Statement by Physicians for Human Rights in Response to Comments by Obama Administration Officials

Physicians for Human Rights Statement

July 10, 2009

For Immediate Release

Statement by Physicians for Human Rights in Response to Comments by Obama Administration Officials

Cambridge, MA – Obama Administration officials stated Friday, as reported by Lara Jakes of the Associated Press, that they had no grounds to investigate the 2001 deaths of Taliban prisoners of war who allegedly were killed by U.S.-backed forces. In their statement, these officials claim that they lack legal grounds to probe these alleged war crimes because "only foreigners were involved and the alleged killings occurred in a foreign country."

The officials' comments came in response to a New York Times report by James Risen that the Bush Administration impeded at least three federal investigations into an alleged massacre of as many as 2,000 prisoners in Afghanistan.

"For US Government officials to claim that there is no legal basis to investigate this well-documented mass atrocity is absurd," stated Physicians for Human Rights Deputy Director Susannah Sirkin. "US military and intelligence personnel were operating jointly and accepted the surrender of the prisoners jointly with General Dostum's forces in northern Afghanistan. The Obama Administration has a legal obligation to determine what US officials knew, where US personnel were, what involvement they had, and the actions of US allies during and after the massacre. These questions, nearly eight years later, remain unanswered."

"Furthermore," added Nathaniel Raymond, PHR's lead researcher on the Dasht-e-Leili case, "The New York Times has shown that the Bush Administration engaged in a coordinated effort to prevent this alleged war crime from ever being investigated. Under the Geneva Conventions, the cover-up of a war crime can itself constitute a war crime."

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize. PHR was founded in 1986 on the idea that health professionals, with their specialized skills, ethical commitments, and credible voices, are uniquely positioned to investigate the health consequences of human rights violations and work to stop them. PHR mobilizes health professionals to advance health, dignity and justice and promotes the right to health for all. PHR has documented the systematic use of psychological and physical torture by US personnel against detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Bagram airbase and elsewhere.

PHR's International Forensic Program (IFP) has conducted forensic assessments and investigations of human rights abuses, crimes against humanity and genocide in many countries. IFP is dedicated to providing independent forensic expertise to document and collect evidence of human rights violations and of violations of international humanitarian law. Since the 1980s, PHR has mobilized forensic scientists and other experts worldwide to respond to inquiries by governments, organizations, families and individuals.

Jonathan Hutson

Chief Communications Officer

Physicians for Human Rights

2 Arrow St., Ste. 301

Cambridge, MA 02138

Update. Over the weekend Obama said that he would order an investigation into the Afghan massacre.

Showdown on Sotomayer. If the Republicans want to go on record opposing the first Hispanic Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, shouldn't we see that as a good thing? And just in time for the 2010 Congressional elections, too.

Bringing hominins back to life

Today's issue of Science features a four-page article by yours truly about the "paleoartists" who create lifelike, three-dimensional models of human ancestors for museums, magazines, and documentaries. The story, which unfortunately is available only to paying subscribers, is chocked full of great photos provided by several of the artists whose work we profile. You can, however, click on this free link and listen to a Podcast in which I talk about the paleoartists and what they do.

Here are a few excerpts from the story that I hope will get you interested:

The interplay between art and science makes reconstruction "a two-way street," says Gary Sawyer, who has been reconstructing hominins at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York City for more than 30 years. The artists must track researchers' latest anatomical interpretations, and reconstruction helps scientists think about issues such as "what kind of muscles a hominin had and how it walked on the landscape," says Alemseged. "But the end product should be seen as an artistic creation."

Some researchers argue that reconstructions influence how scientists view ancient hominins and interpret their behavior. "The scientific community requires a lengthy period of time to absorb and adapt to new ideas, and these illustrations are often part of the process by which you see the change," says Stephanie Moser, an archaeologist at Southampton University in the United Kingdom. "These artistic representations are part of the knowledge cycle and not outside it."

And how are they made?

Whether the art influences the science, the artists work hard to insure that science drives their creations. Each job is unique, but paleoartists usually start with plaster or urethane skull casts of a hominin; for fragile or incomplete skulls, they use computed tomography scans to create a "virtual" plastic cast. Then the artists painstakingly model the muscles, glands, and fat tissues of the face with clay, making educated guesses about how thick each tissue should be and guided by dissections of primates and forensic anthropology techniques. After making a new cast in urethane or acrylic plastic, the paleoartist then painstakingly inserts individual hairs, often from humans, and paints and makes up the face. A similar process is followed with the rest of the body, for which the thickness of skeletal bones and the depth of muscle insertions guide the artists as they decide how slim or stocky to craft the body.

But the paleoartists often have to cross the line between art and science:

Adrie Kennis, who with Alfons has created many hominin reconstructions for European museums, says such compromises are necessary. "If only the scientists made the reconstructions, they would be dull. ... We have to put a character on the face." For example, one key decision paleoartists face is whether to color the sclera of hominin eyes white, as in modern humans, or dark, as in many primates. In modern humans, eye whites make it easier for us to see where our fellow humans are gazing, thus enhancing social communication. But researchers know nothing about the sclera of earlier hominins. "It's a soft tissue we have no data on," says Potts, who adds that he and Gurche discussed at length how to handle the eyes of Gurche's sculptures for the human evolution hall.

Another issue is whether to put smiles on the ancient faces. "The fear muscles in great apes were coopted for smile muscles in humans. We've gone back and forth, how much should they grimace and how much should they smile." In the end, Potts says, they have often gone for a neutral, "almost Mona Lisa kind of effect."

By the way, you might notice that at Science we have begun using the newer and more scientifically correct name for humans and their ancestors, hominin, rather than the older word hominid, which actually refers to humans and great apes.

Photos: A female Neandertal, nicknamed "Wilma," created by Adrie and Alfons Kennis for the cover of National Geographic; Elisabeth Daynès in her Paris studio; John Gurche working on a model of Homo erectus for the Museum of the Earth outside Ithaca, New York.

Question for Radovan Karadzic

If Karadzic really thought all these years that he had been promised immunity from war crimes prosecution in The Hague if he left politics, as he now claims that Richard Holbrooke had told him, why was he in hiding?

No matter, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has now rejected the claim. On with the trial, expected to begin in September.

Leonard Cohen in Paris

Leonard Cohen is on the European stretch of his world tour, and of course Balter's Blog was on the scene when he played at Bercy in Paris last night. A perfect concert, really, Cohen in great voice and spirits, not to mention physically in great shape (prancing on and off the stage as he made his entries and exits), great musicians and backup singers (including his collaborator Sharon Robinson), and a great choice of songs (well, with the generous three hours he gave the wildly appreciative audience, Cohen had time to sing a lot of them.)

If you have the chance to see Cohen on this tour, please be sure you do. It may be his last one ever, the man is nearly 75 years old and would probably not be on the road were it not for his current financial troubles, which I won't get into here. But every cloud has a silver lining, and for his fans, getting a chance to see and hear him in person one last time has got to be it.

Run Sarah run!

I was down in the Lot Valley (southern France) the past few days, so lagging behind--as this blog often does--the 24 hour news cycle. But I have been amused by the frenzied attempts by commentators to "analyze" Sarah Palin's announced resignation as governor of Alaska: Is it an inspired strategic coup designed to prepare her candidacy for president in 2012, or just another example of her erratic and incompetent behavior?

The New York Times' Sam Tanenhaus took a crack at it a few days ago, and I can't help but laugh at this excerpt from his News Analysis:

Still, Ms. Palin was a galvanizing force and continues to outdo all other Republicans in exciting the party’s base. On Friday, it was even possible to see how her decision to exit the governorship could actually strengthen her populist, anti-government theme — and place her in the tradition of previous conservative leaders who have presented themselves not merely as professional politicians but as leaders of a movement.

I'm not laughing at Sam, mind you, because this graf does indeed reflect current wisdom. But let's reflect on it further. "Exciting the party's base" might sound like a real plus for a presidential candidate, and once it became clear how unqualified Palin was to be either vice-president or president this became the the fall back talking point for McCain campaign flaks who immediately realized what a huge mistake they had made. But when all of the other news analysis is telling us how much the party's base has shrunk, getting what remains "excited" conjures up images of yapping dogs getting excited over being tossed chunks of meant. Not a nice image.

Then there is the notion, as Tanenhaus puts it, that resigning as governor of Alaska strengthens Palin's "anti-government theme"--which sounds like wisdom until you realize that Palin is supposedly going for the biggest government job of all, the presidency. If she really wants to strike an anti-government pose, she should refuse to run for president, hole up in a cabin in the woods with a rifle and cans of beans, and shoot the hats off of any federal agents who approach the area.

But really, I wish Sarah well, and hope with all my heart that she grabs the Republican nomination in 2012. That, after all, is our best guarantee that Barack Obama will have a second term.

Wheeling and dealing on health care. A story in Wednesday's New York Times has got to make anyone who seriously cares about health care reform (ie, reform that actually helps the people) sick to their stomach. Basically, the Obama administration is getting the industry players on board (health insurance companies, hospitals, doctors) by promising them things they have long wanted--things that will undermine the reforms and the possibility of a public plan. The Clinton administration's big mistake back in the 1990s was thinking that it could really play ball with the health care industry, and then the industry took the ball and went home. They are still holding it. If the industry isn't screaming, the plan isn't good enough. Hard but true.

Mike Davis, Marc Cooper, James Rainey, Michael Lacey, Jill Stewart, the L.A. Weekly, and the lies that liars tell

A friend of mine in Los Angeles has just brought to my attention a scurrilous column published in the L.A. Weekly late last month, authored by Michael Lacey, executive editor of the Weekly's owner Village Voice Media. The column is, for the most part, an attack on former Weekly staffer Marc Cooper, a good friend and colleague of mine, for his criticisms of the paper. Lacey also took on L.A. Times columnist James Rainey for his own belated story about the troubles at the newspaper (a story only published after Marc chastised the Times for ignoring the dramas that have swirled around the Weekly in recent years, especially after it was purchased by Village Voice Meda.)

Marc is a big boy and can stick up for himself, but what drew my attention was Lacey's statements about Mike Davis, a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, the author of numerous books about Los Angeles, and perhaps the most insightful writer about my hometown since Reyner Banham. Lacey describes an episode in which Marc took Davis's side against Jill Stewart, now the Weekly's news editor, who had made a number of accusations against Davis. Here is how Lacey describes it:

What was Stewart’s offense?

She had dared to expose the fabrications, exaggerations and falsehoods of Los Angeles author Mike Davis, Cooper’s soul mate.

Davis is a self-described “Marxist environmentalist,” a political identity in Russia, by the way, more endangered than a Chernobyl titmouse.

Frankly, unmasking Davis’ reliance upon whoppers to manufacture an apocalyptic vision of Los Angeles was hardly Stewart’s most difficult challenge. Davis once published in the long-ago Weekly his interview with a prominent environmentalist, which was entirely made up.

Davis later admitted the con job and alibied that he was only attempting to learn how to do journalism.

There are several serious problems with this diatribe, but most egregious is the statement that Davis made up an interview. The charge that Davis made up his interview with Lewis McAdams either originated or was repeated in a 1999 New York Times story about Davis by Todd Purdum. It is a gross distortion of what really happened.

For a more accurate story, try Jon Wiener's account in The Nation later that year in which he explains the background to the hatred that many in L.A.'s power elite have for Davis, and the real story behind Davis's interview with McAdams--which really did happen, although Davis admitted to some mistakes in the way he reported it.

In fact, Lacey's version of events is so off base that it is either sloppy journalism or an all-out lie.

As a former writer for the Weekly (my heyday there was the 1980s, when Marc Cooper first came on board as news editor, the job that Stewart now holds) I can only lament the limp rag that the Weekly has become under its new owners. And this column by Lacey is a good example of their mindset. Los Angeles deserves better.

PS--Those interested in Marc Cooper's own autopsy report on the L.A. Weekly's demise can click here.

Photo: Mike Davis

Workers wrung out

This drawing accompanies an article in today's issue of Le Monde (dated 3 July) relating how employers in the U.S. are lowering salaries to deal with the financial crisis. As the article points out, stricter job protection legislation in France makes this much more difficult to do (also very difficult is firing or laying off workers with permanent jobs without a very good reason.)

Of course, the current crisis has become an excellent excuse for those holding the purse strings to do what they have always wanted to do anyway. We all have to make sacrifices, just some of us more than others, it would appear.

Drawing by Sardon.

New York Times' Gina Kolata fails to do her homework

A couple of days ago, Times science writer Gina Kolata, who was filling in for John Tierney on his blog TiernyLab, linked to a report by the organization STATS which argues that the chemical bisphenol-A, or BPA, which is used to make plastic bottles and other products, is not as harmful to health as numerous scientific studies have found. Kolata described STATS as "a nonpartisan, nonprofit group," which indeed is how the organization describes itself on its Website.

Far from it. STATS is affiliated with George Mason University in Virginia, and its president is S. Robert Lichter, a professor at George Mason and also president of the university's Center for Media and Public Affairs, which also describes itself as "nonpartisan." The Center has long been supported by funds from numerous right-wing donors, particularly the Scaife Foundation and the Olin Foundation. Some of the background to this is provided in the Center's Wikipedia entry, which is a good place to get started, as well as Sourcewatch's profile of the organization; other background was provided by Michael Massing in a 2005 article in the New York Review of Books and a letter exchange with Lichter, who had written to criticize Massing's characterization of CMPA. As Massing put it in that exchange:

In my article, I described how the Center for Media and Public Affairs was set up with conservative foundation money in the mid-1980s as part of a growing effort by the right to portray the American press as liberal and out of touch with mainstream America. In a phone conversation, Robert Lichter acknowledged to me that the center's funding in its initial years came almost entirely from conservative sources, with Olin and Smith Richardson in the lead. Beginning in 1991, the center became a regular beneficiary of two foundations controlled by the very conservative Scaife family. According to mediatransparency.org, CMPA since 1986 has received $1,172,000 from Scaife, $730,000 from Olin, and $417,000 from Smith Richardson. The other institutions Lichter cites became supporters much later, and their contributions have been dwarfed by those from these highly conservative groups. It's also worth noting that, at the time Lichter was setting up CMPA, he was a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Furthermore, a survey of the articles that Lichter wrote in the period under discussion shows that they were overwhelmingly—indeed, almost exclusively—conservative in orientation. In contributions to The Wall Street Journal's editorial pages, for instance, Lichter condemned the press for writing too negatively about nuclear energy, too favorably about Anita Hill (a reflection of "the growing influence of feminists at major media outlets"), too critically about Dan Quayle, and too much about the homeless (a "blueprint of advocacy journalism".)

(Back in the early 1990s, the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting--full disclosure, it has a left bias--published its own analysis of Richter's criticisms of PBS for being too liberal.)

The STATS report on BPA begins with the disclaimer that "Neither STATS.org nor the author [of the report, Trevor Butterworth, editor of Stats.org and a senior fellow at the organization] received any payment from any industry or other source associated with the manufacture, use, or distribution of bisphenol a." But that statement is an obfuscation, because both Butterworth and Lichter have taken a strong advocacy position against BPA's critics.

Kolata could have found all this out for herself in a matter of minutes, and she owed it to her readers to do so. Indeed, any time an organization calls itself "nonprofit and nonpartisan," as so many chemical industry and other corporate groups do--often hiding behind names that obscure the organization's true motives and identity--the first instinct of a journalist should be to ask whether or not that is really true.

I personally have no strong views on whether BPA is dangerous or not, because I have not studied the matter. But I do know that given the source of the STATS report, I should read it skeptically. It's just too bad that I had to figure that out on my own.

Followup. Please see the comments section below for an exchange with Trevor Butterworth about this blog post. Criticisms of Gina Kolata's sometimes problematic science journalism have a very long history. For more details, please see this entry at SourceWatch.

More on missing the Madoff machinations. If you get a chance to read today's story in the Washington Post about SEC lawyer Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, who was suspicious of Madoff back in 2004 but told to investigate something else, be sure to get as far as this part:

Walker-Lightfoot's supervisors on the case were Mark Donohue, then a branch chief in her department, and his boss, Eric Swanson, an assistant director of the department, said two people familiar with the investigation. Swanson later married Madoff's niece, and their relationship is now under review by the agency's inspector general, who is examining the SEC's handling of the Madoff case.

And also to this part:

At least five times over nearly 20 years, the SEC has investigated Madoff's business, but it never discovered the tremendous fraud. In 2007, for instance, the agency reviewed his activities after warnings from a one-time rival, Harry Markopolos, that Madoff was probably running a Ponzi scheme.

Actually Markopolos was warning the SEC about Madoff long before 2007, as those who have followed the case closely know (I know it and I am not following it all that closely.)

Israeli war crimes. Amnesty International is the latest human rights group to weigh in with an investigation into Israel's actions in Gaza. The report also condemns Hamas for firing rockets into Israel and killing civilians.

The Senator from Minnesota is me, Al Franken

Those old enough to remember the original "Saturday Night Live" show from the 1970s will remember this signature line from Franken.

But you know, it was a statistical tie, and you have to blame not only Norm Coleman for dragging it out all these months but also, quite frankly, half of the voters of Minnesota for voting for such a wuss (ie Coleman) in the first place. I suppose they can be forgiven, however, since they did hand the state to Barack Obama.

Gaza: 1.5 million people trapped in despair

That's the conclusion of the International Committee of the Red Cross in a new report released today. You can read a summary and download the pdf at the link. Here are some of the basic conclusions:

This small coastal strip is cut off from the outside world. Even before the latest hostilities, drastic restrictions on the movement of people and goods imposed by the Israeli authorities, particularly since October 2007, had led to worsening poverty, rising unemployment and deteriorating public services such as health care, water and sanitation. Insufficient cooperation between the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and the Hamas administration in Gaza had also hit the provision of essential services. As a result, the people of Gaza were already experiencing a major crisis affecting all aspects of daily life when hostilities intensified in late December.

Six months later, restrictions on imports are making it impossible for Gazans to rebuild their lives. The quantities of goods now entering Gaza fall well short of what is required to meet the population's needs. In May 2009, only 2,662 truckloads of goods entered Gaza from Israel, a decrease of almost 80 per cent compared to the 11,392 truckloads allowed in during April 2007, before Hamas took over the territory.

Israel created the conditions in Gaza that allowed Hamas to take over in the first place, because the Palestinian Authority was helpless and unable to help the Gazan people; now it blames Hamas for its own continuing blockade of Gaza. I raise again the question I posed on Saturday: Why does the United Nations and the United States allow Israel to make all of the decisions about territories it illegally occupies or illegally lays siege to, in the case of Gaza? It is long past time for the international community to take these territories away from Israel, guarantee Israel's security, and create the conditions for a viable Palestinian state. Israel will never do it unless it is forced to.

Photo:Ezbet Abd Rabo, Gaza North, May 2009. ©ICRC / M. Al Baba

Justice denied in Madoff sentencing. Since Madoff is already 71 years old, it is unlikely that he will ever serve more than a fraction of his 150 year prison sentence. Like so many white collar criminals, he got off lightly...

Iran and the left. While I have expressed skepticism on this blog about whether the Iranian elections really were rigged (at least to the extent that Ahmadinejad did not really win), apparently some of my fellow leftists think that the current protests in that country are inspired by the CIA and the Obama administration and that somehow Ahmadinejad is the real progressive in all this. Journalist Reese Erlich, author of "The Iran Agenda," directs some common sense against such nonsense in a post on Commondreams.org.


Racial profiling by French police. Anyone who has lived or spent time in France, if they are honest, knows that the police stop non-white people much more often than whites, and often on the flimsiest of pretexts. A new study by the Soros Foundation funded Open Society Justice Initiative and the French research agency CNRS, reported in the June 30 International Herald Tribune, shows just how much more often:

Racial and ethnic profiling by the police is illegal in France, but the study of more than 500 stops at major Parisian transit stations showed that those who appeared to be of Arab origin were at least 7.5 times more likely than whites to be stopped, and that those perceived to be black — of sub-Saharan African or Caribbean origin — were six times more likely than whites to be stopped.

Racism among whites has long been endemic to French society, especially among the older generations. Many French are very critical of the United States, and often for good reasons, but they were humbled when Barack Obama was elected: The day a Black or even North African candidate could become president of France is still very far off...