NDAA - torneranno i campi di concentramento in America?

La mia amministrazione non autorizzerà la detenzione militare a tempo indeterminato senza processo di cittadini americani. Una cosa del genere violerebbe le tradizioni e i valori più importanti della nostra nazione

B.H. Obama

Nel terzo millennio nessuno dovrebbe più subire il trattamento riservato a decine di migliaia di Giapponesi, Italiani e Tedeschi negli Stati Uniti e in Canada:

http://www.informarexresistere.fr/2011/12/31/eterno-lager/

Ma d’altra parte il fatto che gli Stati Uniti si fregino del primato di possedere un quarto della popolazione carceraria del mondo non è un buon segno (con il 5% della popolazione totale mondiale):

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/americas/23iht-23prison.12253738.html?pagewanted=all

E certi disegni di legge attualmente al vaglio delle commissioni competenti sono a dir poco minacciosi:

http://www.informarexresistere.fr/2011/12/17/lo-slittamento-giuridico-verso-la-dittatura-usa-2001-2012/#axzz1iZkF2V7T

Alla fine del 2011 Obama ha controfirmato una legge (National Defense Authorization Act) che trasferisce all’esercito buona parte delle competenze in materia di operazioni anti-terroristiche e prevede la possibilità di imprigionare i sospetti terroristi a tempo indeterminato e senza processo.

prima versione (Senato): http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112s1867pcs/pdf/BILLS-112s1867pcs.pdf

versione emendata (Senato – 93 voti a 7): http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112s1867es/pdf/BILLS-112s1867es.pdf

versione della Camera dei Rappresentanti passata con 322 voti a 96:

http://www.rules.house.gov/Media/file/PDF_112_1/legislativetext/HR1540conf.pdf

versione definitiva

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr1540enr/pdf/BILLS-112hr1540enr.pdf

[283-136 alla Camera e 86-13 al Senato]

Inizialmente avevo preso per buono l’allarme lanciato dalla ABC con questo articolo:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/12/with-reservations-obama-signs-act-to-allow-detention-of-citizens/

che dichiarava senza mezzi termini che l’esercito avrebbe potuto arrestare cittadini americani sulla scorta di sospetti, tenendoli reclusi fino a data da destinarsi.

Poi qualcuno mi ha fatto notare che la sezione 1021 [“AFFIRMATION OF AUTHORITY OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES TO DETAIN COVERED PERSONS”], sottosezione e) recita “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.”

Dunque sembrerebbe che lo stato di diritto antecedente alla legge non possa essere in alcun modo compromesso.

Ma allora perché la ABC aveva stravolto il significato di questa legge, demonizzando Obama, senza sentirsi in dovere di togliere un articolo menzognero? Mi ero persino convinto che la ABC stesse deliberatamente sabotando la campagna di ri-elezione di Obama – un’idea abbastanza sciocca, visto che gli sfidanti repubblicani sono quasi tutti più autoritari e radicali di Obama, che resta un moderato, al loro confronto.

Mi sono preso il tempo di esaminare meglio la questione e devo ammettere che non so cosa pensare. C’è troppa confusione e su una materia così delicata non dovrebbe essercene. Troppi giuristi sembrano minimizzare la portata della legge asserendo che ufficializza pratiche già adottate in precedenza e che l’amministrazione Obama si è espressa in toni rassicuranti.

Ma quando Obama avrà lasciato il posto a qualcun altro? E se ci dovesse essere un altro 11 settembre, magari con una bomba sporca? E nel caso di un conflitto esteso scatenato da un attacco all’Iran? E perché il fatto che queste procedure siano adottate con estrema gradualità dovrebbe rassicurarmi? Non è proprio la gradualità del riscaldamento dell’acqua che impedisce alla rana di sapere che sta per essere bollita?

Tanto per cominciare ho constatato che non è stata unicamente la redazione della ABC a denunciare questa legge, ma anche il New York Times, normalmente molto pro-Obama, con un devastante editoriale che lo definisce maldestro e descrive il testo approvato come “così pieno di elementi discutibili che non c’è lo spazio per esaminarli tutti”, con il potenziale di “conferire ai futuri presidenti l’autorità di imprigionare a vita dei cittadini americani senza una formale accusa e senza un processo” e “nuove, terribili misure che renderanno la detenzione a tempo indefinito e i tribunali militari un aspetto permanente della legge americana”. In sintesi, “una deviazione dall’immagine che che questa nazione si è fatta di se stessa, ossia di un luogo in cui le persone che hanno a che fare con lo stato o sono sottoposti ad un’accusa formale oppure restano a piede libero”.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/opinion/politics-over-principle.html?_r=2

David Cole, docente di giurisprudenza al Georgetown University Law Center, sempre sul NYT, ha avvalorato la posizione del quotidiano:

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/dec/16/bill-rights-some/

Perché mai un quotidiano così importante dovrebbe assumere una posizione così estrema, se non avesse delle solide ragioni per farlo?

Il direttore dell’FBI Robert Mueller, il Segretario alla Difesa Leon Panetta ed il Direttore della National Intelligence, James Clapper, erano anche loro contrari a questa legge perché gli arrestati, sapendo di rischiare una detenzione militare, non avrebbero mai collaborato con le indagini e perché la misura comportava un significativo esautoramento delle funzioni dell'FBI e delle altre agenzie investigative:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57336424/the-problem-with-captured-terrorism-suspects

Sembra siano stati parzialmente accontentai con un emendamento che consente alle suddette agenzie di interrogare i sospettati detenuti dalle autorità militari: “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect the existing criminal enforcement and national security authorities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or any other domestic law enforcement agency with regard to a covered person, regardless whether such covered person is held in military custody”.

Un gruppo di ventisei generali ed ammiragli in pensione che si era già impegnato per proibire la tortura ha scritto ai rispettivi senatori spiegando che questa è una legge che arreca più danni che benefici

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57336424/the-problem-with-captured-terrorism-suspects

Trentadue parlamentari democratici hanno inviato le loro lettere di protesta alle due camere, temendo che la legge minerà alle fondamenta il quarto, quinto, sesto, settimo ed ottavo emendamento della Costituzione.

http://heinrich.house.gov/uploads/Final_Letter_to_NDAA_Conferees_re_Detainees_12122011.pdf

Altre critiche severe sono arrivate dall’American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), da Human Rights Watch e da un articolo di Forbes, che la descrive come “la più grave minaccia alle libertà civili degli Americani”.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/12/05/the-national-defense-authorization-act-is-the-greatest-threat-to-civil-liberties-americans-face/

Quel che è certo è che le disposizioni contenute in questa legge si fanno beffe delle convenzioni di Ginevra e violano gli articoli 8, 9, 10 e 11 della Dichiarazione universale dei diritti dell'uomo, sulla scia del vergognoso Patriot Act, un cavallo di Troia che sta abbattendo dall’interno le difese costituzionali dei cittadini americani:

http://fanuessays.blogspot.com/2011/10/tutto-quel-che-dovete-sapere-sul.html

Non solo il campo di concentramento di Guantánamo non è stato chiuso, come promesso da Obama, ma questa legge in pratica rende impossibile chiuderlo (sezioni 1026 e 1027) nonostante Obama abbia dichiarato che “il carcere di Guantánamo Bay compromette la sicurezza nazionale e la nostra nazione sarà più sicura il gorno in cui questa prigione sarà finalmente e responsabilmente chiusa” [“the prison at Guantánamo Bay undermines our national security, and our nation will be more secure the day when that prison is finally and responsibly closed]

Anzi, ne richiederà l’espansione, così come quella dell’altro campo di concentramento di Bagram, in Afghanistan

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57336424/the-problem-with-captured-terrorism-suspects

Gli Stati Uniti non sono più nella posizione di insegnare a nessuno il significato della democrazia ed il rispetto dei diritti, costituiscono ormai un esempio nefasto per tutte le altre nazioni ed espongono i loro stessi cittadini ad un medesimo trattamento in paesi con i quali sono ai ferri corti (es. accuse di sabotaggio alle infrastrutture iraniane)

http://fanuessays.blogspot.com/2007/03/guantnamo.html

I problemi interpretativi cominciano con la sezione 1021 (precedentemente 1031), che contempla la detenzione a tempo indefinito, senza un giusto processo, di persone ACCUSATE di essere stati o essere membri o di aver appoggiato in misura sostanziale al-Qaeda, i Talebani o forze ad essi associate in stato di belligeranza con gli Stati Uniti ed i loro alleati.

Dunque anche la resistenza palestinese, siriana e libanese all’occupazione israeliana? Saddam Hussein era stato falsamente collegato ad Al-Qaeda, pur essendone un nemico dichiarato: cosa succederà ai cittadini iraniani, siriani, palestinesi, libanesi, somali, yemeniti, pachistani, indonesiani, venezuelani, brasiliani, cubani?

http://www.informarexresistere.fr/2011/12/17/cuba-venezuela-brasile-messico-e-il-nuovo-11-settembre-atomico/#axzz1iZkF2V7T

E perché proprio ora che si afferma che Al Qaeda è stata virtualmente smantellata?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/al-qaeda-targets-dwindle-as-group-shrinks/2011/11/22/gIQAbXJNmN_story.html

e gli Stati Uniti stanno negoziando con i Talebani?

http://www.ilpost.it/2012/01/04/la-sede-diplomatica-dei-talebani-in-qatar/

L’interpretazione delle disposizioni di legge è tutto. L’amministrazione Bush è sempre stata molto elastica nella sua lettura di quel che era autorizzata o meno a fare

http://news.findlaw.com/wp/docs/terrorism/sjres23.es.html

e varie corti, in diversi gradi di giudizio, hanno simpatizzato con questo approccio che erodeva i diritti degli accusati/imputati. (cf. Matteo TONDINI, "Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Se il diritto si svuota dei suoi contenuti": "In conclusione, la sentenza prospetta evidenti elementi di censurabilità sul piano del diritto sostanziale e, più in generale, mette in evidenza un ulteriore problema irrisolto, ovvero l'effettivo accesso alle garanzie previste dal diritto dei conflitti armati e, generalmente, dai diritti umani da parte di coloro che si ritrovano imprigionati in vuoti giuridici, creati appositamente per scavalcare quelle garanzie processuali che trovano fondamento nell'acclaramento della verità (processuale), e non nella messa in libertà dei colpevoli").

ACLU e HRW sostengono che l’ultima volta che poteri di detenzione così ampi sono stati conferiti allo stato è stato al tempo di McCarthy, con l’Internal Security Act. Secondo Jonathan Hafetz, avvocato ed uno dei massimi esperti di questo ambito giuridico, questa è la prima volta nella storia americana che si autorizza per legge l’incarcerazione militare illimitata e senza processo:

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2012/01/ndaa-and-military-detention.html

La sezione 1021 precisa che, nel suo ambito, non è estendibile ai cittadini americani – “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States” (e i cittadini americani all’estero?).

Il giudizio dell’amministrazione Obama sulla sezione 1022 è stato il seguente: “mal concepita, non servità a migliorare la sicurezza degli Stati Uniti…superflua, rischia di creare incertezza”

http://opiniojuris.org/2011/12/31/presidents-signing-statement-on-national-defense-authorization-act/

La lettera b della sezione 1022 specifica che la detenzione militare non è obbligatoria per i cittadini degli Stati Uniti: “The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States”. Di conseguenza, par di capire, gli stranieri sospettati devono per forza essere arrestati, mentre i cittadini americani potrebbero essere arrestati, pur non sussistendo un obbligo di farlo. In ogni caso non è chiaro se la legge stabilisca che questa possibilità è esclusa categoricamente, specialmente alla luce del Patriot Act e dei precedenti Padilla:

http://www.comedonchisciotte.org/site/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2811

e al-Marri:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/opinion/25tue2.html

Robert M. Chesney (University of Texas) ha criticato la scelta di non fare chiarezza, lasciando il testo in termini così vaghi da consentire interpretazioni restrittive e radicali:

http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/12/congress-the-courts-and-detention-of-americans-under-the-aumfndaa/

Anche prendendo per buona l’interpretazione più rigida, quella che esclude i cittadini americani e che è stata esplicitamente fatta propria dall’amministrazione Obama – “per quanto concerne i cittadini statunitensi coinvolti in attività connesse al terrorismo, che siano arrestati all’estero o in patria, saranno processati dal nostro sistema penale” [“when it comes to U.S. citizens involved in terrorist-related activity, whether they are captured overseas or at home, we will prosecute them in our criminal justice system”] –, resta il fatto che questa disposizione viola l'articolo 7 della Dichiarazione universale dei diritti umani: “Tutti sono eguali dinanzi alla legge e hanno diritto, senza alcuna discriminazione, ad una eguale tutela da parte della legge. Tutti hanno diritto ad una eguale tutela contro ogni discriminazione che violi la presente Dichiarazione come contro qualsiasi incitamento a tale discriminazione”. Ora esiste un obbligo di detenzione militare per cittadini non-americani, inclusi quelli arrestati sul suolo americano. Dunque esiste un obbligo di approntamento di una rete di centri di detenzione militari sul suolo americano. Perciò sì, la mia risposta è che esistono le premesse perché negli Stati Uniti si ripeta quel che accadde tra il 1941 ed il 1945.

Che ci sia qualcosa che non torna è un’impressione rafforzata dal rifiuto dell’emendamento proposto dal senatore Feinstein, che esentava in modo esplicito i cittadini statunitensi, senza lasciare adito ad alcun dubbio:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/1969/12/31/military-detention-us-citizens-senate-second-vote_n_1123929.html

Poiché, quasi senza eccezione, chi arriva al potere tende a fare il massimo uso possibile delle sue prerogative, il rifiuto del suddetto emendamento è estremamente significativo. Obama, o chi gli succederà, avrà una discrezionalità interpretativa senza precedenti nella storia americana: 

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/16/three_myths_about_the_detention_bill/

Qualche blogger ha suggerito che si possa trattare di una trappola preparata per forzare la mano ad Obama, che non poteva porre il veto su una sezione senza respingere l’intera legge, la quale però è essenziale per poter rifinanziare le forze armate, inclusi i salari delle reclute e l’indotto delle basi militari negli Stati Uniti, dai quali dipende l’esistenza di milioni di persone e l’economia statunitense (e globale).

Obama è stato certamente molto critico e ha minacciato di usare il suo potere di veto. Ha anche assicurato che “l’esercito non pattuglia le nostre strade e non fa rispettare le nostre leggi – né lo dovrebbe fare” [“our military does not patrol our streets or enforce our laws—nor should it”].

Sembra però che stia cercando di salvare il salvabile, essendo da tempo su posizioni difensive. Non so quanto potere realmente eserciti, non conosco le sue reali intenzioni. 

journalism

Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims that “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

It is in this sense that journalism is vital to the system of checks and balances underpinning democracy. Journalists are expected to keep the establishment accountable. However, this has not always been the case during the Cold War, and especially in its early stages. A climate of fear undermined those principles and, whereas several journalists deserve praise for their courage and passionate advocacy of investigative and interpretive reporting, others failed to live up to their professional standards.

UNITED STATES (1946-1954)

According to Dwight D. Eisenhower, the chief goal of the Cold War was “to get the world, by peaceful means, to believe the truth,” because it was a “struggle for the minds and wills of men.” News reporting in capitalist countries was mostly done under the assumption of Eisenhower’s statement. Arguably, no one did more to strengthen the public’s confidence in the righteousness of this moral crusade than Henry R. Luce, the advocacy publisher of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, which sold millions of copies per week, and a Christian activist, who was persuaded that the world needed moral leadership and that his life mission would be to free America and the world from communism by turning Time Inc. into “an arm of U.S. foreign policy” (Herzstein 2005).

At least in the early decades of the East-West confrontation, the underlying motives of certain strategic decisions were thus not always sufficiently challenged by in-depth reporting: dissent would be easily mistaken for anti-patriotism, if not collusion with the enemy, that is, for a threat to national security. Many Western journalists, acting from a sense of duty and respect towards their government and military sources, and from genuine fear of the “communist menace,” shored up both the consensus view espoused by the Eisenhower administration and by Luce, and the national myths upon which it was founded. This involved a relative lack of meaningful discussion of the values and commitments that should inform Western democracies.

The highly supportive news coverage was perceived as neutral by most of the audience. Millions of Americans did not therefore ask themselves whether, for instance, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s claim that dozens of public servants were members of the Communist Party, and therefore potentially subversive, were plausible, even though three Congressional committees had already examined the same documents and had found no incriminating evidence. A possible explanation for this selective suspension of critical judgment is that the violation of fundamental civil rights for hundreds of U.S. citizens, who were deemed guilty until proven innocent, became somehow “normalized” also as a result of media complacency vis-à-vis McCarthy’s demagogic appeals.

Part of the media acted as though the burden of proof lay with the accused and not with the accuser and as though being a socialist or a communist was a punishable offence. There were of course columnists like Joseph and Stewart Alsop, Marquis Childs, Drew Pearson, I. F. Stone, Richard L. Strout, James Wechsler and many others, who urged the public to keep dissent and disloyalty separated, but they did so in the knowledge that they would likely be confronted with subpoena, if not with a charge of conspiracy and treason. And indeed, some of their papers did become the target of boycotts and libel suits, and New York Post Editor James A. Wechsler was brought up before McCarthy’s Senate investigating subcommittee in 1953, accused of peddling subversive ideas, and asked to produce sufficient evidence of his anti-Communism. Then, starting in 1954, McCarthy was put in his place by the broadcasting on live television of the viciousness of his inquisitorial use of the Army-McCarthy hearings.

It was in that same period that media experts became increasingly conscious of the difficulty of reconciling democratic ideals with the demands of the business of journalism and some, like the prominent American intellectuals who issued the 1947 final report of the Commission on Freedom of the Press, urged journalists to practice self-examination and “engage in vigorous mutual criticism.” However, it seems likely that a deeply polarized ideological climate, such as the one which typified the Cold War, can hardly produce an accurate representation of reality. It is not only that, as it was contended by Edward R. Murrow, a journalist cannot always find two equivalent sides to every story. The problem really is that reporting two irreconcilable sides of an issue as objectively as possible means leaving out alternative points of view. Italy best illustrates this point.

ITALY (1977-1982)

Lying on the fault line between the two blocks, Italy was torn between two antithetical ideologies, Catholicism and Communism, which found common ground only in their shared contempt for liberalism. The upholders of these two systems of beliefs were culturally ill-equipped to fully appreciate the importance of civil liberties such as freedom of thought, speech and press and, more generally, of the expression of differences, dissension and protest which goes with them. The clash between the largest Communist party and one of the largest Christian Democratic parties in the West led to the marginalization of dissent and did nothing to strengthen the commitment of journalists to their role of independent and neutral observers. Enzo Bettiza, a novelist and a journalist, recalls that, in those days, many young reporters were narrow-minded and opinionated and would hold in contempt everything that they found difficult to understand: “ideology would save them the trouble of learning and gathering evidence.”

In the 1970s, the bitter divisions between Right and Left were further exacerbated by the assault on the Italian democratic institutions by both the Communist Red Brigades and the neo-fascist terrorists of Avanguardia Nazionale and Ordine Nuovo. According to several parliamentary, judicial and media inquiries, the murderous tactics of neo-fascist terrorism was part of the so-called “Strategy of Tension”, which was meant to destabilize the State and prepare the ground for a more authoritarian regime in Italy, which would avert the danger of the Communist Party entering into a government led by the Christian-Democrats.

One of the steps that would ensure the success of this operation was seizing control of the media through concentration of ownership into the hands of a few trustworthy members of the illegal Masonic lodge Propaganda 2 (P-2), headed by Licio Gelli, a former liaison officer in the SS Hermann Goering Division. In 1977, the Rizzoli media empire, with 11,000 employees, was rescued from bankruptcy by Roberto Calvi, the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, one of Italy’s largest private banks, a P-2 affiliate, and a financial consultant to the Vatican – he was known as “God’s Banker,” together with Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, president of the Vatican Bank and a personal friend of Calvi. The Rizzoli publishing company, now controlled by Calvi, owned various influential news magazines and, most importantly, the largest and most reputable Italian daily newspaper, the Milan-based Corriere della Sera. The prospect of a gradual change in the editorial policy of the newspaper caused numerous highly respected and long-time reporters, board members and contributors who opposed the deal, such as Umberto Eco and Natalia Ginzburg, to leave, while Oriana Fallaci decided to stay and she became one of the most internationally celebrated political interviewers.

The Italian media did not take notice of this event until 1980, when the plot was foiled, following a shocking interview with Licio Gelli by Corriere della Sera columnist Maurizio Costanzo, another P-2 member, in which the Venerable Master of Propaganda Due outlined his vision, that he called “plan for the democratic renaissance of Italy”. The Italian Republic was to be transformed into a police state, to save it from the “Red Menace.” This coup de theatre did not quite work out as intended: Milan public prosecutors ordered a preliminary enquiry and a list of P-2 members was made public soon afterwards, which included Argentine Admiral Emilio Massera and General Carlos Suarez, two leaders of the right-wing military dictatorship that ruled Argentina until 1983, as well as Stefano Delle Chiaie, an international neofascist terrorist involved in Operation Condor (see entry for Chile and Allende Salvador). In June 1982, Calvi’s corpse was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge, in London. But the most striking revelation was that Angelo Rizzoli, heir to the largest Italian publisher, together with 28 journalists and public broadcasters, seven editors, and the entire Rizzoli’s board of directors were among the 962 names on the list, together with many representatives of a very influential section of the Italian establishment, including the would-be tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, the Minister of Justice, and the Chief of Staff of the Italian Army.

WESTERN EUROPE

As the Italian case clearly shows, Western European press and media were not immune from attempts to curtail their freedom and independence during the Cold War. While, in the United Kingdom, only the Guardian and the Observer took a clear stance against Britain in the 1956 Suez crisis, Charles De Gaulle once famously declared that the press was against him, but that news broadcasters would bow to his will.

Yet the threat to pluralism in news reporting did not only come from the political establishment. While newspapers undeniably contribute to form public opinion, the public itself and the dominant political climate exert a considerable influence on what journalists deem newsworthy and on the criteria informing editorial staffs’ decisions. In short, there is a clear connection between news coverage and the mood of civil society.

A case in point was a significant shift in editorial policy at Le Monde, the newspaper that had dramatically raised the tone of the French press and had gained considerable circulation throughout Europe. Following the May 1968 students’ and workers’ protests, Le Monde gradually drifted towards the extreme left. With a significant measure of superficiality and myopia, its editorials and news coverage defended the means whereby China pursued the “Great Leap Forward.” Similarly, even though Communist and socialist party organs in France and Italy had begun a slow transition from unrestrained support of the Soviet Union and its imperialist policies to moderate criticism, a tendency survived among Western leftwing journalists to systematically reproduce the blind spots that caused so many to fail to grasp the reality of life in Eastern Europe.

EASTERN EUROPE

Needless to say, self-censorship was a matter of course for Eastern European journalists. The state owned the main newspapers, such as Pravda (“Truth”) and “Neues Deutschland,” and everything, from format size to target readership, was regulated by the party. News reporters were taught that their social function was to reproduce and disseminate the communist party’s propaganda. The “Dictionary of Socialist Journalism,” published by the Karl Marx University of Leipzig, proclaimed that “the socialist journalist is a workers’ party functionary. […]. He partakes of the management of the ideological processes…and helps consolidate people’s trust in the Party and the State.”

The values of autonomy, pluralism, and neutrality, which lay at the core of Western journalism, were judged to be detrimental to the promotion of the communist cause, which coincided with the party leaders’ opinion, who purportedly knew what was best for the people. The Western “bourgeois” press was disparaged as a hegemonic tool of the upper classes which used it to subjugate the proletarian masses. Beyond the iron curtain, falsification, deception, and tired clichés were the order of the day, and were justified in the name of the pedagogic intent of the communist regimes and of the need to counteract Western propaganda which, they argued, systematically downplayed the contradictions, double standards and imperialism of the capitalist system. Thus, for instance, the ill-fated strikes in East Berlin, the Hungarian revolt of 1956, and the 1968 Prague Spring, were described by the Communist press as the result of “fascist incendiaries,” Western spies, pillagers, and a few collaborationists who threatened the very existence of the German People’s Republic by fomenting a bourgeois counter-revolution.

CONCLUSION

“Cold War” is an expression coined by British writer and journalist George Orwell who, in his “Politics and the English Language” (1953, pp. 169-70) wrote that “the worst thing one can do with words, is to surrender to them.” He also added that if language is to be “an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought,” one must “let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about.” Sadly, many journalists surrendered to the words “Cold War” and their underlying logic of coding and framing, and ended up perceiving, defining, partitioning and representing the world according to categories invested with strong emotional associations which at times prevented some of them from exercising their critical judgment. The consequence of a practice of news reporting to some extent removed from the ideal of a vigilant press informing critically engaged, discerning citizens, was that media contribution to the public debate on matters of general concern, such as proposals to temporarily restrict civil rights in democratic countries, was not always up to the demands of the role.

Nevertheless, an even greater number of news-reporters did not withdraw from serious reporting and remained committed to the ideal of a genuine, rigorous, probing investigative journalism and intelligent questioning. Edward R. Murrow and his crew, Elmer Davis, who insisted that objectivity was of little use without interpretation, David Halberstam, George Seldes, Ward Just, Malcolm Browne, Peter Arnett, Gloria Emerson, together with Fox Butterfield, Daniel Ellsberg and Neil Sheehan, of Pentagon Papers memory and the two Pulitzer-Prize winning cartoonists Herb Block (who coined the term “McCarthyism”) and Bill Mauldin, are among those professionals who strove to provide an alternative viewpoint on the Cold War in the United States and contributed to McCarthy’s downfall and to the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. In Italy, the Red Brigades, set on taking down “bourgeois” democracy, took aim at those journalists who had accurately and presciently predicted the demise of the terrorist threat and who, in their eyes, had disgraced their profession by serving the “regime.” Some were injured, others were murdered. Like Walter Tobagi, easily the most promising young correspondent of his time, who was killed by the March 28 Brigade, whose leaders were the sons of a prominent journalist, of a film critic and of the editorial director of Sansoni, part of the Rizzoli publishing company, which employed Tobagi. Still, despite numerous death threats and harassment, most Italian journalists did not forsake their duty to be socially responsible, accountable and informative.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Print sources

Barbato, Andrea. Come si manipola l’informazione. Il maccartismo ed il ruolo dei media. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1996.

Bergamini, Oliviero. La democrazia della stampa. Storia del giornalismo. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2006.

Bettiza, Vincenzo. Via Solforino. Milano: Rizzoli, 1999.

Biacchessi, Daniele. Walter Tobagi. Morte di un giornalista. Milano: Baldini Castoldi, 2005.

Hallin, Daniel C. The uncensored war: the media and Vietnam, Berkeley, Calif. [etc.]: University of California press, 1989.

Herzstein, Robert E. Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Murialdi, Paolo. La stampa italiana. Dalla Liberazione alla crisi di fine secolo. Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1998.

Orwell, George. “Politics and the English Language.” In G. Orwell, A collection of essays. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1953, pp. 169-70.

Olson, Kenneth E. The history makers. The press of Europe from its beginnings through 1965, Baton Rouge, Louisiana state university press, 1966.

Protess, David L., and McCombs, Maxwell (eds.). Agenda setting. Readings on Media, public opinion, and policymaking. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991.

Rogin, Michael Paul. The intellectuals and McCarthy: the radical spectre. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT press, c1967.

Westad, Odd Arne, The global cold war. Third world interventions and the making of our times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Guantánamo

Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. military base on the island of Cuba, is a detainment camp in a permanent state of exception, for while the United States have “complete jurisdiction” over the base, the ultimate sovereignty is reserved to Cuba, a country that has no diplomatic relations with the USA and, by the terms of the 1903 agreement, cannot evict the U.S. military without their consent.

According to the U.S. government, conventional American legal norms do not apply to what is technically foreign soil, and enemy combatants can be held prisoners incommunicado until the end of the ongoing war that, in the words of Vice-president Dick Cheney, may well last for generations. Critics have argued that the need to find a proper balance between security and freedom does not justify violations of humanitarian law.

These very same questions have been debated for centuries. Alexander Hamilton once remarked in Federalist 8 (1787) that “safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property…a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort…to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights.”

Indeed, during WWI and WWII, the U.S. government imprisoned thousands of dissidents and of citizens whose only fault was to belong to the “wrong” ethnic group. McCarthyism and the McCarran Internal Security Act (1950), somehow revived the witch-hunting spirit of the provisions included in the notorious Alien and Sedition Acts (1798), allowing the detention, expulsion and de-naturalization of persons suspected to be engaged in “un-American” activities.

The Bush Administration’s response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, as illustrated by the August 2002 memo issued by the office of legal counsel of the justice department, which proclaimed that “the President enjoys complete discretion in the exercise of his Commander-in-Chief authority and in conducting operations against hostile forces”, is the logical continuation of this approach to the issue of national security.

The war on terror has already caused a number of patent violations of the writ of habeas corpus, one of the fundamental rights defined by the U.S. Constitution, and of other constitutional guarantees such as due process of law, trial by jury, and right to counsel. Under such conditions, the process of moral inversion, whereby what is normally judged to be deplorable becomes not only provisionally acceptable but desirable, is more likely to set in. The controversy surrounding the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp is a case in point.

Guantanamo Bay is one of the selected locations where, according to the current American administration, international obligations should no longer apply on grounds of national security and the protection of sensitive information. “Unlawful combatants”, so it is argued, should be considered as outside the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.

Numerous allegations of torture and mistreatment have attracted the attention of international human rights organizations and several cases have been presented to the U.S. Supreme Court for its consideration. On June 29, 2006, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld 548 U.S. _ 2006, the Supreme Court has ruled that: (a) the ad hoc military commissions established by President Bush on 13 November 2001 with Military Order No. 1, entitled “Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War against Terrorism”, to try the Guantanamo detainees and other non-nationals suspected to have committed acts of terrorism, are unauthorized by the Congress and illegal under both military justice law and the four Geneva Conventions of 1949; (b) the detainees are protected by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, prohibiting “violence to life and person . . . cruel treatment and torture” and “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;” (c) and, reiterating the conclusions and recommendations of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld 542 U.S. 507 (2004) and Rasul v. Bush 542 U.S. 466 (2004), which stated that foreign nationals detained outside US borders could file writs of habeas corpus and contest the lawfulness of their detention before a U.S. federal court, that their cases can be heard in federal courts.

Some have pointed out that the fact that the June 29 ruling was generally described as “extraordinary”, rather than simply pertinent and opportune, reflects the nonessential role of international human rights and legal standards in U.S. current foreign policy. Indeed, the White House’s reaction to the ruling – “it requires little more than having Congress put its stamp of approval” – shows a dismaying unconcern with the separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers, namely one of the major achievements of constitutional democracy.