http://harpers.org/rss/index.xml A Harper's Magazine Weblog en-us Copyright Harper's Magazine Tue, 22 May 2012 15:35:51 -0400 http://www.harpers.org/media/image/Harpers_305x100.gif http://harpers.org http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008628 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008628 Scott Horton Tue, 22 May 2012 14:14:34 -0400 This week has been full of illuminating disclosures concerning the American criminal-justice system. Last Monday, a Columbia Law School project showed convincingly that Carlos DeLuna, executed for homicide by the state of Texas in 1989, was innocent of the crime; the project also showed who actually committed the crime. The revelation was shocking in part because DeLuna’s name had never figured among the dozen or more prisoners executed by Texas whose guilt has been vigorously and publicly contested; even his own lawyers seemed to have assumed his guilt. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008615 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008615 Scott Horton Fri, 18 May 2012 09:34:39 -0400 A successfully completed prosecution in the International Criminal Court, new demands for investigations into atrocities in Syria, ongoing issues surrounding crimes committed by American officials during the Bush-era “war on terror”—international criminal-law issues are steadily topical. Canadian scholar William Schabas, now a professor at Middlesex University in London, is one of the world’s leading writers and speakers on the subject. I put six questions to him about his new book, Unimaginable Atrocities: Justice, Politics, and Rights at the War Crimes Tribunals. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008621 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008621 Scott Horton Wed, 16 May 2012 14:32:42 -0400 British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, appearing in character as Admiral General Haffaz Aladeen to promote his new film, The Dictator, has been working in lines about the double standards of American human rights assessments. “What in Wadiya you call genocide,” he says, referring to the dictator’s fictitious Arab homeland, “in Texas you call the justice system.” Texas criminal justice may not amount to genocide, but it does misfire with alarming frequency, and claims innocent lives in the process. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008619 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008619 Scott Horton Wed, 16 May 2012 09:20:01 -0400 ProPublica’s Dafna Linzer continues her examination of the federal pardons process with a piece, excerpted in Monday’s Washington Post, that contrasts two pardon candidates. Both cases are the sort of victimless drug offenses that clog the federal detentions system. One involves a star athlete with no prior criminal record, and a prosecutor’s office and judge who favored immediate commutation of the sentence. The athlete was present at a drug sale, and he introduced the parties to one another, for which he received a gratuity from the dealer. Though such offenses are theoretically prosecutable, this very rarely happens. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008612 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008612 Scott Horton Wed, 09 May 2012 14:34:54 -0400 One of the lasting challenges to America’s federal judiciary will be addressing American complicity in the tortures and disappearances of the past ten years. Two recent appeals-court decisions show us how judicial panels are tackling these issues: by shielding federal officials and their contractors from liability, and even by glorifying the fruits of their dark arts. In the process, legal prohibitions on torture are being destroyed through secrecy and legal sleight of hand, and our justice system is being distorted and undermined. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008603 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008603 Scott Horton Tue, 08 May 2012 12:56:20 -0400 If America’s national-security mavens had to identify their biggest worry on a world map, odds are that the pin would land within a hundred miles of Islamabad. Once hailed as America’s most vital non-NATO ally, and the recipient of more than $10 billion in aid since 2001, Pakistan is now emerging as a nightmare. It may be home to the world’s fastest-growing nuclear stockpile, and it is certainly the most worrisome source of nuclear proliferation over the past decade. Its security forces have a mysteriously cozy relationship with scheduled terrorist forces, such as Lashkar-e Taiba, which launched a series of attacks on Mumbai in November 2008, killing or injuring at least 472 people. And it is a state in abject collapse—unable to convince its citizens to pay taxes, to provide basic utilities to its people, to keep order, or to provide for essential defense. Significantly, Pakistan is also a nation filled with rage against the United States—a dangerous enemy in the making. How could this happen in a country that could barely stand up without massive U.S. assistance? . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008577 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008577 Scott Horton Sat, 05 May 2012 12:59:55 -0400 The world is quickly being reshaped, writes political economist Ian Bremmer. America established itself as the paramount power following the collapse of Communism, but the emerging system is one in which no nation or group of nations stands out as its leader. What will this mean for the global economy and for conflict in the near future? In Every Nation for Itself, Bremmer looks at the world forming now and sees glimmers of hope, but a somber future. I put six questions to him about his new book. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008595 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008595 Scott Horton Thu, 03 May 2012 14:16:42 -0400 Daniel Chong, an engineering student at the University of California at San Diego, went to a 4/20 party thrown by some friends. He got stoned, fell asleep, and was still present the following morning when agents of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration stormed the house. Although it was clear that Chong had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, the DEA threw him into a cell. Then they forgot about him, leaving him without food or water for four days: . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008592 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008592 Scott Horton Tue, 01 May 2012 16:50:36 -0400 Why did Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA’s clandestine service, destroy ninety-two tapes of interrogation sessions in which terrorism suspects were subjected to waterboarding and other torture techniques? On Sunday, Lesley Stahl put the question to him on 60 Minutes, and he provided an answer: . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008576 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008576 Scott Horton Tue, 01 May 2012 10:04:41 -0400 Last week, in a courtroom in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Justice Department launched its latest political charade in the guise of a public-integrity prosecution. Former Democratic vice-presidential nominee John Edwards, a man with whom President Obama once broached the possibility of an appointment as attorney general, faces charges that he spent nearly $1 million in campaign donations to cover up an embarrassing sexual liaison. This, prosecutors insist, was a federal crime, for which Edwards could spend as many as thirty years in prison and face a $1.5 million fine. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/04/hbc-90008568 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/04/hbc-90008568 Scott Horton Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:28:12 -0400 Peter Beinart, a former editor of The New Republic who now writes for the Daily Beast and teaches at the City University of New York, has just published a remarkable book, The Crisis of Zionism, that tackles one of the most contentious issues in American politics: how the United States interacts with an Israel that seems increasingly unreceptive to American advice but increasingly engaged in American politics. I put six questions to Beinart about The Crisis of Zionism and its critics, who seem curiously intent on attacking him while ignoring the actual content of his book: . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/04/hbc-90008551 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/04/hbc-90008551 Scott Horton Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:51:34 -0400 Just how serious is Washington about battling terrorism? The airwaves fill regularly with sanctimonious declamations about terrorist threats and with vows to pursue the war against them to its ultimate conclusion—a war without territorial limits, and with ill-defined opponents and no clear time horizon. A forever war. But to insiders, it is evidently a laughing matter. Developments the past week suggest that for some prominent Washington figures, rubbing elbows with a scheduled terrorist organization and taking money from its front groups is a no-brainer. It may be that they know something most of us don’t about the intelligence community’s dealings with these terrorists. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/04/hbc-90008548 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/04/hbc-90008548 Scott Horton Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:45:00 -0400 Yesterday the Obama Administration, after a delay of several years, released an important document relating to the Bush Administration’s torture policies: a memorandum by Philip Zelikow, a high-ranking State Department lawyer and confidant of Condoleezza Rice, which aggressively refuted Justice Department memoranda that sought to authorize the use of thirteen “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA. Zelikow’s memo concluded that the use of these techniques would constitute prosecutable felonies—war crimes. As Zelikow explained in an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2009, his memo, when it was circulated in February 2006, caused senior figures in the Bush White House to go ballistic—they actually sought to collect and destroy all the copies. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/04/hbc-90008547 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/04/hbc-90008547 Scott Horton Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:29:20 -0400 In a case that may summarize conservative judicial attitudes toward human dignity, Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders, the Supreme Court has decided on the claim of Albert Florence, a man apprehended for the well-known offense of traveling in an automobile while being black. Florence was hustled off to jail over a couple of bench warrants involving minor fines that had in fact been paid—evidence of which he produced to unimpressed police officers. He was then twice subjected to humiliating strip searches involving the inspection of body cavities. Florence sued, arguing that this process violated his rights. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008516 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008516 Scott Horton Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:06:55 -0400 I will be participating in a discussion with Ahmed Rashid, whose new book is entitled Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, at Fordham University on Wednesday, April 4, at 12:30 P.M. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008511 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008511 Scott Horton Wed, 28 Mar 2012 10:44:45 -0400 One month ago, Truthout’s Jeffrey Kaye published a review of autopsy reports released last year by the Department of Defense in response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act request concerning two unwitnessed prisoner deaths at Guantánamo that authorities had described as suicides. Now, Kaye reports that Christof Heyns, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, and arbitrary executions, is “looking into” the deaths. Heyns is a South African law professor who teaches at American University in Washington and holds a fellowship at Oxford. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008514 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008514 Scott Horton Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:32:50 -0400 The Warsaw-based newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and TVP Polish Public Television are reporting that criminal charges have been brought in the long-pending investigation into torture and kidnapping associated with a CIA black site on Polish soil during 2002 and 2003. The English-language Warsaw Business Journal summarizes the story as follows: . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008503 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008503 Fri, 23 Mar 2012 14:17:47 -0400 It seems a little strange that we [Catholics] are so wildly exercised about the “murder” (and the word is of course correct) of an unborn infant by abortion, or even the prevention of conception which is hardly murder, and yet accept without a qualm the extermination of millions of helpless and innocent adults, some of whom may be Christians and even our friends rather than our enemies. I submit that we ought to fulfill the one without omitting the other. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008508 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008508 Scott Horton Wed, 21 Mar 2012 16:08:26 -0400 Early in the morning on Sunday, March 11, sixteen villagers were killed and five wounded in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. The dead included nine children, four men, and three women, of whom eleven were from the same family. In one home, the bodies of the murdered members of a family had been dragged into a pile and set on fire. Reports about the incident rocked a country that was slowly returning to calm following the demonstrations and riots that had erupted over reports that U.S. military authorities at Bagram Air Base had collected and burned copies of the Koran. American officials quickly stated that the Panjwai incident was the work of a single gunman, whom they subsequently identified as Staff Sergeant Robert Bales from Joint Base Lewis–McChord, Washington. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008499 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008499 Scott Horton Mon, 19 Mar 2012 14:52:39 -0400 Following the Justice Department’s agreement in 2009 to vacate the convictions it obtained of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, it conducted an internal probe into the conduct of its senior lawyers and—surprise!—exonerated them and itself. It then refused to make the report public. However, at the time the conviction was voided, the presiding judge in Stevens’s case, Emmet Sullivan, appropriately wary of the department’s ethics office, appointed a special prosecutor, Henry F. Schuelke, III, an eminent Washington attorney and former prosecutor, to probe the DOJ’s conduct. Late last week, Schuelke’s 525-page report was released, over the loud objections of DOJ lawyers. The report revealed gross misconduct by the prosecutorial team, stretching over the entire course of the case and reaching into the upper echelons of the department. It concluded that there had been “systematic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence which would have independently corroborated [Stevens’s] defense.” . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008493 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008493 Scott Horton Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:11:45 -0400 Vladimir Putin is emerging as an iconic figure for Russian politics in the period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but he remains rather mysterious even at home, and widely misunderstood abroad. Now Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen has completed a comprehensive and penetrating look at the experiences that shaped Putin and the character of his stewardship of Russia. I put six questions to Gessen about her new book, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin: . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008488 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008488 Scott Horton Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:31:14 -0400 Yesterday I wrote about how the Obama Administration has insisted that its deal with Yemen’s dictatorship concerning the use of drones there is a secret, and how it has been wielding that specious claim to justify withholding publication of a controversial Justice Department memo that outlines the president’s supposed authority to order the assassination of an American citizen abroad. Now Jeremy Scahill has published an important study of what the Obama Administration is prepared to do to journalists who expose its hit operations in Yemen: . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008485 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008485 Scott Horton Tue, 13 Mar 2012 09:48:10 -0400 Following Attorney General Eric Holder’s speech at Northwestern, publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times responded with renewed demands for the release of the Department of Justice memorandum (or “OLC Memo”), written by Martin Lederman and David Barron, that provides the legal framework for targeted killings. The Obama Administration came to power promising to end secret Justice Department memos like the ones that approved torture and warrantless surveillance. It also published most of the controversial Bush-era memos, which makes it look particularly disingenuous when withholding its own controversial legal opinions. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008471 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008471 Scott Horton Thu, 08 Mar 2012 12:07:17 -0400 On Monday afternoon, Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before law students and faculty at Northwestern University in Chicago to deliver a speech widely billed as a definitive statement about the law governing drone warfare. The speech had been anticipated for some time, thanks in part to Charlie Savage of the New York Times, who revealed in October the existence of a nearly fifty-page memorandum that David Barron and Martin Lederman, two academics then in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had prepared justifying a White House decision to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen who resided in Yemen. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008467 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008467 Scott Horton Mon, 05 Mar 2012 11:48:20 -0400 The military operations in Afghanistan represent a first for NATO in many ways. They occur far from the alliance’s usual theater of action, for example, and they arise from security concerns that are highly attenuated from the perspective of most members. These operations are redefining NATO. At the same time they present a challenge to NATO’s political promise, one that has been inadequately explored. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008462 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/03/hbc-90008462 Scott Horton Fri, 02 Mar 2012 09:07:21 -0400 Tom Engelhardt is a prolific writer and editor, and the curator of TomDispatch, a popular website that presents political commentary. I put six questions to him about his new book, The United States of Fear, in which he projects a fairly gloomy near-term future for an America pulling back from Empire: . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/02/hbc-90008461 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/02/hbc-90008461 Scott Horton Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:18:07 -0400 Turkmenistan, a nation the size of California, and home to 5.5 million people who live atop some of the world’s largest natural gas reserves, recently held presidential elections. The outcome was never in doubt: President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov was reelected with over 97 percent of the vote. A licensed dentist, Berdymukhamedov came to power suddenly in December 2006, through a series of extra-constitutional maneuvers after the death of former president Saparmurat Niyazov. Western diplomats in Ashgabat report that he is widely rumored to be Niyazov’s illegitimate son. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/02/hbc-90008460 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/02/hbc-90008460 Scott Horton Wed, 29 Feb 2012 09:27:47 -0400 Violence broke out across Afghanistan last week when news emerged that American forces had burned copies of the Koran. American military officials explained that the books had been taken from prisoners held at the Bagram detention facility and were being destroyed together with other collected materials. It was a completely avoidable mistake, and one with serious consequences. In the demonstrations and attacks that have followed, at least thirty people have been killed, including two American soldiers who were shot in the back of the head while they were inside Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/02/hbc-90008435 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/02/hbc-90008435 Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:18:35 -0400 Alle Ereignisse im Leben eines Menschen standen demnach in zwei grundverschiedenen Arten des Zusammenhangs: erstlich, im objektiven, kausalen Zusammenhange des Naturlaufs; zweitens, in einem subjektiven Zusammenhange, der nur in Beziehung auf das sie erlebende Individuum vorhanden und so subjektiv wie dessen eigene Träume ist, in welchem jedoch ihre Succession und Inhalt ebenfalls nothwendig bestimmt ist, aber in der Art, wie die Succession der Scenen eines Drama‘s, durch den Plan des Dichters. Daß nun jene beiden Arten des Zusammenhangs zugleich bestehn und die nämliche Begebenheit, als ein Glied zweier ganz verschiedener Ketten, doch beiden sich genau einfügt, in Folge wovon jedes Mal das Schicksal des Einen zum Schicksal des Andern paßt und Jeder der Held seines eigenen, zugleich aber auch der Figurant im fremden Drama ist. Dies ist freilich etwas, das alle unsere Fassungskraft übersteigt und nur vermöge der wundersamsten harmonia præstabilita als möglich gedacht werden kann. . . . http://harpers.org/archive/2012/02/hbc-90008446 http://harpers.org/archive/2012/02/hbc-90008446 Scott Horton Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:30:21 -0400 … but his spirit seems to have inspired a courtroom drama in Madrid the past few weeks. Baltasar Garzón—the crusading investigative judge who once sought the arrest of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, probed crimes against humanity in Central America, exposed massive corruption in public-works projects in Spain, and tried to open the lid on the mass killings of the Franco era—was himself placed in the dock, accused of misuse of his judicial powers. In the end little was left to chance in the rush to destroy him, an effort that brought into alignment the many powerful figures he had offended: the now-governing conservative Partido Popular, which was richly embarrassed by the corruption disclosures of the Garzón-led Gürtel investigation; the United States government, which was angered by his pursuit of a torture investigation focusing on Guantánamo and was openly working for his removal; the heirs of the Franco era, who were whipped into a state of hysteria about the prospect of an investigation into the mass murders of that era. . . .