Velvet Gjelten Covers Iron Fist

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Tom Gjelten weighed in Thursday morning to explain how US-supported torture states are one of the greatest assets to the United States in its "war on terror." Gjelten - in yet another NPR report [see Wednesday's ME piece] warning of the grave terrorism & security threats produced by a free, open Internet - used the uprising in Egypt as a chance to once again champion the benefits of torture and authoritarian rule:

Gjelten: "Egyptian democracy activists, nevertheless, complained the Obama Administration moved too slowly. If so, that could be because pushing too hard in Egypt on one goal could set back progress somewhere else. Promoting Internet freedom, for example, might have been seen as competing with the goal of fighting terrorism. And that's an area where the U.S. relies on Egypt, according to Richard Clarke, a counterterrorism adviser to Presidents Clinton and Bush.

Clarke: "The Egyptian role in counterterrorism has been essential to us for the last 15 to 20 years. They've been one of the best allies we've had in the fight against al-Qaida and other radical groups.

On its face this all sounds rather bureaucratic, bland, and acceptable. Gjelten uses positive terms like "progress" "fighting terrorism" and "relies on Egypt," and former US official Clarke speaks in likewise euphemistic and glowing terms: "role in counterterrorism" "essential to us" and "one of the best allies..." But consider for a moment what these empty words and phrases actually refer to.

Among the Egyptian security services techniques that have been so "essential" to "progress" are documented cases of severe beatings, electroshocks to all parts of the body, suspensions resulting in dislocations, whippings, sexual assaults, rape, threats of rape, torture of children, torture of victims in front of family members, drownings, and of course murder and disappearance. What Tom Gjelten (and NPR) are praising is Egypt's role as an "international centre for interrogation and torture on behalf of other states as part of the 'war on terror'."

Back in the summer of 2009, when Alicia Shepard was pushing her defense of NPR's refusal to call torture torture, she wrote on her blog, "To me, it makes more sense to describe the techniques and skip the characterization." Putting aside the fact that Shepard was well aware that NPR never did or would describe in detail what the US was doing to its detainees, can you imagine how different Gjelten's (and ALL NPR's slanted Egypt coverage) would be if the actual practices and their effects on real human beings were described and the US foreign policy "characterizations"/euphemisms were dropped? Imagine if Gjelten said,

"Having an Egyptian state where detainees know they will be sodomized with sticks, raped, cut with razors, beaten and hung from hooks so that their bones are broken and joints dislocated really helps the US fight terrorism and keep its Middle East agenda in place. It is essential that Egyptians are so terrified of being held by state security forces in Egypt that they dare not organize against US wars on Muslim countries or US/Egyptian support for Israel no matter how unpopular these policies are."

That would be eye-opening! Obviously, such honesty would require a universal standard of decency and morality - instead of one that assumes US government/military goals carry the greatest moral weight with everything else being secondary [not to mention the inherent anti-Arab racism that assumes Arab people deserve nothing but poverty, torture, corruption and dictatorship as long as such conditions support US foreign policy goals.]

Finally, Gjelten's stance is not even internally consistent within the limits of its own sick reasoning. Looked at in a detached and cold-blooded light, one can easily demonstrate that instead of aiding counterterrorism, the US support for torture states (and its own torture practices) serve to swell the ranks of extremists and potential terrorists. In 2005 Naomi Klein wrote how torture is an essential ingredient in the radicalization of extremists. Chris Zambelis brings the issue up to date in 2008 and Glenn Greenwald makes a similar case in 2009. A detached observer might also note that torture produces radically false information, such as the torture confessions in Egypt of al-Libi used to buttress the launch of the Iraq War. Any rational person would have to at least consider that one of the main reasons for supporting torture regimes is to produce more violence and terrorism, thereby sustaining the endless "war on terror" and justifying the grotesque injustices (and spending) involved in this cynical enterprise.

Gjelten concludes his homage to the Iron Fist with this gem:

"The Obama administration may learn whether a new government there, one that more vigorously supports Internet freedom and other democratic values, could be as strong a counterterrorism ally as the Mubarak regime has been."

Gjelten is one scary character...

NPR Black Sites ***Updated***

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UPDATED below [1-26-11]

Just checking in on the torture and authoritarian-watch clock at NPR.

Remember Gulet Mohamed - that young US citizen held, probably tortured, illegally prevented from travelling, and grilled and harassed by the FBI? A week ago I posted on NPR's silence regarding his treatment. Since then, the ACLU sued to get Mohamed off the no-fly list and succeeded in getting him home. Even the Washington Post covered his return. How's NPR doing with on-air coverage? Still nothing, not a word...

And what about Bradley Manning, the young army private - convicted of no crime - who is being held in conditions that are so atrocious that even Amnesty International has weighed in on his case. NPR's on-air coverage? Absolutely nothing about his ill treatment - zilch.

UPDATE

As if to prove that it is nothing but a pro-torture mouthpiece for the new, enhanced Yes We Can Security States of America, NPR finally gets around to covering Gulet Mohamed by covering up his torture, and providing FBI disinformation as a bonus! On Wednesday ME [1-26-11] Jamie Tarabay discusses Gulet Mohamed's situation of being on the no-fly zone - but the fact that he was tortured by the Kuwaitis (with likely US approval) and then grilled relentlessly by the FBI is NEVER mentioned! Tarabay also states as fact that the numbers on Big Brother's no-fly list are "smaller than you think." She's speaking with FBI propagandist, Timothy Healy, director of its Torture Screaming Center Terrorist Screening Center :

Tarbay: "The actual number of people on the no-fly list isn't as high as you might think."

Healy: "About ten thousand. And then the U.S. citizens on the no-fly list is even much smaller, between 500 and 1,000."

Several commenters at the NPR site noted that there are mainstream news reports that show these numbers are probably off by a factor of about 50!

Non-Lethal Weapons are So Funny

"He was in his underwear, that was the experimental protocol. In fact, the first guy up was going to wear a leopard skin pair." (loud chuckle)

So begins NPR's story on the military's non-lethal "heat ray" weapon. David Kestenbaum continues, "The military now has a series of videos: typically a grown man stands calmly in a field, then for no apparent reason, he jumps like he’s been goosed. You can hear the guy holding the video camera chuckle." Golly, hurting people is so funny!

Kestenbaum also informs us that "the military put together another video demonstrating a hypothetical scenario. (sounds of a mob) Some guards are stationed at the entrance to a facility and an angry crowd approaches the barbed wire fence. Are they carrying explosives? Maybe they’re just unhappy citizens? The guards don’t want to have to shoot."

Well that's one scenario, but here's a few other possibilities: "Citizens, already angry at having their country occupied, approach the gates of Abu Ghraib to look for seized relatives are ordered to disperse. When they don't...'" or (closer to home) "Some guards are stationed by the 'free speech' pen outside the Democratic Party Convention and a few rebellious citizens ignore warnings to stay put and decide to walk down the street with their signs -- zap, zap, chuckle, chuckle."

NPR's use of humor and levity (and amnesia) in covering another non-lethal tool of pain in the hands of US authorities really ticks me off given the context of human rights abuses that have been committed - both currently and in the past and at home and abroad - with non-lethal weapons (dogs, tear gas, tasers, pepper spray, etc). For a serious and complicated discussion of this same topic take a look at the report on Democracy Now!