Anthropologists Adopt New Language Against Secret Research

February 19, 2009

By David Glenn (The Chronicle)[1]

In the latest outgrowth of the debate over military sponsorship of social science, members of the American Anthropological Association have voted to strengthen language in their code of ethics against research conducted in secret.

Among other things, the new amendments declare that clandestine fieldwork constitutes “a clear violation of research ethics” and that anthropologists “should not withhold research results from research participants when those results are shared with others.”

The amendments were endorsed in a mail ballot by a vote of 87 percent to 13 percent. (The turnout rate was 16 percent.) The association announced the results on Wednesday.

The ethics code carries no formal weight, and the association has no mechanism for adjudicating charges of misconduct. But the code is widely discussed in graduate courses, and some anthropologists say that it embodies a powerful set of norms.

The code represents “a sense of our collective judgment,” said Dena K. Plemmons, a research scientist at the University of California at San Diego and the chair of the association’s Committee on Ethics, during a conference call with reporters on Wednesday. “We assume that it gives us a guiding framework for our practice.”

The new ethics-code revisions stem from a two-year-old debate about whether—and under what conditions—anthropologists should cooperate with projects sponsored by intelligence agencies or the military. Several government programs are at issue, but the most visible one is the U.S. Army’s Human Terrain System, in which social scientists give on-the-ground advice to military units in Afghanistan and Iraq (The Chronicle, November 30, 2007).

Officials at the Department of Defense have maintained that the research generated by social scientists in the Human Terrain System will be open and unclassified, except in limited cases in which data must be temporarily withheld for reasons of operational security. They have also said that the social scientists are always candid with Afghani and Iraqi citizens about their dual roles as researchers and military personnel.

If those assertions are true, then it appears that anthropologists could participate in the Human Terrain program without technically violating the new ethics rules.

But even if the Human Terrain teams’ reports are unclassified, it seems unlikely that the Afghani and Iraqi citizens who interact with the teams could realistically obtain those reports. As a recently leaked program handbook makes clear, many of the teams’ reports take the form of oral briefings and PowerPoint presentations for brigade commanders.

Lingering Concerns

During a discussion of the Human Terrain program at the anthropology association’s 2007 meeting, Terence Turner, a professor emeritus at Cornell University, called for a strict ban on secret research. The association had added such a ban to its ethics code in 1971, in the wake of revelations about American social scientists’ clandestine counterinsurgency work in Thailand and elsewhere. But the ban was lifted during the 1980s.

The newly approved amendments are not as strong as the 1971 language, and Mr. Turner says he is not fully happy with them. “The new text of the AAA Ethics Code goes some way, but not all the way, toward satisfying the concerns I raised in my 2007 resolution,” he wrote in an e-mail message to The Chronicle on Wednesday.

Mr. Turner’s resolution was aimed primarily at social scientists who work with the Human Terrain System and similar programs. But strong anti-secrecy rules would also call into question the work of a much larger group of anthropologists who conduct proprietary research for corporations and nonprofit organizations.

Officials at the National Association for the Practice of Anthropology, which promotes nonacademic anthropology, did not reply to a request for comment on Wednesday. That association opposed Mr. Turner’s 2007 motion, but its president gave a qualified endorsement to the weaker language that was approved this week.

Mr. Turner is not happy that the code’s epilogue still includes language that suggests that anthropologists who are also members of other organizations might legitimately choose to follow the other organizations’ rules instead of the anthropology association’s code.

That passage “opens a hole wide enough to drive a Humvee through,” Mr. Turner says.

Mr. Turner will have plenty of additional chances to push for revisions. Ms. Plemmons’s committee recently began a wholesale review of the ethics code—a process that is expected to take two years. The anthropology association is also collecting material for an ethics casebook for scholars who work with the military.

'Accessory' to State

Scholars took up broader questions about the military and social science during a symposium that was Webcast on Wednesday afternoon from Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies.

“What happens to universities and to disciplines when military funding becomes larger rather than smaller?” asked Catherine Lutz, a professor of anthropology and international studies at Brown.

She said that anthropologists should look skeptically at how fields like physics and communication studies have been shaped by Pentagon money. “We’re not simply helping the state when we take military funding,” she said. “We are in fact restructuring and reshaping our discipline as an accessory to various kinds of state projects.”

But David Kennedy, Brown’s vice president for international affairs, urged scholars not to categorically reject collaboration with the Pentagon. He noted that military personnel themselves have played crucial roles in exposing abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison and in similar recent scandals.

Scholars should keep such complexities in mind, Mr. Kennedy said, rather than simply deciding that “the taint of militarization” can be avoided if they refuse to accept money from the Defense Department.

Program Modifications

The Human Terrain program, meanwhile, has been through a difficult period. Three social scientists in the program have been killed since last May, including Michael V. Bhatia, a young international-relations scholar (The Chronicle, July 4, 2008).

Last week, Wired and the freelance writer John Stanton reported that the program’s structure had abruptly changed. Civilians in the program will now be government employees rather than contractors. Among other things, the change reportedly means that social scientists on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq could see pay cuts of more than 60 percent.

Officials in the program did not reply to a request for comment on Wednesday.

Thanks to David Glenn and The Chronicle for covering this document. Reprint rights remain with the aforementioned.

Afghanistan: Slipping out of control

February 19, 2009

By Kim Sengupta (The Independent)^[1]

The 'surge', with the extra US forces in Afghanistan expected to rise to 30,000, was required to 'stabilise a deteriorating situation' said Barack Obama

A grim picture of spiralling violence and a disintegrating society has emerged in Afghanistan in a confidential Nato report, just as Barack Obama vowed to send 17,000 extra American troops to the country in an attempt to stem a tide of insurgency.

Direct attacks on the increasingly precarious Afghan government more than doubled last year, while there was a 50 per cent increase in kidnappings and assassinations. Fatalities among Western forces, including British, went up by 35 per cent while the civilian death toll climbed by 46 per cent, more than the UN had estimated. Violent attacks were up by a third and roadside bombings, the most lethal source of Western casualties, by a quarter. There was also a 67 per cent rise in attacks on aircraft from the ground, a source of concern to Nato which depends hugely on air power in the conflict.

The document, prepared by the Pentagon on behalf of the US-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan and seen by The Independent, also reveal how swathes of the country have slipped out of the control of President Hamid Karzai’s government. According to a poll taken towards the end of last year, a third of the population stated that the Taliban had more influence in their locality.

The growing unpopularity of Mr Karzai, along with accusations of corruption against figures associated with his government, has led the new US administration to repeatedly warn the Afghan President he will lose Washington’s support in the coming national elections unless there are drastic changes. The military “surge”, say US officials, must be accompanied by significant improvement in governance with Mr Obama describing the Karzai government of being “detached” from what was going on in his own country.

Mr Obama acknowledged that the reinforcements, with the total numbers of extra forces expected to rise to 30,000, had been sent because “urgent and swift action” was required “to stabilise a deteriorating situation … in which the Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan and al-Qa’ida threatens America from its safe haven along the Pakistani border.”

Mr Karzai was informed of the new deployments in a telephone call on Tuesday. The Afghan leader had complained publicly at the weekend that he had not heard from the US leader since the inauguration almost a month ago.

The new US administration had indicated that it was prepared to talk to Iran about the Afghan situation and yesterday, Italy, which assumes the presidency of the G8 this year, said that Tehran would be invited to participate in a summit on Afghanistan. The Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said: “We want to consider how to involve Iran, not whether to involve Iran.”

Nato has accused the Iranian regime of allowing weapons to be smuggled into Afghanistan while drugs go in the other direction, with some of the profits pumped back in to funding the insurgency. The UN’s International Narcotics Control Board said in its annual report that due to overproduction of opium there has been a rise in the production of cannabis in Afghanistan. Many provinces which had been declared by the Afghan government and Nato to be free of poppy cultivation have switched to cannabis. The report stated: “The lack of security in Afghanistan has severely hampered government efforts to eradicate illicit opium poppy; a total of 78 persons involved in the eradication efforts lost their lives in 2008, a six-fold increase over the previous year. The increase in illicit cultivation of cannabis in Afghanistan is also a worrying development.”

Meanwhile, eight years after “liberation” and the fall of the Taliban, many Afghan people still lack basic amenities. Across the country 38 per cent of the population did not have access to medical facilities with the figure rising to 44 per cent in rural areas.

The Taliban has also carried out a violent campaign against education for children in many parts of the country, claiming it was being used for Western indoctrination, and targeting girls’ schools in particular as being against Islam. The Nato report states that “access to schools for both girls and boys varies across the country and is tightly linked to security. Degree of access to girls’ schools is also an ethno-geographic factor”.

Whereas 74 per cent of Uzbek, 73 per cent of Tajik and 72 per cent of Hazara girls are in a position to receive an education, it falls to 44 per cent among the Pashtuns and, in the conservative deep south of the country, in provinces like Helmand where British troops are based, no more than 24 per cent attend schools.

Thanks to Kim Sengupta and The Independent for covering this document. Reprint rights remain with the aforementioned.

UN group to probe poll chaos deaths

February 9, 2009

By Lucas Barasa (Daily Nation)

Even as the country grapples with formation of a tribunal to try poll violence suspects, a high-level team from the UN headquarters has arrived in the country to investigate killings during the chaos.

The fact-finding mission of the UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial executions will also look into the killings of members of the Mungiki sect allegedly by police and those by the military in Mt Elgon.

Interested

According to Kenya National Commission on Human Rights vice-chairman Omar Hassan, the advance team jetted into the country on Sunday for the mission that will last from February 16 to February 26.

The UN Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial executions, Prof Philip Alston, is expected in the country on February 16.

“He (special rapporteur) is particularly interested in alleged extra-judicial killings during the post-election violence, in Mt Elgon and of Mungiki suspects,” Mr Hassan told the Nation in an exclusive interview in Nairobi, on Monday.

The special rapporteur carries out fact-finding missions with the consent of the Government concerned. He is an independent and impartial investigator, and reports his findings publicly to the UN Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly.

Mr Hassan said the special rapporteur would meet key government officials as well as civil society organisations.

He also hopes to meet with victims and witnesses, politicians and security officers.

An NGO forum will be held on February 16 “so that Kenyan civil society can brief the Special Rapporteur on the issue of killings in Kenya”.

Describing the UN mission as a first major breakthrough and fundamental step forward in investigations into rampant extra-judicial killings in the country, Mr Hassan regretted that it had taken the government more than a year to allow the team to come.

First seen in the Daily Nation. Thanks to the Lucas Barasa and the Daily Nation for covering these documents.

Demonstrators accuse police over disappearance of kin

February 8, 2009

By Ramadhan Rajab & Cyrus Ombati (The Standard)[1]

Angry demonstrators who accused police over the disappearance of their relatives blocked part of the Nakuru-Nairobi highway.

About 100 demonstrators on Sunday claimed police had arrested their kin over accusations that they were followers of the Mungiki sect. They carried banners and demanded an explanation over their missing relatives. Police were forced to use teargas canisters to disperse the group.

Speaking to The Standard, Ms Susan Njeri, 65, said she had lost three family members in unclear circumstances. She said on December 26, her son George Kariuki, 30, who owned a phone repair kiosk in Mwiki, Nairobi, was picked up by people she suspected to be policemen and until now she has not seen him. She said Kariuki’s father, Mr Peter Njenga had been following the matter.

"He went to see police in Ruiru, but we have not seen him too," Susan said.

Mr Kamau Kang’ara, director of Oscar Foundation, who led the demonstration, was arrested and later released when local MP Peter Mwathi intervened. Kang’ara claimed tens of youth branded Mungiki had disappeared.

"We have compiled a list of those believed to have been killed by police," he said.

Kiambu OCPD Jay Munyambu, who led the anti-riot police, invited the protestors to his office to discuss the matter. He promised to investigate the allegations.

First seen in The Standard. Thanks to the Ramadhan Rajab, Cyrus Ombati and The Standard for covering these documents.

Wikileaks releases NATO report on civilian deaths

February 16, 2009

WIKILEAKS PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release.

Wikileaks releases NATO report on civilian deaths

A confidential NATO report from January reveals that civilian deaths from the war in Afghanistan have increased by 46% over the past year.

The 12 page report was authenticated and released in full today by Wikileaks.

The report highlights huge increases on attacks aimed at Coalition forces, including a 27 % increase in IED attacks, a 40%. rise in rifle and rocket fire and an increase in surface to air fire of 67%.The report shows a dramatic escalation of the war and civil disorder. Coalition deaths increased by 35%, assassinations and kidnappings by 50% and attacks on the Kabul based Government of Hamid Karzai also more than doubled, rising a massive 119%.

According to the report, outside of the capital Kabul only one in two families had access to even the most basic health care, and only one in two children had access to a school.

The disclosure follows the unrelated arrest of Colonel Owen McNally earlier this month for passing older civilian death toll figures to Human Rights Watch analyst and former BBC radio reporter Rachel Reid. Human Rights Watch published a report based around that data, which covered 2006-2007, last September.^[1]

The London Times, stated that American military officials were "seething" over the leaks.

A UK Ministry of Defence source reportedly told the Daily Mail:

"What McNally passed on will not cost lives in the sense that it doesn't give specific military details. But the whole point of defeating the Taliban is winning hearts and minds and stopping the population joining their cause. If they think we're lying to them, it could become a very dangerous place. This has caused a diplomatic row and the Americans are not happy at all."^[2]

Wikileaks legal spokesperson Jay Lim stated "We deplore the arrest of Colonel McNally for revealing civilian death figures. It is clear that Col. McNally's actions are of the highest moral calibre. His example has encouraged others to step forward."

NATO is not likely to find Wikileaks' source so readily. The site uses state of the art anonymization technologies, and the identity of its sources are protected under the Swedish Press Freedom Act.^[3]

In January Wikileaks quashed a South African Government investigation after warning it would seek to have the prosecutors charged and extradited to face trial before Swedish courts

Tax Gap: Rare glimpse into offshore world of big money and low taxes

February 13, 2009

By Tax gap reporting team (The Guardian)[1]

One of the more fascinating sets of records disclosed by Rudolf Elmer is, he says, the confidential investor list of an offshore fund run by the Carlyle Group.

This prominent private equity operation in Washington DC counts presidents and prime ministers among its advisers, and Elmer's list opens the door to a rarely seen offshore world of big money and low taxes.

Carlyle sources did not challenge the authenticity of the list when we showed it them. They emphasised instead that all their activities in the Caymans were perfectly legal and normal.

The fund bought and sold shares in US start-up firms from its offices in Washington DC. But an offshore paper entity in the Caymans, TCG Ventures Ltd, was nominally running the show.

TCG's correspondence was administered by Swiss bank officials actually living on the islands, in return for a fee. This helped the foreign investors to minimise their tax bills and protected them from the American courts.

US tax authorities accepted this legal fiction, although the set of rules which allowed it has since been changed.

Carlyle emphasises that the American tax authorities lost nothing from this arrangement. What seems clear, however, is that such an offshore structure makes it in effect a voluntary matter for some foreign investors to disclose their profits to tax authorities in their home countries.

The fund, Carlyle Venture Partners, put together 67 wealthy companies and individuals to invest approximately $230m.

According to the documents, investors included the Saudi prince Talal bin Abdul-Aziz ($1m); two companies advised by Prinz Michael von und zu Liechtenstein ($7m); the late Akram Ojjeh, who earned a fortune brokering arms deals in the Middle East ($2m); the Kuwaiti state's sovereign wealth fund ($10m); and London-based Saudi companies linked to the Bin Laden family construction group ($2m).

There are American names on the list. Felix Smolka, a hotelier in Boca Raton, Florida, was listed as the contact point for two anonymous entities who tipped in $1m each, Durant Trading LC and Milestone Development Corporation. Smolka told the Guardian that both were offshore companies which he did not own: he was merely an "investment adviser" to one and a "contact" for the other.

The list of investors also includes anonymous companies and trusts from Panama, Liechtenstein, the British Virgin Islands and the Channel Islands, each with its own secrecy laws that conceal the real owners.

In an extreme example of offshore "layering", one person invested his Carlyle Group $1m into the Caymans through an anonymous company in Panama. The contact name given to Carlyle transpires in turn to be merely that of a firm of administrators in Liechtenstein, most notoriously secretive of all havens.

The Caymans host more than 9,000 private equity funds and about 80% of the world's hedge funds.

First seen in The Guardian. Thanks to the Tax gap reporting team and The Guardian for covering these documents.

Tax Gap: Isles of plenty

February 13, 2009

By Tax gap reporting team (The Guardian)[1]

A Caribbean paradise ... operated in secret. A top Swiss banker turned whistleblower says he has the evidence

A hoard of banking files from the Caymans – one of the most secretive British tax havens – are being supplied to the US authorities by a whistleblower who claims they detail worldwide tax avoidance.

The Cayman Islands – Caribbean territories under ultimate UK control – are currently the target of reformers. Alastair Darling was yesterday challenged in the Commons over allegations that UK banks have been using the Caymans for massive tax avoidance schemes. Barack Obama, before he reached the White House, was one of the senators who singled out the islands as a blot on the US fiscal landscape which ought to be investigated.

The whistleblower's documents have been seen by the Guardian. They record the names and transactions of hundreds of companies, trusts, funds and wealthy individuals - information protected by local and Swiss secrecy laws.

Some of the paperwork concerns legal tax avoidance structures. Other files are alleged to point to potential illegal tax evasion by individuals around the globe.

The thousands of pages come from Rudolf Elmer, chief operating officer for the Julius Baer Swiss bank office in Grand Cayman until he was sacked in December 2002. Elmer, 53, and the bank have been involved in a long dispute. The bank accused him of forging documents and making violent threats. Elmer has accused the bank of hiring private investigators to harass him.

Elmer says his documents include all the back-up data held on Julius Baer's computer server in the Caymans at the time he was sacked, including accounts, correspondence, memos and resolutions dealing with 114 trusts, 80 companies, 60 funds and 1,330 individuals.

The bank says Elmer inappropriately obtained some documents as part of "a misguided campaign" against them. They reject his allegations as baseless and say their activities complied with all applicable laws and regulations.

In September 2005 the Swiss authorities held Elmer in custody for 30 days. They have indicated that they intend to charge him with breaking Swiss bank secrecy laws and with sending threatening messages to two Julius Baer officials.

Last year Elmer posted some documents on the Wikileaks website, which specialises in material from whistleblowers. Julius Baer got the site closed down for alleged breach of confidence, but Wikileaks had the California court order overturned on appeal.

The legal action drew the attention of the US Internal Revenue Service, who contacted Elmer. He is co-operating with the IRS, and with financial specialists in the office of Robert Morgenthau, the district attorney of New York; and with the powerful sub-committee on investigations chaired by Senator Carl Levin, which has a track record of probing offshore havens.

Elmer's disclosures follow the emergence of similar whistleblowers. One recently testified in the United States against the Swiss bank UBS, and another sold British and European authorities the contents of computer files from Liechtenstein bank LGT.

Elmer says his interest is in the network of tax havens. "People don't know how the system works. They may hear of some case, but the big picture always disappears into bank secrecy, professional secrecy with lawyers and accountants, and tax secrecy. But they need to know that this is a system which undermines our society, our democracy." He has lodged copies of files with Jack Blum, a veteran lawyer in Washington DC and an outspoken critic of the behaviour of tax havens.

Blum told the Guardian: "What Elmer is doing is extremely valuable in the process of educating people of the need for major reform. This is a system for enabling a certain class of people to avoid their societal duty, which is to pay tax."

We found and interviewed Elmer, now 53, at his new home on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. He used to be a part-time captain in the Swiss army, and is an accountant and auditor by training, and a lover of ballroom dancing.

He told us that originally, in 1987, he was proud to join the Zurich headquarters of Julius Baer, one of Switzerland's oldest and most respected private banks, handling some $38bn of assets, mostly for wealthy individuals.

But Julius Baer told the Guardian that Elmer had inappropriately retained documents when he was sacked by them in December 2002. They said many "were altered to create a distorted fact pattern or supplemented by forged documents".

Elmer responded to us that he had changed the titles of files to make them more easy to identify and also wrote spoof letters to tax authorities, for example purporting to be from penitent taxpayers confessing their evasion. He said he had not distorted or altered the contents of any internal document.

The bank suggested that since Elmer had forged spoof letters, they would be surprised if we placed any reliance on information from him. We invited them to identify any document referred to which they regarded as forged. They did not.

The documents include details of numerous trusts in which wealthy people have placed capital. This allows them lawfully to avoid paying tax on profits, because legally it belongs to the trust. In the same way, the capital can pass to heirs free of inheritance tax.

The trust itself pays no tax, as a Caymans resident. The trustees can distribute money to the trust's beneficiaries but it is essential the trustees exercise their own control over the trust's assets. If not, the assets become once more the property of the person who sets up the trust- and may be taxed.

The paperwork now being handed to US authorities appears to include several cases where wealthy individuals sought to use trust money as though it were their own. When we put these cases to the bank, they told us they did not consider it appropriate to discuss the affairs of their clients through the media.

Some documents refer to a Greek shipowner who placed $26.5m into a trust. Payments appear to be being made in and out without the knowledge of the trustees. The shipowner is said to have written letters referring to the trust as though it were a personal bank account. "The trust appears to be funding the settler's [founder's] shipping business," said one memo. Another speaks of "a risk that the structure could be regarded as a sham".

The Guardian emailed a summary of the documents to the shipping owner, who made no comment.

In other cases, the documents refer to:

• A memo by one Caymans financier, who did not leave a message on the answer machine of a UK client "in case the tapes are seized by the authorities".

• A memo about the affairs of a UK stockbroker whose trust was bluntly said to contain "undeclared money".

• Fears among Julius Baer staff that "we are rubber-stamping investment instructions" in relation to trusts set up by a London-based South American financier.

• Suspicions a German businessman sold a yacht which belonged to his trust and pocketed some of the cash for himself.

One file supplied to US authorities records concerns over a trust called Moonstone, opened on the instructions of the law firm of Dr Thomas Baer, former president of the Julius Baer bank, in the name of a man named Schuler. Caymans staff did not have a passport for Schuler and no way of knowing who he was. Nor were they able to verify where the money had come from. Dr Baer told us he could not discuss a case where documents might have been supplied by a criminal source and that he was bound by lawyer's confidentiality.

He added that Swiss banks were not allowed to open accounts without complying with "know your customer" rules; and that the leaked documents did not reveal what information was available to the bank in Switzerland, nor whether the required information was finally supplied to the Julius Baer Trust Company in the Caymans.

Other Elmer files refer to an alleged trust opened by a Mexican police chief accused of colluding with drug dealers; a Brazilian politician accused of corruption; and a trust allegedly established by Canadian businessman David Radler, now better known as the partner in fraud of former Daily Telegraph proprietor Conrad Black.

In respect of all of the contents of the files, Julius Baer told the Guardian: "All of the activities of our group companies and of the investment vehicles which you have referred to, including associated fee flows and interdependencies, are in full compliance with applicable laws and regulations. These activities are transparent to the regulatory and other governmental agencies in the jurisdictions in which they operate, to their respective external auditors and, with respect to investment vehicles, to investors in such vehicles."

Tax rate: 0%

Lawyers and accountants make up a tenth of the 52,000 population of the Cayman Islands, which are English-speaking, politically stable, in the US time zone, and with zero taxes. This British Overseas Territory with palm trees and luxury hotels, measuring less than 100 square miles, is the fifth largest financial centre on the planet. Tax Justice Network campaigners estimate that tax havens collectively hold more than $11.5 trillion. Some comes from tax avoidance. Each year the US may lose a total of about $100bn in potential taxes, France about $50bn, Germany $30bn, the UK between $20bn and $80bn - and the developing world loses up to $800bn in stolen capital. But in the Caymans, a prison sentence awaits anyone who discloses bank information.

First seen in The Guardian. Thank to the Tax gap reporting team and The Guardian for covering these documents.