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Health and Human Rights

Jul 15th, 2010
by Robin Kirk.
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This morning, the Summer Institute began with a presentation by Jason Cross on health and human rights. Soon to be a PhD in cultural anthropology, Jason is also a lawyer (Duke Law) and a veteran activist with experience in Europe and Latin America.

He described health as a “gateway” human right and perhaps one of the more radical human rights claims. Unlike civil and political rights, which can be seen as conceptual or having to do with behaviors and ideas, health is rooted in  the body, suffering and mortality.

Health can be thought of a “positive” right, he said. Some philosophers and political scientists divide rights into negative and positive. A negative right, for example, is a “don’t mess with me” right. This protects the individual’s freedom without that freedom infringing on the freedom of others. Freedom of speech is one example as are the rights to assembly and due process.

A positive right is a right to something: education, health care, culture. Seen in this way, rights cost money and depend on some entity organizing or providing them, like a government. The negative/positive distinction is not good or bad but frames rights claims in different ways.

“What do people mean when they make human rights claims? What effect do these claims have on the world?” he asked. Jason pointed out that human rights language is relatively new; while people made have made health claims around justice before only post 1950s were these claims phrased in rights language. “As with most languages, things are going to mean different things in different contexts.”

In the American context, how do human rights factor into the debate over health care insurance? No single system is by definition the “rights” option; single payer is no more “rights-y” than government-sponsored (when you pay is different, Jason pointed out, but not how rights-oriented each model can be). Most Americans would say, “If you want health care, work to earn it!” Jason encouraged us not to propose one approach over another, but rather help students understand who different countries and cultures embrace different models as rights-positive.

Dr. Paul Farmer

One of the leading thinkers and practitioners in this field is Dr. Paul Farmer, a Duke grad who founded Partners in Health and who has written extensively on this issue. Denying health care when a government can provide it is as lethal as any bullet, Farmer has said.is also a huge ethical question when government impose economic sanctions on other countries that result in higher mortality rates, as with the Iraq sanctions of 10 years ago. Jason emphasized that this challenges us to think about violence differently. he has worked extensively in El Salvador, where human rights activists talk about health as a positive right and link it to issues of dignity.

There is a tension, Jason pointed out, between classic human rights talk and a positive human rights approach. He used the example of how NGOS like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch deal with immigration. They fear “diluting” human rights and getting lost in broader issues that are impossible to measure or quantify. At the same time, groups in countries like El Salvador insist that narrowing everything down to civil and political rights miss the structures that perpetuate abuse, including the economic relationships settled in free trade agreements.

“Part of the struggle is a knowledge struggle and research is important in this regard,” he said.

There are also weirdnesses! Most countries include a constitutional right to health case. Among them is Brazil, here cosmetic surgery is covered by health plans. More helpfully, some countries link populations to clinics, ensuring that there are enough services for their populations. Other countries have used human rights claims to establish cheaper access to certain live-saving drugs, including anti-AIDS and tuberculosis medicines. (South Africa leading the way). Ecuador is currently creating waves issuing its first compulsory license for lopinavir/ritonavir, a key medication in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, circumventing the high cost it would pay on the open market.

While Ecuador has made waves on this, it is not a leader in issuing compulsory licenses, essentially and end-run around patents. That distinction belongs to the US, which issues more compulsory licenses than any other country — most for military technology, not for life-saving drugs.

Finishing up, Jason mentioned two books that are useful in the classroom: Global Health by Mark Nichter and Global Politics of Health by Sara Davies.

An excellent and provocative presentation!

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Outlawed

Jul 14th, 2010
by Robin Kirk.
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Christina Cowger from North Carolina Stop Torture Now gave a wonderful presentation to Duke University’s Summer Institute on Human Rights about the state’s role in extraordinary rendition and torture. She used this Witness video, which has footage of German citizen Khaled el-Masri recounting his experience being tortured in Morocco.

It’s hard to watch. But more people need to hear this story.

The Duke Human Rights Center is partnering with NCSTN and the UNC Law School’s clinic on Immigration and Human Rights Policy to support an accountability process for the state. We want to inform people about the links between North Carolina and extraordinary rendition/torture and propose legislation that would prevent operations involving torture from being based in the state.

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The story behind “Straight 18″ on child soldiers

Jul 13th, 2010
by Robin Kirk.
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Former Child Soldiers in the Democratic Republ...

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Jo Becker

Duke University’s Summer Institute on Human Rights was lucky enough to have Jo Becker speak today, about how she approaches advocacy and teaching. A long-time veteran of Human Rights Watch, she heads the Children’s Rights Division and is writing a book that collects stories of how advocates work for human rights around the world.

She divided advocacy into three areas. First, advocates must analyze an issue and determine if the source is culture, law of enforcement. That analysis includes, in Jo’s view, documenting the problem and doing education about the issue to the public.

Then, it’s important to develop a strategy — how are you going to get improvements? Finally, she talked about determining who can actually make change and how to reach them. Is it the government?Guerrillas? International bodies?

She used child soldiers as an example. In places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia and Burma, children fight on all sides. These include boys and girls as well as children as young as seven. Among some groups, fighting is considered a child’s duty or a right of passage.

There is also a fundamental problem of law. The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the quickest treaty to be adopted internationally and is also the most widely ratified of the human rights covenants (the only two countries not to ratify are Somalia and the United States, which under President Ronald Reagan was concerned about supposed “anti-family” bias). Ratification means the treaty becomes a matter of national law and is enforceable.

The Convention defines a child as under 18, in all but one circumstance: fighting. The Convention holds that 15 is the minimum age for recruitment into the armed forces

In 1988, Jo was a part of the “Straight 18″ campaign to create a new treaty on child soldiers that would raise the minimum age to 18. She told us how they built a strategy to influence policy makers by creating a coalition that included researchers, human rights advocates, child welfare workers, national groups, religious groups and people involved in rehabilitation. This allowed us to “speak in one voice and coordinate our strategies,” she said, and also established credibility.

One thing that was evident then was the lack of information on the subject — not many people knew about this issue. So the Coalition spent a lot of time documenting the issue and informing various publics. They also spent time building a network of people, including policy makers, concerned about the issue and willing to go public with declarations of support for a “straight 18″ treaty.

In 2002, the campaign was able to get the United States to sign the Optional Protocol on children in armed conflict. Weirdly, the US was able to ratify this without signing the Convention. Jo pointed out that this is the only time that the US has changed its recruitment practices to adjust to a human rights treaty.

Several years later, Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sam Brownback (R-KS) sponsored a bill that restricted US military aid to countries that have child soldiers in their armed forces. Enacted in 2008, the law currently affects six countries: Afghanistan, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Uganda.

The International Criminal Court now considers the use of child soldiers a prosecutable war crime.

So this is a huge — and rare — success story. This doesn’t mean that the use of child soldiers has stopped; but 133 countries have signed and the number of child soldiers has dropped by half, Jo estimated.

For students, I think this is a wonderful way to show that change can happen and progress can be made. Too often, there is a sense of helplessness against abuses and the inevitability of evil. But Jo’s retelling of this important story is a powerful antidote to inaction.

Jo’s book, which contains the full story of this and other campaigns, will be published as early as next year by Stanford University Press.

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Posted in: Burma, Colombia, Duke Human Rights Center, Duke University, Human Rights, Robin Kirk, The Congo.
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Ebrington Barracks

Jun 26th, 2010
by Robin Kirk.
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On Derry’s Waterside, opposite the famous walls of the old city, lies an unusual “star fort” that was for decades the home of

Demolition at Ebrington Barracks

British Army troops sent to Northern Ireland. The Ebrington Barracks lies on strategically useful land (King James the Second placed his artillery there to bombard the city in 1689). The Waterside is also predominately Protestant and thus less hostile to British troops.

Only in 2006 did the last soldiers leave, raising the question of what to do with this infamous site.

I was lucky enough to get a tour of the reconstruction underway while finishing my trip to Northern Ireland in June. ILEX, a government-supported development company, is currently reconfiguring the base as a mix of housing, performance space, museum and shopping area.

The plans are stunning. Along with the site construction, the company has coordinated the placement of a new pedestrian bridge that will span the River Foyle, allowing people to make the easy crossing. The bridge is spectacular, with a Calatrava-esque harp design and a lovely S-curve. ILEX is under the control of the devolved government, meaning the First Minister (Peter Robinson, a Loyalist) and Deputy First Minister (Martin McGuinness, a Republican and former IRA commander in Derry).

Model of Derry's Peace Bridge

At the time of the Bloody Sunday massacre, McGuinness was second-in-command of the IRA in Derry. The Saville Inquiry, released last week, cleared him of responsibility for any shots at British troops, though left open the possibility that he was armed that day and may have been involved in directing some of the IRA gunmen present.

As Deputy First Minister, McGuinness has earned the praise of even die-hard loyalists. He got along so well with former First Minister Ian Paisley (who should be cited as the original fire-breathing preacher) that the two were dubbed “the Chuckle Brothers.” As a prime mover of the Ebrington project for his hometown, McGuinness certainly does not lack for vision and big ideas.

Part of the reason for investining in the Waterside and constructing the bridge is that Derry remains deeply divided along sectarian lines. “Cityside,” meaning the walled city, the Bogside (where Bloody Sunday took place) and the mountains that line the invisible border with the Republic are overwhelmingly Catholic. The Waterside is Protestant and includes the area’s main hospital and train station. The one remaining Protestant enclave in Cityside is known as “The Fountain,” and has barely 200 residents (and shrinking).

So it is big, ambitious thinking to engineer a bridge and a new development that means to be non-sectarian. Funded by a European Peace III grant as well as governmental and some private monies, this is an attempt to recover from the Troubles and begin to remap Derry as a place where sectarian divisions should vanish.

Defiant murals mark the Fountain in Derry

But then what about the history of the place itself, so upsetting for so many Catholics? Can a base used to launch Bloody Sunday, among many other affronts, ever be a popular picnic spot? I think of American examples like Wounded Knee (a sad, desolate spot) or the Crater (outside Petersburg, VA, a lovely, magical spot); moving further afield, could one ever conceive of a picnic at the Katyn Forest or in Oradour, demolished by the Nazis in 1944 in retaliation for an attack by the Resistance on German soldiers?

I’m not counting heads here, to equalize the number of victims — in important ways, that doesn’t matter. What matters is the emotional weight of the atrocity on a given population. Sure, life rolls on and we forget the dismal news of the past (we must forget to some degree). But is it too soon for Ebrington, with the Saville Inquiry just released? Or is this precisely the right time to “remake” the landscape into one that promotes peace?

From an Ebrington gun sight to the Cityside, with Peace Bridge pylons under construction

One of the first things done to remake Ebrington was knock down the building where Bloody Sunday was planned. The argument was that the building itself, unlike the star fort walls or the once luxurious officers’ mess, had no architectural value and was in the way of the plans. At the same time, that building had huge meaning for the Catholic population.

Do you have to erase history in order to make peace? Or is there a way to acknowledge even the atrocities of the past as a part of peace?

I can see why ILEX, apart from any architectural argument, would want to get rid of the building. Sites have power, even when they were somewhat marginal to the actual atrocity. The real “site” of Bloody Sunday is and will always be the Bogside. At the same time, physically erasing the building sends precisely the wrong message, that by eliminating a site you are somehow trying to glide over its continuing importance. Other “sites of conscience” efforts have taken the opposite strategy. In Cincinnati’s excellent National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, they included as the first exhibit an actual slave jail, conplete with the place where the shackles were driven into rough wood timbers. It’s a powerful, haunting space even within this beautiful new museum. And I don’t think it causes only anger (though it certainly does provoke that); it is anger along with understanding and a sense that the whole history, even the bad parts, is getting the recognition and respect it merits.


Posted in: Human Rights, Robin Kirk.
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The Saville Inquiry

Jun 15th, 2010
by Robin Kirk.
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Thirty-eight years after the tragedy known as “Bloody Sunday” in Londonderry, a second official inquiry contains  one crucial word: “innocent.” The thirteen men who died that day (another died of his wounds four months later) posed “no threat” and were engaged in no activity that would justify their shooting

The original civil rights banner from the tragic march in 1972

Prime Minister David Cameron said that the inquiry found soldiers went into the Bogside, where a peaceful civil rights march was being held, as a result of an order from Parachute Regiment Colonel Derek Wilford. The order, said Cameron,  “should not have been given” and  was contrary to the orders that Wilford had received from Brigadier Pat MacLellan, the soldier in charge of the Army’s operation that day.

Cameron said, “What happened should never, ever have happened – some members of our armed forces acted wrongly. On behalf of our government and our country I am deeply sorry.”

In a stirring passage, Cameron added, “You do not defend the British army by defending the indefensible. We do not honor all those who have served with distinction in keeping the peace and upholding the rule of law in Northern Ireland by hiding from the truth.”

That should be the motto of any person or group seeking justice.

The families who lost loved ones on January 30, 1972, were allowed to see an advance copy of the report. This morning, they were taken first into the Guild Hall to see the final product and signalled their approval by sticking their thumbs through the wire window grate, outside the city’s ancient walls.When I spoke to family members during a May 2010 visit, they said they didn’t need the report to tell them what really happened. Nevertheless, the conclusion of “innocent” is being embraced as vindication of their long struggle for truth.

The report also said that Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness was probably armed with a submachine gun on the day (he was reputedly an active member of the Irish Republican Army). While it was possible he fired his weapon, the report said McGuinness did not engage in any activity which justified the soldiers opening fire.

The next question is whether or not any British soldiers would face prosecution as a result of the Saville Inquiry. There may be some efforts, but the families themselves say that jail for soldiers was never the main point. They wanted the government to report what happened and apologize, all of which happened today.

The Bogside artists based the portraits on photographs of the 14 victims kept by their families

In the Bogside, the Catholic neighborhood where the march took place,  march-related murals now draw hundreds of tourists who want to hear about the “Saturday matinee” (when kids would face off against the soldiers, then break for tea) and “Agro Corner,” the spot where violence (aggravation) would always start. The Troubles really began on that day, as Catholics frustrated with their second-class status concluded that the non-violence that inspired the march would not work in Northern Ireland. Until then, many believed that the techniques used by Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. would bring about change.

After Bloody Sunday, through, hundreds of young men and women joined the Irish Republican Army, believing that violence was the only way out.

Things have changed yet again, as most people in Northern Ireland embrace the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and opt for peace over sectarian fighting. Reports like this one — hideously expensive at $300 million ($21 million per victim), twelve years in the making, hugely complex — are difficult but necessary, as a way of getting the whole story out about what happened. It still remains for the real stories of what happened to thousands of other victims — among them, those killed by the IRA and Loyalist paramilitaries — to be told.There cannot be a “hierarchy of victims,” where only one side receives some level of accountability for its dead.

Perhaps it is time to start considering a truth and reconciliation commission for Northern Ireland? A very hard road, but a necessary one.

Here footage from the march (to the U2 song):

Posted in: Human Rights, Robin Kirk.
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Tipping point for sectarianism?

May 28th, 2010
by Robin Kirk.
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One of the most confusing things about Northern Ireland is the contrast between what people say they want and what is.

For instance, a report was released yesterday asserting that 80 per cent of people polled  in Northern Ireland would prefer to live in “mixed” neighborhoods: i.e. Protestants and Catholics together. Yet 90 percent of current public housing is segregated. There are more “peace walls” now than when the Good Friday agreement was signed in 1998. When new housing goes up, new walls go up with it, along with services for both sides (two leisure centers, two medical clinics, two bus routes, etc.) This is a tremendous cost at a time when the Exchequer is stumbling.

Red Hand of Ulster

Gordon Gillespie, a research fellow at Queens, is part of a Flag Monitoring Project that counts the flags that proliferate every marching season. He says that most people, Protestant and Catholic, don’t like the flags. Yet as many go up now as 20 years ago, some staying aloft all year round.

Ulster Independence flag

The symbolism of the flags is intricate and ever-changing. There are obvious flags (the tricolor=Republican, the Union Jack=Loyalist). But then things start to get tangled. Both use the Red Hand of Ulster, from the myth of the Irish King who had his sons swim to the island to see who would win and become the next king. One of the sons, falling behind, cut off his hand and heaved it to shore, thus proving his devotion).

The Republicans feel kinship with the Palestinians, so use their symbols, while the Loyalists favor Israel and adopt the blue bars and star of David on the Isreali national flag. The blue flag above is described in the following way by Gordon’s research report:

The flag was unveiled on ‘Ulster Day’, 17 November 1988, when the Ulster Independence Committee (now the Ulster Independence Movement; UIM) was formed. The flag is made up of St. Patrick’s Cross and St. Andrew’s Cross (see above), the six pointed star and the Red Hand of Ulster. The UIM claims to break from traditional Loyalist thought by promoting independence from both Ireland and Britain. The flag is also flown by members of other groups and is popular with some elements in the Ulster Defence Association (UDA).

The Scottish flag, and its cross of St. Andrews would be Protestant; anything with Irish language is generally Nationalist.

Every year, new flags appear. Like most other cheap goods, they’re not made here but in China or Taiwan. Even though only a small percentage of the people who live in Northern Ireland are involved in designing, producing or hanging flags, they  — and sectarianism they represent — remain the lenses through which Northern Ireland is still viewed.

Some say that people are being “politically correct” when they say they want to live in mixed neighborhoods. When it comes time to move, almost all still check “Catholic” or “Protestant” on their forms. But is even that “politically correct” answer a victory of sorts? Northern Ireland has already, I think, passed a tipping point for daily sectarian violence; when will the symbols of sectarianism, which for so many are unpopular, follow?

Posted in: Human Rights, Northern Ireland, Robin Kirk, Troubles.
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Wild Belfast

May 26th, 2010
by Robin Kirk.
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In a recent issue of The Nation, Ari Kelman writes about the quickening pace of extinction. Kelman writes that when Thomas Jefferson wrote his encyclopedic Notes on the State of Virginia, he believed that extinction was biologically impossible. Since God made the world, he thought, he would not let his creations vanish. There was no evidence, he asserted (wrongly, of course) of Nature “having formed any link in her great work so weak as to be broken.”

Kelman goes on to discuss Caroline Fraser’s book, Rewilding the World, and her visits to the places where human habitation has been prevented for long periods, thus prompting a resurgence of wildness. Ironically, these places were made into no-man’s-lands by human violence:

In the wake of the cold war, for example, scientists discovered that what had been known as the Death Zone, the narrow parcel of land separating East from West Germany, was among “the most undisturbed natural areas” in Europe. Similarly, intractable strife has transformed the Korean Demilitarized Zone into an “Eden” entirely given over to wild nature, but only because it’s a no man’s land. As Fraser notes: “The 38th parallel, a border 155 miles long and 2½ miles wide, guarded by two million North and South Korean soldiers, is believed to be the best-preserved piece of land on earth. It is also the most dangerous. No human being has set foot in it in fifty-five years.”

Me with the DukeEngage in Belfast students on Napoleon's Nose at Cave Hill Belfast

Another one of those places is above Belfast. For more than 30 years during The Troubles, the mountain was blocked off by the British Army. The Black Mountain base figures in tales of arrest and torture; but for the most part,the hills were untraveled by humans. In 2005, to great fanfare, the mountain was reopened. It is now possible to walk amidst the red grouse, badgers, stonechats, skylark, peregrine falcons, hare and yellow gorse that flourish there.

With my DukeEngage students, I had a glorious walk up Cave Hill, north of Black Mountain, on Saturday, I had aspirations to extend the walk later in the week, starting at Black Mountain and ending at Cave Hill, in North Belfast. It is the same string of mountains, after all, and to my eye, this would make a glorious walk on the rare sunny day.

A number of people told me “no problem,” making me immediately suspicious. If it was no problem, why were there no maps?

I finally called the warden (ranger in American) this morning. He sadly, but definitively, told me that this walk was, as yet, impossible. “Private land” issues, including a police firing range.

The good news is that “wild Belfast” will continue to flourish on sections of the hills. And to see them,  I’ll have to satisfy myself with combining the “virtual tour” of Black Mountain and Cave Hill.

Posted in: Duke Human Rights Center, Duke University, Human Rights, North Carolina, Robin Kirk, Troubles, torture.
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“Recreational rioting” in West Belfast

May 24th, 2010
by Robin Kirk.
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Along the Peace Wall in West Belfast

One of the most interesting phrases we learned about the conflict in West Belfast is “recreational rioting.” Daniel, who lives on the (Nationalist) Falls, is part of a mobile phone network that acts as rapid response to any trouble. If a neighbor reports stones thrown from the Shankill (Unionist) side, he’ll call his Unionist counterpart, who will defuse the trouble. The same applies if the rocks come from the Falls.

They call this “recreational rioting,” when young people born after the 1994 cease-fires engage in some sectarian skirmishing. What’s most interesting about this is that it is pretty friendly. The young people decide on a time to “riot” via Facebook, MySpace or Bebo (popular with Belfast kids, Bebo is also where they recruit for football or flute bands). Protestants and Catholic pelt each other for awhile. Then they rest and share a joint (this was confirmed by mobile phone network volunteers on both sides of the Peace Line).

William "Plum" Smith and Stevan Budi, a Duke student

That doesn’t mean that the peace wall is coming down any time soon. William “Plum” Smith, an ex-prisoner who helped found EPIC, a Shankill community group that my Duke students are working with, says the wall will come down only when the people who live on it ask for it to be dismantled. He’s one of the smartest people I know on what it really takes to dismantle such a long-standing conflict. You can’t do it by decree or because politicians (or tourists) think it is time. The people themselves have to feel confident that their safety won’t be sacrificed.

It’s not pretty. No matter how many murals and wishes for peace go up on that concrete (and corrugated steel and barbed wire and rebar and steel netting), it is one ugly blight on any concept of living in some semblance of harmony. Yet the people of Belfast, admirably and with great difficulty, are making their way toward peace. It’s thrilling (and sometimes a bit frightening) to watch. In the end, though, it is some of the most difficult and important work I’ve ever seen. I’m so glad my students are able to experience it!

Posted in: Duke Human Rights Center, Duke University, Human Rights, Northern Ireland, Robin Kirk, Troubles, Unionists, reconciliation.
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Bearing Witness

Mar 12th, 2010
by Robin Kirk.
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dawes.hup07Yesterday, I was included in a panel with James Dawes, who teaches literature at Macalester College. This was at Elon College, hosted by Safia Swimelar, who is teaching a human rights class and helping her students put on a performance of Ariel Dorfman’s Speak Truth to Power.

Dawes’ book, That the World May Know: Bearing Witness to Atrocity, is a fascinating and nuanced look at how stories are told to promote human rights and the challenges and dilemmas these stories represent. To write the book, Dawes did many firsthand interviews with journalists and human rights workers, and the book is often emotionally gripping.

What I especially appreciate about the book is that it takes on some assumptions and questions them in a thoughtful and sensitive way. For instance, he questions the notion that the testimony victims give of the abuse they suffered is always beneficial to them psychologically. In other words, that telling “heals.” This made me remember a Duke event several years ago that focused on the Korean “comfort women” forced into prostitution by the Japanese Army during World War II. An enterprising Duke undergraduate arranged the whole event around a documentary and the visit of a former “comfort woman” who was willing to tell her story.

First, we watched the documentary, which was informational but not very well-done. Then we turned to the panel and the guest (I was on the panel, more out of solidarity that any expert knowledge). The wonderfully elegant and reserved woman, by then in her eighties, walked slowly to her chair. But she did not speak. She was so moved and upset by the film that no words would come. As it turned out, she had never told her story in public before and it remained one of great pain and shame for her. There was a good audience of about 100 people. And we all sat with her in silence as she wept. This went on for at least 10 minutes. Eventually, she was able to speak. But those 10 minutes were among the most moving and wrenching I had ever experienced. And they really made me question bringing victims to relive their stories, despite the obvious need we have to know about the terrible things that have happened in order to prevent them from happening ever again.

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Mar 3rd, 2010
by Robin Kirk.
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A friend shared with me Glenn Greenwald’s post on Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol’s sickening new ad campaign.

Don your Hazmat suit, gloves, helmet and goggles and watch it here.

In the ad, they describe Eric Holder’s Department of Justice as the “Department of Jihad.” Reason? The DOJ  employs nine lawyers who previously represented Guantanamo detainees (including Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who successfully represented the Guantanamo-plaintiffs in the 2006 Hamdan case before the U.S. Supreme Court).

Yes — brilliant, principled lawyers who did the right thing by upholding the American Constitution and defending the least among us.

“The ad darkly asks of these lawyers: “whose values do they share?,” and labels 7 of those unidentified DOJ lawyers “The Al Qaeda 7,” Greenwald writes.

The values they share? American ones, without a doubt.

Greenwald continues, brilliantly:

We all have a tendency to look back on shameful events in our nation’s history — slavery, the internment of Japanese-Americans, the McCarthyite witch hunts — and like to believe that we would have been on the right side of those conflicts and would have vigorously opposed those responsible for the wrongs.  Here we have real, live, contemporary McCarthyites in our midst — Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol — launching a repulsive smear campaign, and we’ll see what the reaction is and how they’re treated by our political and media elites.

Too often, poison like this goes unremarked. Time to jump into the blogosphere (you do have your Hazmat suit on still, right?)  and make yourself known.

Posted in: Robin Kirk.

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