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By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

All eyes are on the U.S. Senate this week for the impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump, only the third presidential impeachment trial in U.S. history. But another important trial is happening at the same time, far from the eyes of the public, at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Behind the razor-wire fencing of Camp Justice, five of the remaining 41 Guantanamo prisoners sit through more pretrial hearings, almost 20 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks they are charged with perpetrating.

One witness this week is Dr. James E. Mitchell, a retired Air Force psychologist who, with his partner, psychologist John Bruce Jessen, developed and then implemented the CIAs post-9/11 torture program. Mitchell and Jessen actively participated in torture sessions at CIA black sites. Both have long maintained that they were only contractors, taking orders from the CIA. Despite having no prior experience with interrogation, they were paid handsomely, receiving at least $81 million in taxpayer dollars from the U.S. government for their work on the torture program. Torture is a war crime, and those who torture should be prosecuted. But Mitchell is not the one on trial this week. Indeed, he defiantly said in court this week, Id get up today and do it again. Mitchell was sitting in the courtroom, not far from his torture victims.

The pretrial hearings at Guantanamo this week are an attempt by the defense attorneys for the five, all who face the death penalty, to suppress statements the defendants made to the FBI during or not long after being tortured by the CIA. Among the five prisoners is the alleged 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times some or all of which were directly conducted by Mitchell. Waterboarding is a torture technique that uses water and a wet towel over ones mouth and nose to bring a victim to the brink of suffocation, simulating drowning.

Mitchell and Jessen shun the word torture, preferring the euphemism enhanced interrogation techniques, or EITs. The American Civil Liberties Union sued Mitchell and Jessen on behalf of two CIA prisoners and the family of another CIA torture victim, Gul Rahman, who died during his brutal interrogation and torture at a CIA black site in Afghanistan. In the lawsuit, the ACLU summarized some of these EITs: Torture methods devised by Mitchell and Jessen and inflicted on the three men include slamming them into walls, stuffing them inside coffin-like boxes, exposing them to extreme temperatures and ear-splitting levels of music, starving them, inflicting various kinds of water torture, depriving them of sleep for days, and chaining them in stress positions designed for pain and to keep them awake for days on end.

Mitchell and Jessen said they reverse-engineered techniques taught to the U.S. military to avoid capture, or, if caught, how to resist torture and interrogation. The military training is called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. In theory, SERE was developed to help people survive. Mitchell and Jessen developed techniques to harm people, not to help them. That vital distinction raised ethical concerns with members of the American Psychological Association (APA) concerns that were dismissed by the organizations leadership, eager to please the administration of President George W. Bush. Anti-torture psychologists led a multiyear campaign challenging the collusion of the APA, the worlds largest professional association of psychologists, with the Pentagon and the CIA. The APA leadership was ultimately ousted, and the organization barred its members from participating in harsh interrogations.

While he was campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in 2015-16, Donald Trump frequently touted the need for torture, even though torture is almost universally acknowledged to deliver false or unreliable information. I would bring back waterboarding, and Id bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding, he bragged at one of the candidate debates.

Speaking on the Democracy Now! news hour, Baher Azmy, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit law organization that has represented scores of Guantanamo prisoners, reflected on the impeachment trial of Donald Trump and the Guantanamo military tribunals: They are, in a sense, both show trials. The military commissions process was generated instead of a traditional Article III criminal trial, in order to suppress the truth, in order to repress accountability for war crimes and, in the Senate trial, repress accountability for an abuse of power.

This week, the tortured logic of the U.S. system of justice is on full display, from Washington, D.C., to Guantanamo Bay.

Excerpt from:
The Tropic of Torture, from Guantanamo to Washington - Democracy Now!

But popular protests show potential for democratic renewal

DEMOCRACY IS in retreat, according to the latest edition of the Democracy Index from our sister company, The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). This annual survey, which rates the state of democracy across 167 countries based on five measureselectoral process and pluralism, the functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil libertiesfinds that democracy has been eroded around the world in the past year. The global score of 5.44 out of ten is the lowest recorded since the index began in 2006. Just 22 countries, home to 430m people, were deemed full democracies by the EIU. More than a third of the worlds population, meanwhile, still live under authoritarian rule.

The sharpest decline in democratic freedoms occurred in China. There discrimination against minorities in the western region of Xinjiang and other infringements of civil liberties, such as digital surveillance, contributed to a drop in the countrys score, from 3.32 to 2.26. India, the worlds biggest democracy, also slid down the EIUs rankings after the Hindu-nationalist government stripped the Muslim-majority region of Jammu & Kashmir of its statehood in August. The decision by the Indian state of Assam to exclude nearly 2m mostly Muslim residents from a tally of native citizensin effect removing their citizenshipalso contributed to the drop. The passage by Parliament in December of the discriminatory Citizenship (Amendment) Act suggests Indias decline will continue in the 2020 index.

Even full-fledged democracies were not immune to backsliding. After alleged links were discovered between senior government figures in Malta and the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, an anti-corruption activist and journalist, Joseph Muscat, the prime minister, announced his resignation. The political crisis was enough to demote tiny Malta to the EIUs flawed democracy category for the first time since the index began. In sub-Saharan Africa, where half of the 44 governments included in the index are categorised as authoritarian, 23 countries saw their democracy scores decline, whereas only 11 improved. The regions deterioration can be blamed in part on undemocratic elections, such as Senegals presidential poll in February, in which rivals of Macky Sall, the incumbent, were barred from running.

Still, some silver linings can be detected among the clouds. Frances Great National Debate, a series of town-hall meetings convened by President Emmanuel Macron in response to the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets) protests, received nearly 2m online contributions from citizens. The effort helped the country regain its full democracy status. (A drop of 0.12 points had caused it to slip into the flawed category in 2015). When peaceful protests broke out in Chile, over the countrys high levels of inequality, the government responded by promising to increase the minimum wage, raise taxes on the wealthy and hold a referendum in 2020 on a new constitution. But the reforms came with a cost. The demonstrations led to more than 20 deaths and thousands of injuries.

Download the EIUs full report here.

Read more here:
Daily chart - Global democracy has another bad year | Graphic detail - The Economist

T he charges against Donald Trump in his impeachment trial boil down to this: he tried to cheat his way to a second term, got caught, and attempted a cover-up. The difficulty is that Trump, notwithstanding heaps of damning factual evidence of deliberate wrongdoing, is 99% certain to get off.

Yet the trial in the Senate cannot be dismissed simply because the result is known in advance. Its perverse outcome, if confirmed, may seriously undermine respect for American democracy and the constitutionally based rule of law. Thats bad news for the world at large.

Take the legal aspects first. American observers of Britains Brexit travails had great fun ridiculing the archaic rules and conventions that for months tied parliament up in knots. Yet the US situation is arguably worse.

The impeachment process, contingent on proof of high crimes and misdemeanors, is a game played under 18th-century English rules, though not English spelling, that even American legal scholars struggle to explain. Trump is charged, firstly, with abuse of power. The framers of the constitution were particularly concerned that a sitting president would abuse his office to get re-elected, said Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor, in a recent analysis.

According to the English tradition followed by the likes of James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, Feldman said, impeachable offences occurred when a high office-holder took gifts of value to do his job.

In Trumps case, the alleged gift of value was Ukraines looked-for agreement to investigate his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, and his son, for evidence of corruption.

Yet the presidents lawyers reject the basic premise. They say Trump was fulfilling his duty to root out corruption in Ukraine, a recipient of US aid. There was no quid pro quo. What Trump did, they argue, cannot be defined as a high crime or misdemeanour whatever they may be.

Republican sycophancy means the Senate often more closely resembles Russias rubber-stamp Duma or Irans Majlis

Trumps defence goes much further. By denouncing the entire process as a hoax and refusing to cooperate which gave rise to a second charge of obstruction he has, de facto, denied Congresss right to impeach him at all. The very idea an accused person could take such a stand was never envisaged by delegates to the 1787 constitutional convention in Philadelphia and is wholly unprecedented.

A president who cannot be criminally investigated [due to the immunity traditionally afforded an incumbent] and also cannot be investigated by Congress would be effectively above the law Denying Congresss power to conduct an impeachment inquiry subverts the foundation of democratic government, Feldman wrote.

This reliance on time-worn, disputed English legal precedents has exposed a dangerous US constitutional weakness, as Adam Schiff, the House of Representatives lead prosecutor, recognised last week. I dont think the impeachment power is a relic. If it is a relic, I wonder how much longer our republic can succeed, he said.

The president has shown he believes hes above the law and scornful of constraint If we dont stand up to this peril today, we will write the history of our decline with our own hand Our future is not assured.

Political aspects of the trial are no less threatening for US democracy. The Senate was conceived as a body of independent, high-minded individuals acting in the national interest. Today it is anything but, dominated by a rabidly partisan Republican majority determined to acquit Trump no matter what.

Quite why Chief Justice John Roberts, who presides at the trial, calls the Senate the worlds greatest deliberative body is puzzling. Republican sycophancy, fed by fear of Trump, means it often more closely resembles Russias rubber-stamp Duma or Irans Majlis.

Robertss supreme court provides more evidence of a fundamental breakdown in the fabled US constitutional system of checks and balances. Trump has successfully nominated two conservative justices to the court Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh and more may follow. He is also shamelessly packing the federal bench. Public trust in the independence and open-mindedness of the judiciary is plainly at risk.

Its entirely possible the electoral college, another 18th-century remnant, will deliver the presidency to Trump in November, contradicting the popular vote (as happened in 2016 and 2000) and, for many, rendering the election meaningless.

Unchecked, underhand voter suppression, gerrymandering of electoral districts, and antiquated and insecure voting equipment all fuel doubts that the US is still capable of holding free and fair elections.

The chronic failure to curb a system of money politics that favours incumbents further exacerbates democracys credibility problem. So, too, does the politicisation of offices of state such as attorney-general where the present incumbent, William Barr, acts more like Trumps consigliere than chief government law officer.

Factor in digital meddling by foreign powers, notably Russia, and Trumps fake news culture of lies and manipulation, and a sobering picture takes shape of a democratic system on its knees and close to possible collapse.

For a watching world where democracy is widely under attack from autocrats and populists and where the US claims to set an example, this is a chilling spectacle.

Of all the many wrong things Trump has done, his most terrible legacy may be the destruction of trust in the workings of democracy, the US constitution, and the rule of law. His weird, slightly unreal trial in absentia symbolises that dread prospect.

E pluribus unum out of many, one. And that one a tyrant, just as the founding fathers feared.

Read more here:
Trumps most baleful legacy? The end of trust in democracy and the rule of law - The Guardian

Interaction between citizens and the officials they elect to represent them is crucial to a democracy.

Citizens must be able to tell the officials what they want and what they dont want. They must also be able to hold the officials responsible for their actions.

The elected officials must explain to the citizens why they take the actions they do.

In Fort Dodge there has been an event in place for at least 20 years that brings state, and sometimes federal, legislators, together with citizens. Its called Eggs and Issues.

Eggs and Issues is a forum that is held once a month while the Iowa legislature is in session. Its typically held on the fourth Saturday of January, Feburary, March and April. Its held on the campus of Iowa Central Community College.

During the forum, the legislators give opening statements about issues and bills they are working on. Then it is the audiences turn. Anyone in the room who has a question is free to ask it.

The give and take between the legislators and the citizens is democracy at work.

It is something that everyone should want to be part of.

Eggs and Issues is sponsored by the Greater Fort Dodge Growth Alliance and Iowa Central Community College.

The 2020 series of Eggs and Issues forums will begin at 8:30 a.m. Saturday in the Bioscience and Health Sciences Building on the Fort Dodge campus.

U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, is expected to attend. Also expected to attend are state Sen. Tim Kraayenbrink, R-Fort Dodge; state Rep. Ann Meyer, R-Fort Dodge; and state Rep. Mike Sexton, R-Rockwell City.

We encourage everyone to participate in their democracy by attending Eggs and Issues.

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Eggs and Issues is democracy in action | News, Sports, Jobs - Fort Dodge Messenger

It was a curious exchange. Frustrated by the attacks on his partythe Movement for Socialism (MAS)former president of Bolivia Evo Morales made an audio recording in which he called upon his supporters to form militias. Maximilian Heath of Reuters went to Argentina to speak with Morales about this leaked recording; Morales said, In Bolivia, if the armed forces are shooting the people, killing the people, the people have the right to organize their security.

Morales anxiousness is rooted in fact. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rightsa body of the pro-U.S. Organization of American Statesreported in December 2019 that there have been a series of massacres conducted by the armed forces of the current interim government in Bolivia. The use of the word massacre in this report is significant; these were not clashes or conflicts, but the targeted murder of civilians who supported MAS and Morales.

The interim president of Bolivia, Jeanine ez Chvez, has made inflammatory statements about the indigenous support base of MAS and Morales. She has frequently spoken of them with derision, even saying that she dreams of a Bolivia without satanic indigenous rites and that the city is not for the Indians. ez signed Supreme Decree no. 4078 that exempted the military from any criminal responsibility for its use of force; she wants to ban MAS, and her interior minister has filed a warrant for the arrest of Morales. This is a rapid and disturbing attack on the political fabric of Bolivia.

Apology

Morales statement about militias came merely as a way to say that he worried about the repression and violence occasioned by the interim government and the military, now immune from prosecution. U.S. President Donald Trumps main envoy to Latin AmericaMauricio Claver-Carone (who organized the bankrupting $57 billion loan to Argentina when he was the U.S. director at the International Monetary Fund)went to Bolivia and attacked Morales. Morales, Claver-Carone said, is fomenting insurrection from Argentina. This is a bizarre statement.

Morales was re-elected in 2014. There was not a whiff of impropriety in that election. He had a mandate to remain in office until January 2020. Even if there was a problem in the 2019 election, he should have remained in office until this month. But he was removed by a U.S.-backed military coup. That coup is not the insurrection that worries Claver-Carone. What worries him is that Morales is concerned about his supporters who are being intimidated and killed. It was not the coup, but Morales statement of anguish that became the scandal. Morales then apologized for his statement.

Elections

Bolivia will face an election on May 3. The Movement for Socialism Party nominated Luis Arce Catacora, Bolivias former minister for the economy, as its presidential candidate, and David Choquehuanca, Bolivias former foreign minister, as its vice-presidential candidate. MAS has been deeply bruised. More than 100 government officials from the MAS party are either in detention or face criminal charges, while a handful are in the Mexican embassy in La Paz (they have been denied safe passage to the airport).

The anti-coup uprising in Chapare province led the interior minister Arturo Murillo to make a statement that he would perhaps disenfranchise the entire province if the rebellion continues (the rebels burned down a hotel that he owns). Supporters of MAS and its party workers are afraid to leave their homes, let alone campaign in the election. Morales statement came as a mirror of their own anxiousness.

No one imagines that there is going to be a fair election. The Trump administration has said it will send a USAID team to Bolivia to monitor the situation, and then to resume U.S. aid to the country; the U.S. will also monitor the elections. Between the U.S. monitors and Supreme Decree no. 4078, the conditions for a fair election simply do not apply.

And not many outside the region seem to have any problem with this attack against democracy.

Staggering Number

On January 14, the UNs human rights body released a brief statement on the killings of human rights activists in Colombia. The UN said that a staggering number of human rights defenders were killed last year in Colombia; by the UNs count, between 107 and 120 activists were murdered. In 2018, 115 human rights defenders were killed, and in the first two weeks of January of this year, 10 human rights defenders have already been murdered. Most of them are from left-wing peoples organizations.

The UN numbers are conservative. For 2018, the Center for Research and Popular Education Peace Program, based in Colombia, documented 1,151 death threats, 648 assassinations, and 304 cases of physical injuries. But the UNs trendline is correct. Of the murders last year, 98 percent took place in very poor rural areas. The killers, the UN suggests, are criminal groups and armed groups linked to illicit economies in areas vacated by the FARC-EP. In other words, right-wing paramilitary groups and their affiliated drug gangs have taken advantage of the peace treaty signed by the Left to terrorize the countryside.

In the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research dossier on Colombia (December 2019), the argument is made that the Colombian oligarchy does not want to move toward peace because this would shift the needle of Colombian politics toward the peoples movements and the Left. The continuation of the warnow as assassination and intimidationfavors the oligarchy. They prefer this violence to democratic politics.

These targeted murders and this targeted intimidation is only one part of the problem in Latin America. The other is that this regionwith its outrageous social inequalityexperiences violence at extreme levels. While Latin America is home to only 8 percent of the worlds population, 33 percent of all homicides occur in the region. This includes high violence against young men, and it includes the highest rates of femicide in the world. None of the right-wing governments are interested in addressing this fundamental problem for the hemisphere.

What the government of Ivn Duque is doing in Colombia is what the interim government of Jeanine ez is doing in Boliviaboth are using extreme state violence against trade unionists and peasant organizers, against socialist leaders and indigenous leaders. This extreme violence undermines the possibility of democracy and allows the oligarchy to be re-elected in polling booths where the Left not dare enter.

Hroes del ancahuaz

In 2016, Evo Morales inaugurated the General Juan Jos Torres Anti-Imperialist Command School in the town of Warnes. General Juan Jos Torres was the socialist president of Bolivia in 1970-71. He was overthrown in a coup by the Bolivian general favored by the CIA, Hugo Bnzer. Bnzer had closely worked with the Nazi leader Klaus Barbie to set up the CIA-run Operation Condor to search out and kill any and every communist in the hemisphere. They killed Torres in 1976. The combination of the CIA, Nazis, and the oligarchies of the region is not something from the past: Brazils culture secretaryRoberto Alvimrecently plagiarized a speech from the Nazi Joseph Goebbels.

The interim governments interim Defense Minister Luis Fernando Lpez said that his government has renamed the Anti-Imperialist school. We are not anti-anything, he said, as if his government is not anti-Morales, anti-MAS, and anti-communist. The school has been renamed Hroes del ancahuaz.

In 1967, Che Guevara and his National Liberation Army of Bolivia operated near the ancahuaz River in Bolivias southeast. The government of General Ren Barrientos Ortuo, the CIA agent Flix Rodrguez, and the Nazi Klaus Barbie ran the operation to destroy Guevaras campaign. They named their operation the ancahuaz Campaign. The Anti-Imperialist School in Bolivia now honors the menled by a CIA agent and a Naziwho killed Che Guevara. It sends a message to the Che Guevaras of today: We will get you. This is the democracy of the oligarchy in Latin America today.

This article was produced by Globetrotter, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

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What the Right Wing in Latin America Means by Democracy Is Violence - CounterPunch