Showing posts with label accountability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label accountability. Show all posts
Finding the needle in the GOP haystack.
Republicans are worried that having too many candidates in the race for president will confuse voters. So the party is planning to use the low standing in the polls of some contenders to exclude them from the debates.
But polls, especially at such an early stage in a campaign, are notoriously inaccurate yardsticks. Something more precise is needed.
Since there is no way to gauge hypocrisy, two widely used and accepted methods of assessing suitability are being proposed: all candidates must submit to drug and IQ tests. Only contestants with IQs over 70 and measurable amounts of cannabis in their blood streams will be permitted to compete.
In the event that none of the current aspirants can meet these standards -- not likely in the case of cannabis, the GOP will have time to recruit replacements. Since all the candidates have supported the use of such determinations by employers, they will welcome the application of these standards to their own jobs.
If some do object, perhaps that can be added as the missing hypocrisy test.
The United States of America is at moral crossroads
The CIA should be shut down.
The spy work, if there was any, can be carried on gamely by the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Air Force Intelligence, the FBI's National Security Branch, the Army Intelligence and Security Command, the Department of Energy's Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Coast Guard Intelligence, the Treasury's Office of Intelligence and Analysis, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (sic), the National Reconnaissance Office, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, to say nothing of all the state and local police spooks.
Military operations should have been handled by the Department of Defense all along.
But it will be a further crime if all that happens now is that a few relatively-low level functionaries, however blood-soaked their uniforms, are scape-goated, Abu Graib-style. This fish was rotting from the head. The only way that these and other crimes can be prevented from happening in the future is to hold the perpetrators accountable. If this were some failing garrison in the Third World, instead of the failing Leader of the World, the State Department would be piously scolding them to clean-house. The United States needs to be live up to its ideals. If we can't clean our house, if we can't prosecute the criminals ourselves, as domestic and international law requires, then we should turn Bush, Cheney, and their co-conspirators over to the International Criminal Court and let the world community help us out.
More:
CIA tortured, misled, U.S. report finds, drawing calls for action by Mark Hosenball (Reuters)
Return of the CIA's 'Rogue Elephants': The Senate's report on torture shows U.S. intelligence agencies need to be reined in again by Peter Fenn (US News)
There Is Something Worse Than Torture in the Senate Torture Report: It's not the torture—it's the CIA lying by David Corn (Mother Jones)
U.S. under fire over Senate's report on CIA torture by Bill Trott (Reuters UK)
Rectal feeding and rehydration...
Something new to think about.
Oliver Laughland takes a look at some of the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ used by the agency: How the CIA tortured its detainees: Waterboarding, confinement, sleep deprivation (The Guardian).
Oliver Laughland takes a look at some of the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ used by the agency: How the CIA tortured its detainees: Waterboarding, confinement, sleep deprivation (The Guardian).
Justice: Bradley Manning and the Case Against Solitary Confinement
[If there is anything positive resulting from the torture of Bradley Manning by USMC carabinieri at Quantico, it is that it has raised public awareness about the shockingly routine use in United States state and federal prisons of the cruel but not unusual punishment of solitary confinement. Yesterday, for example, Robert Gibbs was asked about Manning by ABC's Jake Tapper and MSNBC featured an excellent interview about his treatment with FireDogLake's Jane Hamsher. Like the tragic shooting in Tucson and the issue of gun control, the government's brutal handling of Bradley Manning has encouraged the media to begin to shine a light on a dark corner of American justice.]
by Lynn Parramore (new deal 2.0; 2011-01-23)
In the earliest days of our Republic, a group of well-meaning Philadelphia Quakers set out to reform the prison system. The idea was to remove convicts from the mayhem and corruption of overcrowded jails to solitary cells where sinners would return to mental and spiritual health through reflection. In the Walnut Street Jail, no windows would distract the prisoners with street life; no conversation would disturb their penitence. Alone with God, they would be rehabilitated.
There was a small problem. Many of the prisoners went insane. The Walnut Street Jail was shut down in 1835.
But the word penitentiary became part of the language, and the idea of placing prisoners in solitary confinement did not die. It seemed so reasonable - so much better than chain gangs or public stocks. New prisons opened to test the theory that solitude might bring salvation to criminals.
Charles Dickens had a keen interest in prison conditions, having witnessed his father’s detention in a Victorian debtor’s prison. When he heard about the latest American innovation in housing convicts, he came to see for himself. At Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, the wretches he found in solitary confinement were barely human spectres who picked their flesh raw and stared blankly at walls. His on-the-spot conclusion: Solitary confinement is torture. Dickens wrote:
That was 1842. Since then, piles of scientific studies, along with the vivid accounts of victims, have confirmed what was obvious to Dickens. Solitary confinement is worse than smashed bones and torn flesh. When human beings are deprived of social contact for even a few weeks, concentration breaks down, memory fades and disorientation sets in. Eventually, many prisoners experience explosive rages, hallucinations, catatonia, and self-mutilation. Some become irretrievably insane. Far from promoting safety, the most commonly cited justification, solitary confinement often amplifies violent impulses, turning prisoners into ticking time bombs who are far more dangerous to human society upon release than they ever were to begin with (see National Geographic’s documentary on the subject, available on Netflix).
Human beings need social contact for normal brain function. Solitary confinement is thus a method of inflicting traumatic injury upon the human mind. “It’s an awful thing, solitary,” wrote former Vietnam prisoner John McCain in Faith of My Fathers. “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.” Among its legion perversities, solitary confinement turns medical doctors into torturers; renders violent criminals more aggressive, and makes prisoners cut off from human society incapable of functioning in it.
In 1890, the United States Supreme Court nearly declared the punishment unconstitutional. It is banned by the Geneva Convention, condemned by the United Nations, and either prohibited or restricted in most civilized countries. And yet today, as Atul Gawande showed in his revealing 2009 New Yorker article, tens of thousands of Americans are tortured in this fashion every day, out of sight, in the “Supermax” prisons that have popped up like poisoned mushrooms on the American landscape since the 1980s. Some prisoners are consigned to these Houses of Unholiness for violations - both major and minor — of prison rules. Some for gang activity. Others for trying to escape. Or for violent behavior. Some are placed there because they are mentally ill and there is nowhere else to put them - the equivalent of casting a sufferer of pneumonia onto an Arctic tundra.
Save for the death penalty, solitary confinement is the most extreme sanction allowed by law. Like slavery and every other form of institutionalized inhumanity, it should be banished to the dark annals of American history as an example of what happens when our humanity slumbers.
Instead, it is being used as a method of terror and coercion by the United States government upon a citizen who has not even been convicted of a crime.
As Salon’s Glenn Greenwald and several other courageous journalists have documented, Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has been detained in solitary confinement for the last seven months, despite not having been convicted of any crime, having been a model detainee, and having evidenced no signs of violence or even disciplinary misdemeanors. Manning has been kept alone in a cell for 23 hours a day, barred from exercising in that cell, deprived of sleep, and denied even a pillow or sheets for his bed. As Greenwald reports, “the brig’s medical personnel now administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation.” A court hearing has not been set.
The message of the U.S. government to its citizens in this activity is clear: blow the whistle and your brain will be mutilated before you even have a trial.
But it may be that much to the shame of the U.S. government, our slumbering humanity is awakening. The solitary confinement - the torture, for we must call it that - of Bradley Manning is ironically shining a light on this brutality and tipping us off to the danger of authoritarianism. A United Nations probe is now investigating the Bradley case, and the drumbeat of outrage in the blogosphere grows louder every day. Protesters are organizing. Whatever one thinks of Manning and his involvement in the WikiLeaks release of classified information, there can never be any justification for torture. As Greenwald argues, such practices weaken the position of the United States government, both abroad and at home. Other countries will think twice before accepting extradition requests to a place where inhumane treatment of prisoners is sanctioned. Our moral standing in the world suffers, while the American citizenry, already suspicious of post-9/11 governmental abuses of power, grows even more alarmed. What kind of legitimacy adheres to a judicial hearing when the accused has been subject to sanity-threatening conditions? Even exposing the accused to duress is a violation of justice and of the U.S. Constitution — which applies to both civilians and soldiers. Trust and faith in American justice will deteriorate as long as such damaging practices continue.
As we spend time and rejoice with our friends and family in the new year — enjoying the social interaction that human beings require - let us pause for a moment to remember the thousands of people being tortured in American prisons, including Bradley Manning, and let us send our own message back to our government: We are Americans. We will not accept the intimidation and coercion of our fellow citizens, even from the Pentagon. Most assuredly, we will not accept torture in our name. Not of the accused. Not of the mentally ill. Not even of convicted criminals. When our civilized society is attacked, no matter what the justification, we will rise up to defend it.
The placement of human beings in solitary confinement is not a measure of their depravity. It is a measure of our own.
Lynn Parramore is Editor of New Deal 2.0, Media Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and Co-founder of Recessionwire. This article originally appeared here.
See, also: U.S. can't link accused Army private [Bradley Manning] to Assange (NBC News 2011-01-25);
Salon's Glenn Greenwald on "disgustingly harsh conditions inside prisons" and related matters (Salon 2011-01-25);
US accused of inhumane treatment over Wikileaks soldier case (Amnesty International 2011-01-24).
by Lynn Parramore (new deal 2.0; 2011-01-23)
The degree of civilization in a society can be judged
by entering its prisons. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky
by entering its prisons. ~Fyodor Dostoevsky
In the earliest days of our Republic, a group of well-meaning Philadelphia Quakers set out to reform the prison system. The idea was to remove convicts from the mayhem and corruption of overcrowded jails to solitary cells where sinners would return to mental and spiritual health through reflection. In the Walnut Street Jail, no windows would distract the prisoners with street life; no conversation would disturb their penitence. Alone with God, they would be rehabilitated.
There was a small problem. Many of the prisoners went insane. The Walnut Street Jail was shut down in 1835.
But the word penitentiary became part of the language, and the idea of placing prisoners in solitary confinement did not die. It seemed so reasonable - so much better than chain gangs or public stocks. New prisons opened to test the theory that solitude might bring salvation to criminals.
Charles Dickens had a keen interest in prison conditions, having witnessed his father’s detention in a Victorian debtor’s prison. When he heard about the latest American innovation in housing convicts, he came to see for himself. At Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, the wretches he found in solitary confinement were barely human spectres who picked their flesh raw and stared blankly at walls. His on-the-spot conclusion: Solitary confinement is torture. Dickens wrote:
I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers…I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.A man who had seen his share of inhumanities, Dickens pronounced solitary confinement to be “rigid, strict, and hopeless…cruel and wrong.”
That was 1842. Since then, piles of scientific studies, along with the vivid accounts of victims, have confirmed what was obvious to Dickens. Solitary confinement is worse than smashed bones and torn flesh. When human beings are deprived of social contact for even a few weeks, concentration breaks down, memory fades and disorientation sets in. Eventually, many prisoners experience explosive rages, hallucinations, catatonia, and self-mutilation. Some become irretrievably insane. Far from promoting safety, the most commonly cited justification, solitary confinement often amplifies violent impulses, turning prisoners into ticking time bombs who are far more dangerous to human society upon release than they ever were to begin with (see National Geographic’s documentary on the subject, available on Netflix).
Human beings need social contact for normal brain function. Solitary confinement is thus a method of inflicting traumatic injury upon the human mind. “It’s an awful thing, solitary,” wrote former Vietnam prisoner John McCain in Faith of My Fathers. “It crushes your spirit and weakens your resistance more effectively than any other form of mistreatment.” Among its legion perversities, solitary confinement turns medical doctors into torturers; renders violent criminals more aggressive, and makes prisoners cut off from human society incapable of functioning in it.
In 1890, the United States Supreme Court nearly declared the punishment unconstitutional. It is banned by the Geneva Convention, condemned by the United Nations, and either prohibited or restricted in most civilized countries. And yet today, as Atul Gawande showed in his revealing 2009 New Yorker article, tens of thousands of Americans are tortured in this fashion every day, out of sight, in the “Supermax” prisons that have popped up like poisoned mushrooms on the American landscape since the 1980s. Some prisoners are consigned to these Houses of Unholiness for violations - both major and minor — of prison rules. Some for gang activity. Others for trying to escape. Or for violent behavior. Some are placed there because they are mentally ill and there is nowhere else to put them - the equivalent of casting a sufferer of pneumonia onto an Arctic tundra.
Save for the death penalty, solitary confinement is the most extreme sanction allowed by law. Like slavery and every other form of institutionalized inhumanity, it should be banished to the dark annals of American history as an example of what happens when our humanity slumbers.
Instead, it is being used as a method of terror and coercion by the United States government upon a citizen who has not even been convicted of a crime.
As Salon’s Glenn Greenwald and several other courageous journalists have documented, Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has been detained in solitary confinement for the last seven months, despite not having been convicted of any crime, having been a model detainee, and having evidenced no signs of violence or even disciplinary misdemeanors. Manning has been kept alone in a cell for 23 hours a day, barred from exercising in that cell, deprived of sleep, and denied even a pillow or sheets for his bed. As Greenwald reports, “the brig’s medical personnel now administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation.” A court hearing has not been set.
The message of the U.S. government to its citizens in this activity is clear: blow the whistle and your brain will be mutilated before you even have a trial.
But it may be that much to the shame of the U.S. government, our slumbering humanity is awakening. The solitary confinement - the torture, for we must call it that - of Bradley Manning is ironically shining a light on this brutality and tipping us off to the danger of authoritarianism. A United Nations probe is now investigating the Bradley case, and the drumbeat of outrage in the blogosphere grows louder every day. Protesters are organizing. Whatever one thinks of Manning and his involvement in the WikiLeaks release of classified information, there can never be any justification for torture. As Greenwald argues, such practices weaken the position of the United States government, both abroad and at home. Other countries will think twice before accepting extradition requests to a place where inhumane treatment of prisoners is sanctioned. Our moral standing in the world suffers, while the American citizenry, already suspicious of post-9/11 governmental abuses of power, grows even more alarmed. What kind of legitimacy adheres to a judicial hearing when the accused has been subject to sanity-threatening conditions? Even exposing the accused to duress is a violation of justice and of the U.S. Constitution — which applies to both civilians and soldiers. Trust and faith in American justice will deteriorate as long as such damaging practices continue.
As we spend time and rejoice with our friends and family in the new year — enjoying the social interaction that human beings require - let us pause for a moment to remember the thousands of people being tortured in American prisons, including Bradley Manning, and let us send our own message back to our government: We are Americans. We will not accept the intimidation and coercion of our fellow citizens, even from the Pentagon. Most assuredly, we will not accept torture in our name. Not of the accused. Not of the mentally ill. Not even of convicted criminals. When our civilized society is attacked, no matter what the justification, we will rise up to defend it.
The placement of human beings in solitary confinement is not a measure of their depravity. It is a measure of our own.
Lynn Parramore is Editor of New Deal 2.0, Media Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and Co-founder of Recessionwire. This article originally appeared here.
See, also: U.S. can't link accused Army private [Bradley Manning] to Assange (NBC News 2011-01-25);
Salon's Glenn Greenwald on "disgustingly harsh conditions inside prisons" and related matters (Salon 2011-01-25);
US accused of inhumane treatment over Wikileaks soldier case (Amnesty International 2011-01-24).
Decline of The Empire: Wikileaks hounded?
Here's a statement on the vilification of Wikileaks from Reporters Without Borders that one might have liked to have seen -- might once upon a time reasonably have expected to see -- on the editorial page of the New York Times or in a statement from the news networks:
Full coverage of The US embassy cables on the guardian.co.uk site;
BBC News' Wikileaks revelations;
WikiLeaked: Inside the State Department's Secret Cables
at Foreign Policy's blog;
Wiki Leaks on Democracy Now!;
One Analyst, So Many Documents: How could Bradley Manning alone have leaked so much classified material? by Marc Ambinder;
US embassy cables: The job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment by Simon Jenkins;
The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange by David Samuels;
Wikileaks Evolves by Raffi Khatchadourian;
WikiLeaks reveals more than just government secrets, The moral standards of WikiLeaks critics and other Salon posts by Glenn Greenwald;
WikiLeaks vs. The Empire by Tom Hayden;
Hillary Clinton Gets Wiki-Served by Robert Scheer;
The (Not So) Secret (Anymore) US War in Pakistan by Jeremy Scahill;
Greg Mitchell's Blogging the Wikileaks;
WL Central: An unofficial WikiLeaks information resource.
Visit MacLeod Cartoons.
Reporters Without Borders condemns the blocking, cyber-attacks and political pressure being directed at cablegate.wikileaks.org, the website dedicated to the US diplomatic cables. The organization is also concerned by some of the extreme comments made by American authorities concerning WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.For other aspects of the Wikileaks story:
Earlier this week, after the publishing several hundred of the 250.000 cables it says it has in its possession, WikiLeaks had to move its site from its servers in Sweden to servers in the United States controlled by online retailer Amazon. Amazon quickly came under pressure to stop hosting WikiLeaks from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and its chairman, Sen. Joe Lieberman, in particular.
After being ousted from Amazon, WikiLeaks found a refuge for part of its content with the French Internet company OVH. But French digital economy minister Eric Besson today said the French government was looking at ways to ban hosting of the site. WikiLeaks was also recently dropped by its domain name provider EveryDNS. Meanwhile, several countries well known for for their disregard of freedom of expression and information, including Thailand and China, have blocked access to cablegate.wikileaks.org.
This is the first time we have seen an attempt at the international community level to censor a website dedicated to the principle of transparency. We are shocked to find countries such as France and the United States suddenly bringing their policies on freedom of expression into line with those of China. We point out that in France and the United States, it is up to the courts, not politicians, to decide whether or not a website should be closed.
Meanwhile, two Republican senators, John Ensign and Scott Brown, and an independent Lieberman, have introduced a bill that would make it illegal to publish the names of U.S. military and intelligence agency informants. This could facilitate future prosecutions against WikiLeaks and its founder. But a criminal investigation is already under way and many U.S. politicians are calling vociferously for Assange’s arrest.
Reporters Without Borders can only condemn this determination to hound Assange and reiterates its conviction that WikiLeaks has a right under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment to publish these documents and is even playing a useful role by making them available to journalists and the greater public.
We stress that any restriction on the freedom to disseminate this body of documents will affect the entire press, which has given detailed coverage to the information made available by WikiLeaks, with five leading international newspapers actively cooperating in preparing it for publication.
Reporters Without Borders would also like to stress that it has always defended online freedom and the principle of “Net neutrality,” according to which Internet Service Providers and hosting companies should play no role in choosing the content that is placed online.
Full coverage of The US embassy cables on the guardian.co.uk site;
BBC News' Wikileaks revelations;
WikiLeaked: Inside the State Department's Secret Cables
at Foreign Policy's blog;Wiki Leaks on Democracy Now!;
One Analyst, So Many Documents: How could Bradley Manning alone have leaked so much classified material? by Marc Ambinder;
US embassy cables: The job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment by Simon Jenkins;
The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange by David Samuels;
Wikileaks Evolves by Raffi Khatchadourian;
WikiLeaks reveals more than just government secrets, The moral standards of WikiLeaks critics and other Salon posts by Glenn Greenwald;
WikiLeaks vs. The Empire by Tom Hayden;
Hillary Clinton Gets Wiki-Served by Robert Scheer;
The (Not So) Secret (Anymore) US War in Pakistan by Jeremy Scahill;
Greg Mitchell's Blogging the Wikileaks;
WL Central: An unofficial WikiLeaks information resource.
Visit MacLeod Cartoons.
Saturday Catchup 2010-07-31
One Good Turner Deserves Another
Still right after all these years: "The war in Afghanistan is nearly nine years old—the longest in American history. After the U.S. quickly toppled the Taliban regime in October 2001, the Taliban, by all accounts, came back stronger and harsher enough to control now at least 30 percent of the country. During this time, U.S. casualties, armaments and expenditures are at record levels. America’s overseas wars have different outcomes when they have no constitutional authority, no war tax, no draft, no regular on the ground press coverage, no Congressional oversight, no spending accountability and, importantly, no affirmative consent of the governed who are, apart from the military families, hardly noticing." -- Out of Afghanistan by Ralph Nader (Common Dreams 2010-07-31).
Follow the money (if you can): "On July 27, 2010 the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) released an audit of the Department of Defense’s (DOD) management of the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which was used as a source of money for rebuilding Iraq. The Inspector General found that the DOD used the Fund in an ad hoc manner, never followed the guidelines set up for U.S. agencies involved in reconstruction, which means it can’t account for almost all of its spending, and is probably still using the Fund today even though it has no authority to do so anymore." -- Department Of Defense Didn’t Follow Accounting Rules During Iraq Reconstruction by Joel Wing (Musings on Iraq 2010-07-29). See, also: Audit: US can't account for $8.7B in Iraqi funds by Tarek El-Tablawy and Sinan Salaheddin (AP 2010-07-27).
Wikioverdose: "I know. What's a thousand documents amongst friends? Well, there's your problem. We don't have any friends. Corruption over there is endemic, pandemic and epidemic. Our allies aren't necessarily allied on our side. The fighting is going badly and a halfway decent deep-dish pizza crust remains a concept the Afghanis seem unable or unwilling to embrace. Not to mention Democracy. Unplug the drain and the ring around the tub is we've been there 8 years and things are so not getting better. As a matter of fact you could say the movement more resembles whatever is the opposite of getting better. Don't even mention quagmire. Hah. Hah. We sneer at your quagmire. Our Afghanistan participation makes a quagmire look like a refreshing dip in a spring fed pool with buckets of frosty beer within reach and cold cucumbers slices on our eyelids. Spa spangled bog." -- Spa Spangled Bog by Will Durst (Huffington Post 2010-08-01). A few more tentative thoughts on the Afghanistan wikileaks to hold us until someone does the hard work of sorting through all this raw data: Are the WikiLeaks War Docs Overhyped Old News? by Spencer Ackerman (Danger Room 2010-07-26). And Andy Borowitz: "Russia Disbands Spy Agency; Will Use WikiLeaks Instead."
Always good to know what the next president is thinking: "The tradition that general officers should provide disinterested advice to policymakers based on their best judgments and the most current available intelligence has long since passed. Modern generals first test the wind before they offer an opinion and then carefully tailor their comments to support the prevailing policy. Petraeus, who is regarded as an intellectual and even somewhat of an iconoclast, is no different. His counterinsurgency strategy, far from a new development, is a replay of similar thinking during the Vietnam war and a repudiation of the Powell Doctrine, which asserted that wars should be in the national interest, with attainable objectives, fought using overwhelming force, and incorporating a clear exit strategy. In short, Petraeus is the architect of the counterinsurgency long war combined with nation building strategy that has been embraced by both Presidents Bush and Obama." -- Who Owns General Petraeus? by Philip Giraldi (AntiWar.com 2010-07-29).
This Week's Sermon: "When the First Congress subsequently wrote the Bill of Rights in 1789, one of the main objectives was to confirm that the new republic was anchored first and foremost in religious freedom. It is no wonder, then, that the very first freedom listed in the Bill of Rights is freedom of religion. And religious freedom was given pride of place for a reason: to signal clearly to Americans that gone were the days of living under the thumb of an oppressive regime that dictated religious thought." -- No, America Is NOT a Christian Nation by Richard Albert (Alternet 2010-07-31).
Harlem Nocturne: "The end of an era has been declared repeatedly ever since the death, in December, of Harlem political patriarch Percy Sutton and the political demise of Governor Paterson this winter. Yet the more accurate, and complex, tale is an unfinished one. It starts in 1944, when a brilliant, singular personality, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., became the first person elected to represent a congressional district created to empower central Harlem. By 1970, Powell was sick with cancer and brooding on a Caribbean island, and was knocked off by Charlie Rangel, who has become the consummate Washington insider, steering tens of millions of dollars to the district and making Harlem a force in city elections. Now, though, in an echo of the financial and legal messes that brought down Powell, an ethics investigation has forced Rangel to give up his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee; last week, a congressional panel accused him of multiple ethics violations. Racial politics in New York and nationally have shifted to the point where the machine model that served Rangel so well has grown creaky. No one knows what the new order will look like, but the struggle to define it is under way in the cradle of black politics. The battle isn’t simply to follow Rangel in Congress—the district’s next congressman could as easily be white or Latino as black—but to determine what style of politics will control Harlem in the future: a revitalized, updated clubhouse, a reform movement in the Obama mold, or perhaps something in nobody’s mold, like the freewheeling pioneer who’s the father of Harlem politics." Knocking on Harlem's Door by Chris Smith (New York Magazine 2010-07-24).
It's all Bush's fault: "...we seem to have forgotten how much of a wretched impact [George W. Bush's] years in the Oval Office had and continue to have on this nation and the world. Part of the reason we've managed to forget, of course, is that he's been gone for almost two years now. Under normal circumstances, that tends to put the onus on the current president; Obama has been holding the reins with a Democratically-controlled congress on Capitol Hill for eighteen months, and therefore all eyes tend to fall on him. The problem is that no president in American history has done more damage and screwed us worse than George W. Bush did. In the nearly 3,000 days he spent in office, Bush cut the country to ribbons in ways that have never been seen before, and the impact of that era lingers to this day. The main reason for our forgetfulness, however, can be found on your television and in the pages of your newspaper. The media has completely redacted the impact of the Bush era from their coverage of the Obama administration, a continuing act of deception that I believe is completely deliberate. The entire Bush administration is a lesson in media cowardice and complicity; they rolled over for him for virtually every one of those 3,000 days, and would now like to have us all forget it happened. If as Bush falls in the forest and the media doesn't cover it, did it happen? Certainly, but when the daily grind of the 24-hour news cycle omits the idiot elephant that remains in the room, the narrative of the present becomes skewed and distorted." -- The Missing Piece Meets the Big O by William Rivers Pitt (truthout 2010-07-31).
On the other hand: "I have often said the biggest problem with the Democrats is that we are not tough enough. Now is the time to be tough." -- No More Apologies -- It's Time to Stand Up for Our Convictions by Howard Dean (Huffington Post 2010-07-26).
This week in Crazy: Glenn "Beck has done all he can to scare the hell out of people about the Tides Foundation and 'turn the light of day' onto an organization that actually facilitates non-profit giving. And guess what? Everybody in America would have found out about the Tides Foundation last week if Byron Williams had had his way. He's the right-wing, government-hating, gun-toting nut who strapped on his body armor, stocked a pickup truck with guns and ammo, and set off up the California coast to San Francisco in order to start killing employees at the previously obscure Tides Foundation in hopes of sparking a political revolution. Thankfully, the planned domestic terrorist attack never came to pass because California Highway Patrol officers pulled Williams over for drunk driving on his way to his killing spree. Williams quickly opened fire, wounding two officers during a lengthy shootout. Luckily, Williams wasn't able to act out the ultimate goal of his dark anger -- fueled by the TV news he watched -- about how 'Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items,' as his mother put it. Williams wasn't able to open fire inside the offices of the Tides Foundation, an organization 'nobody knew' about until Glenn Beck started targeting it." -- Beck's incendiary angst is dangerously close to having a body count by Eric Boehlert (Media Matters 2010-07-27).
Backlist: "I am told by people I respect that Barack Obama cannot pull out of both Iraq and Afghanistan without becoming a one-term president. I think that may be true. The charges from various quarters would be toxic—that he was weak, unpatriotic, sacrificing the sacrifices that have been made, betraying our dead, throwing away all former investments in lives and treasure. All that would indeed be brought against him, and he could have little defense in the quarters where such charges would originate." -- A One-Term President?: The Choice by Garry Wills (New York Review of Books 2009-12-03). Nearly a year later, the question remains: shouldn't your willingness to kill people in order to be president automatically disqualify you from holding the office?
It appears that there are no videos of Titus Turner. What a loss.
Still right after all these years: "The war in Afghanistan is nearly nine years old—the longest in American history. After the U.S. quickly toppled the Taliban regime in October 2001, the Taliban, by all accounts, came back stronger and harsher enough to control now at least 30 percent of the country. During this time, U.S. casualties, armaments and expenditures are at record levels. America’s overseas wars have different outcomes when they have no constitutional authority, no war tax, no draft, no regular on the ground press coverage, no Congressional oversight, no spending accountability and, importantly, no affirmative consent of the governed who are, apart from the military families, hardly noticing." -- Out of Afghanistan by Ralph Nader (Common Dreams 2010-07-31).
Follow the money (if you can): "On July 27, 2010 the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) released an audit of the Department of Defense’s (DOD) management of the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), which was used as a source of money for rebuilding Iraq. The Inspector General found that the DOD used the Fund in an ad hoc manner, never followed the guidelines set up for U.S. agencies involved in reconstruction, which means it can’t account for almost all of its spending, and is probably still using the Fund today even though it has no authority to do so anymore." -- Department Of Defense Didn’t Follow Accounting Rules During Iraq Reconstruction by Joel Wing (Musings on Iraq 2010-07-29). See, also: Audit: US can't account for $8.7B in Iraqi funds by Tarek El-Tablawy and Sinan Salaheddin (AP 2010-07-27).
Wikioverdose: "I know. What's a thousand documents amongst friends? Well, there's your problem. We don't have any friends. Corruption over there is endemic, pandemic and epidemic. Our allies aren't necessarily allied on our side. The fighting is going badly and a halfway decent deep-dish pizza crust remains a concept the Afghanis seem unable or unwilling to embrace. Not to mention Democracy. Unplug the drain and the ring around the tub is we've been there 8 years and things are so not getting better. As a matter of fact you could say the movement more resembles whatever is the opposite of getting better. Don't even mention quagmire. Hah. Hah. We sneer at your quagmire. Our Afghanistan participation makes a quagmire look like a refreshing dip in a spring fed pool with buckets of frosty beer within reach and cold cucumbers slices on our eyelids. Spa spangled bog." -- Spa Spangled Bog by Will Durst (Huffington Post 2010-08-01). A few more tentative thoughts on the Afghanistan wikileaks to hold us until someone does the hard work of sorting through all this raw data: Are the WikiLeaks War Docs Overhyped Old News? by Spencer Ackerman (Danger Room 2010-07-26). And Andy Borowitz: "Russia Disbands Spy Agency; Will Use WikiLeaks Instead."
Always good to know what the next president is thinking: "The tradition that general officers should provide disinterested advice to policymakers based on their best judgments and the most current available intelligence has long since passed. Modern generals first test the wind before they offer an opinion and then carefully tailor their comments to support the prevailing policy. Petraeus, who is regarded as an intellectual and even somewhat of an iconoclast, is no different. His counterinsurgency strategy, far from a new development, is a replay of similar thinking during the Vietnam war and a repudiation of the Powell Doctrine, which asserted that wars should be in the national interest, with attainable objectives, fought using overwhelming force, and incorporating a clear exit strategy. In short, Petraeus is the architect of the counterinsurgency long war combined with nation building strategy that has been embraced by both Presidents Bush and Obama." -- Who Owns General Petraeus? by Philip Giraldi (AntiWar.com 2010-07-29).
This Week's Sermon: "When the First Congress subsequently wrote the Bill of Rights in 1789, one of the main objectives was to confirm that the new republic was anchored first and foremost in religious freedom. It is no wonder, then, that the very first freedom listed in the Bill of Rights is freedom of religion. And religious freedom was given pride of place for a reason: to signal clearly to Americans that gone were the days of living under the thumb of an oppressive regime that dictated religious thought." -- No, America Is NOT a Christian Nation by Richard Albert (Alternet 2010-07-31).
Harlem Nocturne: "The end of an era has been declared repeatedly ever since the death, in December, of Harlem political patriarch Percy Sutton and the political demise of Governor Paterson this winter. Yet the more accurate, and complex, tale is an unfinished one. It starts in 1944, when a brilliant, singular personality, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., became the first person elected to represent a congressional district created to empower central Harlem. By 1970, Powell was sick with cancer and brooding on a Caribbean island, and was knocked off by Charlie Rangel, who has become the consummate Washington insider, steering tens of millions of dollars to the district and making Harlem a force in city elections. Now, though, in an echo of the financial and legal messes that brought down Powell, an ethics investigation has forced Rangel to give up his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee; last week, a congressional panel accused him of multiple ethics violations. Racial politics in New York and nationally have shifted to the point where the machine model that served Rangel so well has grown creaky. No one knows what the new order will look like, but the struggle to define it is under way in the cradle of black politics. The battle isn’t simply to follow Rangel in Congress—the district’s next congressman could as easily be white or Latino as black—but to determine what style of politics will control Harlem in the future: a revitalized, updated clubhouse, a reform movement in the Obama mold, or perhaps something in nobody’s mold, like the freewheeling pioneer who’s the father of Harlem politics." Knocking on Harlem's Door by Chris Smith (New York Magazine 2010-07-24).
It's all Bush's fault: "...we seem to have forgotten how much of a wretched impact [George W. Bush's] years in the Oval Office had and continue to have on this nation and the world. Part of the reason we've managed to forget, of course, is that he's been gone for almost two years now. Under normal circumstances, that tends to put the onus on the current president; Obama has been holding the reins with a Democratically-controlled congress on Capitol Hill for eighteen months, and therefore all eyes tend to fall on him. The problem is that no president in American history has done more damage and screwed us worse than George W. Bush did. In the nearly 3,000 days he spent in office, Bush cut the country to ribbons in ways that have never been seen before, and the impact of that era lingers to this day. The main reason for our forgetfulness, however, can be found on your television and in the pages of your newspaper. The media has completely redacted the impact of the Bush era from their coverage of the Obama administration, a continuing act of deception that I believe is completely deliberate. The entire Bush administration is a lesson in media cowardice and complicity; they rolled over for him for virtually every one of those 3,000 days, and would now like to have us all forget it happened. If as Bush falls in the forest and the media doesn't cover it, did it happen? Certainly, but when the daily grind of the 24-hour news cycle omits the idiot elephant that remains in the room, the narrative of the present becomes skewed and distorted." -- The Missing Piece Meets the Big O by William Rivers Pitt (truthout 2010-07-31).
On the other hand: "I have often said the biggest problem with the Democrats is that we are not tough enough. Now is the time to be tough." -- No More Apologies -- It's Time to Stand Up for Our Convictions by Howard Dean (Huffington Post 2010-07-26).
This week in Crazy: Glenn "Beck has done all he can to scare the hell out of people about the Tides Foundation and 'turn the light of day' onto an organization that actually facilitates non-profit giving. And guess what? Everybody in America would have found out about the Tides Foundation last week if Byron Williams had had his way. He's the right-wing, government-hating, gun-toting nut who strapped on his body armor, stocked a pickup truck with guns and ammo, and set off up the California coast to San Francisco in order to start killing employees at the previously obscure Tides Foundation in hopes of sparking a political revolution. Thankfully, the planned domestic terrorist attack never came to pass because California Highway Patrol officers pulled Williams over for drunk driving on his way to his killing spree. Williams quickly opened fire, wounding two officers during a lengthy shootout. Luckily, Williams wasn't able to act out the ultimate goal of his dark anger -- fueled by the TV news he watched -- about how 'Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items,' as his mother put it. Williams wasn't able to open fire inside the offices of the Tides Foundation, an organization 'nobody knew' about until Glenn Beck started targeting it." -- Beck's incendiary angst is dangerously close to having a body count by Eric Boehlert (Media Matters 2010-07-27).
Backlist: "I am told by people I respect that Barack Obama cannot pull out of both Iraq and Afghanistan without becoming a one-term president. I think that may be true. The charges from various quarters would be toxic—that he was weak, unpatriotic, sacrificing the sacrifices that have been made, betraying our dead, throwing away all former investments in lives and treasure. All that would indeed be brought against him, and he could have little defense in the quarters where such charges would originate." -- A One-Term President?: The Choice by Garry Wills (New York Review of Books 2009-12-03). Nearly a year later, the question remains: shouldn't your willingness to kill people in order to be president automatically disqualify you from holding the office?
It appears that there are no videos of Titus Turner. What a loss.
Accountability: Torture as policy in the Bush years
The Torture Report, an initiative of the ACLU's National Security Project, aims to give a full account of the Bush administration's torture program, from its improvised origins to the systematized, lawyer-rationalized maltreatment of hundreds of prisoners in U.S. custody around the world. In this video, Glenn Greenwald, one of the Report's expert contributors, and principal author Larry Siems, who directs the Freedom to Write and International Programs at PEN American Center, reflect on the Report and the ongoing struggle for accountability.
The Torture Report: Chapter 1 - Origins -- Creating the space for torture; Chapter 2 - Experimenting With Torture -- Experimenting With Torture; Chapter 3 - Black Sites, Lies, and Videotapes -- Black Sites, Lies, and Videotapes; Chapter 4, Part 1 - A Ponzi Scheme of Torture -- The Scheme; Chapter 4, Part 2 – A Ponzi Scheme of Torture -- The Story Unravels (Jose Padilla); Chapter 4, Part 3 (new) – A Ponzi Scheme of Torture -- The Story Unravels (Binyam Mohammed & Abu Zubaydah).
Chapter 5 will be released next week: Where Are We Now? by Larry Siems (The Torture Report 2010-07-14)
The Torture Report: Chapter 1 - Origins -- Creating the space for torture; Chapter 2 - Experimenting With Torture -- Experimenting With Torture; Chapter 3 - Black Sites, Lies, and Videotapes -- Black Sites, Lies, and Videotapes; Chapter 4, Part 1 - A Ponzi Scheme of Torture -- The Scheme; Chapter 4, Part 2 – A Ponzi Scheme of Torture -- The Story Unravels (Jose Padilla); Chapter 4, Part 3 (new) – A Ponzi Scheme of Torture -- The Story Unravels (Binyam Mohammed & Abu Zubaydah).
Chapter 5 will be released next week: Where Are We Now? by Larry Siems (The Torture Report 2010-07-14)
Schools: AFT Leader Outlines Vision to Build Better Public Education System
Saying America's teachers will "lead and propose, not wait and oppose," American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten proffers a plan to "build a system of public education as it ought to be." She argues real changes can be made by focusing on good teaching, creating a curriculum that provides opportunity for students to learn, and sharing responsibility and accountability between teachers, parents and administrators. -- AFT Leader Outlines Vision to Build Better Public Education System by James Parks (AFL-CIO Now Blog 2010-07-09).
The complete text of Weingarten's proposal (pdf).
The complete text of Weingarten's proposal (pdf).
The Internets: A net loss of freedom
That a nebulous complaint by a rightwing thinktanker persuaded an ISP to take down a Spinwatch site sets a disturbing precedent. (Guardian UK 2010-07-06).
That a nebulous complaint by a rightwing thinktanker persuaded an ISP to take down a Spinwatch site sets a disturbing precedent. (Guardian UK 2010-07-06).
Militarism: Unanimous Conformity in the Senate
by Norman Solomon, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
For the warfare state, it doesn't get any better than 99 to 0.
Every living senator voted Wednesday to approve Gen. David Petraeus as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.
Call it the unanimity of lemmings - except the senators and their families aren't the ones who'll keep plunging into the sea.
No, the killing and suffering and dying will be left to others: American soldiers who, for the most part, had scant economic opportunities in civilian life, and Afghans trapped between terrible poverty and escalating violence.
The senatorial conformity, of course, won't lack for rationales. It rarely does.
An easy default position is that the president has the right to select his top military officers. (Then why is Senate confirmation required?) Or: This is a pivotal time for the war in Afghanistan. (All the more reason for senators to take responsibility instead of serving as a rubber stamp for the White House.)
In today's Senate, the conformity is so thick that it's almost enough to make you nostalgic for the Senate of four and a half decades ago. At least there were a couple of clear dissenters from the outset - first and foremost, Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska, who in August 1964 voted against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that "authorized" the horrors of the U.S. war on Vietnam.
Within a couple of years, appreciable dissent was coming from William Fulbright, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as Frank Church and George McGovern. Then Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy and other senators.
The process of getting off the war train was pitifully slow, in view of the wholesale deadly ferocity of the Vietnam War - and in view of the fact that Congress, like the U.S. news media, lagged so far behind the clarity of opposition emerging from many millions of Americans. Whatever good happened on Capitol Hill was a direct result of the anti-war movement and more generalized public sentiment against continuing the war.
In the Senate of 2010, the baseline of conscience and courage is at an abysmally low level.
When the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, said he's "deeply concerned" about the course of the Afghan war, his tactical objections dodged the fundamentals of the escalating conflagration. And so, Levin dutifully declared that Petraeus will "bring highly experienced leadership and a profound understanding of the president's strategy in Afghanistan."
Chiming in was Sen. John McCain, who lauded the general as "one of the finest military leaders our country has ever produced." McCain has long been appreciative of Petraeus' record, including his services as a military spinmeister for President George W. Bush's Iraq war policies midway through the decade.
In 2007, a notable ad from MoveOn.org described Petraeus as "a military man constantly at war with the facts." There's no reason to believe that Petraeus is more candid these days. At any rate, the policy from the White House is what really matters, not the proclivities of any particular general.
Like mice who won't try to bell the chief-executive cat, senators complain but keep on purring. That explains their unanimous vote for a general pledging to stay the course in Afghanistan.
Every few months, I take another look at footage of Sen. Morse, directly challenging the war president, a man of his own party. It's inspiring - yet painful to watch, because of the sharp contrast with today's mealy-mouthed senators.
A growing number of House members are lining up against the Afghanistan war, although they're far short of a majority. Meanwhile, the Senate is a bastion of bluster. The overarching congressional problem is a pattern of doing what the war machinery requires - most importantly, voting to pay for the war. Until that stops, the war won't.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
I don't know about you, but I'm always "nostalgic for the Senate of four and a half decades ago." That was before militarization and before the corporate takeover of the nation's political apparatus. The Congress in those days was populated by titans (for all their flaws} compared to the moral and intellectual pipsqueaks we have now. Then we worried about improving democracy; today we have to worry if democracy can survive. -- JG
For the warfare state, it doesn't get any better than 99 to 0.
Every living senator voted Wednesday to approve Gen. David Petraeus as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.
Call it the unanimity of lemmings - except the senators and their families aren't the ones who'll keep plunging into the sea.
No, the killing and suffering and dying will be left to others: American soldiers who, for the most part, had scant economic opportunities in civilian life, and Afghans trapped between terrible poverty and escalating violence.
The senatorial conformity, of course, won't lack for rationales. It rarely does.
An easy default position is that the president has the right to select his top military officers. (Then why is Senate confirmation required?) Or: This is a pivotal time for the war in Afghanistan. (All the more reason for senators to take responsibility instead of serving as a rubber stamp for the White House.)
In today's Senate, the conformity is so thick that it's almost enough to make you nostalgic for the Senate of four and a half decades ago. At least there were a couple of clear dissenters from the outset - first and foremost, Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska, who in August 1964 voted against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that "authorized" the horrors of the U.S. war on Vietnam.
Within a couple of years, appreciable dissent was coming from William Fulbright, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as Frank Church and George McGovern. Then Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy and other senators.
The process of getting off the war train was pitifully slow, in view of the wholesale deadly ferocity of the Vietnam War - and in view of the fact that Congress, like the U.S. news media, lagged so far behind the clarity of opposition emerging from many millions of Americans. Whatever good happened on Capitol Hill was a direct result of the anti-war movement and more generalized public sentiment against continuing the war.
In the Senate of 2010, the baseline of conscience and courage is at an abysmally low level.
When the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, said he's "deeply concerned" about the course of the Afghan war, his tactical objections dodged the fundamentals of the escalating conflagration. And so, Levin dutifully declared that Petraeus will "bring highly experienced leadership and a profound understanding of the president's strategy in Afghanistan."
Chiming in was Sen. John McCain, who lauded the general as "one of the finest military leaders our country has ever produced." McCain has long been appreciative of Petraeus' record, including his services as a military spinmeister for President George W. Bush's Iraq war policies midway through the decade.
In 2007, a notable ad from MoveOn.org described Petraeus as "a military man constantly at war with the facts." There's no reason to believe that Petraeus is more candid these days. At any rate, the policy from the White House is what really matters, not the proclivities of any particular general.
Like mice who won't try to bell the chief-executive cat, senators complain but keep on purring. That explains their unanimous vote for a general pledging to stay the course in Afghanistan.
Every few months, I take another look at footage of Sen. Morse, directly challenging the war president, a man of his own party. It's inspiring - yet painful to watch, because of the sharp contrast with today's mealy-mouthed senators.
A growing number of House members are lining up against the Afghanistan war, although they're far short of a majority. Meanwhile, the Senate is a bastion of bluster. The overarching congressional problem is a pattern of doing what the war machinery requires - most importantly, voting to pay for the war. Until that stops, the war won't.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
I don't know about you, but I'm always "nostalgic for the Senate of four and a half decades ago." That was before militarization and before the corporate takeover of the nation's political apparatus. The Congress in those days was populated by titans (for all their flaws} compared to the moral and intellectual pipsqueaks we have now. Then we worried about improving democracy; today we have to worry if democracy can survive. -- JG
Accountability: To avoid a repeat of the current disaster, it is important apportion responsibility accurately
Here's the inside story of how the administration of Barack Obama failed to crack down on the corruption of the Bush years – and let the world's most dangerous oil company get away with murder: "It's tempting to believe that the Gulf spill, like so many disasters inherited by Obama, was the fault of the Texas oilman who preceded him in office. But, though George W. Bush paved the way for the catastrophe, it was Obama who gave BP the green light to drill. 'Bush owns eight years of the mess,' says Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California. 'But after more than a year on the job, [Interior Secretary Ken] Salazar owns it too.'" -- The Spill, The Scandal and the President by Tim Dickinson (Rolling Stone 2010-05-08).
Saturday Catchup: Some stuff you don't want to miss
Labor: Is it possible to join high technology, cost efficiency, and technological innovation to the coop movement and worker-control?: The Cooperative Movement, Self-Management, And Competitiveness: The Case Of Mondragón Corporación Cooperativa by Alessandra Azevedo and Leda Gitahy (WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society 2010-03-18). This is the outfit the U.S. steelworkers are working with to see if the union co-op hybrid model can be made to work here.
Crime Log: "If we were to take an honest look at America’s blasted landscape of 'losers' and the far shinier, spiffier world of 'winners,' we’d have to admit that it wasn’t signs of onrushing socialism or fascism that stood out, but of staggeringly self-aggrandizing greed and theft right in the here and now. We’d notice our public coffers being emptied to benefit major corporations and financial institutions working in close alliance with, and passing on remarkable sums of money to, the representatives of 'the people.' We’d see, in a word, kleptocracy on a scale to dazzle. We would suddenly see an almost magical disappearing act being performed, largely without comment, right before our eyes." -- American Kleptocracy: How Fears of Socialism and Fascism Hide Naked Theft by William J. Astore (TomDispatch 2010-04-20).
Putting the gross in Gross National Product: Six Banks Control 60% of GNP -- Is the U.S. at the Mercy of an Unstoppable Oligarchy? by Bill Moyers (Bill Moyers Journal 2010-04-23) Economists James Kwak and Simon Johnson wonder whether the financial powers are more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever.
Musical interlude: We've been talking about The National for nearly a decade. Will we still love them now that they have a major takeout (The National Agenda by Nicholas Dawidoff) in the Times' Magazine? Sure we will.
3-Card Monte: "The drumbeat about deficits has reached deafening levels. The president warns about 'out of control' spending. Fed Chair Ben Bernanke calls for bringing deficits down. The opinion pages bristle with rants about the U.S. turning into Greece, headed to default. Next week, the first session of the president's 'National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform' will convene. The next day, shamelessly, the two co-chairs and the staff director (all committed deficit hawks) will grace a forum sponsored by the Peterson Foundation, established by Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson largely to gin up hysteria about America's long term deficits." - The Big Fix (Hold On To Your Wallets) by Robert Borosage (Campaign for America's Future 2010-04-21).
Oh, I get it now: Uses and Abuses of Gresham's Law in the History of Money by Robert Mundell (Columbia University 1998). The law is trivially easy to understand; so why does everybody get it wrong?
The Long War: Historian, international relations expert and former US Army Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich talks to Bill Moyers about how we got in to Iraq and Afghanistan and why we can't seem to get out (extended video, Bill Moyers Journal 2010-04-09).
The Long War: Rethinking Afghanistan’s Sticky Icky Quagmire by Josh Mull (FDL's The Seminal 2010-04-20). There is definitely a huge drug problem, and our strategy seems to be the cause of it. There are much easier ways to achieve our objectives in the region than an expensive and bloody policy of military aggression, but our leaders are stuck in failed policies born of a worldview that is at once arrogant and ignorant. Time to rethink Afghanistan?
More music: Here's a number from a B.B.King special I worked on a couple of decades back. My friend Douglas Brodoff aptly called this a rock opera in 5 minutes. An honor to have been there.
Collateral damage: "Education catastrophe" as states may cut 300,000 public school jobs by Tamar Lewin and Sam Dillon (New York Times 2010-04-21). The 2010-11 school term is shaping up as one of the most austere in the last half century. In addition to teacher layoffs, districts are planning to close schools, cut programs, enlarge classes and shorten the school day, week or year to save money. See, also: Tax Day and America’s Wars - What the Mayor of One Community Hard Hit by War Spending Is Doing by Jo Comerford (TomDispatch 2010-04-11).
Democracy in the Middle East: In spite of America's professed commitment to equality, the U.S. government makes an exception when it comes to Israel's insistence on being recognized as a Jewish state, which in theory and practice means privileging Jewish citizens over all other citizens: A State for All Its Citizens by Nadim N. Rouhana (Foreign Policy 2010-04-22). A country cannot be both democratic and theocratic.
Hubris: "We can't have it all. The belief that we can is one of the things that has driven us to this awful place. If insanity could be defined as having lost functional connection with physical reality, to believe we can have it all -- to believe we can simultaneously dismantle a world and live on it; to believe we can perpetually use more energy than arrives from the sun; to believe we can take more than the world gives willingly; to believe a finite world can support infinite growth,much less infinite economic growth, where economic growth consists of converting ever larger numbers of living beings to dead objects (industrial production, at core, is the conversion of the living -- trees or mountains -- into the dead -- two-by-fours and beer cans) -- is grotesquely insane. This insanity manifests partly as a potent disrespect for limits and for justice. It manifests in the pretension that neither limits nor justice exist. To pretend that civilization can exist without destroying its own landbase and the landbases and cultures of others is to be entirely ignorant of history, biology, thermodynamics, morality, and self-preservation. And it is to have paid absolutely no attention to the past six thousand years." -- No, We Can't Have It All by Derrick Jensen (excerpted from Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization (Common Dreams 2010-04-23).
Water is the new oil: Cochabamba, the Water Wars and Climate Change by Amy Goodman (TruthDig 2010-04-21). Bolivian President Evo Morales calls Cochabamba the heart of Bolivia. It was here, 10 years ago this month, that, as one observer put it, "the first rebellion of the 21st century" took place. In what was dubbed the Water Wars, people from around Bolivia converged on Cochabamba to overturn the privatization of the public water system.
Art & Design: Running Fence: Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Masterpiece Revisited at the Smithsonian American Art Museum by Alix McKenna (California Literary Review 2010-04-19).
Most conceptual art you can "get" in an elevator pitch. The Running Fence was something to see.
Reconsideration: The Teabaggers are not the mob of racist yobs you accuse them of being. And even though Polatik's "CD sales on the Tea Party Express tour didn’t go as I had hoped...you can expect to see Polatik t-shirts, posters and videos very soon."
Everything else you wanted to know about zombified cockroaches but were afraid to ask: A Wasp Finds the Seat of the Cockroach Soul by Carl Zimmer (Discover blogs / The Loom 2010-04-20).
Department of Guilty Pleasures:
Crime Log: "If we were to take an honest look at America’s blasted landscape of 'losers' and the far shinier, spiffier world of 'winners,' we’d have to admit that it wasn’t signs of onrushing socialism or fascism that stood out, but of staggeringly self-aggrandizing greed and theft right in the here and now. We’d notice our public coffers being emptied to benefit major corporations and financial institutions working in close alliance with, and passing on remarkable sums of money to, the representatives of 'the people.' We’d see, in a word, kleptocracy on a scale to dazzle. We would suddenly see an almost magical disappearing act being performed, largely without comment, right before our eyes." -- American Kleptocracy: How Fears of Socialism and Fascism Hide Naked Theft by William J. Astore (TomDispatch 2010-04-20).
Putting the gross in Gross National Product: Six Banks Control 60% of GNP -- Is the U.S. at the Mercy of an Unstoppable Oligarchy? by Bill Moyers (Bill Moyers Journal 2010-04-23) Economists James Kwak and Simon Johnson wonder whether the financial powers are more profitable, and more resistant to regulation than ever.
Musical interlude: We've been talking about The National for nearly a decade. Will we still love them now that they have a major takeout (The National Agenda by Nicholas Dawidoff) in the Times' Magazine? Sure we will.
3-Card Monte: "The drumbeat about deficits has reached deafening levels. The president warns about 'out of control' spending. Fed Chair Ben Bernanke calls for bringing deficits down. The opinion pages bristle with rants about the U.S. turning into Greece, headed to default. Next week, the first session of the president's 'National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform' will convene. The next day, shamelessly, the two co-chairs and the staff director (all committed deficit hawks) will grace a forum sponsored by the Peterson Foundation, established by Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson largely to gin up hysteria about America's long term deficits." - The Big Fix (Hold On To Your Wallets) by Robert Borosage (Campaign for America's Future 2010-04-21).
Oh, I get it now: Uses and Abuses of Gresham's Law in the History of Money by Robert Mundell (Columbia University 1998). The law is trivially easy to understand; so why does everybody get it wrong?
The Long War: Historian, international relations expert and former US Army Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich talks to Bill Moyers about how we got in to Iraq and Afghanistan and why we can't seem to get out (extended video, Bill Moyers Journal 2010-04-09).
The Long War: Rethinking Afghanistan’s Sticky Icky Quagmire by Josh Mull (FDL's The Seminal 2010-04-20). There is definitely a huge drug problem, and our strategy seems to be the cause of it. There are much easier ways to achieve our objectives in the region than an expensive and bloody policy of military aggression, but our leaders are stuck in failed policies born of a worldview that is at once arrogant and ignorant. Time to rethink Afghanistan?
More music: Here's a number from a B.B.King special I worked on a couple of decades back. My friend Douglas Brodoff aptly called this a rock opera in 5 minutes. An honor to have been there.
Collateral damage: "Education catastrophe" as states may cut 300,000 public school jobs by Tamar Lewin and Sam Dillon (New York Times 2010-04-21). The 2010-11 school term is shaping up as one of the most austere in the last half century. In addition to teacher layoffs, districts are planning to close schools, cut programs, enlarge classes and shorten the school day, week or year to save money. See, also: Tax Day and America’s Wars - What the Mayor of One Community Hard Hit by War Spending Is Doing by Jo Comerford (TomDispatch 2010-04-11).
Democracy in the Middle East: In spite of America's professed commitment to equality, the U.S. government makes an exception when it comes to Israel's insistence on being recognized as a Jewish state, which in theory and practice means privileging Jewish citizens over all other citizens: A State for All Its Citizens by Nadim N. Rouhana (Foreign Policy 2010-04-22). A country cannot be both democratic and theocratic.
Hubris: "We can't have it all. The belief that we can is one of the things that has driven us to this awful place. If insanity could be defined as having lost functional connection with physical reality, to believe we can have it all -- to believe we can simultaneously dismantle a world and live on it; to believe we can perpetually use more energy than arrives from the sun; to believe we can take more than the world gives willingly; to believe a finite world can support infinite growth,much less infinite economic growth, where economic growth consists of converting ever larger numbers of living beings to dead objects (industrial production, at core, is the conversion of the living -- trees or mountains -- into the dead -- two-by-fours and beer cans) -- is grotesquely insane. This insanity manifests partly as a potent disrespect for limits and for justice. It manifests in the pretension that neither limits nor justice exist. To pretend that civilization can exist without destroying its own landbase and the landbases and cultures of others is to be entirely ignorant of history, biology, thermodynamics, morality, and self-preservation. And it is to have paid absolutely no attention to the past six thousand years." -- No, We Can't Have It All by Derrick Jensen (excerpted from Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization (Common Dreams 2010-04-23).
Water is the new oil: Cochabamba, the Water Wars and Climate Change by Amy Goodman (TruthDig 2010-04-21). Bolivian President Evo Morales calls Cochabamba the heart of Bolivia. It was here, 10 years ago this month, that, as one observer put it, "the first rebellion of the 21st century" took place. In what was dubbed the Water Wars, people from around Bolivia converged on Cochabamba to overturn the privatization of the public water system.
Art & Design: Running Fence: Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Masterpiece Revisited at the Smithsonian American Art Museum by Alix McKenna (California Literary Review 2010-04-19).
Most conceptual art you can "get" in an elevator pitch. The Running Fence was something to see.Reconsideration: The Teabaggers are not the mob of racist yobs you accuse them of being. And even though Polatik's "CD sales on the Tea Party Express tour didn’t go as I had hoped...you can expect to see Polatik t-shirts, posters and videos very soon."
Everything else you wanted to know about zombified cockroaches but were afraid to ask: A Wasp Finds the Seat of the Cockroach Soul by Carl Zimmer (Discover blogs / The Loom 2010-04-20).
Department of Guilty Pleasures:
The Kleptocarcy; The Game That Goes On and On
A Swiss Bank, A President, and the Permanent Government
By Russ Baker (WhoWhatWhy.com)
Photo: © JASON REED/Reuters/Corbis
President Obama on Martha’s Vineyard, summer 2009. UBS banker and Obama fundraiser Robert
Wolf is driving the golf cart.
Last August, the presidential press corps followed Barack Obama and his family to Martha's Vineyard for their brief vacation. The coverage focused on summery fare—a visit to an ice cream parlor, the books the president had brought along. Nearly everyone mentioned his few rounds of golf, including his swing, and the enthusiasm of onlookers. What caught my eye, though, was the makeup of his foursome. The president was joined by an old friend from Chicago; a young aide; and Robert Wolf, Chairman and CEO, UBS Group Americas. In a decidedly incurious piece, a New York Times reporter made light of Wolf's presence:
Wolf, however, is hardly—as the Times suggested— just another donor. For one thing, he is a leading figure in an industry that almost brought down the entire financial system—and then was the recipient of astonishing government largesse. UBS, along with other banks, benefited directly from the backdoor bailout of the insurance giant AIG.
But UBS stands alone in one rather formidable respect—it was the defendant in the largest offshore tax evasion case in U.S. history, accused of helping wealthy Americans hide their income in secret offshore accounts. To settle a massive investigation, UBS forked over $780 million to the US treasury. This settlement came shortly before Wolf rounded out Obama’s golfing party. Given this rather problematical situation, why then would the President choose UBS’s Wolf of all people for this honor?
Wolf declined a request for an interview about his relationship with the President, so it was not possible to pose that question to him. This hardly matters, though, for the story goes far beyond Wolf and UBS. It involves Republicans as well as Democrats, the Bush Administration as well as Obama’s. More importantly, behind the trivialized golf outing on Martha’s Vineyard, lie the interests that increasingly set the course for every administration. And that now game the system so well that the rest of us—wherever we live in the world—are kept fighting for the scraps.
BOTH SIDES NOW
When most people criticize those aspects of government that seem most impervious to the democratic process, they cite the permanency and perceived self-interest of the mandarins of the Washington bureaucracy. But when it comes to real power, an ability to come out ahead no matter which party is in power, it’s hard to top certain financial institutions.
UBS is very much a part of that permanent government. Though not a household name in the United States, UBS is a major player in the Beltway game. During the 2008 campaign, while Robert Wolf was courting Democratic hopeful Obama, his UBS cohort, former Senator Phil Gramm, was working the other side of the street. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee in the 1990s, Gramm, a corporate-friendly Texas Republican, played a key role in the deregulation of the banking industry, an act so central to the nation’s financial collapse. Since 2002, Gramm has been UBS Americas’ vice chairman. In 2008, he was the leading economics adviser for Obama’s opponent, John McCain—and even touted as a possible treasury secretary in a McCain administration.
The bottom line: UBS hedged its bets, and so had an inside track no matter which party took the White House. Thus, when Obama won, it was Wolf who ascended. The new president named the banker-donor to his White House Economic Advisory Board.
The important machinations behind this accrual of influence rarely get attention in the frenzied hustle of the news cycle. One reason is that they do not seem like news at all, since they are essentially woven deeply into the fabric of politics and government, thus hidden in plain sight. Another is that they are dauntingly complex.
Some things are simple, though. Like the fact that a UBS executive is a dubious candidate to serve as an economic advisor to the president. For one thing, the company’s track record at the time of the election was distinctly underwhelming. UBS suffered major losses on subprime lending, and had to raise money from the Singapore government and other entities. As Slate’s money columnist Daniel Gross quipped back in 2008, “UBS used to stand for Union Bank of Switzerland. But perhaps it should stand for Untold Billions Squandered. Or Underwater Bi-Lingual Schleppers.” Furthermore, UBS’ stock lost nearly 70 percent of its value even before the recession really kicked in—making it the worst performing foreign bank operating here.
Given this damning set of facts, Wolf made both an odd choice as a presidential adviser and a peculiar pick for that intimate round of golf.
“HIDE FUNDS HERE”
Despite being the world’s biggest manager of private assets, UBS has stayed pretty much below the domestic radar. The Alpine quiet surrounding its activities was, however, quietly shattered in mid-2007, when an IRS audit of a US citizen led to a UBS banker who then revealed certain UBS practices that encouraged wealthy Americans to hide taxable income. UBS bankers had apparently used every trick in the book—including giving customers code names and assisting them with or providing them with untraceable pay phones, encrypted computers, fake trusts, document-shredding and even counter-surveillance training.
By Russ Baker (WhoWhatWhy.com)
Photo: © JASON REED/Reuters/Corbis
President Obama on Martha’s Vineyard, summer 2009. UBS banker and Obama fundraiser Robert
Wolf is driving the golf cart.
Last August, the presidential press corps followed Barack Obama and his family to Martha's Vineyard for their brief vacation. The coverage focused on summery fare—a visit to an ice cream parlor, the books the president had brought along. Nearly everyone mentioned his few rounds of golf, including his swing, and the enthusiasm of onlookers. What caught my eye, though, was the makeup of his foursome. The president was joined by an old friend from Chicago; a young aide; and Robert Wolf, Chairman and CEO, UBS Group Americas. In a decidedly incurious piece, a New York Times reporter made light of Wolf's presence:
"The president has told friends that to truly relax he prefers golfing with young aides...But he departed from that pattern Monday when he invited a top campaign contributor, Robert Wolf, president of UBS Investment Bank, to join him for 18 holes. Call it donor maintenance."
Wolf, however, is hardly—as the Times suggested— just another donor. For one thing, he is a leading figure in an industry that almost brought down the entire financial system—and then was the recipient of astonishing government largesse. UBS, along with other banks, benefited directly from the backdoor bailout of the insurance giant AIG.
But UBS stands alone in one rather formidable respect—it was the defendant in the largest offshore tax evasion case in U.S. history, accused of helping wealthy Americans hide their income in secret offshore accounts. To settle a massive investigation, UBS forked over $780 million to the US treasury. This settlement came shortly before Wolf rounded out Obama’s golfing party. Given this rather problematical situation, why then would the President choose UBS’s Wolf of all people for this honor?
Wolf declined a request for an interview about his relationship with the President, so it was not possible to pose that question to him. This hardly matters, though, for the story goes far beyond Wolf and UBS. It involves Republicans as well as Democrats, the Bush Administration as well as Obama’s. More importantly, behind the trivialized golf outing on Martha’s Vineyard, lie the interests that increasingly set the course for every administration. And that now game the system so well that the rest of us—wherever we live in the world—are kept fighting for the scraps.
BOTH SIDES NOW
When most people criticize those aspects of government that seem most impervious to the democratic process, they cite the permanency and perceived self-interest of the mandarins of the Washington bureaucracy. But when it comes to real power, an ability to come out ahead no matter which party is in power, it’s hard to top certain financial institutions.
UBS is very much a part of that permanent government. Though not a household name in the United States, UBS is a major player in the Beltway game. During the 2008 campaign, while Robert Wolf was courting Democratic hopeful Obama, his UBS cohort, former Senator Phil Gramm, was working the other side of the street. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee in the 1990s, Gramm, a corporate-friendly Texas Republican, played a key role in the deregulation of the banking industry, an act so central to the nation’s financial collapse. Since 2002, Gramm has been UBS Americas’ vice chairman. In 2008, he was the leading economics adviser for Obama’s opponent, John McCain—and even touted as a possible treasury secretary in a McCain administration.
The bottom line: UBS hedged its bets, and so had an inside track no matter which party took the White House. Thus, when Obama won, it was Wolf who ascended. The new president named the banker-donor to his White House Economic Advisory Board.
The important machinations behind this accrual of influence rarely get attention in the frenzied hustle of the news cycle. One reason is that they do not seem like news at all, since they are essentially woven deeply into the fabric of politics and government, thus hidden in plain sight. Another is that they are dauntingly complex.
Some things are simple, though. Like the fact that a UBS executive is a dubious candidate to serve as an economic advisor to the president. For one thing, the company’s track record at the time of the election was distinctly underwhelming. UBS suffered major losses on subprime lending, and had to raise money from the Singapore government and other entities. As Slate’s money columnist Daniel Gross quipped back in 2008, “UBS used to stand for Union Bank of Switzerland. But perhaps it should stand for Untold Billions Squandered. Or Underwater Bi-Lingual Schleppers.” Furthermore, UBS’ stock lost nearly 70 percent of its value even before the recession really kicked in—making it the worst performing foreign bank operating here.
Given this damning set of facts, Wolf made both an odd choice as a presidential adviser and a peculiar pick for that intimate round of golf.
“HIDE FUNDS HERE”
Despite being the world’s biggest manager of private assets, UBS has stayed pretty much below the domestic radar. The Alpine quiet surrounding its activities was, however, quietly shattered in mid-2007, when an IRS audit of a US citizen led to a UBS banker who then revealed certain UBS practices that encouraged wealthy Americans to hide taxable income. UBS bankers had apparently used every trick in the book—including giving customers code names and assisting them with or providing them with untraceable pay phones, encrypted computers, fake trusts, document-shredding and even counter-surveillance training.
Saturday Catchup: Must-reads (and sees) from the recent past
Is America ‘Yearning for Fascism’? by Chris Hedges (TruthDig 2010-03-29). "The Democrats and their liberal apologists are so oblivious to the profound personal and economic despair sweeping through this country that they think offering unemployed people the right to keep their unemployed children on their nonexistent health care policies is a step forward. They think that passing a jobs bill that will give tax credits to corporations is a rational response to an unemployment rate that is, in real terms, close to 20 percent. They think that making ordinary Americans, one in eight of whom depends on food stamps to eat, fork over trillions in taxpayer dollars to pay for the crimes of Wall Street and war is acceptable. They think that the refusal to save the estimated 2.4 million people who will be forced out of their homes by foreclosure this year is justified by the bloodless language of fiscal austerity. The message is clear. Laws do not apply to the power elite. Our government does not work. And the longer we stand by and do nothing, the longer we refuse to embrace and recognize the legitimate rage of the working class, the faster we will see our anemic democracy die."
On this week's 42nd anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination, two talented lawyers who've dedicated their careers to fighting inequality join Bill Moyers to examine justice and injustice in America after 42 years of struggle. Watch Bill Moyers interview with Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander. A transcript of the interview. Bill Moyers essay on economic justice (Bill Moyers Journal 2010-04-02). Also: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Economic Dream Still Unfulfilled, 42 Years Later by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship (Salon 2010-04-02)and We Still Don’t Hear Him by Bob Herbert (New York Times 2010-04-02).
The Inhumanity of War by Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute (Huntington Post 2010-04-03). Constant warfare is good for America and boon to the world. Not.
Nearly six months ago, in a must-read piece in The New Yorker, Jane Mayer pondered the risks of the C.I.A.’s covert drone program (The Predator War 2009-10-26), Obama's ramping up of the terror bombing in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The situation has only become more dire in the months since; as with the torture of prisoners, the debate over the indiscriminately murderous drones has devolved into an argument over how far we can go without committing acts that are actually indictable: see, Drone Attacks Are Legit Self-Defense, Says State Dept. Lawyer by Nathan Hodge (Danger Room 2010-03-26) and The Legal And Moral Issues Of Drone Use (NPR 2010-03-30) with Peter Bergen, Amitai Etzioni and Philip Alston.
Will the Pentagon send surveillance drones and other military support to the Somali government for its offensive against al-Qaida-linked insurgents, as the Associated Press reports? Perhaps you should ask your members of Congress.
Newsweek calls Afghanistan’s police force a ”$6 billion fiasco” that could cost us the war. Nation building is a risky business; no wonder presidential candidates promise not to do it.
"A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the National Security Agency’s program of surveillance without warrants was illegal, rejecting the Obama administration’s effort to keep shrouded in secrecy one of the most disputed counterterrorism policies of former President George W. Bush." By Charlie Savage and James Risen (New York Times 2010-03-31).
The event itself was insignificant, of course, especially by comparison to, say, decades of priestly diddling of deaf children, but the media coverage was characteristically abysmal:
But then, as so often before, Jon Stewart put it all in perspective for you:
And speaking of the important role of late night comedians in our national dialog, David Letterman's interview of Tea Party member Pam Stout on the Late Show was a "quietly remarkable piece of television," according to Entertainment Weekly's tv critic Ken Tucker.
Catch Henry Farrell and Daniel Drezner's Fun for the Whole Family episode on BloggingHeads -- will health care reform give Obama a foreign policy boost?; Obama and Netanyahu, less than the best of pals; The Frumble in the Jungle; can conservative intellectuals ride the Tea Party tiger?; the Catholic Church’s systemic failure; is the Greek financial crisis just the tip of the iceberg?:
Speaking of the Frumble in the Jungle, Carl Bloice takes on The Myth of the Sensible Center (Black Commentator 2010-04-01). Left, Right and Center become meaningless anyway when the central ideologies controlling our politics, corporatism and militarism, are forbidden subjects.
The Fed in Hot Water by Robert Reich (TalkingPointsMemo 2010-0402). Tim Geithner made secret, unregulated, probably illegal payouts of Bear Stearns and AIG worth tens of billions in public dollars months before Congress authorized taxpayer bailout of the financial community. Also, watch Robert Reich on ABC's This Week: The Obama Administration's Approach To Financial Reform Will Do 'Nothing' To Change Wall Street (Huntington Post 010-04-04).
To battle Wall Street, Obama should channel Teddy Roosevelt by Simon Johnson and James Kwak (The Washington Post 2010-04-04). Like that's going to happen.
And Tepid Reforms Demand that Progressives Mobilize by Katrina vanden Heuvel (Washington Post 2010-03-30).
US GAO releases 2010 Assessments of Selected Weapons Programs (2010-03-30), one- or two-page assessments of 70 weapon programs, most found wanting against "best practices" criteria.
Music video of the week is from a tribute to Skip Spence's legendary Oar (full disclosure: I wrote the liner notes for the second Moby Grape album), with a wild guitar solo by Wilco's Nels Cline:
Women in Their 90'S Who Make A Difference Today by Joan Wile (AfterDowningStreet 2010-04-03). My 94-year-old mother, having lent a hand in the battle to permit wind farms in New England, now wants take on the war in Afghanistan. "I think you should leave the world a little better than you found it," she says.
It took a while for the corporations to lay their cold dead hands fully on the the switches of mass media access after the terrifying (to them) social, intellectual and artistic cacophony of the 60s. Throughout the 70s and 80s, though, brief flashes of anarchy and creativity could still sneak past the cultural police lines, as in this energetic Black Leather Monster by punk rockers Wendy O. Williams and The Plasmatics on “Solid Gold,“ the pop hits countdown that usually featured lipsyncing bubblegum bands and eroto-aerobic dance routines.
A Critic's Place, Thumb and All is a thoughtful meditation on the future of arts criticism by Times film critic A.O.Scott (New York Times 2010-03-30).
Finally, a song much abused by karaoke singers is given its most disturbing reading ever:
On this week's 42nd anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination, two talented lawyers who've dedicated their careers to fighting inequality join Bill Moyers to examine justice and injustice in America after 42 years of struggle. Watch Bill Moyers interview with Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander. A transcript of the interview. Bill Moyers essay on economic justice (Bill Moyers Journal 2010-04-02). Also: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Economic Dream Still Unfulfilled, 42 Years Later by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship (Salon 2010-04-02)and We Still Don’t Hear Him by Bob Herbert (New York Times 2010-04-02).
The Inhumanity of War by Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute (Huntington Post 2010-04-03). Constant warfare is good for America and boon to the world. Not.
Nearly six months ago, in a must-read piece in The New Yorker, Jane Mayer pondered the risks of the C.I.A.’s covert drone program (The Predator War 2009-10-26), Obama's ramping up of the terror bombing in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The situation has only become more dire in the months since; as with the torture of prisoners, the debate over the indiscriminately murderous drones has devolved into an argument over how far we can go without committing acts that are actually indictable: see, Drone Attacks Are Legit Self-Defense, Says State Dept. Lawyer by Nathan Hodge (Danger Room 2010-03-26) and The Legal And Moral Issues Of Drone Use (NPR 2010-03-30) with Peter Bergen, Amitai Etzioni and Philip Alston.
Will the Pentagon send surveillance drones and other military support to the Somali government for its offensive against al-Qaida-linked insurgents, as the Associated Press reports? Perhaps you should ask your members of Congress.
Newsweek calls Afghanistan’s police force a ”$6 billion fiasco” that could cost us the war. Nation building is a risky business; no wonder presidential candidates promise not to do it.
"A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the National Security Agency’s program of surveillance without warrants was illegal, rejecting the Obama administration’s effort to keep shrouded in secrecy one of the most disputed counterterrorism policies of former President George W. Bush." By Charlie Savage and James Risen (New York Times 2010-03-31).
The event itself was insignificant, of course, especially by comparison to, say, decades of priestly diddling of deaf children, but the media coverage was characteristically abysmal:
But then, as so often before, Jon Stewart put it all in perspective for you:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| 2 Girls 1 GOP | ||||
| ||||
Catch Henry Farrell and Daniel Drezner's Fun for the Whole Family episode on BloggingHeads -- will health care reform give Obama a foreign policy boost?; Obama and Netanyahu, less than the best of pals; The Frumble in the Jungle; can conservative intellectuals ride the Tea Party tiger?; the Catholic Church’s systemic failure; is the Greek financial crisis just the tip of the iceberg?:
Speaking of the Frumble in the Jungle, Carl Bloice takes on The Myth of the Sensible Center (Black Commentator 2010-04-01). Left, Right and Center become meaningless anyway when the central ideologies controlling our politics, corporatism and militarism, are forbidden subjects.
The Fed in Hot Water by Robert Reich (TalkingPointsMemo 2010-0402). Tim Geithner made secret, unregulated, probably illegal payouts of Bear Stearns and AIG worth tens of billions in public dollars months before Congress authorized taxpayer bailout of the financial community. Also, watch Robert Reich on ABC's This Week: The Obama Administration's Approach To Financial Reform Will Do 'Nothing' To Change Wall Street (Huntington Post 010-04-04).
To battle Wall Street, Obama should channel Teddy Roosevelt by Simon Johnson and James Kwak (The Washington Post 2010-04-04). Like that's going to happen.
And Tepid Reforms Demand that Progressives Mobilize by Katrina vanden Heuvel (Washington Post 2010-03-30).
US GAO releases 2010 Assessments of Selected Weapons Programs (2010-03-30), one- or two-page assessments of 70 weapon programs, most found wanting against "best practices" criteria.
Music video of the week is from a tribute to Skip Spence's legendary Oar (full disclosure: I wrote the liner notes for the second Moby Grape album), with a wild guitar solo by Wilco's Nels Cline:
Women in Their 90'S Who Make A Difference Today by Joan Wile (AfterDowningStreet 2010-04-03). My 94-year-old mother, having lent a hand in the battle to permit wind farms in New England, now wants take on the war in Afghanistan. "I think you should leave the world a little better than you found it," she says.
It took a while for the corporations to lay their cold dead hands fully on the the switches of mass media access after the terrifying (to them) social, intellectual and artistic cacophony of the 60s. Throughout the 70s and 80s, though, brief flashes of anarchy and creativity could still sneak past the cultural police lines, as in this energetic Black Leather Monster by punk rockers Wendy O. Williams and The Plasmatics on “Solid Gold,“ the pop hits countdown that usually featured lipsyncing bubblegum bands and eroto-aerobic dance routines.
A Critic's Place, Thumb and All is a thoughtful meditation on the future of arts criticism by Times film critic A.O.Scott (New York Times 2010-03-30).
Finally, a song much abused by karaoke singers is given its most disturbing reading ever:
Accountability: Freedom of Information - Online
The Sunlight Foundation has proposed Federal legislation that would require government to provide meaningful access to its information online. In the words of its organizational sign-on letter, the Public Online Information Act (POIA)
Sunlight Foundation proposes Public Online Information Act, LII Announce (Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School 2010-03-16)
More about the Public Online Information Act (Sunlight Foundation)
Read a summary of the Public Online Information Act or read the entire bill
requires government information that is public to be made available in the broadest, most accessible manner — online. Our vital public information can enhance accountability, spur commerce, and empower citizenship, but only if we create and require meaningful digital access to it. POIA creates this meaningful access through two mechanisms.The act also creates procedures similar to those available under Freedom of Information Act to enable organizations and individual citizen to pry loose information from reluctant bureaucrats.
First, POIA mandates that the Executive Branch make public records permanently available on the Internet, with a few exceptions....
Second, POIA creates an advisory body of government officials and private citizens to ensure that all three branches of government...will coordinate the development of government-wide Internet disclosure policies.
Sunlight Foundation proposes Public Online Information Act, LII Announce (Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School 2010-03-16)
More about the Public Online Information Act (Sunlight Foundation)
Read a summary of the Public Online Information Act or read the entire bill
Health Care Reform: With friends like this...
Rep. Lynn Woolsey of California wrote an op-ed in Roll Call Monday pandering to liberals about her commitment to a public option. It comes on the heels of her public announcement that she will break every single pledge she’s ever made to vote against a health care bill without a public option. (Woolsey is co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. In addition to abandoning her promise to support affordable, universal health care, she has endorsed Rep. Jane Harman, the leading Democratic proponent of the security state in the House of Representatives, over her liberal anti-war challenger Marcy Winograd, further evidence that progressives must build alternatives, including third party and independent candidacies, to their codependent relationship with the Democrats.)
The rest of the story: Lynn Woolsey: Closing Barn Doors Since 1993 by Jane Hamsher (FireDogLake 2010-03-09)
The rest of the story: Lynn Woolsey: Closing Barn Doors Since 1993 by Jane Hamsher (FireDogLake 2010-03-09)
Must See TV: Abolish the Senate
AfterDowningStreet's David Swanson makes the case for ditching a dysfunctional and anti-democratic anachronism:
The Filibuster
The Subpoena
Q&A
Q&A (cont.)
The Filibuster
The Subpoena
Q&A
Q&A (cont.)
The Long War: AfPak Accountability
Blackwater’s Youngest Victim: Father of 9 Year-Old Killed in Nisour Square Gives Most Detailed Account of Massacre to Date
Here is a Democracy Now! exclusive report from Jeremy Scahill about "a nine year old boy, shot in the head and killed by Blackwater in the infamous Nisour Sqaure massacre. His father, who is suing the private military contractor, provides the most detailed eyewitness account of the massacre to date.Last weekend vice president Joe Biden announced that the US Justice Department would appeal the dismissal of the criminal case against five Blackwater operatives accused of being behind the infamous Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad in September 2007. Some 17 Iraqis were killed and more than 20 wounded in fifteen minutes of sustained gunfire. On New Year’s Eve, federal judge Ricardo Urbina threw out the cases, but not for lack of evidence or because the men are not guilty. Urbina charged that prosecutors had committed gross misconduct in the case and violated the constitutional rights of the Blackwater men. Despite Biden’s assurances that the US would seek justice for the Iraqi victims, legal analysts say the appeal is an uphill battle and Blackwater’s lawyers predict it will fail.Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill, the National Security reporter for The Nation magazine, has conducted an in-depth investigation of the massacre and of nine-year old Ali Kinani’s death. Blackwater's Youngest Victim:
Nisour Square was the highest profile deadly incident involving Blackwater -- or any private war contractor. And was supposed to be the case that stuck, the case that showed the US would hold private security companies accountable for their alleged crimes. The indictment of the Blackwater shooters was the first time the Justice Department had taken any meaningful action against the company. To the Iraqi victims, the New Year’s Eve dismissal was shattering. Adding insult to injury, several of the Iraqi victims say they were pressured into a settlement with Blackwater earlier this month for what many considered a paltry sum. As it stands now, there is only one remaining legal case against Blackwater in the United States -– a lawsuit brought by Mohammed Kinani, father of the youngest victim that day -- his nine year old son, Ali who was shot in the head and killed by Blackwater forces. Ali’s father may well be the one man now standing between Blackwater and total impunity for the Nisour Square massacre.
The rest of the story: Blackwater’s Youngest Victim by Jeremy Scahill (The Nation 2010-01-29)
Accountability: On Christmas Eve, Massive bailouts to Big Ins/Big Pharma by Senate AND to Freddie/Fannie by WH
by Seafan (Democratic Underground)
How long did they think this would go unnoticed? The caliber of this corporate robbery of the public purse is astronomical, unprecedented and facilitated by this administration. There is no looking away from this.
Many of us were unwilling witnesses to the giveaway to Big Health Insurance/Big Pharma, courtesy of the US Senate on Christmas Eve.
But on the same day, the White House announced an unlimited credit line at the disposal of troubled Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Some days are just spectacular for the chosen few, aren't they? Read more at Democratic Underground.
How long did they think this would go unnoticed? The caliber of this corporate robbery of the public purse is astronomical, unprecedented and facilitated by this administration. There is no looking away from this.
Many of us were unwilling witnesses to the giveaway to Big Health Insurance/Big Pharma, courtesy of the US Senate on Christmas Eve.
But on the same day, the White House announced an unlimited credit line at the disposal of troubled Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Some days are just spectacular for the chosen few, aren't they? Read more at Democratic Underground.
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