washington did not (for once) plan and organize this transnational program of assassination and torture, but its national security agencies were certainly involved, as declassified Defense Department communications indicate. In his book The Condor Years, Columbia University journalism professor John Dingesreported that the CIA provided training for Chile’s secret police, computers for Condor’s database, telex machines and encoders for its secret communications, and transmitters for its private, continent-wide radio communications network. Chilean Colonel Manuel Contreras, one of Condor’s chief architects (who was then on the CIA payroll), met with CIA Deputy Director Vernon Walters four times. And what did the CIA get in return? Among other things, access to the “results” of interrogation under torture, according to Dinges. “Latin American intelligence services,” he added,
“considered U.S. intelligence agencies their allies and provided timely and intimate details of their repressive activities. I have obtained three documents establishing that information obtained under torture, from prisoners who later were executed and disappeared, were provided to the CIA, the FBI and the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). There is no question that the U.S. officials were aware of the torture.”
Justice Delayed
Why did it take 40 years to bring the architects of Operation Condor to justice? A key factor: for much of that time, it was illegal in Argentina to put them on trial. In the first years of the new civilian government, the Argentine congress passed two laws that granted these men immunity from prosecution for crimes committed in the dirty war. Only in 2005 did that country’s supreme court rule that those impunity laws were unconstitutional. Since then, many human rights crimes have been prosecuted. Indeed, Reynaldo Bignone, the former dictator, was already in jail when sentenced in May for his role in Operation Condor. He had been convicted in 2010 of kidnapping, torture, and murder in the years of the dirty war. As of March, Argentina’s Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) had recorded 666 convictions for participation in the crimes of that era.
But there’s a question that can’t help but arise: What’s the point of bringing such old men to trial four decades later? How could justice delayed for that long be anything but justice denied?
One answer is that, late as they are, such trials still establish something that all the books and articles in the world can’t: an official record of the terrible crimes of Operation Condor. This is a crucial step in the process of making its victims, and the nations involved, whole again. As a spokesperson for CELS told the Wall Street Journal, “Forty years after Operation Condor was formally founded, and 16 years after the judicial investigation began, this trial produced valuable contributions to knowledge of the truth about the era of state terrorism and this regional criminal network.”
It took four decades to get those convictions. Theoretically at least, Americans wouldn’t have to wait that long to bring our own war criminals to account. I’ve spent the last few years of my life arguing that this country must find a way to hold accountable officials responsible for crimes in the so-called war on terror. I don’t want the victims of those crimes, some of whom are still locked up, to wait another 40 years for justice.
Nor do I want the United States to continue its slide into a brave new world, in which any attack on a possible enemy anywhere or any curtailment of our own liberties is permitted as long as it makes us feel “secure.” It’s little wonder that the presumptive Republican presidential candidate feels free to run around promising yet more torture and murder. After all, no one’s been called to account for the last round. And when there is no official acknowledgement of, or accountability for, thewaging of illegal war, international kidnapping operations, the indefinite detention without prospect of trial of prisoners at Guantánamo,and, of course, torture, there is no reason not to do it all over again. Indeed, according to Pew Research Center polls, Americans are nowmore willing to agree that torture is sometimes justified than they were in the years immediately following the 9/11 attacks.
Torture and the U.S. Prison System
In a recent piece of mine, I focused on Abu Zubaydah, a prisoner the CIA tortured horribly, falsely claiming he was a top al-Qaeda operative, knew about a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and might even have trained some of the 9/11 pilots. “In another kind of world,” I wrote, Abu Zubaydah “would be exhibit one in the war crimes trials of America’s top leaders and its major intelligence agency.” Although none of the charges against him proved true, he is still held in isolation at Guantánamo.
Then something surprising happened. I received an email message from someone I’d heard of but never met. Joseph Margulies was the lead counsel in Rasul v. Bush, the first (and unsuccessful) attempt to get the Supreme Court to allow prisoners at Guantánamo to challenge their detention in federal courts. He is also one of Abu Zubaydah’s defense attorneys.
He directed me to an article of his, “War Crimes in a Punitive Age,” that mentioned my Abu Zubaydah essay. I’d gotten the facts of the case right, he assured me, but added, “I suspect we are not in complete agreement” on the issue of what justice for his client should look like. As he wrote in his piece,
”There is no question that Zubaydah was the victim of war crimes. The entire CIA black site program [the Agency’s Bush era secret prisons around the world] was a global conspiracy to evade and violate international and domestic law. Yet I am firmly convinced there should be no war crimes prosecutions. The call to prosecute is the Siren Song of the carceral state — the very philosophy we need to dismantle.”
In other words, one of the leading legal opponents of everything the war on terror represents is firmly opposed to the idea of prosecuting officials of the Bush administration for war crimes (though he has not the slightest doubt that they committed them). Margulies agrees that the crimes against Abu Zubaydah were all too real and “grave” indeed, and that “society must make its judgment known.” He asks, however, “Why do we believe a criminal trial is the only way for society to register its moral voice?”
He doubts that such trials are the best way to do so, fearing that by placing all the blame for the events of those years on a small number of criminal officials, the citizens of an (at least nominally) democratic country could be let off the hook for a responsibility they, too, should share. After all, it’s unlikely the war on terror could have continued year after year without the support — or at least the lack of interest or opposition — of the citizenry.
Margulies, in other words, raises important questions. When people talk about bringing someone to justice they usually imagine a trial, a conviction, and perhaps most important, punishment. But he has reminded me of my own longstanding ambivalence about the equation between punishment and justice.
Even as we call for accountability for war criminals, we shouldn’t forget that we live in the country that jails the largest proportion of its own population (except for the Seychelles islands), and that holds the largest number of prisoners in the world. Abuse and torture — including rape, sexual humiliation, beatings, and prolonged exposure to extremes of heat and cold — are routine realities of the U.S. prison system. Solitary confinement — presently being experienced by at least 80,000 people in our prisons and immigrant detention centers — should also be considered a potentially psychosis-inducing form of torture.
Every nation that institutionalizes torture, as the United States has done, selects specific groups of people as legitimate targets for its application. In the days of Operation Condor, Chilean torturers called their victims “humanoids” to distinguish them from actual human beings. Surely, though, the United States hasn’t done that? Surely, there’s no history of the torture of particular groups? Sadly, of course, such a history does exist, and like so many things in this country, it’s all about race.
The practice of torture in the U.S. didn’t start with those post-9/11 “enhanced interrogation techniques,” nor with the Vietnam War’s Phoenix Program, nor even with the nineteenth century U.S. war in the Philippines. It began when European settlers first treated native peoples and enslaved Africans as subhuman savages. As southern farmers started importing captured Africans to augment their supply of indentured English labor, they quickly realized that there was little incentive for those slaves to work — none but the pain of whippings, mutilations, and brandings, and the threat of yet more pain. Torture and slavery, in other words, were fused at the root. From the first arrival of black people on this continent, it has been permissible, even legal, to torture them.
And it didn’t stop with emancipation. After the end of slavery, southern states began the practice of convict leasing — arresting former slaves and then their descendants, often on trumped-up charges, and renting them out as labor to farmers and later coal mine owners who had the power and legal right to whip and abuse them as they chose.
Then there’s lynching. Many people think of it as an extrajudicial death by hanging. As it was practiced in the Jim Crow South, however, it was a form of public, state-approved torture, often involving the castration or disembowelment of the living victim, sometimes followed by death by fire. Lynching thus continued the practice of treating black minds and bodies as legitimate targets of torture. So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that, of the more than two million prisoners in the United States today, 40% are black, while the U.S. population is only 13% black.
Here’s the problem, then. When we say that putting George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and other top officials in their administration in prison for war crimes would be justice, we endorse a criminal justice system that is more criminal than just, and where torture is a daily occurrence.
Do we want to do to Bush, Cheney, and their accomplices essentially what they did to their victims? There is, of course, a certain appeal to the idea of someday seeing such powerful white men among the suffering, tortured millions in our prison system, or even — like the supposed “dirty bomber”José Padilla and Abu Zubaydah — in perpetual solitary confinement.
And yet, would this truly provide even a facsimile of justice, given that American prisons are hardly instruments of justice to begin with? Those opposed to the acts at the heart of America’s never-ending war on terror were heartened when President Obama ordered the CIA “black sites” dismantled globally. We continue to demand the closing of Guantánamo (something that looks increasingly unlikely to happen in his presidency). How, then, can we find justice through a prison system that uses similar methods on an everyday basis here in the U.S.?
Forty Years to Go?
And then, of course, there is the question: Whom should justice truly serve?
The first answer is: the victims of the “war on terror,” including those who were tortured, those detained without trial, the civilian “collateral damage” of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the “unintended” victims of drone assassinations. Then there are all those in the rest of the world who have to live with the threat of a nuclear-armed superpower that has in these years regularly refused to recognize the most basic aspects of the rule of law.
Many who work with survivors of organized repression like Operation Condor say that their primary desire is not the punishment of their oppressors but official acknowledgement of what happened to them. In his New Yorkerarticle, Wechsler, for instance, pointed out that, for the victims of torture, accountability may not be identical to punishment at all.
“People don’t necessarily insist that the former torturers go to jail — there has been enough of jail — but they do want to see the truth established… It’s a mysteriously powerful, almost magical notion, because often everybody already knows the truth — everyone knows who the torturers were and what they did, the torturers know that everyone knows, and everyone knows that they know.”
Seeing “the truth established” was the purpose behind South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Torturers and murderers on both sides of the anti-apartheid struggle were offered amnesty for their crimes — but only after they openly acknowledged those crimes. In this way, a public record of the horrors of apartheid was built, and imperfect as the process may have been, the nation was able to confront its history.
That is the kind of reckoning we need in this country. It started with the release of a summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s torture program, which brought many brutal details into the light. But that’s just the beginning. We would need a full and public accounting not just of the CIA’s activities, but of the doings of other military and civilian agencies and outfits, including the Joint Special Operations Command. We also would need a full-scale airing of the White House’s drone assassination program, and perhaps most important of all, a full accounting of the illegal, devastating invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Justice would also require — to the extent possible — making whole those who had been harmed. In the case of the “war on terror,” this might begin by allowing torture victims to sue their torturers in federal court (as the U.N. Convention against Torture requires). With one exception, the Obama administration has until now blocked all such efforts on national security grounds. In the case of the Iraq War, justice would undoubtedly also require financial reparations to repair the infrastructure of what was once a modern, developed nation.
We’re unlikely to see justice in the “war on terror” until that cruel and self-defeating exercise is well and truly over and the country has officially acknowledged and accounted for its crimes. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another 40 years.
Rebecca Gordon, a TomDispatch regular, teaches in the philosophy department at the University of San Francisco. She is the author of American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes (Hot Books). Her previous books include Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States and Letters from Nicaragua.
June 7, 2016
Rival Cyprus leaders map out intensified peace talks
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — The rival leaders of ethnically divided Cyprus are meeting to take stock of where things stand in reunification talks ahead of an intensified phase of negotiations aiming at a peace deal by year’s end.
President Nicos Anastasiades, a Greek Cypriot, and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci are meeting at a U.N. compound Wednesday to outline the points the agree and disagree on before launching the stepped-up talks.
Anastasiades said this would help make talks more productive by focusing efforts on tackling disagreements in forging a federation.
It’s their first meeting after Anastasiades paused the talks over a perceived bid to diplomatically upgrade the island’s breakaway Turkish Cypriot north.
A Turkish invasion in the wake of a 1974 coup aiming at union with Greece carved Cyprus along ethnic lines.
News Guide: Clinton, Trump sharpen contrasts for matchup
WASHINGTON (AP) — With a splash of history and a dose of reassurance, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican Donald Trump claimed their parties’ presidential nominations and are turning their political guns on each other.
Clinton claimed her place in history as the nation’s first woman ever assured a major party’s presidential nomination. Trump seized the chance to speak in more unifying, substantive tones as Republican leaders have demanded in recent days.
And for Bernie Sanders, Tuesday’s contests offered the chance to cap a remarkable and resilient campaign to level the American playing field — one that vexed the Clinton armada for a solid year. But Tuesday’s contests gave Sanders a new taste of victory, and he said he wasn’t yet done.
Political mathletes get to stand down after the final contest of the primaries in District of Columbia June 14.
Here’s a look at how Tuesday’s contests unfolded:
THE BASICS
The evening offered 694 Democratic delegates up for grabs in New Jersey, California, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota. The District of Columbia, which offers 20 delegates, is the last to vote.
As Tuesday turned to Wednesday, Clinton won three states while Sanders took Montana and North Dakota. California remained uncalled.
On the Republican side? That’s all, folks.
The ferocious 17-way battle for the GOP nomination ended quietly Tuesday with the contest’s final votes in five states (there was no GOP contest in North Dakota). Trump is the only remaining GOP candidate.
Technically, it’s still not over on either side. Neither Clinton nor Trump will be their parties’ official nominees until the formalities of the delegate votes at the parties’ national conventions. Associated Press counts of Republican and Democratic convention delegates have found enough support to assure Clinton and Trump their parties’ nominations.
___
WHY IT MATTERS FOR CLINTON
This time, Clinton got the celebration she’d hoped for in 2008 — and by many accounts, long before that.
Emotional from the moment she stepped onstage at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Clinton made clear she considers the competition with Sanders over and delivered yet another broadside against Trump.
The speech was also notable for its timing: The event comes on the eight-year anniversary of Clinton’s concession speech to then-Sen. Barack Obama, in which she noted her campaign hadn’t breached “that highest, hardest glass ceiling” but that barrier now had “about 18 million cracks in it.”
She’s now assured of crossing a boundary as the first woman to win the presidential nomination of any party. How she proceeds toward Election Day begins with mending the stubborn split between her supporters and Sanders’ — and depends significantly on how well she learns a bracing lesson he taught her: Young people, especially young women, flocked to him in the primaries.
The occasion also opens the gates to flashy endorsements. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi didn’t wait for the votes Tuesday to announce her support. There’s a bigger endorsement on the horizon from President Obama, followed by joint appearances.
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WHY IT MATTERS FOR TRUMP
The contests Tuesday gave the billionaire mogul a high-profile way to pivot from several difficult days in which members of his own party nearly unanimously ordered him to cease his criticism of an American-born judge based on the jurist’s ethnicity.
In his victory speech, Trump spoke of new beginnings.
“We’re only getting started, and it’s gonna be beautiful,” Trump said at his golf course in Westchester County, N.Y., calling it an “honor” to lead the GOP. “I understand the responsibility of carrying the mantle.”
“Tonight we close one chapter of history and we begin another.”
He also spoke of issues — trade, economic prosperity and more.
His words were far closer to the tone and approach Republicans have been demanding in the weeks since Trump’s remaining rivals surrendered the contest — a sign, perhaps, that he was starting to turn away from the combative and impulsive style that served him well in the primaries and toward fulfilling his promise to unite the fractured party.
For at least one high-profile Republican, it was too late: Sen. Mark Kirk, who is in a tough re-election fight in Illinois, rescinded his endorsement of Trump. House Speaker Paul Ryan kept his but called Trump’s remarks about the judge “racist” and suggested that the mature thing for Trump to do would be to admit they were wrong.
That didn’t happen. But instead of attacking his critics, Trump offered signs he was turning a corner.
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OBAMA ENDORSEMENT?
Not yet.
Obama called Clinton on Tuesday night to congratulate her for securing “the delegates necessary to clinch” the Democratic nomination.
But the president did not formally endorse Clinton. The president also called Sanders to praise him for shining a spotlight on economic inequality and energizing millions of voters.
The White House said Sanders requested a meeting with Obama. The meeting is scheduled for Thursday at the White House.
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CONTESTED REPUBLICAN CONVENTION?
Nope.
Regardless of how many GOP politicians come out against Donald Trump, the math says they can’t contest his nomination.
With his victories Tuesday, Trump now has at least 1,441 bound delegates who are required by party rules to vote for him at the convention. It takes 1,237 delegates to win the GOP nomination.
Trump also has public support from 95 unbound delegates, but they could possibly change their minds and switch to another candidate.
Several Republicans in Congress are criticizing Trump for saying a federal judge could not preside fairly over a case involving Trump University because of his Mexican heritage.
GOP Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona said Trump’s comments could spur talk of a challenge at the convention.
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WHAT ABOUT BERNIE?
For Sanders, Tuesday presented an opportunity to emerge from the race with significant gravitas in the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign.
But first, he insisted he’s going to continue to fight for the working class and for low-income people in the remaining contest and perhaps beyond.
Sanders planned to travel to Vermont on Wednesday and head to Washington Thursday for meetings and a rally.
His campaign, meanwhile, sent out a fundraising email Tuesday evening urging supporters to help him finish strong June 14 in the District of Columbia contest.
And his North Dakota win gave Sanders a shot of good news amid Clinton’s celebration.
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IN HOUSE ELECTION NEWS …
In North Carolina Tuesday, Rep. Renee Ellmers, endorsed by Trump, became the first Republican incumbent ousted in this year’s primaries. Rep. George Holding defeated her in a contest resulting from redrawn district lines.
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AND IN SENATE ELECTION NEWS….
California is sending two Democratic women running for the U.S. Senate to the November ballot: Attorney General Kamala Harris and Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Orange County, running against each other.
They were among 34 candidates seeking the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer. Under California election rules only two candidates — the top vote-getters — advance to the November election.
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Associated Press writers Stephen Ohlemacher, Kathleen Hennessey, Ken Thomas, Alan Fram, Nancy Benac and Michael Blood contributed to this report.
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Follow Laurie Kellman on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/APLaurieKellman
EgyptAir flight lands in Uzbekistan after bomb threat
CAIRO (AP) — Egyptians officials say a bomb threat has forced an EgyptAir plane en route to Beijing from Cairo to make an emergency landing in Uzbekistan.
The passengers have been evacuated and the aircraft is now being searched.
The plane, an Airbus A-330-220 with 135 passengers and crew on board, landed in Uzbekistan three hours after it took off from Cairo at around 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
The plane landed at the airport in the town of Urgench, about 840 kilometers (600 miles) west of the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.
The officials say said an anonymous caller telephoned security agents at the Cairo airport to say that a bomb was on board the flight. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
Clinton seizes historic primary win
NEW YORK (AP) — Powered by a strong showing in California, Hillary Clinton declared victory in her yearlong battle for the heart of the Democratic party, seizing her place in history and setting out on the difficult task of fusing a fractured party to confront Donald Trump.
Clinton cruised to easy victories in three of the six state contests on Tuesday — including delegate-rich New Jersey. With each win she further solidified Sen. Bernie Sanders’ defeat and dashed his already slim chances of using the last night of state contests to refuel his flagging bid.
The much-needed winning streak allowed Clinton to celebrate her long-sought “milestone” — the first woman poised to lead a major political party’s presidential ticket. Standing before a flag-waving crowd in Brooklyn, the former secretary of state soaked up the cheers and beamed.
“Barriers can come down. Justice and equality can win,” she said. “This campaign is about making sure there are no ceilings, no limits on any of us. This is our moment to come together.”
Clinton had already secured the delegates needed for the nomination before Tuesday’s contests, according to an Associated Press tally. Still, Sanders had hoped to use a victory in California to persuade party insiders to switch their allegiances. Sanders picked up wins in Montana and North Dakota. But Clinton’s substantial lead in California made it clear his effort was faltering.
Sanders vowed to continue to his campaign to the very last contest in the District of Columbia on next Tuesday.
“The struggle continues,” he said.
Sanders is under intense pressure from top Democrats hoping to coax him gently out of the race, win over his voters and turn to the task of challenging Trump.
Despite the pledge to solider on, there were signs Sanders was listening. In his typically passionate remarks, the socialist firebrand repeatedly noted “we are in this together” and argued that a base tenet of his campaign was that “we will not allow right-wing Republicans to control our government.”
Sanders said he called Clinton to congratulate her on the victories.
The senator is scheduled to return home to Burlington on Wednesday, before coming to Washington Thursday for meetings and a campaign rally.
President Barack Obama called both Sanders and Clinton late Tuesday, congratulating both on their campaigns. The White House said Sanders and Obama would meet Thursday, at Sanders’ request, to discuss “how to build on the extraordinary work he has done to engage millions of Democratic voters, and to build on that enthusiasm.”
Clinton and Sanders are also expected to connect in the coming days, Clinton’s spokesman said late Tuesday. The candidates’ campaign managers spoke earlier in the day, signaling that conversations were underway about the road ahead.
As the Democratic race was wrapping up, Republicans were unraveling anew. Despite handily winning GOP contests in California, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota and Montana, presumptive nominee Trump was in damage control mode over his race-based attacks on a Hispanic judge that had party leaders in fits. After one senator rescinded his endorsement and House Speaker Paul Ryan called the comments “racist,” Trump sought to calm worries with a rare, scripted victory speech.
“I understand the responsibility of carrying the mantle and I will never, ever let you down – too much work, too many people, blood, sweat and tears,” Trump said, reading from a teleprompter at a rally at one of his golf courses in suburban New York City. “I will make you proud of your party and our movement, and that’s what it is, is a movement.”
Trump went on to preview what Clinton has ahead of her: He blasted the former secretary of state and first lady as the defender of a “rigged” political system. He promised to deliver a longer speech on the Clintons “probably Monday.”
“The Clintons have turned the politics of personal enrichment into an art form for themselves. They’ve made hundreds of millions of dollars selling access, selling favors, selling government contracts, and I mean hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said.
In her remarks, Clinton was similarly hard-edged, saying Trump was “temperamentally unfit to be commander in chief.”
“When he says let’s make America great again, that’s code for let’s take America backward,” she said.
Clinton’s moment came a day after she secured the necessary 2,383 delegates, according to the AP tally. Her victories on Tuesday added to the count, which includes pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses, as well as superdelegates — the party officials and officeholders who can back a candidate of their choosing.
Sanders and some in his army of die-hard supporters expressed frustration about the survey. As he addressed supporters in Los Angeles, the crowd chanted “Media is corrupt.”
Both Clinton and Trump made overtures toward an energized and passionate pool of voters. Trump noted he and Sanders both oppose the president’s Pacific Rim trade deal, and he sympathized with frustration for having “been left out in the cold by a rigged system of super delegates.”
Clinton thanked the senator for driving the debate over economic mobility and income inequality and tried to show she absorbed some of his message. Mostly, she expressed empathy of a candidate who knows the bitter taste of defeat.
“It never feels good to put our heart into a cause or a candidate you believe in and come up short,” she said. “I know that feeling well. But as we look ahead to the battle that awaits, let’s remember all that unites us.”
But for Clinton, the night was largely about marking the moment.
Her campaign produced a video to introduce her speech, chronicling women’s rise in politics from the suffragettes through Clinton’s concession to speech to then-Sen. Barack Obama, eight years ago Tuesday when she thanked supporters for helping her put “18 million cracks” in the “highest, hardest glass ceiling.”
Iraqi forces push deeper into Islamic State-held Fallujah
NAYMIYAH, Iraq (AP) — Iraq’s elite counterterrorism forces say they have pushed deeper into Islamic State-held Fallujah, more than two weeks after the operation to retake the city from the militant group started.
Maj Gen Hadi Zayid Kassar, the deputy commander of the operation with the counterterrorism forces, says that after securing the southern edge of the city on Sunday, Iraqi special forces pushed into the neighborhood of Shuhada on Wednesday morning.
IS has controlled Fallujah, which is located about 65 kilometers (40 miles) from Baghdad, for more than two years.
The operation to retake the city is expected to be one of the most difficult yet — Fallujah is symbolically important to the militant group and has long been a bastion of support for anti-government militants since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Egypt officials: Bomb threat forced an EgyptAir flight from Cairo to Beijing to make emergency landing in Uzbekistan
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt officials: Bomb threat forced an EgyptAir flight from Cairo to Beijing to make emergency landing in Uzbekistan.
The Latest: Trump tightens grip on GOP nomination
WASHINGTON (AP) — The latest developments in the 2016 campaign for the presidency. All times EDT:
3:25 a.m.
Donald Trump is tightening his grip on the Republican nomination for president, winning at least 297 delegates in Tuesday’s primaries — the last five contests of the primary season.
Six delegates in California are still left to be allocated because of incomplete results in individual congressional districts.
With no one else left in the race, Trump easily won all five Republican primaries Tuesday.
He has 1,536 delegates. It takes 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination for president.
