Avuncular American

Gestapo, 1937: "Intensified Interrogation"

EL DE House (Cologne) museum tickets

It was a rainy day in Cologne, and we had time to kill before catching our train back to Brussels.  And there it was on the map, just a couple of blocks away.  A museum in what had been the city's Gestapo HQ.

The "EL DE" House (taking the initials of its builder, Leopold Dahmen) is the home of NSDOK, the National Socialist Documentation Center.  This is definitely a place to visit, especially now that torture is no longer a subject about which Americans can experience schadenfreude or gloating about those bad Nazis.

Deep down in the dungeons of the EL DE house, where prisoners' graffiti has been preserved, your audio guide informs you that the Gestapo joked about the "intensified interrogation" it inflicted on its helpless prisoners.  Already in 2007, The Atlantic documented how the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation techniques" not only sounded like the Nazis' original Verschärfte Vernehmung, but also matched them in their application.

It helps bring home what this means down there in the claustrophobic cells, where there was no hope of escape for the unfortunate Germans, Russians, Poles and others who were rounded up.  Elsewhere in the EL DE House, the birth and rise of the Nazi movement, and its diabolical work to exterminate Jews, Gypsies, and others is painstakingly documented.

All too often, the exhibits show how the torturers were able to pick up with normal life after the war... but what kind of dreams did they have at night?

I share former CIA agent Philip Giraldi's disgust (writing in the American Conservative) with the apologists for "EIT" who will not pronounce the word "torture," and yet who continue to justify the same thing that Nazis did in those dark places.

Apparently we are in a minority; according to a recent poll, some 2/3 of Americans feel that torture was justified.  Former US diplomat Peter Van Buren, in "Torture and the Company We Keep," urges Americans to "Look around at the company you keep.  The people who support torture, six out of ten, are your neighbors, your co-workers, the people on the bus with you..."

In 1945, American soldiers liberated Cologne and freed the prisoners who survived those Nazi torturers in the EL DE house.  What would they have thought if they knew that their fellow citizens, a half century later, would perform similar horrors?

Our Forbidden Places: Journey Into Moroccans' Hearts

Nos lieux interdits

(Leila Kilani, 2008, Morocco)

Documentary film maker and historian Leila Kilani has given us a unique look into contemporary Morocco, through her award-winning film on the country's Equity and Reconciliation Commission, better known as "l'Instance équité et réconciliation" or IER, set up to help heal the wounds of almost four decades of impunity.   Impunity to disappear, to torture, to execute anyone who was deemed an opponent.

The first remarkable thing about this film is that it happened at all.How many countries have given free rein to a group presided over by a former political prisoner, investigating human rights violations committed by the duly constituted government?

The contrast with neighboring Algeria couldn't be greater.  In 2005, Algerians voted for the Charter for National Peace and Reconciliation.  That the intervening years have yielded neither is in large part due to the Charter's denial of responsibility for human rights abuses by state security forces.

In Morocco, where several attempted military coups and opposition by unions and leftist parties were met with equally brutal repression, especially in the Seventies, the IER has operated under an open government admission of culpability.  However, unlike South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Morocco's IER was not empowered to question the torturers and those behind the dark years of repression.  Kilani's film, made with the full cooperation of the government and the IER, documents this conscious omission, but puts the whole process in the context of a national therapy session.

Her technique is deceptively simple: much like Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, to which Nos lieux interdits has been favorably compared (not to worry, it only lasts 108 minutes, unlike Lanzmann's 9-hour film-fleuve), Kilani simply turned the camera on as families and survivors tell their stories or talk with each other.  It is simple and effective.  As the son of one of the disappeared hears his father's contemporaries describe the conditions of his death, we see him flinch, and that split second on film shows Leila Kilani's sensitivity to her subject - and to the real people she films - better than any film reviewer can describe.

Michel Amarger, RFI film critic, told the audience that Kilani's selection of "little people" instead of representatives of victims' groups may have rattled the latter, but it certainly makes for better cinema.  In other, less sensitive hands, Nos lieux interdits might have been simply what Kilani had originally imagined: a filmed travelogue of desolation, cataloging Morocco's former black sites.

King Mohamed VI, speaking of the IER's work (their site has an English version), said that "the truth uncovered is only relative... and absolute truth is known only to God."   Most of the family members are content with even less: the son who bears up to hearing the conditions under which his father died really only wants to give him a decent Islamic burial.

Kilani's film was shown on the margins of Brussels' 4th annual Arab Film Festival, which partnered the showing with "Le P'tit Ciné," part of their documentary series "Travail de mémoire."  Leila Kilani has mastered her two chosen careers, history and film, and her subjects' memories, though painful, are no doubt cathartic.

Morocco has shown the way.  When do we get to see anything remotely similar in post-Bush USA? 

Kafka, Or the Half-Life of Black Lists

Brussels was the venue for a very important human rights conference this past week, but it took place in an academic setting, out of the spotlight but hopefully not entirely unnoticed.

ULB’s October 20 conference, “Terrorism Lists, Executive Powers, and Human Rights,” organized by the European Centre for Constitutional & Human Rights” (ECCHR), aimed very high. It gathered internationally-known jurists from academia and the human rights community, but also “practitioners” from both sides of the bar.

The day-long program started with a debate, Gilles de Kerchove, the EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator versus Mark Muller QC, Chair of the prestigious UK-based Bar Human Rights Committee (BHRC). De Kerchove garnered general admiration for his willingness to appear before a generally critical audience, before which speaker after speaker denounced the politicization of justice represented by the widespread creation, post 9/11, of no-fly lists. Muller stressed the disproportionate impact on open exile groups, whose freedom of expression has been hard hit by the blacklisting by EU member states, often simply copying each other’s lists, or worse, taking verbatim “toxic” lists coming out of the crusading Bush White House.

Kafka in Canada

“Kafkaesque” was used more than once to describe travesties, not of justice, but of what de Kerchove called “administrative procedure.” Those two chilling words have condemned people to much more than getting bumped from flights. In the case of Sudanese-Canadian Abousfian Adelrazik, it resulted in exile, torture, and brushes with death, before concerted legal, civil disobedience, press, and ultimately domestic political pressure shamed the Canadian government into granting a passport to one of its own citizens. “A black man, in a black site, on a black list,” is how Professor Amir Attaran of the University of Ottawa described Abdelrazik, who only escaped death because his case went beyond the courts. He had fallen into the black hole of the black list: “too innocent to charge, too guilty to fly.”

Such a gathering of legal brainpower would not be so rash as to condone terrorism, indeed one speaker denounced terrorism as one of the worst crimes against human rights. But the “craven arbitrariness,” as Attaran called blacklisting, risks subverting separation of powers and the rule of law, through extending and generalizing states of emergency.

“Proscription regimes,” as they are referred to in legal circles - black lists or no-fly lists if you will - give inordinate power to intelligence agencies, and have led to mistakes, misinformation, and deliberate disinformation changing (and ending) lives of sometimes innocent people. Blacklisted people wind up living a sort of non-life, deprived of means of earning a living, or even conducting basic economic activities (ever try to live without money?). Remember, we are sometimes talking about people whose only crime was to oppose dictators in their home countries, often quite peacefully. And once on Country A’s blacklist, it is extremely difficult - even when “cleared” - to be removed from those of Countries B through Z.

How Terrorism Ends (hint: not through war)

One of the most potent arguments opposing the wholesale, and sometimes unquestioning, inclusion of individuals and movements on blacklists came from Oliver Wils, the Director of Berlin-based NGO Berghof Peace Support, active in conflict resolution. Wils cited (as did the US Congress) a 2008 RAND Corporation study How Terrorist Groups End:

The evidence since 1968 indicates that most groups have not ended due to military pressure but because (1) they joined the political process or (2) local police and intelligence agencies arrested or killed key members and that few groups achieved victory within this timeframe.

The ending of most terrorist groups requires a range of policy instruments, such as careful police and intelligence work, military force, political negotiations, and economic sanctions. Yet policymakers need to understand where to prioritize their efforts with limited resources and attention.

The RAND study, noted Wils, shows that only 7% of terrorist groups that operated in the last four decades were put out of action by military force.

The Obama Administration wants to apply “smart power” solutions to problems exacerbated by the Bush Administration’s kinetic “War on Terror.” This week’s conference on the dangers of blacklists highlighted a number of key issues which should be of interest to smart American negotiators, and to European policy makers. With increasing focus on diplomatic solutions, will the Obama Administration pause before acceding to some dictator’s demand to put a legitimate opposition movement - even a liberation movement - on a black list? How many “peace processes” have come to a screeching halt, because one of the parties - The Outs - are declared “terrorists” by The Ins?

This post first appeared in Blogactiv.eu.

"The Army of Crime" - Criminal, Terrorist, or Patriot?

L'Armée du Crime

The lump that was in my throat during the 139 minutes of L'Armée du Crime, Robert Guédiguian's dramatization of the "Manouchian Group" story has subsided, but the emotion remains.  This is a good, old fashioned, based-on-fact war story that needed to be told, and in the veteran French-Armenian director's hands, it has been done justice.

"Justice," such as it was during the dark years of the Nazi Occupation of France and the active collaboration of the Vichy government of Maréchal Pétain, was of course in the hands of the victors.  The Manouchian Group - we know their fate in the film's first moments - is given a show trial and accused of carrying out "terrorist acts" against the occupier.

The film does not actually glorify terrorism - few of the group are natural killers, least of all poet Missak Manouchian, who becomes its leader - but its portrayal of the various assassinations, ambushes, and bombings carried out in Paris is factual.  The Musée de la Résistance Nationale has lent its stamp of approval, even providing an excellent "teachers' guide" available on the film's official site.

The film's poster tells you the essentials: Manouchian's collection of resistance fighters - "Jews, Poles, Hungarians, Italians, Spanish, and Armenians" - came from the ranks of the MOI, la Main-d'oeuvre immigrée, foreign communists who had found refuge in France, and many of whom were veteran anti-fascists from the Spanish Civil War.  The film deftly shows their trajectory from simple immigrant workers lying low during the early days of the Occupation, through uncoordinated individual acts against the Germans, to full-blown integration into what became the Resistance.

Guédiguian has a stable of actors who regularly surface in his films, and one of his regulars, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, playing the composite character of "Commissaire David," manages to incarnate the contradictions and betrayals that were the hallmark of French officialdom's reaction to defeat at the hands of the Germans.  While Darroussin's understated performance captures all the ambiguity, the script sometimes hammers French culpability down our throats, especially when depicting torture by French police - not Nazis.

All of which, Guédiguian tells us, is based on historic documentation.  Even the soundtrack is historically significant: listen to Maurice Chevalier's "Ça sent si bon la France" and savor not only the irony in the 1941 song's selection for the soundtrack, but reflect that the crooner was long shunned after the war for his dalliance with collaboration.

Terrorism, torture... you might get the impression that the director is trying to send a contemporary message while educating his audience on a part of French history often overlooked.  That would be correct: Guédiguian is a committed leftist, who mourns the passing of the kind of militant trade unionism that was the petri dish for the Manouchian Group.

French men and women who remember that their soldiers tortured Algerians in their war of independence but forget that Frenchmen tortured Frenchmen in the Nazi cause will find L'Armée du Crime unnerving.  Americans who acknowledge that "enhanced interrogation" has been carried out in their name will be reminded that water torture is not always as clean and clinical as shown in stock Pentagon or CIA footage.  And we used to think it was only the Gestapo that did such despicable things.

At least the 23 members of the Manouchian Group, tortured and executed in the dank dungeons along the Seine for their adopted country, now have a fitting cinematic tribute to their bravery.

Reminders of the Bush Legacy: Torture, Iraq

It's been a while since I used my Iraq and Torture category tags.

For the latter, I've not written about torture since the Inauguration of President Obama.  Now not a day goes by without a new revelation about the depths of the previous administration's depravity, or a call for investigation, prosecution, accountability, or just plain truth.

On Iraq, well, that's been overshadowed by concerns over systemic survival and other cosmic economic matters.  But Iraq, as Secretary of State Clinton would tell us after her lightning visit this weekend, will not be forgotten: "As we draw down militarily, we will deepen our civilian cooperation," she said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Nor will future generations be likely to forget Iraq, as they'll be paying for the "$3 Trillion War" for the foreseeable future.

Five years ago, you'd never have known that costs were a concern, or that the price of the Bush war on Iraq would include the soul of the United States.  Back then, the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC, Paul Bremer's hand-picked coterie of exiles from Saddam Hussein) apparently had nothing better to do than dream up a new symbolic flag for the country that was then tearing itself apart outside the Green Zone (see image, thanks to CRW "Flags of the World," of the ill-fated flag unveiled 26 April, 2004).  The flag was such a laughing stock that it joined other great IGC/CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) ideas in the dustbin of history.

While Viceroy Bremer and the IGC were playing at governance within the Emerald City, the niceties of torture were being observed at places like Abu Ghraib.  Just like the trillions that will haunt future generations, so too will the images of torture and abuse - soon to be multiplied by additional, graphic, horrors to be released next month.  Will that include photographic evidence of the sexual abuse of women and children that Seymour Hersh alluded to five years ago?

At a recent Brussels discussion of President Obama's 100 day report card, someone had the temerity to suggest that there was no difference between George W. Bush and Barack Obama, only "stylistic" changes.  It was all I could do to remain diplomatic and suggest that there were in fact many crucial policy differences, and a monumental moral difference.

The "Program" that Bush liked to justify was nothing other than what autocrats, bullies, and zealots have justified over the centuries, that the ends justified the means, and that only they could define what is permitted/forbidden, good/bad, us/them...  It was called "the unitary Presidency."

Those days are over, but should not be forgotten.  Today, in a style and with an erudition that few journalists can match, Frank Rich of the New York Times showed us the link between torture and Iraq.   The link was a straight line, drawn by crooked men.

Dubya We Hardly Knew Ye

In some ways, we think we know George W. Bush too well.

He's been President of the United States for eight interminable years.  Today begins his last full week, for those who don't have the official Countdown Out of Office Calendar.

For the 3,000 to 5,000 American families who homes are repossessed daily, Bush has a permanent place in their broken hearts.

To the families of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died since his invasion of their country, "Boosh" will be shorthand for their multiple reasons to hate.  To the families of American soldiers killed there, they will not be able to see his name without remembering who sent their sons and daughters to his war of choice.

And for generations of Americans to come, he will be remembered as the leader who saddled them with insurmountable debt and a stricken economy, rivaling Herbert Hoover in opprobrium.

(Thanks to MAD Magazine and Warner Bros. for their unforgettable poster)

But do we know George W. Bush at all?  Don't look for much help in his endless series of "legacy" interviews, where he finds fault with everyone but himself for the country's parlous state.  Not much help either from the "biopic" by Oliver Stone, despite Josh Brolin's best efforts at impersonification, as Dubya might say.  What is George W. Bush?

Anti-government? (though he expanded both government payroll and national debt as no President before him).  Christianist zealot? (though jeopardized the lives of his fellow religionists in the Middle East, who lost a longtime safe haven in Iraq).  "Master of Business Administration?" (his MBA got him nowhere in "managing" the meltdown brought on by his policy of malign neglect).  I suspect the books analyzing his psyche will continue to be legion, to be added to groaning bookshelves full of tomes attacking his policies while in office.

My apologies to fans of the Irish tune "Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye," and to Kenneth O'Donnell, who appropriated the title for his book on the lamented John F. Kennedy.  No one will lament Dubya.  But he remains an enigma.

I've been reminded by conservative readers that W. probably won't be - and they think he shouldn't be - tried for war crimes.  On the prediction, they're probably right.  On his guilt, well you just have to read the indictment.  It will take more than four or eight years of an Obama Administration to wash away the stain that Bush's torture policies left on a sullied American reputation.

But here's a Travel Warning to the soon-to-be-ex-President: if I were you, I would avoid travel to democratic countries that have an independent judiciary.  Once out of office, the aura of the US Presidency and the immunity it affords will no longer be a force to dissuade prosecutors who respect human rights.  You might just get pursued beyond the borders of Crawford, so it might be best to lie low.

And please, please, don't write any books.  Even Spell Check won't be able to correct your twisting of the language, and of the truth.  Just cut some brush, and fade away.  We won't be needing your advice any more, thank you.

Shoes? Throw the book at Bush & Cheney

Full disclosure: I enjoyed watching, and replaying, the shoe incident in Iraq as much as anyone.  Muntazer al-Zaidi might be suffering a few broken bones, but he's probably lucky that the Iraqi security people got to him before a Secret Service bullet.  And thanks to Emine Saner in yesterday's Guardian, we have a cultural guide to insult symbolism throughout the world.

But here's the thing: if getting a pair of shoes thrown at him is the worst that George W. Bush experiences, then he's getting off very lightly.  If anything, al-Zaidi's gesture of frustration is symbolic of the feelings of millions, not just in the Arab world, who will see Bush take leave of Washington on January 20 and say to themselves:  That's all?  He just walks away?

Bush and his VP Cheney deserve more than ineffective (but entertaining) gestures.  They deserve a hearing - in court.  Blogger/lawyers Scott Horton of Harper's and Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com have done yeoman work over the years documenting the Bush Administration's transgressions of US law and the Constitution, especially in the matter of torture.  They focus on the truly important, while the rest of us get distracted by shoes, Blagojevich, and Madoff.

The latter are, despite their apparently brazen corruption, ultimately transitory characters.  Bush and Cheney, however, have bequeathed America a stain that will be long lasting.   So they deserve - not just shoes - but the book.

Trouble in the Homes of Human Rights

By homes, I mean France and the United States.

Don't get me wrong: both countries respect human rights to a great degree (though not unreservedly: see Gitmo, torture, Abu Ghraib).  Certainly more than many places on this earth.

France even has a junior minister in charge of human rights, though to listen to her boss the Foreign Minister, the Sarkozy administration apparently has doubts as to the utility of the post.  Talk about lousy timing: his remarks guaranteed conflicting headlines on the very day that the UN is marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In Washington, the State Department handed out awards in the service of human rights to some of its own: the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe and the Political Section chief in Sri Lanka.  Both very deserving, they were joined by a Russian human rights campaigner/journalist at the ceremony.

France was right to create a sub-cabinet level post to call attention to human rights abuses, and the junior minister has been outspoken.  And the United States State Department is right to persist in its efforts to document abuse by other countries, even while the current US administration sullies the reputation of the country that used to lead the way in the field.

Here's hoping that the 61st anniversary this time next year will allow unequivocal adherence to the quest for human rights in the two countries which owe their founding to that very cause.

What's the Bush Legacy Worth? I'd Say 20 Years

If you can stomach it, read excerpts from George W. Bush's "interview" with his sister (?) for National Public Radio on his legacy: "I came to Washington with a set of values, and I'm leaving with the same set of values."

Values.  I did a word search in the White House transcript for words like "torture," "financial crisis," and "depression," but came up with naught.

True to form, the born-again President looks to a higher Father: "I have recognized I am a lowly sinner seeking redemption."  How convenient.  We'll never know whether he'll be redeemed, as that's between him and his Creator.

Earthbound punishment for torture is another matter.  According to lawyer Scott Horton - Justice After Bush: Prosecuting An Outlaw Administration - in the current Harpers

18 U.S.C. § 2340 makes it a crime for any “person acting under the color of law” to “inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control.” The penalty for this crime—as Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel carefully noted in a 2003 memo on the subject—is up to twenty years in federal prison.

Twenty years...  That's about as long as it will take for the United States to dig out from the mess he has created.  Two decades of undoing the harm to the nation's working and middle classes.  Twenty long years of hard labor - starting with an Obama Administration - to build up the nation's moral standing in the world, after the blustering buffoons (Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld) squandered the country's ability to lead.

The White House released the transcript on "Black Friday."  How appropriate.  As he prepares to scurry off to Crawford - maybe the only place safe from international arrest warrants - Bush leaves behind a country where Black Friday shoppers literally - and lethally - stampede in the rush to the bottom.  Into a Wal-Mart, to buy what?  Melamine-tainted Chinese-made candy?  Toxic toys?  Quite a Christmas that will make.

Quite a legacy, Mr. Bush.

L'Ennemi Intime - France in Algeria

Florent-Emilio Siri's 2007 film "L'Ennemi Intime" (The Intimate Enemy) has been referred to by more than one reviewer as "the French 'Platoon.'"  While it happens to be an excellent Vietnam film and one of Oliver Stone's best, I wouldn't rate "Platoon" in quite the same historical category as "L'Ennemi Intime."

The main difference?  Siri's film is written by French historian and documentary film maker Patrick Rotman, who himself made a three part documentary by the same title in 2002.  "L'Ennemi Intime," whether the Siri/Rotman feature film or the Rotman documentary, transports the audience into the hell that was France's war in Algeria from 1954 to Algerian independence in 1962.

For those whose sole reference for cinematic treatment of the Algerian war is the timeless "Battle of Algiers," I highly recommend "L'Ennemi Intime" (for an excellent resume of the Algerian war oeuvre - in French - see DVDtoile.com and this in the Herald Tribune).  Siri and Rotman, while trying to make this tough subject accessible to the film-going public, obviously had both education and posterity in mind when they created the film's official website.  Few film makers have exhibited such a serious approach to educating their public: there's a teaching guide, bibliography, interactive map, lexicon...

But what about the film, you're asking?  Steel yourself for: the aftereffects of napalm (not only used in Vietnam); torture of captured Algerians by French soldiers; collective punishment of civilians by both sides; and the "sourire Kabyle" (throat-slitting by FLN of French soldiers or suspected sympathizers)... It's a tough film, but portrays this "sale guerre" with true attention to historical detail.

The casting is first rate: just compare Rotman's documentary to Siri's film, and you see how much lead actors Benoit Magimel and Albert Dupontel look like the real conscripts sent off to maintain "Algerie Francaise."  Fellag (playing, appropriately, a captive FLN "fellagha") and other North African actors have key roles, showing how torn Algerians were between colonial occupiers and guerrillas fighting in the "zone interdite."  The location filming in next-door Morocco is an excellent stand-in for Kabylie of 1959; Cesar-nominated cinematographer Gianni Fiore Coltellacci provides haunting images.

The "fog of war" is ever-present; whether on night patrol or scanning the craggy valleys with binoculars by day, no one is ever quite sure whose side the others are on.  And as Patrick Rotman shows in his documentary of the same name, "the intimate enemy" is sometimes yourself.  How do you go back to life in Swinging Sixties France after you've tortured a prisoner?

Some day, a director might make an "American Ennemi Intime," where the moral fog of the War on Terror catches up with those who carried out - or who ordered - "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Alistair Horne, whose book "A Savage War of Peace" remains the English-language reference on the Algerian war of independence, and has been called "Bush's Favorite Historian," tried to instruct former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the parallels between Algeria and Iraq after seeing the news from Abu Ghraib.  Appropriate in its lack of appreciation for irony, Rumsfeld wrote this back to Horne: "as you well know, we do not believe in torture..."

As the poster for "L'Ennemi Intime" says: "Il n'y a pas pire ennemi que soi-meme" - you're your own worst enemy.  We may have to wait a long time for an American equivalent.