India's Foreign Policy: The Foreign Hand

by 

Bharat Karnad

Bharat Karnad is Professor of National Security Studies at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi

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foreign policy

America

India

Narendra Modi

Barack Obama

Sunil Mittal

Has India outsourced foreign policy to American think tanks?

IN 2013, Brookings Institution, a prestigious American think tank, opened its New Delhi chapter, promising to disseminate ‘recommendations for Indian policymakers’. Three years later, its Washington twin, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, set up shop in the country, hoping to develop ‘fresh policy ideas and direct[ly] [engage] and collaborat[e] with decision makers in [Indian] government, business, and civil society’. It is reasonable to surmise that the policy advice proffered by these two organisations will, at a minimum, be in tune with the US interests and geopolitics.

In fact, at an event on 6 April, Sunil Mittal, owner of Bharti Airtel, a big donor and chairman of the board of trustees of Carnegie India, removed any doubts on this score. “We have put out our flag here,” he declared, without a trace of irony in a speech that to some seemed studded with many other cringe-worthy gems, such as his plea to numerous Indian moneybags in the audience to show more “generosity in moving our agenda forward”—meaning, presumably, the Carnegie (cum-Brookings)-qua-US government policy agenda in this country.

Carnegie and Brookings have established a presence financed by Indians, to influence the Indian Government and engender domestic policies that resonate with the United States’ regional and international posture. It is a business model last implemented when the famed Jagat Seths of Murshidabad subsidised the East India Company’s operations.

It marks an astonishing turn in Indian foreign policy that until the last years of the 20th century had made good by leveraging the country’s autonomous heft and independent standing in the world—keeping all big powers at bay while getting close to this or that major country on a contingency basis to advance specific strategic interests from time to time, and by scrupulously preserving its broad policy latitude and freedom of action. But Shivshankar Menon, a star in the Brookings India firmament, during his time as India’s Foreign Secretary and National Security Adviser in the Manmohan Singh dispensation, scoffed at Indian policies to ‘balance’ regional and international power as “oh so 19th century” and now foresees no detrimental outcomes from buying into US security schemes. That such sentiments are mainstream today is attributable to the institutionalisation in the late 1990s of the collaborationist school of national security policy thinking propagated by the late K Subrahmanyam, the ‘go to’ strategist for the Indian Government.

In a nutshell, Subrahmanyam’s idea was that in a world dominated by the US, it made economic, technological and military sense to foster a strategic partnership with it to help propel the Indian economy forward and enable the country to technologically and militarily compete with China, and, by acting as a ‘responsible’ country with ‘reasonable’ policies, become a stakeholder in a system of durable peace in Asia overseen by Washington DC. The policies of AB Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh, and Narendra Modi have hewed to the Subrahmanyam script. They have made capital purchases ($10 billion worth of transport planes, for example, with $25 billion worth of nuclear reactors in the pipeline), courted US trade and investments, enhanced military cooperation, and even compromised India’s nuclear security (by acquiescing in a testing moratorium cemented by the Indo-US nuclear deal and restricting India to a small nuclear arsenal for ‘minimum deterrence’). It may be recalled that Subrahmanyam and his acolytes campaigned for India’s signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1995-96, which would have left India stranded short of even basic low-yield fission weapons.

Subrahmanyam’s prescriptions found eager takers because toadying up to the West is in India’s genes. The retention, post- 1947, of the colonial-era civil services, administrative structure and armed forces wedded to British norms and values has perpetuated policies in the Western mould, notwithstanding the ‘socialism’ professed by its rulers. Moreover, the English-medium education system has had its effect. This is another colonial legacy that today mass produces software specialists, engineers, doctors and financial managers itching to service the post- industrial economies of the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Indian policies to keep this ‘brain bank’ solvent have helped firm up domestic support for US-friendly policies among the middle-class and other aspiring sections of the Indian society, complete with an annual song-and-dance celebration of our ‘pravasis’ staged by the Ministry of External Affairs which loops back into jam-packed NRI receptions for Prime Minister Modi on his jaunts to Western cities.

Central to giving legitimacy to the role of American think tanks in shaping Indian foreign policy is Ashley Tellis. As a senior Carnegie associate in Washington and heavyweight policy wonk, he finessed the Nuclear Deal with the US through Indian corridors. Tellis enjoys unprecedented access to the highest in the land, and rarely misses an opportunity to push US objectives in the guise of serving India’s interests. He, for instance, contends in a recent monograph that India’s best bet is to ally with the US and Japan because it will ‘never be capable of holding its own against… China or defining the international system to its advantage in the face of possible opposition’, and, that even Modi’s more modest goal of making India ‘a leading power’ will require it to lean on the US.

India, in the minds of the new lot of Indian rulers, is thus increasingly only a cultural expression, not a national territorial entity whose interests have to be vigorously protected, pursued and advanced by any and all means. In their reckoning, the nation and national interest are fungible concepts and the policies meant to serve them can be entirely elastic. So, C Raja Mohan, director of the local Carnegie unit, argues for India’s becoming a part of the ‘political West’ and for its joining China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative, deeming these moves as “pragmatic economics and muscular geopolitics”. But cutting deals at every step reflects a susceptibility to pressure and an infirm will, compounding the confusion at the heart of Indian foreign and military policies. When aggregated, the effects of such moves can quickly hollow out the nation.

This is a self-serving thesis for the obvious reason that India has not discriminately built up its strategic capabilities or exercised its hard power options to make life difficult for China, nor reacted in kind to China’s elbows in the face. Beijing has had a free pass. Merely mentioning a transfer of nuclear missiles to Vietnam and the Philippines, or activation of the Tibet and Uyghur ‘cards’, is to hint at the sort of trouble India can create for China as payback for its nuclear missile arming of Pakistan and supporting insurgencies in the Indian northeast.

Consumed with pleasing Washington and fearful of displeasing Beijing, Indian governments—including Modi’s— have settled into a comfortable niche they have carved out of a small-minded, narrow-visioned Indian state that can be relied upon not to be disruptive, create trouble, or undermine regional and global orders that victimise it. Such weak-willed and weak-kneed regimes will, however, seek ‘narratives’ from Carnegie and Brookings that would justify their risk-averse, talk-much-do-little policies that hitch the country to the US bandwagon. This last, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar said at the Carnegie do, constitutes “a contemporary agenda [that goes] beyond the debates of a less confident era”. India, he averred, must “leverage the dominant, collaborate with the convergent, and manage the competition”.

Subrahmanyam had observed that, “With the Americans, you purchase not just weapons but a security relationship… [We should] build it into [our] calculations.” Jaishankar didn’t explain how Modi’s forging a military alliance with the US by signing the ‘foundational agreements’ that Washington desires, such as the Logistics Support Agreement (LSA), Communications Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement, and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement, which will tar India’s reputation in the Third World, limit India’s room for manoeuvre, alienate Moscow, hobble sensitive strategic projects involving Russian technical expertise, and comprehensively ground the country’s fighting capabilities featuring Russian hardware, even as America offers us armaments of 1970s vintage—F-16/F-18 combat aircraft, will ‘leverage the dominant’ and serve the national interest.

The LSA, for example, is unnecessary because it only formalises an existing arrangement whereby US ships and aircraft are refuelled and replenished on a barter basis to avoid negotiating the complex accounting systems in each other’s country and handling cash. The LSA will end up re-hyphenating India with Pakistan, as Islamabad is on the LSA grid and to get reimbursement for sustaining and servicing US troops in Afghanistan, has to jump through procedural hoops and face US Congressional scrutiny. Does Modi favour exposing the Indian military to this kind of public humiliation in another country? Apologists for the accords claim they will extend the operational reach of the Indian navy and air force. But why would New Delhi opt for such a short-term salve when the long term solution of developing distant bases (in the Agalégas in Mauritius, in northern Mozambique, Seychelles, et al) is available for the asking?

Modi’s approval of these agreements— to satisfy President Barack Obama, perhaps—may be traced to his palpable fascination with the US. He is planning his fourth visit to Washington soon. It is in keeping with the impetuous decisions he makes (such as committing the country to buy 36 Rafale fighter aircraft in Paris, initially disavowing India’s claim on the Kohinoor diamond, among others) as friendly gestures to his Western hosts.

The outsourcing of India’s foreign policy in small and big ways begs the larger question: Does the Indian Government have a sense of India, its role in the region and the world, of the nation’s inherent capacity to shape its own future, and to mobilise resources for it? The answer is iffy. Why else would one see India running in place for the last six decades and still expect to get somewhere? When a country doesn’t know what it wants and how to get it, it will latch on to imported solutions. A facilitative factor is the Indian Government’s naiveté and gullibility when dealing with Western countries, resulting in its swallowing nonsensical promises such as Washington’s to help India become ‘a major power’. Related to it is the civilisational failing of mistaking tactics for strategy. It is the same old story all over again. Incapable of seeing beyond their immediate pecuniary profit, the Seths lent money to Robert Clive at Plassey, and, other repercussions apart, funded their own decline.

http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/voices/indias-foreign-policy-the-foreign-hand#all

The Missing 28 Pages

America's "allies" pursue their own agendas

PHILIP GIRALDI

The redacted 28 pages describing the Saudi Arabian role in 9/11 have become somewhat of a political football. At this point, I suspect the Obama Administration is doing a damage assessment on them to determine whether they will in any way hurt Democratic electoral prospects in November. As the missing pages will likely lead to increased speculation about a major cover-up carried out by the George W. Bush Administration, Obama’s political advisers would likely be inclined to convince him to release the document if he is at all hesitating.

If the pages are released there will significant foreign policy fallout. There have already been demands that the Saudi government be considered fair game for remedial lawsuits in U.S. courts by filed by families of victims of 9/11. There is currently a bill in Congress specifically authorizing such action. Riyadh has already responded to it by threatening massive retaliation if official Washington does not take steps to prohibit such legal action, including the warning that it might consider selling off its $750 billion in American based assets, which might produce a surge in U.S. interest rates. Washington has up until now specifically protected Saudi Arabia in U.S. courts by having the State Department intercede and grant it sovereign immunity, a privilege not extended to the Palestinian Authority and to Iran, both of which have been hammered by adverse judgements in Manhattan courtrooms.

Given leaks from individuals who have either read the 28 pages or who have been informed of the contents it is pretty clear what will be revealed. The Saudi government, concerned lest al-Qaeda begin directing its activity against the Kingdom and Royal Family, was engaged in a program of bribing the group and even covertly supporting it as long as it carried out its actions somewhere else. This meant in practice that the Saudis were paying a modern equivalent of Danegeld to Osama bin Laden and not asking too many questions. In addition to the secret payments from the government, the 9/11 Commission also determined that a number of Islamic charities funded by individual Saudis as well as some prominent members of the Royal Family were also subsidizing al-Qaeda. In some cases, that the ostensibly charitable giving was clearly intended to aid extremist Sunni groups like al-Qaeda should have been clear to the donors, though such a link is necessarily difficult to demonstrate.

Some of the money that wound up in the hands of the 9/11 terrorists, 15 out of 19 of whom were Saudis, came through what is referred to as cut-out channels from the Saudi Embassy in Washington, where Prince Bandar bin Khalid al-Faisal was Ambassador. Nearly $130,000 appear to have wound up in the hands of two of the hijackers Nawaq al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar, sums originating from the Embassy in Washington and the Saudi Consulate General in Los Angeles. Much of the money came from the personal bank account of Bandar’s wife Princess Haifa bint Faisal and also through the Embassy’s religious affairs office. Princess Haifa’s contributions were directed through a cut-out associate in California and wound up in the possession of Osama al- Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi intelligence operative, who in turn supported the hijackers. Princess Haifa’s checks were made out in small amounts of $3,500 per month.

After 9/11 occurred Prince Bandar was one of the first visitors to the Bush White House. The Justice Department immediately halted any investigation into the Saudi activity while the Administration took steps to fly official Saudis and members of the bin Laden family out of the country. A recent New York Post article identifies by name a number of FBI special agents who were astonished when they were told to stop looking at the Saudis as they were convinced that major leads in the investigation led directly to the Saudi Embassy. According to the agents and other sources, the White House effectively blocked inquiry into any possible Saudi role in 9/11.

Those who have read the 28 pages seem to agree that the top levels of the Saudi government, which means the King and Crown Prince and their cabinet, were uninvolved in the money transfers, but that does not preclude Saudi intelligence service and lower level bureaucratic involvement as part of an ongoing clandestine relationship with al-Qaeda. But even so, given the possible blowback, it should be considered probable that there was no intention on the part of Saudi officials to support an active terrorist plot unfolding in the United States. And the end recipients of other funding that wound up in the hands of hijackers might have been unknown to the donors and unrelated to any direct support of al-Qaeda, meaning that the 28 pages are likely little more than a series of allegations. Princess Haifa’s payments that could have supported two terrorists might, for example, have been conceived by her as being purely charitable, as some Saudi sources have suggested, and not part of some nefarious scheme.

And, of course, the big question is motive. That Saudi Arabia might be bribing a home grown terrorist group to leave it alone is perhaps not surprising, but if they were supporting that group knowing that it was planning a major terrorist attack in the United States that would be something quite different. Lacking Saudi government internal documents, I would imagine the 28 pages will be unable to determine whether or not that was the case and one might well assume that it would have been insanity for the Saudis to support such an initiative.

Another revelation from the discussion of the 28 pages, which reportedly constituted the entire “foreign involvement” section of the 592 page 9/11 Committee report, was that there was indeed no investigation of anyone but the Saudis. I have long argued that there were other plausible players in the drama, to include the Israelis, who were running a massive spying ring in the United States directed against Arabs and some of whom were seen celebrating as the twin towers went down. And there were also the Pakistanis, who appear to have facilitated the travel of several of the hijackers.

The five “dancing Israeli” celebrants, who turned out to be employees of an Israeli-owned moving company in New Jersey, were arrested after 9/11 and held in Brooklyn, initially on charges relating to visa fraud. FBI interrogators questioned them for more than two months. Several were held in solitary confinement so they could not communicate with each other and two of them were given repeated polygraph exams, which they failed when claiming that they were nothing more than students working summer jobs. The two men that the FBI focused on most intensively were believed to be Mossad staff officers and the other three were volunteers helping with surveillance. After 71 days, the Bush White House intervened, ordering the Israelis to be releasedand deported. They later complained about their treatment and sued the United States government.

There have also been unsubstantiated allegations that Pakistan might have helped fund or even carry out 9/11, but a stronger case can be made regarding the hijackers being known to the Pakistani Intelligence Service (ISI). Several of the alleged perpetrators of 9/11 spent considerable time in Pakistan prior to the attack and it is unlikely that ISI would have missed their presence or the opportunity to recruit them as sources.

It should surprise no one that the Saudis, Israelis and Pakistanis should all be pursuing their own agendas without regard for the interests of the United States and no one should get too exercised about it. One only has to look at contemporary Syria to realize that no one is playing straight there for all the talk of there being a “coalition” against ISIS. But one nevertheless has to ask why the White House did not demand a thorough investigation of possible foreign involvement after 9/11 and why only the 28 pages on the Saudis appeared in the final report. What if the Saudis were funding al-Qaeda or if the Israelis suspected something was about to happen, even if neither knew the details of an impending terrorist attack in the U.S.? What if the Bush Administration subsequently covered up those unpleasant revelations for various reasons? There should certainly be a reckoning, even now, and some people formerly in the government might well be good candidates for trial and imprisonment relating to their actions at that time. The American public is paying the bills and bearing the burdens of our fractured foreign and national security policies so it deserves a level of honesty from its government. As 9/11 has only served as a prelude to much worse slaughter and dislocation all around the world, much of it excused over what occurred on September 11th, 2001, it is past time for the people to learn what really happened on that day.

http://www.unz.com/article/the-missing-28-pages/

The Management of Dissent: How to Destroy an Activist

Janet C. Phelan, investigative journalist and human rights defender that has traveled pretty extensively over the Asian region, an author of a tell-all book EXILE, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/24/the-management-of-dissent-how-to-destroy-an-activist/

Column: Society

Region: USA in the World

While the West, and the United States in particular, has repeatedly voiced criticism over human rights abuses in other countries, the US’s own record in terms of detaining and incarcerating dissidents is now becoming conspicuous.

In presenting a recent report on human rights issues, US Secretary of State John Kerry stated: “Here is the truth, we believe: A government that fails to respect human rights, no matter how lofty its pretentions, has very little to boast about, to teach, and very little indeed in the way of reaching its fullpotential.” 

This report itself is heavily weighted in terms of naming Asian and Middle Eastern countries as human rights abusers. Kerry reports that “In every part of the world, we see an accelerating trend by both state and non-state actors to close the space for civil society, to stifle media and Internet freedom, to marginalize opposition voices, and in the most extreme cases, to kill people or drive them from their homes.” 

The United States is not named in the report.

However, the US is itself a major culpable actor in such abuses. Despite its continuing and increasingly strained efforts to self-promote as a defender of human rights, the US is now inhibiting media and internet freedom as well as regularly imprisoning activists–often without trial.

The world is already aware of the use of the Espionage Act to imprison and otherwise intimidate whistleblowers. The cases ofBradley Manning, Jeffrey Sterline,  James Hitselberger,      John Kiriakou,   and others have hit the mainstream press.

What the world may not be aware of is that non-CIA connected individuals, who are merely attempting to correct and/ or broadcast injustices, are now facing jail time.

You Mean I Forgot to Tell You About Your Trial?

Tim Lahrman is a name well known to disability rights activists. A trained paralegal, Tim has been volunteering his paralegal skills to a growing list of people who are engaged in legal battles against guardians and lawyers.

For those unacquainted with the issues concerning adult guardianships, an overview reveals that these guardianships constitute a legal loophole through which an individual may be declared incompetent and then stripped of all his assets and the lion’s share of his rights. 

In fact, upon the initiation of such a guardianship, the alleged incapacitated person may not even be allowed to hire a lawyer to defend against the guardianship. The National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse’s website has a compelling summary of what rights are lost when one goes under a guardianship.

Robin Gibson, a Los Angeles woman, attributes Tim Lahrman’s legal expertise to the successful resolution of an ongoing legal conflict with the guardian for her mother.  Recently, the mother was released from a guardianship which Gibson states was draining her mother’s estate and wherein the guardian, Frumeh Labow, had virtually sequestered the older woman from contact with the outside world.

“I owe this all to Tim,“ pronounced an exhilarated Robin Gibson in a recent interview. “I have finally got my mother back.“

Gibson is only one of many who have benefited from Lahrman’s legal acumen and skills. And she may be one of the last. For Tim Lahrman now sits in an Indiana jail cell, held without bail on two seventeen year- old misdemeanor charges.

Candice Schwager, an attorney from Texas, has this to say about Lahrman’s incarceration:  “There is an entirely different agenda behind this seventeen year old persecution. It’s not even reasonable to think that Goshen keeps misdemeanor cold case files and this was bad luck. This arrest was retribution because Tim has brought up the crimes of a clouted political figure.”

Tim Lahrman was himself placed under a guardianship in 1987. He was at that point in time in his twenties and an owner of a thriving automotive business which was subsequently ravaged through the guardianship proceedings.

Lahrman’s guardianship was never legally terminated. After sacking his business, the guardian, Kenneth Scheibenberger, “just sort of wandered off,” according to Lahrman.

This left Tim Lahrman in legal limbo. Neither his rights nor his property were ever restored to him. He was left, in essence, as a legal zero.

As the law states, Lahrman thus could not have had the “legal capacity” to commit the two misdemeanors with which he was charged in 1999 —driving with a suspended license and possession of a small amount of marijuana.

Tim filed legal notice in the misdemeanor case of his stated “lack of capacity.” The court took no notice and, after oddly failing in its legal mandate to summon him for his trial, held the trial without him present, found him guilty and sentenced him to two years. He was not present at the hearing and was not subsequently apprehended.

Fast forward to 2016. Tim is not only assisting others in their guardianship cases but has now filed a number of lawsuits in his own matter.

Filed on January 20, 2015 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, South Bend Division, Tim Lahrman also sued Elkhart County Superior Court No. 2 (Stephen R. Bowers, Judge), the Chief Judge of the Indiana Court of Appeals, the State of Indiana, the Office of Indiana Attorney General and the Indiana Supreme Court Division of State Court Administration. Lahrman was picked up in March of this year on the seventeen year- old stale and expired warrant, and is being held in Elkhart County Jail without bail. His writ of Habeas Corpus, filed with the court this past week, was reportedly denied by Judge Bodie Stegelmann. According to reports, Judge Stegelmann has ordered Lahrman into a psychiatric evaluation.

Attorney Schwager, who has filed notice in this case, states that Tim was put into “the hole”—solitary confinement—this past week after asking his public defender for her name and also requesting the court file. The request apparently frightened her. Schwager has more on the case.

The public defender subsequently withdrew and the judge has ordered Tim to appear pro se—without legal counsel.

I Don’t Know You But I Am Sure You Are Incompetent

Another disability rights activist, Cary Andrew Crittenden, is now being held in Santa Clara County Jail, in Northern California, after being arrested on Christmas Eve on “secret charges.”

We can only term the charges “secret” because the Santa Clara County Prosecutor’s office has consistently refused to honor its legal responsibility to release the records containing the factual circumstances surrounding Crittenden’s arrest. The California Public Records Act, clarified by the court case known as “Kusar” mandates the release of these records.

Crittenden, who has launched an internet campaign against corruption in Santa Clara County was previously arrested in Santa Clara County for making online statements about public officials which were deemed to be “harassment.”

An internal affairs complaint was filed on February 11 with the Prosecutor’s office concerning the refusal of Assistant District Attorney David Angel to comply with the records disclosure law, which is in place in order to guard against “secret arrests.” This IA complaint appears to have gone the way of the public’s rights to know—into the garbage can. No action has been taken on the complaint.

The recipient of the complaint, a Lt. Jorge Perez, who states he is an investigator with the DA’s office, has refused to even release the name of the individual who has been assigned to investigate the complaint concerning ADA David Angel’s refusal to comply with the law.

Recently, there was an attempt to have Crittenden declared incompetent to stand trial. If an individual is so deemed, he may be incarcerated indefinitely without ever having his day in court. Sniffing this rat, Crittenden refused to attend the psychiatric evaluation which the court had set up for him.

In a bizarre, Kafkaesque effort, a “doctor” –who never saw or evaluated Cary Andrew Crittenden–trotted himself into court. In a declaration that would have made any surrealist proud, Dr. Burke, the “doc-in the pocket” of the court, intoned that in his professional opinion, Crittenden, a man he had never seen, was “incompetent to stand trial.”

The fact that Burke had never evaluated Crittenden did not escape the attention of the court, however. Crittenden was ordered into another evaluation, and the subsequent medical professional reportedly determined that Crittenden was indeed competent.

The propensity for courts now to order activists and dissidents into psychiatric evaluation is something that deserves special attention. A person adjudicated incompetent by a court may, in fact, never get a trial. He can be locked up indefinitely on minor and potentially bogus charges and also be court- ordered to be forcibly  medicated with anti- psychotics, which constitute a chemical strait jacket.

If you think that the cases involving Lahrman and Crittenden are the exception, you may rest assured that, for cases involving guardianship activists, this is standard court operating procedure. Rosanna Miller, who was attempting to protect her father’s interests while he was under guardianship, was arrested in 2014 for failure to pay court costs. The Ohio Supreme Court, however, had issued a memo stating that an individual cannot be arrested for failure to pay court costs.

Questions were raised about the possibility that the Bellafontaine judge, Ann Beck, was involved in a number of financial improprieties. Beck then quickly released Miller from custody. Barbara Stone, a NY attorney whose mother, Helen, was under a questionable guardianship in Florida, was arrested and charged with “custody interference”—which mandates a potential sentence of five years in prison—for allegedly taking her mother to lunch.

If I Can’t Get You, I’ll Get Your Kid

The psychiatric incarceration of John Rohrer raises further questions about motives to detain this young man, and detain him possibly indefinitely.  Rohrer, who apparently wandered into the wrong house while under the influence of a hallucinogen, has now been detained over ten years, the last six and a half years as an in-patient in a state psychiatric facility. The case has been fraught with illegal maneuvers by the prosecutors and judge, including denying him his right multiple times to hearings to determine whether he meets the state’s definition of being “mentally ill.” In fact, Rohrer has never been deemed incompetent. Rohrer is now being held at Appalachian Behavioral Healthcare, a State psychiatric hospital, where he was forcibly drugged for years.

It should be noted that the Ohio Supreme Court has determined that a judge may not order forced drugging unless he makes a finding that the individual lacks capacity to consent. The forced drugging must also be in the patient’s “best interests” and there must not be any alternatives deemed to be as effective as the drugging. In the Rohrer case, Judge Corzine made none of these findings, and in fact stated on the record that Rohrer appeared “pretty lucid today.”

Nevertheless, Corzine ordered the forced drugging of John Rohrer.

According to reports, during a brief 2007 exposure to Risperdal, Rohrer, who was at that time 27 years old, suffered a cardiac event, but this did not stop it from being chosen as the primary drug to forcibly inject.

Medical and legal malpractice complaints were filed November 24, 2014 in the Ohio Court of Claims and November 28, 2014 in the Franklin County Common Pleas Court by the attorney for John Rohrer. The complaint states that Rohrer was forcibly injected with Risperdal for more than 3 ½ years although the drug is known to cause irreversible brain damage. In addition, the complaint states that Rohrer’s rights to a fair hearing have been repeatedly violated.

The activist in the Rohrer case is actually his mother. Attorney and talk show host Katherine Hine founded the advocacy group Stop Child Abuse Now in Oklahoma and advised a group of foster mothers who were outraged at the involvement of judges and lawyers in the murder of 2 year old Ryan Luke in 1995. She is the Executive Director of the Ross County Network for Children in Ohio, an organization with a strong history of conflict with the Ross County Prosecutors, surrounding two child murderers that the County had not wanted prosecuted back in the 1990’s.

Hine is now with WJLA radio hosting a two weekly broadcasts—one exposing illegalities of forced psychiatry and another exposing the consequences of the lack of judicial accountability. She also is a contributor to The Columbus Free Press.

The Ross County Prosecutor’s office has made it clear that they despise her. Now, they are the ones making sure John Rohrer stays locked up.

Hine has faced three disciplinary actions.  She writes, “My first discipline was in Oklahoma in like 1981 or 1982 when my soon to be ex grabbed by children in violation of an Oklahoma custody order giving their temporary custody to me.” According to Hine, “He claimed he wasn’t served.” She reports that “I got a private reprimand – where you go into an office and they yell at you about 15 minutes.  Told me what a disgrace to the profession I was and how ashamed they all were of being in the bar association with me.”

She was subsequently reprimanded by the Oklahoma Bar in 1997 for communicating with a judge concerning a matter involving a suspected case of child abuse, in which she did not represent a party. In fact, Hine had signed a letter along with seven other individuals who were concerned that the judge had authorized supervised visitation of a child with a sexual predator and that the supervision stipulation was being ignored. In other words, the child was allowed to be alone with the predator. There was another attempt at discipline when she was accused of ghost writing for a pro se litigant, but Hine invoked confidentiality and the complaint evaporated.

Concerning the lengthy incarceration of her son, Katherine Hine has this to say: “These people are like the Cosa Nostra. They launch intergenerational vendettas and will go after your family.”

According to Hine, John Rohrer is no longer allowed online. He had previously set up websites with his music and poetry but the public awareness of his situation had launched protests among his readers and as a result, he is now barred by the hospital from going onto the internet.

Recent articles have discussed the increasing incidence of suspension and disciplinary actions taken against attorneys who are attempting to protect the rights of individuals. If the current trend continues, we may see anyone standing up for the rights of another individual escorted into jail and, from there, potentially into a rubber room.

http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/24/the-management-of-dissent-how-to-destroy-an-activist/

The Big Lies and the Small Lies

by MANUEL E. YEPE

Any reasonably sane person would assume that after the recent public acknowledgment by US President Barack Obama of the foreign policy errors that are implicit, and even explicit, in his efforts to normalize political relations with Cuba, there would be a process of apologies and explanations for the big and small lies that the immense defamation apparatus of Washington has spread about Cuba around the world, trying to justify its economic, commercial and financial blockade against the rebel island.

Even in the simplest parts of the propaganda war against Cuba, we find evidence of the lies with which the smear campaign has sought to support its purposes –to the embarrassment of honest Americans who are becoming aware of the truth- as the curtain is drawn aside as a result of the timid measures that the White House has taken citing legal incapacity to eliminate the shameful blockade.

An example of this is provided by José Manzaneda, site coordinator of Cubainformación that originates in Spain and is dedicated to promoting solidarity with the island on the Internet. Manzaneda recalls one of the many deceitful facets of the propaganda campaign against Cuba that somehow now clashes with the truth.

Cuba has rock bands in all genres –from heavy metal to hardcore, death metal, alternative rock and punk. The Caribbean country hosts local and international groups that take part in thirteen festivals of rock music (Caimán Rock, Brutal Fest, Festival Metal HG among them) and has a unique experience in the world: a state-owned Cuban Rock Agency devoted to the promotion, distribution and hiring of rock bands. Despite this, during the recent Havana concert by the English band the Rolling Stones, the US-financed media from around the world devoted extensive space to promote their stale falsehoods against Cuba.

Manzaneda notes that Spanish channel La Sexta, in its coverage of the Stones’ artistic visit, said “Cuba has vibrated to the sound of those “Satanic Majesties” (…) and showed their trademark tongue after 40 years of rock censorship in the island “.

Another Spanish channel, Cuatro, repeated the same nonsense about the alleged “censorship” that Cuba applied to the music of the British band “whose music had been banned in Cuba until now”.

The same lie was repeated by Antena 3, another Spanish channel: “The Rolling Stones displayed their energy in the same island where their sound was banned until recently.”

Other media did not go that far but repeated over and over the same message: not now, but for decades the Cuban Revolution “censured”, “discriminated” or “banned” rock “.

Meanwhile, the international corporate media insisted on another message openly more counterrevolutionary: the concert was due to a supposed transition, an opening, or even a political “spring” in Cuba. “A concert that marked the cultural opening of Cuba,” said Deutsche Welle TV). “A historic event that shows the opening of Cuba to the West –that albeit slow, is already unstoppable.” (Cuatro TV).

In almost all news reports, this great concert was linked to the absurd events and incomprehension towards rock that occurred in Cuba in the 60s. But the reality is that if the Rolling Stones and other big bands did not act earlier on the island it was not due to obstacles from Cuba other than economic. There were big free concerts in Havana, like the Manic Street Preachers in 2001 and Audioslave in 2005. All of these, as with the Stones now, were funded by the artists themselves.

Manzaneda recalls: “It is not Cuba that has made a cultural opening to the world. What has really changed is that the US government and its accompanying media have modified their policy of aggression against Cuba. And now, for a band like the Rolling  Stones,   performing on the island they are no longer at high risk of reprisals and smear campaigns; but rather the opposite.”

It is true that in the early years of the Revolution, and until the mid 70s, rock and English language were not broadcast by Cuban radio stations as part of an inexperienced and naive defensive reaction against the huge cultural aggression promoted and financed by the United States.

In those years, Cubans certainly committed many errors of this type, including their dislike of persons that were then, and remain today, idols of US American youth, who were inspired precisely by the ideals and struggles of Cuban youth and their leaders, such as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

This article was translated from the Spanish by Walter Lippmann for the invaluable CubaNews.

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Manuel E. Yepe is a lawyer, economist and journalist. He is a professor at the Higher Institute of International Relations in Havana.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/29/the-big-lies-and-the-small-lies/