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Tag: George W. Bush

Obama Lifts the U.S. HIV Travel and Immigration Ban

Excellent news:

President Obama on Friday announced the end of a 22-year ban on travel to the United States by people who had tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS, fulfilling a promise he made to gay advocates and acting to eliminate a restriction he said was “rooted in fear rather than fact.”

At a White House ceremony, Mr. Obama announced that a rule canceling the ban would be published on Monday and would take effect after a routine 60-day waiting period. The president had promised to end the ban before the end of the year.

“If we want to be a global leader in combating H.I.V./AIDS, we need to act like it,” Mr. Obama said. “Now, we talk about reducing the stigma of this disease, yet we’ve treated a visitor living with it as a threat.”

The United States is one of only about a dozen countries that bar people who have H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

President George W. Bush started the process last year when he signed legislation, passed by Congress in July 2008, that repealed the statute on which the ban was based. But the ban remained in effect.

It was enacted in 1987 at a time of widespread fear that H.I.V. could be transmitted by physical or respiratory contact. The ban was further strengthened by Congress in 1993 as an amendment offered by Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that many people weren’t even aware that the ban existed at all. I remember precisely when I learned about it: when we applied for my husband’s U.S. visa in 2005. As a part of the process, he had to get tested for HIV — with the stipulation that if he tested positive, his application would be denied (and exorbitant application fee not refunded). I was horrified and sickened at the time I saw the information on those papers. I’m sickened and horrified still thinking about it now. The policy was discriminatory on its face against a group that is already incredibly marginalized and vilified still to this day. And it’s particularly laughable that a country that funds and promotes abstinence-only education would then treat keeping HIV-positive travelers and immigrants out of the country as some sort of “prevention” method.

In addition to being discriminatory against people living with HIV in general, it also had a particularly profound effect on other specific marginalized populations. These include, but I’m sure are not limited to, those individuals and families who come from nations with particularly high infection rates (often exacerbated by our own international HIV policy!), and the gay community:

In practice, the ban particularly affected tourists and gay men. Waivers were available, but the procedure for tourists and other short-term visitors who were H.I.V. positive was so complicated that many concluded it was not worth it.

For foreigners hoping to immigrate, waivers were available for people who were in a heterosexual marriage, but not for gay couples. Gay advocates said the ban had led to painful separations in families with H.I.V.-positive members that came to live in this country, and had discouraged adoptions of children with the virus.

Gay advocates said the ban also discouraged travelers and some foreigners already living in the United States from seeking testing and medical care for H.I.V. infection.

Stigma, shaming and fear-mongering are not the ways to prevent new HIV infections. This ban was merely another method for exerting privilege and keeping yet more “undesirables” from immigrating. The repeal is hardly a dent in the vast problems with both our nation’s immigration policy and HIV policy, but it was an utterly appalling rule that I couldn’t be more thrilled to see go.

Shall we tint our Twitter avatars? No? Carry on…

As many of you are no doubt aware, Manuel Zelaya, the democratically elected president of Honduras, was ousted in an illegal military coup last June.   Obama originally issued a condemnation of the army, who stormed the presidential palace and removed and forcibly deported Zelaya while he was still in his pajamas.

Obama’s extremely reasonable response was nice, at least compared to Bush’s endorsement of  (and connections to) the short-lived 2002 illegal removal of democratically elected leftist president Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.  Zelaya and Chavez are political allies.   The US has a long history of undermining and actively supporting the overthrow of leftish governments in Latin America (This isn’t the greatest or most comprehensive overview, but it’s a start.)  So I was really disappointed when Obama backed down from having a position beyond that this is None of Our Business:

“The same critics who say that the United States has not intervened enough in Honduras are the same people who say that we’re always intervening and the Yankees need to get out of Latin America. You can’t have it both ways…”

Because funding mass murders and installing puppet dictators is really equatable with supporting actual democratic process and providing humanitarian aid.

Amnesty International recently released a report warning of a post-coup humanitarian crisis in Honduras.  Mass demonstrations have been underway, met with arbitrary arrests and brutality.  Calls for aid have been largely ignored, at least here in the US.

I would be especially, especially interested to hear from Feministe readers in other parts of the world.  How is the media covering the coup?  How is your government and population responding?  Here, it’s not even a story anymore.

Hey, remember the worldwide Twitterevolution after the elections in Iran? People in the US were all over that.  I saw so many tweets from people who had turned their avatars green praising the brave souls in the streets of Tehran.  Hell, I made my avatar green.  I changed my location to Tehran.  I had my doubts about what all this did for the courageous in the streets, but if in any tiny way it showed support, I wanted to show support.

But the whole thing left a gross taste in my mouth.  Much as I supported the people of Iran fighting for their rights to self-determination, over here in the US all the support felt like it was coming less from the grassroots up than from the government/corporate media power structure on down.  It is in the interest of US foreign policy to undermine Ahmadinejad however possible.  The feel good story of normal people like you and me banding together across the globe via Twitter, the little company that could, to Twitterize the popular revolution?  PR gold.
Earlier this summer the US Congress even passed a resolution condemning the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the crackdown on peaceful protestors. One thing that bugged me then was the complete hypocrisy of the US government, which has in recent history shown no such love or respect for demonstrators on their own soil, including those specifically demanding free and fair elections.  I don’t want to equate the bloody repression of protesters in Iran to that facing  those in the US protesting the 2000 and 2004 stolen elections or anything, but the US government hardly has a history of glorifying their own citizens when they fight for democracy at home, let alone any consistent support for those fighting for their rights across the globe. It is clear that all the love the US government feels for Iranian protesters is primarily motivated by political opportunism.

This is not to in anyway undermine the demonstrators in Iran, who have my love and support.  But it is to point out that I think Honduran demonstrators are equally deserving.  And there are obvious reasons why they’re not getting it.

Abu Ghraib Abuse Allegations Include Rape

By now, you’ve likely heard of the most recent allegations regarding U.S. soldiers’ abuse of Iraqi prisoners: they include rape and other sexual assault, of both female and male detainees, and there may be photographs of the assaults among those which Obama has recently decided not to release.  You can read the details here — it probably goes without saying that they’re immensely disturbing.

It’s hard to know what to say to this.  I’ve spent the last day trying to figure it out, to come up with something intelligent.  Instead, all I can muster is seething rage, crushing sadness, and unbearable shame.  I’ve never been a patriot.  Honestly, I don’t even understand patriotism.  And I’ve certainly been ashamed of my country before.  But this is certainly a new low.  As a rape survivor myself, particularly.

I think that Jennifer Pozner hit the nail pretty much right on the head in under 140 characters on Twitter.  Rape is a part of war.  And U.S. soldiers have been raping the “enemy” ever since the U.S. military was established.  It’s one of the many reasons I oppose war.  That doesn’t surprise me, though it doesn’t lessen my rage, sadness or shame.

What is shocking (if not surprising), and only magnifies that rage and shame, is the fact that all of these abuses were seemingly sanctioned by our government.  The soldiers who committed other abuses at Abu Ghraib claimed that they were following orders.  While that in no way absolves them, seeing the government’s stance on torture, we also have little reason to doubt them.  And I see little reason to believe that these rapes and sexual assaults were somehow vastly different.  What’s shocking is that in the 21st century, the U.S. government is condoning and possibly even promoting rape as a war tactic.

Of course, the Obama administration is trying to deny that the photos exist.  The automatic response to that is, the only way we’ll ever know is if you just release them like you promised.  At the same time, Mark Leon Goldberg makes an excellent point that these victims have rights. And it is indeed pretty damn difficult to justify releasing photographs of rape and sexual assault to the public without the victims’ consent.

So I don’t know where to go from there, on any of this.  I guess I’ll just open up the floor to all of you.

ETA: Ashley has some good and difficult thoughts over at the SAFER blog.

War Crimes

Yeah, we commit them in secret prisons.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Thursday made public detailed memos describing brutal interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency, as President Obama sought to reassure the agency that the C.I.A. operatives involved would not be prosecuted.

In dozens of pages of dispassionate legal prose, the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior operatives of Al Qaeda are spelled out in careful detail — like keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or putting insects into the box to exploit their fears.

The interrogation methods were authorized beginning in 2002, and some were used as late as 2005 in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas prisons. The techniques were among the Bush administration’s most closely guarded secrets, and the documents released Thursday afternoon were the most comprehensive public accounting to date of the program.

Some senior Obama administration officials, including Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., have labeled one of the 14 approved techniques, waterboarding, illegal torture. The United States prosecuted some Japanese interrogators at war crimes trials after World War II for
…
Together, the four memos give an extraordinarily detailed account of the C.I.A.’s methods and the Justice Department’s long struggle, in the face of graphic descriptions of brutal tactics, to square them with international and domestic law. Passages describing forced nudity, the slamming of detainees into walls, prolonged sleep deprivation and the dousing of detainees with water as cold as 41 degrees alternate with elaborate legal arguments concerning the international Convention Against Torture.

You can read the memos here. It’s really disturbing stuff, and it’s quite honestly humiliating — the United States’ status as some sort of moral beacon faded long ago (if it ever existed), but certainly we’re supposed to be better than this. And while I’m not a big fan of punitive punishment, the lack of accountability here is startling:

Within minutes of the release of the memos, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that the memos illustrated the need for his proposed independent commission of inquiry, which would offer immunity in return for candid testimony.

Mr. Obama condemned what he called a “dark and painful chapter in our history” and said that the interrogation techniques would never be used again. But he also repeated his opposition to a lengthy inquiry into the program, saying that “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.”

A dark chapter in our history? The past? Sure, it is “past” insofar as four years ago is “the past,” but come on now — it’s hardly so far back in history that we should close the book on it and move on. It just happened. Many of the people who authorized and implemented these procedures are still in positions of power; none of them, as far as I know, have had to pay any penance for the crimes they committed or encouraged.

Of course, it’s not so easy to pinpoint exactly who should be paying penance, and for what. The people who actually carried out the torture did so under orders from above; they were told that they had the legal go-ahead. The lawyers who wrote the memos certainly came to some reprehensible conclusions, but they weren’t the policy-makers or the order-givers, even if they knew that their recommendations would translate into policy. I personally believe that the buck stops at the highest levels of power — clearly the higher-ups in the Bush administration not only knew what was going on, but pushed their legal experts to come to these conclusions. In doing so, they put American citizens in legally precarious situations — for all their America-loving talk, they encouraged CIA operatives to commit war crimes, and opened all of those people up to potential prosecution. It doesn’t look like the CIA officers are going to be prosecuted, but they were put in a very troublesome situation — and many of them did very troublesome things.

Mr. Obama said that C.I.A. officers who were acting on the Justice Department’s legal advice would not be prosecuted, but he left open the possibility that anyone who acted without legal authorization could still face criminal penalties. He did not address whether lawyers who authorized the use of the interrogation techniques should face some kind of penalty.

I hope some sort of investigation is launched, but I also hope that we don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees. I obviously don’t have a ton of sympathy for torturers, but I’m also not sure that they guy working at a prison in Aghanistan, who’s being told by everyone from the President of the United States on down to use “harsh” techniques in order to get information from detainees, and who is operating under significant personal stress in an organization that relies heavily on hierarchy, is the person who should be held ultimately accountable. I would much rather see the people who were in positions of real power and authority have to answer for this.

The New York Times offers a round-up of blog and op/ed opinionson the torture memos. It’s well worth a read.

Religious zealots vs. Obama at Notre Dame

President Obama is set to speak at Notre Dame on May 17th, and some folks aren’t too happy about it. Why? Because he’s pro-choice, and giving him a platform would violate the rules laid out in Catholics in Political Life. The pertinent guideline reads, “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”

Interestingly, George W. Bush spoke at Notre Dame’s 2001 commencement. Pretty sure that he’s in favor of the death penalty, and that under his leadership in Texas a whole lot of people were executed.

I guess those “fundamental moral” pro-life principles don’t apply to people after they’re born.

Breaking: Obama Overturns Ban on Stem Cell Research

I just watched it live on CNN.com!  Whoa!

The executive order is a reversal of an executive order issued by President Bush in 2001:

Because stem cells have the potential to turn into any organ or tissue cell in the body, research advocates say they could yield cures to debilitating conditions such as diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and spinal injuries. But because work on embryonic stem cells involves the destruction of human embryos, many conservatives supported the limits Bush imposed by executive order in 2001.

Dr. Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and co-chairman of Obama’s science advisory council, said Sunday that Obama will “endorse the notion that public policy must be guided by sound, scientific advice.”

Obama’s order will direct the National Institutes of Health to develop revised guidelines on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research within 120 days, said Varmus, who joined Barnes in the conference call with reporters.

“The president is, in effect, allowing federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research to the extent that it’s permitted by law — that is, work with stem cells themselves, not the derivation of stem cells,” he said.

Obama also said that he hopes Congress will continue to support stem-cell research legislatively.  All of this is incredibly excellent news, and I cannot possibly express how very happy I am about the development.  It looks like we may in fact be moving towards a real “culture of life,” which values the lives of actual people.  Go President Obama!

h/t HollyOrd’s twitter

Obama to Rescind HHS “Conscience” Rule

So by now, I hope we all remember that dangerous HHS rule that Bush implemented during his final days in office?  The one that prevents health care providers from “discriminating” against employees who refuse to to do their jobs, when they include things like providing patients with birth control and accurate reproductive health options?

And indeed, the one that we were all hoping Obama would overturn once he entered office?

The news has come out today that rescinding the rule is exactly what he apparently plans to do:

Taking another step into the abortion debate, the Obama administration Friday will move to rescind a controversial rule that allows health-care workers to deny abortion counseling or other family-planning services if doing so would violate their moral beliefs, according to administration officials.

The rollback of the “conscience rule” comes just two months after the Bush administration announced it last year in one of its final policy initiatives.

Three cheers for that!

The kind of sketchy news is this part:

Officials said the administration will consider drafting a new rule to clarify what health-care workers can reasonably refuse for patients.

For more than 30 years, federal law has allowed doctors and nurses to decline to provide abortion services as a matter of conscience, a protection that is not subject to rulemaking.

In promulgating the new rule last year, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said it was necessary to address discrimination in the medical field.

He criticized “an environment in the health-care field that is intolerant of individual conscience, certain religious beliefs, ethnic and cultural traditions and moral convictions.”

Officials said the Obama administration’s goal is to make the rule clearer.

Let’s hope that once the administration “considers” this option, they decide to toss the idea back out.  Unless, of course, by making the rules “clearer,” Obama plans to limit the amount of services that health care workers can refuse to provide further than before, thus making access to things like emergency contraception a whole lot easier.  If that’s the route he’s planning to go, it would make this even better news.

NARAL is asking supporters to send Obama their thanks for planning to rescind the rule, and I strongly urge you to do so as well.  Not only is positive reinforcement hugely helpful when it comes to policy, but knowing that he has lots of support for the idea is also likely to increase the chances that Obama gets this done right.

Executive Order Watch

Executive orders from the office of the new President are trickling in at a faster pace now. Here’s the rundown so far:

  • Guantanamo Bay must be closed down within a year. Nothing is clear yet about what exactly the government plans to do with the detainees, whose trials have been suspended. Along with Guantanamo, the CIA has been ordered to shut down their overseas network of covert prisons where they’ve kept suspects in secret custody for months or years. Another order Obama signed created a task force to figure out what to do next.
  • The U.S. Army Field Manual is now the official standard for interrogation for all U.S. personnel; it prohibits waterboarding as well as threats, coercion, and physical abuse. A pretty tight restriction on anything approaching torture, but a source of the Washington Post suggests that there may be revisions to that manual in store, which would re-expand what is allowed.
  • Along with requesting that military judges suspend the trials of the Guantanamo detainees, another order suspended the trial of Ali al-Marri, who is accused of being an al-Qaeda agent and is being held indefinitely as an “enemy combatant.” His status and fate remains uncertain as well.
  • All White House officials who makes more than $100k is getting a pay freeze.
  • Executive branch employees are prohibited from taking any gifts from lobbyists. (It’s hard but not impossible, sadly, to believe that this wasn’t a rule before. I haven’t been able to find out if it was or not.)
  • Hiring, firing, and other employment practices in the executive branch must now be made based on qualifications, competence, and experience, as opposed to political connections. (This is thought by some to be a repudiation of how former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez fired a bunch of prosecutors who weren’t faithfully doing everything Republicans told them to.)
  • New executive branch appointees may not take part in any matter related to any employer or client that they’ve worked with during the last two years, or work on any issue area or in any department of government that they lobbied during the last two years. This is intended to stop “revolving door” cronyism, of course, and may affect a lot of Obama’s staff. UPDATE: In fact, it looks like the administration may already have to seek a waiver from this rule for William Lynn, nominated to be Deputy Secretary of Defense, because Lynn was a vice-president and Raytheon and now would be involved in budgeting and acquisitions. DOH way to make a rule and break it, in the military-industrial complex no less.
  • Similarly, executive branch employees who leave government service are now prohibited from lobbying the executive branch for two years after they leave or the rest of the Obama administration, whichever is longer.
  • Other officials besides the President *cough*CHENEY*cough* can no longer claim executive privilege to keep executive-branch documents sealed. Bush gave that power to former Presidents and Vice-Presidents as well… oops, can’t seal your old records any more! Now, if even the President wants to exercise that power, the act must still be reviewed for constitutionality by the Attorney General and the White House counsel.
  • Obama has ordered new guidelines to be developed for government communication and the Freedom of Information Act to implement principles of openness, transparency, and participatory government.

Sounds good to me so far, although I expect the “up in the air” status of Guantanamo detainees is unlikely to make anyone happy, especially the right wing. Still, for now it means no more hidden prison networks, no more waterboarding, and slightly fewer possibilities for secrecy and cronyism.

I am still waiting anxiously to see if more orders are signed rescinding some of Bush’s worst orders, like the one cutting off overseas aid for organizations that even breathe the word “abortion,” and the one letting health care providers refuse treatment without referral whenever it conflicts with their beliefs. After all, it is the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade today, and Blog for Choice day too.

UPDATE: According to California NOW the Department of Health & Human Services has confirmed that they have yet to develop guidelines for implementing the “conscience rule” that would allow health care providers to refuse service if they didn’t like it. Because Obama’s team issued an order halting any implementation of last-minute Bush directives until they can be reviewed, it looks like that rule will not be going forward. I can’t imagine the Obama administration would review it and let it continue.

Sources: here and here and here.

Inauguration Open Thread

Rumor has it that Jill is present in the crowds in D.C., but the rest of us are watching the inauguration on the tube. What are your thoughts on the switch in power? Chris Matthews’ wacky commentary? Joe Biden’s goofy smile? Hillary Clinton’s cabinet seat? Bill Clinton’s yellow scarf? George Bush’s final exit? Obama’s historic seat at the table?