Peace and Justice Post

A psychologist whose research was used in constructing the US’s program to torture terrorism suspects has been granted a $31-million no-bid Army contract to provide “resilience training” to US soldiers.

Mark Benjamin at Salon.com reports that University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman’s research “formed the psychological underpinnings of the Bush administration’s torture program.”

The Army awarded the “sole source” contract in February to the University of Pennsylvania for resilience training, or teaching soldiers to better cope with the psychological strain of multiple combat tours. The university’s Positive Psychology Center, directed by famed psychologist Martin Seligman, is conducting the resilience training.

Army contracting documents show that nobody else was allowed to bid on the resilience-training contract because “there is only one responsible source due to a unique capability provided, and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.” And yet, Salon was able to identify resilience training experts at other institutions around the country, including the University of Maryland and the Mayo Clinic. In fact, in 2008 the Marine Corps launched a project with UCLA to conduct resilience training for Marines and their families at nine military bases across the United States and in Okinawa, Japan.

In a 2009 article, the New York Times described Seligman’s small but crucial role in the establishment of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on terrorism suspects before the techniques were suspended in 2008.

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A Statement by the Asian Human Rights Commission, Oct 15, 2010

It is diluting the UN ICCPR and CAT by having reservations against many of their provisions.

The ratification of the of UN International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights (ICCPR) and the UN convention against Torture (CAT) this June had come after a valiant struggle by the human rights movement and had raised new hopes among the civil society and made them convinced of Pakistan’s commitment for restoring the rule of law. They were mistaken. All the happiness proved to be a premature celebration of a victory that was not worth the paper, which it was written on. The belief, that the ratification was a proof that Pakistan is taking slow but steady steps for consolidating the gains made by the democratic movement, turned out to be just that; a belief.

The hopes were short-lived. The President of Pakistan has ratified the convention but with ‘reservations’. Even a cursory look at the reservations makes it absolutely clear that ratifying the convention was only a window dressing exercise with little meaning.

Through the reservations on UN Convention against Torture, the government of Pakistan has explicitly declared that it will not specify torture as the criminal offence in the domestic law.

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By John Pilger, ZNet, Oct 15, 2010

John Pilger’s ZSpace Page

The rescue of 33 miners in Chile is an extraordinary drama filled with pathos and heroism. It is also a media windfall for the Chilean government, whose every beneficence is recorded by a forest of cameras. One cannot fail to be impressed. However, like all great media events, it is a façade.

The accident that trapped the miners is not unusual in Chile and the inevitable consequence of a ruthless economic system that has barely changed since the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Copper is Chile’s gold, and the frequency of mining disasters keeps pace with prices and profits. There are, on average, 39 fatal accidents every year in Chile’s privatised mines. The San Jose mine, where the men work, became so unsafe in 2007 it had to be closed – but not for long. On 30 July last, a labour department report warned again of “serious safety deficiencies ”, but the minister took no action. Six days later, the men were entombed.

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By Tom Lasseter,  McClatchy Newspapers, Oct 13, 2010

The New-Herald, October 13, 2010

By By Georgie Anne GeyerUniversal Press Syndicate

WASHINGTON — Every day now, at least if you peruse one of the big Eastern American newspapers, you read about our wars: Fighting in Afghanistan, in its 10th year! Collapse in Pakistan! American troops still in Iraq! American troops and/or drone strikes in Somalia, Yemen and various countries of Africa, plus threats to China over oil in the South China Sea!

If you plumb just a little bit below that warfare on the surface, you will find that current Pentagon outlays are roughly $700 billion annually, the U.S. spending more on its military than the rest of the world combined. That we have approximately 300,000 troops stationed abroad, occupying some 76l bases, or euphemistically called “sites,” in 39 foreign countries — an “empire of bases.” And that the Pentagon, being neat and precise in its habits, has divided up the planet into eight “unified commands” in order to, well, order the world.

Ahhh, but all this military expansionism is merely temporary, the loyal American citizen will say. It is a result of America’s having to fight the Cold War with the Soviets — and now, on top of that, having to face down Islamic radicalism. It is not, in short, who we are, a peaceable people forced into wars against our better selves. But instead of patting ourselves on the back, perhaps we ought to study a quote of the great philosopher Joseph Schumpeter, who wrote of the military created by imperialist states: “Created by the wars that required it, the machine now created the wars it required.”

Indeed, there is a growing school of military men and political thinkers coming to the fore who believe that the United States is now creating wars it either thinks it requires or that it simply desires to fight, to illustrate its predominance and grandeur before the world. This is not a line of thought that is easily going to fade away.

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Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari believes that the United States has been secretly behind a number of Taliban suicide attacks across the nation, according to a detailed account from Bob Woodward’s new book Obama’s Wars.

According to the book, Zardari expressed this concern to then-US envoy Zalmay Khalizad during a dinner, telling him that they were being arranged by either the US or India and that he “didn’t think India could be that clever.”

Met with shock by Khalizad, Zardari explained that it was part of a US plot to “destabilize Pakistan so that the US could invade and seize its nuclear weapons.” Zardari also apparently claimed that Afghan President Hamid Karzai had told him the US was responsible for the attacks.

The claims continued to get more elaborate, as Zardari claimed the CIA was overtly supporting Baitullah Mehsud and that the US had “revealed its support of the TTP.” Mehsud, the former leader of the TTP, was assassinated in August 2009, and has since been replaced by Hakimullah Mehsud.

Middle East Online, Oct 14, 2010

The monorail will link Mecca with the holy sites

16 Chinese workers will be deported for protesting for higher wages, better working conditions.

RIYADH – Saudi authorities are deporting 16 Chinese workers on a light railway project in the Muslim holy city of Mecca after they led a protest for higher wages, Saudi media said on Thursday.

The 16 were arrested on Tuesday after a strike by Chinese workers over pay and conditions that saw several vehicles damaged, the Al-Watan newspaper reported citing a Mecca police spokesman.

Earlier reports said workers on the project were frustrated by low pay, non-payment of wages and the high temperatures they endure working in the desert kingdom.

Several hundred Chinese workers were brought in by a consortium led by China Railway Corp for the planned 1.8 billion dollar rapid transport system to serve pilgrims visiting the Muslim holy places.

The monorail will link Mecca with the holy sites of Mina, Arafat and Muzdalifah, which are visited by massive tides of pilgrims during the annual hajj.

Begun in early 2009, the project is scheduled to be partially in operation in time for this year’s hajj, which begins around November 14.

There has been criticism of the carriages the consortium intends to use on the monorail but Al-Watan reported that it had been rejected by the Chinese.

JURIST Contributing Editor Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson School of Law says despite United Nations Human Rights Council findings that Israel clearly broke international law in its raid of the Gaza Strip Flotilla, the US has yet to condemn the action…

By Mahir Ali, ZNet, October 13, 2010

Mahir Ali’s ZSpace Page

That it appeared just as these relations were entering an increasingly fraught phase in the wake of Nato military incursions into Pakistani territory, the temporary closure of supply routes and the series of attacks on Nato tankers is merely a coincidence, albeit one that conforms to a long-standing pattern of mutual mistrust.

Although the Bush administration went out of its way to coddle Pervez Musharraf, plenty of Americans were consistently convinced that Pakistan was playing a double game of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. The advent of the even more pliable Asif Zardari held out the promise of fewer problems on that score. Woodward quotes him as telling “CIA officials privately in late 2008 that any innocent deaths from the [drone] strikes were the cost of doing business against senior Al Qaeda leaders. ‘Kill the seniors,’ Zardari had said. ‘Collateral damage worries you Americans. It does not worry me.’ “

The degree of moral abstemiousness inherent in that “What, me worry?” style of statement shouldn’t surprise anyone. More alarming is the apparent absence of any sense that the deaths of innocents serve as an invaluable recruitment tool for the Taliban.

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