Showing posts with label security state. Show all posts
Showing posts with label security state. Show all posts
Fascinating long read
The British security service, MI5, its war on communism, and its file on Eric Hobsbawm, 'one of the pre-eminent British historians of the 20th century.'
Stuck on the Flypaper by Frances Stonor Saunders (London Review of Books).
“The most valuable sense of humor is the kind that enables a person to see instantly what it isn't safe to laugh at.” -- Donald Rumsfeld
Many of you frequent flyers will recall that for a time TSA had signs and loudspeakers prohibiting humor attacks at security checkpoints. “You are reminded that any inappropriate remarks or jokes concerning security may result in your arrest,” warned one loudspeaker message in Dallas last fall. It's ironic that a sign at Burbank's Bob Hope Airport should say, "No jokes."
This came to mind because of the announcement this week by the U.S. Secret Service that it has issued an RFP for software that can detect sarcasm. Since we are decades from producing a computer with a sense of humor, it's likely the service will have to make do with a program that sorts through a giant database of pre-screened tweets and emails looking for tells: wannabe terrorists would do well to get in the habit now of putting smiley faces and LOLs in all their social media posts.
The fact that no one can be absolutely certain the Secret Service itself isn't kidding is evidence of how difficult a task deciphering snide remarks will be. The safest thing is probably to assume that, like TSA, the service is deficient in the skill set needed to detect and catalog gradations of wit, and to try to help them out with some practical alternatives. I started to suggest that, instead of wasting resources developing software that will never be operational, the service ask working comics to apply their expertise to the problem, until I remembered that the functionaries interviewing prospective government humor analysts would be the same ones who can't see the whimsy in an airport sign prohibiting jokes; they'd just end up with a government facility full of Dennis Millers.
More effective might be a change in staffing practices: the service should immediately stop hiring seminary dropouts and returning Mormon missionaries and limit their recruiting to inner city Jews, blacks, Irish and Italians.
This is a serious problem needing serious attention. We certainly don't want anyone arrested at a fund-raising dinner or a Fourth of July picnic for asking the agent groping him, "Do you want me to do you now?," let alone for bringing up his fling with Hitler's mother.
“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.” -- William James
This came to mind because of the announcement this week by the U.S. Secret Service that it has issued an RFP for software that can detect sarcasm. Since we are decades from producing a computer with a sense of humor, it's likely the service will have to make do with a program that sorts through a giant database of pre-screened tweets and emails looking for tells: wannabe terrorists would do well to get in the habit now of putting smiley faces and LOLs in all their social media posts.
The fact that no one can be absolutely certain the Secret Service itself isn't kidding is evidence of how difficult a task deciphering snide remarks will be. The safest thing is probably to assume that, like TSA, the service is deficient in the skill set needed to detect and catalog gradations of wit, and to try to help them out with some practical alternatives. I started to suggest that, instead of wasting resources developing software that will never be operational, the service ask working comics to apply their expertise to the problem, until I remembered that the functionaries interviewing prospective government humor analysts would be the same ones who can't see the whimsy in an airport sign prohibiting jokes; they'd just end up with a government facility full of Dennis Millers.
More effective might be a change in staffing practices: the service should immediately stop hiring seminary dropouts and returning Mormon missionaries and limit their recruiting to inner city Jews, blacks, Irish and Italians.
This is a serious problem needing serious attention. We certainly don't want anyone arrested at a fund-raising dinner or a Fourth of July picnic for asking the agent groping him, "Do you want me to do you now?," let alone for bringing up his fling with Hitler's mother.
“Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.” -- William James
Third party? Now? How about now? No? Maybe now?
The arguments for a People's Party become ever more compelling. Clinging to the faith that the Democrats any more than the Republicans will dismantle the corporate-security state is like believing in angels.
In a new book, Ralph Nader reminds us that the militarization of American diplomacy began with Bill Clinton and that Obama has doubled down on the excesses of George Bush and Dick Cheney. In Unstoppable, Nader demands an end to “unconstitutional wars and unchecked militarism.” Barack Obama, he writes, “has extended the Bush doctrine by declaring his unilateral right, as secret prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner, to destroy anybody, anywhere in the world, including American citizens, suspected to be engaged in alleged terrorist activities, all this vaguely and loosely defined as anti-U.S. security," extending the illegal reach of wars of choice, invasions, incursions, and drone attacks, without regard for international law or national boundaries.
For the average citizen, the growth of corporate power bolstered by the security apparatus has been matched by a corresponding decline in quality of life. Enough is enough. Building new organizations, like a third party, and restoring old ones, like the Labor Movement, to challenge the status quo will not be easy. But without that effort, our national decline, now in its fifth decade. will continue until it is irreversible.
Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State by Ralph Nader (Amazon Kindle).
In a new book, Ralph Nader reminds us that the militarization of American diplomacy began with Bill Clinton and that Obama has doubled down on the excesses of George Bush and Dick Cheney. In Unstoppable, Nader demands an end to “unconstitutional wars and unchecked militarism.” Barack Obama, he writes, “has extended the Bush doctrine by declaring his unilateral right, as secret prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner, to destroy anybody, anywhere in the world, including American citizens, suspected to be engaged in alleged terrorist activities, all this vaguely and loosely defined as anti-U.S. security," extending the illegal reach of wars of choice, invasions, incursions, and drone attacks, without regard for international law or national boundaries.
For the average citizen, the growth of corporate power bolstered by the security apparatus has been matched by a corresponding decline in quality of life. Enough is enough. Building new organizations, like a third party, and restoring old ones, like the Labor Movement, to challenge the status quo will not be easy. But without that effort, our national decline, now in its fifth decade. will continue until it is irreversible.
Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State by Ralph Nader (Amazon Kindle).
quote unquote: James Madison
"I believe there are more instances
of the abridgment of
the freedom of the people
by gradual and silent encroachments
of those in power,
than by violent and sudden usurpations."
-- James Madison, warning against Pres. Obama's signing into law of the National Defense Authorization Act on 2011/12/31. The law contains provisions that allow the indefinite military detention, without trial or appearance before a judge, of anyone -- even U.S. citizens and residents -- accused of a "belligerent act" or any terror-related offense.
Not The Onion: Hundreds of common words that could get you in trouble
The Daily Mail reports that federal thought police have compiled an "intriguing" list of words and phrases to be used to "monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S." The list includes "obvious choices such as 'attack', 'Al Qaeda', 'terrorism' and 'dirty bomb' alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like 'pork', 'cloud', 'team' and 'Mexico'."
The Dept. of Homeland Security was forced to release the list by a privacy watchdog group that filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act. Although DHS claims it only employs the list to detect legitimate security risks, "[t]he words are included in the department's 2011 'Analyst's Desktop Binder'* used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify 'media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities'."
Note that the avoidance of many of these words would make public discussion of security and military issues -- to say nothing of the weather -- impossible. But note also that your continued insistence on discussing such matters may attract the security state's interest.
Of course, you could decide to mess with them by putting references to "pork," "snow," "bridge," "tremor," "Tucson," "worm" and "metro" in all your communications.
The rest of the story: Revealed: Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don't want the government spying on you by Daniel Miller (Mail Online 2012-05-26).
*Even "redacted," 'Analyst's Desktop Binder' makes for interesting reading.
The Dept. of Homeland Security was forced to release the list by a privacy watchdog group that filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act. Although DHS claims it only employs the list to detect legitimate security risks, "[t]he words are included in the department's 2011 'Analyst's Desktop Binder'* used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify 'media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities'." Note that the avoidance of many of these words would make public discussion of security and military issues -- to say nothing of the weather -- impossible. But note also that your continued insistence on discussing such matters may attract the security state's interest.
Of course, you could decide to mess with them by putting references to "pork," "snow," "bridge," "tremor," "Tucson," "worm" and "metro" in all your communications.
The rest of the story: Revealed: Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don't want the government spying on you by Daniel Miller (Mail Online 2012-05-26).
*Even "redacted," 'Analyst's Desktop Binder' makes for interesting reading.
Privacy: All Your Data Are Belong To Us
This week Dropbox changed its terms of service, as reported by the essential Business Insider. Under its new policy, Dropbox says that it will cooperate with “United States law enforcement when it receives valid legal process” and may, if necessary, decrypt the private files in Dropbox folders, allowing them to be read by government snoops.
Not that Dropbox deserves to be singled out, except that I had just gotten around to using it. As David Gerwirtz points out on ZDNet's government blog, the lead could have cited Gmail. Or any Google app requiring sign-up. Or Amazon’s cloud. Or Hotmail. Or any of Yahoo’s many services. Or almost any other online service.
The rest of the story: If you have something to hide from the government, don't use Dropbox by David Gewirtz (ZDNet Government 2011-04-18)
Not that Dropbox deserves to be singled out, except that I had just gotten around to using it. As David Gerwirtz points out on ZDNet's government blog, the lead could have cited Gmail. Or any Google app requiring sign-up. Or Amazon’s cloud. Or Hotmail. Or any of Yahoo’s many services. Or almost any other online service.
The rest of the story: If you have something to hide from the government, don't use Dropbox by David Gewirtz (ZDNet Government 2011-04-18)
Must Read: How the US Government Strikes Fear in Its Own Citizens and People Around the World
In a recent speech, Glenn Greenwald discussed how the government and media treatment of WikiLeaks is symptomatic of a total lack of respect for the law and government transparency by the secret consortium of government and corporate power that runs the United States.
[Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from the transcript of a speech delivered by Constitutional lawyer and Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald at the Lannan Foundation on March 8. The speech was transcribed by the blog Contumacious. Please visit AlterNet to read the entire speech.]
by Glenn Greenwald
...[P]olitical controversies and political issues never take place in isolation. They're always part of some broader framework, that drives political outcomes, and that determines how political power is exercised. And so it doesn't really matter which specific topic, or which specific controversy of the day you want to discuss, the reality is, you can't really meaningfully discuss any of them without examining all the forces that shape political culture, and that shape how political outcomes are determined. So, in order to talk about any issue, you end up speaking about these same, broad themes, that are shaping, and I think plaguing, the political discourse in the United States.
This is something that I first realized when I started writing about politics in late 2005. One of the very first topics on which I focused was the scandal about the Bush administration eavesdropping on American citizens without the warrants required by law. This was first exposed by the NYT in December of 2005, so it happened around six weeks after I began writing about politics. I had this very naïve idea that this was going to be very straightforward and simple political controversy. The reason I thought that in my naiveté, was because what the Bush administration got caught doing [eavesdropping on Americans without warrants from the FISA court] is as clear as could possibly be a felony under American law. You can actually look at the criminal law that existed since 1978, when FISA was enacted. It says that doing exactly what the Bush administration got caught doing, is a felony in the U.S., just like robbing a bank, or extortion or murder, and that it's punishable by a prison term of five years or a $10,000 fine for each offense.
The report that the NYT published was that there were at least hundreds and probably thousands of instances where American citizens were eavesdropped on illegally and in violation of the law. So, I thought that this was going to be a fairly straightforward controversy, because I had this idea that if you get caught committing a felony, and the NYT writes and reports on that and everybody's talking about that, that that's actually going to be a really bad thing for the person who got caught doing that. I know it was really naïve. I'm actually embarrassed to admit that I thought that, but that really is was I thought at the time. I also thought that basically everybody would be in agreement that that was a really bad thing to do....that thing that the law said for 30 years was a felony and punishable by a prison term and a large fine. And, as it turned out (and I realized this fairly quickly) none of that actually happened. It wasn't a really bad thing for the people who got caught committing that felony.
And, not only did everyone not agree that that was a bad thing, very few people actually agreed that that was a very bad thing. So, what I thought I was going to be able to do was to take this issue and write very legalistically about it, and demonstrate that what the Bush administration had done was a crime, that it was a felony under the statute and that the legal defenses for it that they had raised were frivolous and baseless and that would be the end of the story. Crime committed, investigation commenced, punishment ensues. So what immediately happened, when I realized that none of that was really going on, of course then the question became why. Why was my expectation about what would happen so radically different than what in fact happened?
So, then I needed to delve into that dynamic, that I began by referencing that determines political outcomes. I had to examine the fact that we have a political faction inside the U.S. [the American Right] that is drowning in concepts of nationalism, and exceptionalism, in tribalism that leads them to believe that whatever they and their leaders do is justifiable inherently because they do it, and in a complete lack of principle...this is the same faction that impeached a democratically elected president not more than 10 years earlier on the grounds that the rule of law is paramount and we can't allow our presidents to break the law. And, yet, here they were defending it.
Please read the entire address at How the US Government Strikes Fear in Its Own Citizens and People Around the World by Glenn Greenwald (AlterNet 2011-03-21).
Glenn Greenwald is a constitutional law attorney and chief blogger at Unclaimed Territory. His forthcoming book, How Would a Patriot Act: Defending American Values from a President Run Amok will be released by Working Assets Publishing next month.
[Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from the transcript of a speech delivered by Constitutional lawyer and Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald at the Lannan Foundation on March 8. The speech was transcribed by the blog Contumacious. Please visit AlterNet to read the entire speech.]
by Glenn Greenwald
...[P]olitical controversies and political issues never take place in isolation. They're always part of some broader framework, that drives political outcomes, and that determines how political power is exercised. And so it doesn't really matter which specific topic, or which specific controversy of the day you want to discuss, the reality is, you can't really meaningfully discuss any of them without examining all the forces that shape political culture, and that shape how political outcomes are determined. So, in order to talk about any issue, you end up speaking about these same, broad themes, that are shaping, and I think plaguing, the political discourse in the United States.
This is something that I first realized when I started writing about politics in late 2005. One of the very first topics on which I focused was the scandal about the Bush administration eavesdropping on American citizens without the warrants required by law. This was first exposed by the NYT in December of 2005, so it happened around six weeks after I began writing about politics. I had this very naïve idea that this was going to be very straightforward and simple political controversy. The reason I thought that in my naiveté, was because what the Bush administration got caught doing [eavesdropping on Americans without warrants from the FISA court] is as clear as could possibly be a felony under American law. You can actually look at the criminal law that existed since 1978, when FISA was enacted. It says that doing exactly what the Bush administration got caught doing, is a felony in the U.S., just like robbing a bank, or extortion or murder, and that it's punishable by a prison term of five years or a $10,000 fine for each offense.
The report that the NYT published was that there were at least hundreds and probably thousands of instances where American citizens were eavesdropped on illegally and in violation of the law. So, I thought that this was going to be a fairly straightforward controversy, because I had this idea that if you get caught committing a felony, and the NYT writes and reports on that and everybody's talking about that, that that's actually going to be a really bad thing for the person who got caught doing that. I know it was really naïve. I'm actually embarrassed to admit that I thought that, but that really is was I thought at the time. I also thought that basically everybody would be in agreement that that was a really bad thing to do....that thing that the law said for 30 years was a felony and punishable by a prison term and a large fine. And, as it turned out (and I realized this fairly quickly) none of that actually happened. It wasn't a really bad thing for the people who got caught committing that felony.
And, not only did everyone not agree that that was a bad thing, very few people actually agreed that that was a very bad thing. So, what I thought I was going to be able to do was to take this issue and write very legalistically about it, and demonstrate that what the Bush administration had done was a crime, that it was a felony under the statute and that the legal defenses for it that they had raised were frivolous and baseless and that would be the end of the story. Crime committed, investigation commenced, punishment ensues. So what immediately happened, when I realized that none of that was really going on, of course then the question became why. Why was my expectation about what would happen so radically different than what in fact happened?
So, then I needed to delve into that dynamic, that I began by referencing that determines political outcomes. I had to examine the fact that we have a political faction inside the U.S. [the American Right] that is drowning in concepts of nationalism, and exceptionalism, in tribalism that leads them to believe that whatever they and their leaders do is justifiable inherently because they do it, and in a complete lack of principle...this is the same faction that impeached a democratically elected president not more than 10 years earlier on the grounds that the rule of law is paramount and we can't allow our presidents to break the law. And, yet, here they were defending it.
Please read the entire address at How the US Government Strikes Fear in Its Own Citizens and People Around the World by Glenn Greenwald (AlterNet 2011-03-21).
Glenn Greenwald is a constitutional law attorney and chief blogger at Unclaimed Territory. His forthcoming book, How Would a Patriot Act: Defending American Values from a President Run Amok will be released by Working Assets Publishing next month.
Saturday Catchup 2010-08-28
Capitalism, Threat or Menace: "Now, anyone can look at China's rapid economic growth and react with wonderment and awe. They have surpassed Japan, and are outranked only by the U.S. -- for now. Plus, they are the largest owner of American debt at the better part of a trillion dollars. China shows what you can do with a little industrial planning, policy and guidance from the government. But then again, many things are possible when you don't have those annoyances, those minor nuisances like environmental regulations, workplace safety, worker's rights, and democratic government. Chinese-style capitalism seems to be a purer form than its U.S. counterpart, and therefore a Republican nirvana, minus the part about government planning. And for now, we wait for a nascent labor movement to kick into gear and transform a country that responds to massive public unrest with military crackdowns. While Chinese workers jump out of windows, Americans are dying as well. In the U.S., workers die on exploding oil rigs and in deathtrap coalmines because their regulation-hating employers want to maximize profits. And besides, they say, regulations are dumb. Consumers die from unsafe food because food companies want to cut corners. Just like the Great Depression days when people lacked a safety net, the unemployed, foreclosed and student debtor-prisoners of today are turning to suicide at an alarming rate, with an increase of calls to suicide prevention hotlines." -- Capitalism Is Killing Us by David A. Love (Huffington Post 2010-08-25).
Hey, Glenn Beck: Here's how Martin Luther King described Jesus at the end of an essay published eight months after the civil rights leader was assassinated: "A voice out of Bethlehem two thousand years ago said that all men are equal.... Jesus of Nazareth wrote no books; he owned no property to endow him with influence. He had no friends in the courts of the powerful. But he changed the course of mankind with only the poor and the despised." King concluded this final essay, titled "A Testament of Hope," with a strikingly radical claim, indicating his strong identification with society's most disadvantaged and outcast persons. "Naive and unsophisticated though we may be," King said, "the poor and despised of the twentieth century will revolutionize this era. In our 'arrogance, lawlessness, and ingratitude,' we will fight for human justice, brotherhood, secure peace, and abundance for all." -- Martin Luther King, Democratic Socialist by Paul Street (The Black Commentator 2006-02-02).
And btw, Beck, it's not like we haven't seen your likes before:
The Tea Party is no joke: "There’s nothing in the world more tired than a progressive blogger like me flipping out over the latest idiocies emanating from the Fox News crowd. But this summer’s media hate-fest is different than anything we’ve seen before. What we’re watching is a calculated campaign to demonize blacks, Mexicans, and gays and convince a plurality of economically-depressed white voters that they are under imminent legal and perhaps even physical attack by a conspiracy of leftist nonwhites. They’re telling these people that their government is illegitimate and criminal and unironically urging secession and revolution." -- Tea Party Rocks Primaries by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone 2010-08-26).
The legendary Budd Schulberg told the Glenn Beck Story more than half a century ago:
In the end, though, you reap what you sow.
A step back for the security state: The New York state law mandating the removal from NYPD computerized databases of personal information of many thousands of entirely innocent citizens stopped and frisked wholly without reasonable suspicion, is a clear refutation not only of the policies of mayor Mike Bloomberg and NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, but also of the Bush-Cheney-Obama insistence that national security and public safety trump individual constitutional liberties. If any civics classes still remain in public schools, NY governor David Paterson's signing statement is especially worth hearing and discussing in the context of a 22-page July 29 ACLU report card: "Obama Administration in Danger of Establishing 'New Normal' With Worst Bush-Era Policies." In office, Barack Obama has not only continued but expanded the disabling of the Bill of Rights begun by George W. Bush. "In a democracy," Governor Paterson said, "there are times when safety and liberty find themselves in conflict. From the Alien and Sedition Acts [opposition to which gave Thomas Jefferson the presidency] to the Patriot Act, we have experienced moments where liberty took a back seat." As president, Barack Obama has not done anything to rein in the excesses of the USA PATRIOT Act ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001" -- got to admire the Right's knack for clever marketing of bad ideas) . Indeed, when Democrats on the Judiciary Committee tried, once Obama was in the Oval Office, to enact a few reforms, the president helped the Republicans block most of them. -- What Obama Could Learn From Paterson: Lame-duck governor's inspiring words in defense of liberty by Nat Hentoff (Village Voice 2010-08-25).
Some very mean bugs are looking for you: The era of antibiotics is coming to a close. In just a couple of generations, what once appeared to be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria they were designed to knock out. Once, scientists hailed the end of infectious diseases. Now, the post-antibiotic apocalypse is within sight. -- Are you ready for a world without antibiotics? by Sarah Boseley (Guardian UK 2010-08-12).
All your PowerPoint are belong to us: "I have been assigned as a staff officer to a headquarters in Afghanistan for about two months. During that time, I have not done anything productive. Fortunately little of substance is really done here, but that is a task we do well. We are part of the operational arm of the International Security Assistance Force commanded by U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus. It is composed of military representatives from all the NATO countries, several of which I cannot pronounce. Officially, IJC was founded in late 2009 to coordinate operations among all the regional commands in Afghanistan. More likely it was founded to provide some general a three-star command. Starting with a small group of dedicated and intelligent officers, IJC has successfully grown into a stove-piped and bloated organization, top-heavy in rank. Around here you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a colonel. For headquarters staff, war consists largely of the endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information. Even one tiny flaw in a slide can halt a general's thought processes as abruptly as a computer system's blue screen of death." -- PowerPoints 'R' Us by Col. Lawrence Sellin, U.S. Army Reserves (Breitbart/UPI "Outside View" 2010-08-24). See, also: Colonel Kicked Out of Afghanistan for Anti-PowerPoint Rant by Spencer Ackerman (Wired/Danger Room 2010-08-27).
Our adventure in Afghanistan, as seen by the other side in Kunar Province:
Aw, how can we leave now?: Gitmo, the next Galapagos? It's a mighty ill wind that blows absolutely no good. Guantánamo Bay may be best known for its U.S. military base on Cuban soil and its unconstitutional prison, but to scientists at New York Botanical Garden's Caribbean Biodiversity Program it's a prime spot for ecological research. -- Guantánamo Bay, Site of Important Ecological Research by Julie Schwietert Collazo (Discover 2010-08-06).
Bon voyage: Perhaps you've had a good laugh over seasteading, the scheme hatched by rich libertarians to escape the clutches of democracy by living on giant metal platforms in the middle of the ocean. But as it turns out, seasteading is something of a wet dry run for some libertarians’ ultimate escape plan of uploading their brains into robot bodies and blasting off into space. This is also known as “transhumanism,” which is (very) loosely defined as a movement of people/future androids who are promoting the adoption of technologies that will eventually help “humans transcend biology,” in the words of Objectivist futurist Ray Kurzweil. -- The Ultimate Escape: The Bizarre Libertarian Plan of Uploading Brains into Robots to Escape Society by Brad Reed (AlterNet 2010-08-27).
Hey, they're cartoons anyway: A roundup of GOP candidates in the midterm elections as animated by NMA World Edition in Taiwan:
Can't help it. Love these guys. 美國反伊斯蘭情緒太超過?
Norman Rockwell's America was real: During World War II, the women in the small town of North Platte, Nebraska touched the lives of thousands of young soldiers on their way to war. It's not a bad model to keep before us now, as so many Americans deal with economic anxiety by demonizing their fellow citizens. -- Simple Gestures, Lifelong Memories by Abigail R. Esman (Forbes 2010-08-09).
Milestones: "Elizabeth Sargent, a poet, answered an advertisement to 'live and work in Carnegie Hall' 46 years ago and moved in with a recommendation from the literary critic Malcolm Cowley. Half a lifetime later, on Thursday, she was the last resident to move out of the 116-year-old studio apartments in Carnegie Hall Towers, which once percolated with creativity and personality Mark Twain used to smoke his pipe in the author’s club across the hall from Ms. Sargent’s studio; Marlon Brando entertained guests in the apartment directly below; and Leonard Bernstein read scores on the same floor. Norman Mailer penned works in her apartment, and Isadora Duncan danced down the hallway. 'This was a magical place,' Ms. Sargent said. 'Artists really had a freedom here; they developed here.'” -- In Apartments Above Carnegie Hall, a Coda for Longtime Residents by Liz Robbins (New York Times 2010-08-27).
George David Weiss, composer of Elvis' "Can't Help Falling in Love," "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens and "What a Wonderful World," Louis Armstrong's greatest hit, has died.
Hey, Glenn Beck: Here's how Martin Luther King described Jesus at the end of an essay published eight months after the civil rights leader was assassinated: "A voice out of Bethlehem two thousand years ago said that all men are equal.... Jesus of Nazareth wrote no books; he owned no property to endow him with influence. He had no friends in the courts of the powerful. But he changed the course of mankind with only the poor and the despised." King concluded this final essay, titled "A Testament of Hope," with a strikingly radical claim, indicating his strong identification with society's most disadvantaged and outcast persons. "Naive and unsophisticated though we may be," King said, "the poor and despised of the twentieth century will revolutionize this era. In our 'arrogance, lawlessness, and ingratitude,' we will fight for human justice, brotherhood, secure peace, and abundance for all." -- Martin Luther King, Democratic Socialist by Paul Street (The Black Commentator 2006-02-02).
And btw, Beck, it's not like we haven't seen your likes before:
The Tea Party is no joke: "There’s nothing in the world more tired than a progressive blogger like me flipping out over the latest idiocies emanating from the Fox News crowd. But this summer’s media hate-fest is different than anything we’ve seen before. What we’re watching is a calculated campaign to demonize blacks, Mexicans, and gays and convince a plurality of economically-depressed white voters that they are under imminent legal and perhaps even physical attack by a conspiracy of leftist nonwhites. They’re telling these people that their government is illegitimate and criminal and unironically urging secession and revolution." -- Tea Party Rocks Primaries by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone 2010-08-26).
The legendary Budd Schulberg told the Glenn Beck Story more than half a century ago:
In the end, though, you reap what you sow.
A step back for the security state: The New York state law mandating the removal from NYPD computerized databases of personal information of many thousands of entirely innocent citizens stopped and frisked wholly without reasonable suspicion, is a clear refutation not only of the policies of mayor Mike Bloomberg and NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly, but also of the Bush-Cheney-Obama insistence that national security and public safety trump individual constitutional liberties. If any civics classes still remain in public schools, NY governor David Paterson's signing statement is especially worth hearing and discussing in the context of a 22-page July 29 ACLU report card: "Obama Administration in Danger of Establishing 'New Normal' With Worst Bush-Era Policies." In office, Barack Obama has not only continued but expanded the disabling of the Bill of Rights begun by George W. Bush. "In a democracy," Governor Paterson said, "there are times when safety and liberty find themselves in conflict. From the Alien and Sedition Acts [opposition to which gave Thomas Jefferson the presidency] to the Patriot Act, we have experienced moments where liberty took a back seat." As president, Barack Obama has not done anything to rein in the excesses of the USA PATRIOT Act ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001" -- got to admire the Right's knack for clever marketing of bad ideas) . Indeed, when Democrats on the Judiciary Committee tried, once Obama was in the Oval Office, to enact a few reforms, the president helped the Republicans block most of them. -- What Obama Could Learn From Paterson: Lame-duck governor's inspiring words in defense of liberty by Nat Hentoff (Village Voice 2010-08-25).
Some very mean bugs are looking for you: The era of antibiotics is coming to a close. In just a couple of generations, what once appeared to be miracle medicines have been beaten into ineffectiveness by the bacteria they were designed to knock out. Once, scientists hailed the end of infectious diseases. Now, the post-antibiotic apocalypse is within sight. -- Are you ready for a world without antibiotics? by Sarah Boseley (Guardian UK 2010-08-12).
All your PowerPoint are belong to us: "I have been assigned as a staff officer to a headquarters in Afghanistan for about two months. During that time, I have not done anything productive. Fortunately little of substance is really done here, but that is a task we do well. We are part of the operational arm of the International Security Assistance Force commanded by U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus. It is composed of military representatives from all the NATO countries, several of which I cannot pronounce. Officially, IJC was founded in late 2009 to coordinate operations among all the regional commands in Afghanistan. More likely it was founded to provide some general a three-star command. Starting with a small group of dedicated and intelligent officers, IJC has successfully grown into a stove-piped and bloated organization, top-heavy in rank. Around here you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a colonel. For headquarters staff, war consists largely of the endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information. Even one tiny flaw in a slide can halt a general's thought processes as abruptly as a computer system's blue screen of death." -- PowerPoints 'R' Us by Col. Lawrence Sellin, U.S. Army Reserves (Breitbart/UPI "Outside View" 2010-08-24). See, also: Colonel Kicked Out of Afghanistan for Anti-PowerPoint Rant by Spencer Ackerman (Wired/Danger Room 2010-08-27).
Our adventure in Afghanistan, as seen by the other side in Kunar Province:
Aw, how can we leave now?: Gitmo, the next Galapagos? It's a mighty ill wind that blows absolutely no good. Guantánamo Bay may be best known for its U.S. military base on Cuban soil and its unconstitutional prison, but to scientists at New York Botanical Garden's Caribbean Biodiversity Program it's a prime spot for ecological research. -- Guantánamo Bay, Site of Important Ecological Research by Julie Schwietert Collazo (Discover 2010-08-06).
Bon voyage: Perhaps you've had a good laugh over seasteading, the scheme hatched by rich libertarians to escape the clutches of democracy by living on giant metal platforms in the middle of the ocean. But as it turns out, seasteading is something of a wet dry run for some libertarians’ ultimate escape plan of uploading their brains into robot bodies and blasting off into space. This is also known as “transhumanism,” which is (very) loosely defined as a movement of people/future androids who are promoting the adoption of technologies that will eventually help “humans transcend biology,” in the words of Objectivist futurist Ray Kurzweil. -- The Ultimate Escape: The Bizarre Libertarian Plan of Uploading Brains into Robots to Escape Society by Brad Reed (AlterNet 2010-08-27).
Hey, they're cartoons anyway: A roundup of GOP candidates in the midterm elections as animated by NMA World Edition in Taiwan:
Can't help it. Love these guys. 美國反伊斯蘭情緒太超過?
Norman Rockwell's America was real: During World War II, the women in the small town of North Platte, Nebraska touched the lives of thousands of young soldiers on their way to war. It's not a bad model to keep before us now, as so many Americans deal with economic anxiety by demonizing their fellow citizens. -- Simple Gestures, Lifelong Memories by Abigail R. Esman (Forbes 2010-08-09).
Milestones: "Elizabeth Sargent, a poet, answered an advertisement to 'live and work in Carnegie Hall' 46 years ago and moved in with a recommendation from the literary critic Malcolm Cowley. Half a lifetime later, on Thursday, she was the last resident to move out of the 116-year-old studio apartments in Carnegie Hall Towers, which once percolated with creativity and personality Mark Twain used to smoke his pipe in the author’s club across the hall from Ms. Sargent’s studio; Marlon Brando entertained guests in the apartment directly below; and Leonard Bernstein read scores on the same floor. Norman Mailer penned works in her apartment, and Isadora Duncan danced down the hallway. 'This was a magical place,' Ms. Sargent said. 'Artists really had a freedom here; they developed here.'” -- In Apartments Above Carnegie Hall, a Coda for Longtime Residents by Liz Robbins (New York Times 2010-08-27).
George David Weiss, composer of Elvis' "Can't Help Falling in Love," "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens and "What a Wonderful World," Louis Armstrong's greatest hit, has died.
War Toys On the Homefront
It's hard not to think the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has money to burn in light of its purchase of a "ray-gun" for its jail.
Wait a minute. 10,000 test-blasts on human subjects! It's nice that the Pentagon wants to develop non-lethal weapons, but this can't be the only way to figure out whether or not a particular contraption is lethal. Not that anyone wants to get PETA fired up, but these are people we're talking about.
The rest of the story: ACLU Blasts Jailhouse Pain Ray, Condemns ‘Star Wars Tech’ by Noah Shachtman (Wired/Danger Room 2010-08-27).
To the shock of absolutely no one, the ACLU hates the idea of blasting Los Angeles prisoners with an invisible heat ray. The civil liberties organization has sent a letter to L.A. Sheriff Lee Baca, begging him to not use the pain weapon, less than a week after its installation at the Pitchess Detention Center.Wired happily notes that, so far, "the Active Denial System hasn’t actually killed anyone, after more than 10,000 test-blasts on human subjects."
But both sides of this energy weapon fight seem a little, um, confused. The ACLU claims that the so-called “Assault Intervention Device” is a killer — and “robot-like,” to boot. (Not that the system has killed anyone, or can operate on its own.) The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is claiming the ray gun can’t cause lasting harm. (Well, if you ignore those test subjects with second degree burns.)
Wait a minute. 10,000 test-blasts on human subjects! It's nice that the Pentagon wants to develop non-lethal weapons, but this can't be the only way to figure out whether or not a particular contraption is lethal. Not that anyone wants to get PETA fired up, but these are people we're talking about.
The rest of the story: ACLU Blasts Jailhouse Pain Ray, Condemns ‘Star Wars Tech’ by Noah Shachtman (Wired/Danger Room 2010-08-27).
Saturday Catchup: 2010-07-24
It's Jobs, Stupid: Left to itself, the U.S. economy may not return to its pre-recession rate of unemployment until 2021, says a new study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Even under the more optimistic growth assumptions of the Congressional Budget Office, we’ve got five more years of high unemployment ahead. Not troubling enough? Consider this: millions of jobless Americans means lower wages for those lucky enough to be employed. Median wages rose just 0.8% over the last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, failing to keep up with even the low 1.8% rate of inflation. In real, inflation-adjusted terms, that’s a wage drop. “Excess supply in the labor market — 14.6 million Americans were unemployed as of June — has helped keep wage growth in check,” the Wall Street Journal explains. Or, in the more gleeful terms used by a financial analyst quoted by Bloomberg news last month, “Companies are getting higher-productivity employees for the same or lower wage rate they were paying a marginal employee. Not only are employees higher skilled, you have a better skill match. You have a more productive and more adaptive labor force.” That’s great for business – and helps explain the 44% increase in corporate profits this year – but considerably worse news for anyone trying to work for a living. Without more job creation or growing wages, economic recovery doesn’t translate into anything that benefits the vast majority of Americans. So what’s to be done? -- A Decade of High Unemployment and Falling Wages… Or We Could Create Jobs and Help our Cities by Amy Traub (DMIblog 2010-07-22).
Meanwhile, back at the ranch: "It was a branding moment. With their lockstep vote against extending unemployment benefits, the Republicans are indelibly marked as not only heartless but also frivolous in their much-professed concern over the soaring national debt....once again the Republicans seem determined to prove that when it comes to social compassion, they are the worst." -- The Grinches Who Stole Summer by Robert Scheer (Truthdig 2010-07-21).
Not to beat a dead horse, but...It's Jobs, Stupid: "The way to get jobs back is to increase federal spending in the short term in order to make up for the gap left by consumers and businesses (the fastest way to get this money into circulation is by extending unemployment benefits and aiding stranded state and local governments). Over the longer term, we can lift the wages of the vast majority of Americans by expanding and extending the Earned Income Tax Credit -- an income supplement -- up through the middle class, and pay for it by a higher marginal income tax rate on the top. And while we’re at it, exempt the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes, and pay for that by lifting the cap on Social Security taxes on all incomes in excess of $250,000. Beyond that, and over the still longer term, America’s vast middle class and the poor more need to be more productive and innovative, so they can add more value to an increasingly integrated global economy. That means better education. Instead of firing school teachers, closing libraries, and increasing tuitions at public universities, we have to do exactly the opposite." -- Why We Can’t Rely on Foreign Consumers to Rescue American Jobs, and Why the “Jobs for America Summit” is a Bad Joke by Robert Reich (Guernica: a magazine of art & politics 2010-07-21).
It's hard not to think of this as Brother Mose's Teabagger song:
Not To Miss: How could Barack Obama nominate with such confidence a candidate for the Supremes who remains, in conventional terms, a legal and political empty suit? "The very fact that such a person could become dean of the Harvard Law School, Solicitor General of the United States, and now apparently a justice of the Supreme Court, tells us a great deal about how members of the contemporary power elite in America, whether they call themselves 'liberals' or 'conservatives,' see themselves. For Elena Kagan presents a particular kind of blank slate to the world: one that appears to have been the product of, among other things, exquisitely calculated careerism. And that sort of careerism is by necessity always grounded in the relentless pursuit of the approval of the legal and political and economic establishment — something that itself is always inimical to significant legal, political, or economic change. Kagan, in short, is the kind of candidate who is most popular with admirers of the status quo. Indeed, Obama’s nomination of Kagan suggests that, for all his talk of 'change,' he is himself at heart a comfortable denizen of Establishment America – that place where people with the right sorts of resumes rotate profitably between Wall Street, Washington, and the Ivy League, while praising each other for having 'good judgment,' and being 'reasonable' and 'non-partisan.'" -- Elena Kagan, Barack Obama, and the American Establishment by Paul Campos (Lawyers, Gun$ & Money 2010-07-21).
Action: The Investigative Fund incubates in-depth reporting with the potential for social impact. Their work is made possible by support of individuals and institutions committed to a free and independent press. The Fund is a program of The Nation Institute, a 501(c)(3) public foundation, donations to which are tax deductible to the fullest extent provided by law. If you have any questions, or would like other donation options, contact Taya Kitman at (212) 822-0252. Or just give.
File this one under #stillmissdennishopperalwayswill:
Weekly war crimes update: A recent report from Amnesty International has confirmed that 35 women and children were killed following the latest US attacks on an alleged al-Qaeda hideout in Yemen. Initially, there were attempts to bury the story, and Yemen officially denied that civilians were killed as a result of the Dec 17 attack on al-Majala in southern Yemen. However, it has been simply impossible to conceal what is now considered the largest loss of life in one single US attack in the country. If the civilian casualties were indeed a miscalculation on the part of the U.S. military, there should no longer be any doubt about the fact that cluster munitions are far too dangerous a weapon to be utilized in war. And they certainly have no place whatsoever in civilian areas. The human casualties are too large to justify." -- Cluster Bombs and Civilian Lives: Efficient Killing, Profits and Human Rights by Ramzy Baroud (truthout 2010-07-24). See, also: New study claims increases in infant mortality and cancer in Fallujah greater than in Hiroshima by Zaid Jilani (Think Progress 2010-07-24).
The Bush and Blair govs knew that the WMDs and Sadam Hussein-Al Queda links were a pack of lies: This week Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former director general of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, their version of the FBI, said Tuesday that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had greatly increased the terrorist threat to Britain and that intelligence available before the Iraq war had not been sufficient to justify the invasion of that country. Ex-Official Says Afghan and Iraq Wars Increased Threats to Britain by Sarah Lyall (New York Times 2010-07-20). The headline speaks for itself; I'm linking it mainly because The Times buried the story.
True heroes are few: "When we create a legion of heroes in our minds, we blind ourselves to evidence of their destructive, sometimes atrocious, behavior. Heroes, after all, don’t commit atrocities. They don’t, for instance, dig bullets out of pregnant women’s bodies in an attempt to cover up deadly mistakes. They don’t fire on a good Samaritan and his two children as he attempts to aid a grievously wounded civilian. Such atrocities and murderous blunders, so common to war’s brutal chaos, produce cognitive dissonance in the minds of many Americans who simply can’t imagine their 'heroes' killing innocents. How much easier it is to see the acts of violence of our troops as necessary, admirable, even noble. By making our military generically heroic, we act to prolong our wars. By seeing war as essentially heroic theater, we esteem it even as we excuse it." -- “Our American Heroes”: Why It’s Wrong to Equate Military Service with Heroism by William J. Astore (Guernica: a magazine of art & politics 2010-07-23).
Could it be that, somewhere in this nightmarish technological morass, there is something as simple as a delete button?:
"Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States. An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances. In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space." -- A hidden world, growing beyond control by Dana Priest & William M. Arkin (Washington Post 2010). Also, some perspective from The Nation: Corporate Media Discover Private Spies. In Other News, No WMD in Iraq by Jeremy Scahill (The Nation 2010-07-20).
The Asian Age can use "MNCs" in its headline and, unlike here, the reader knows what they're talking about: "Corporates seek to globalise production but they do not want to globalise justice and rights. The difference in the treatment of Union Carbide and Dow Chemical in the context of Bhopal, and of BP in the context of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico shows how an apartheid is being created. The devaluation of the life of people of the Third World and ecosystems is built into the project of globalisation. Globalisation is leading to the outsourcing of pollution - hazardous substances and technologies - to the Third World. This is at the heart of globalisation - the economies of genocide." -- The Killing Fields of Multi-National Corporations Pesticides, Pollution and the Economies of Genocide by Vandana Shiva (The Asian Age 2010-07-14).
Here's a pull-out from The Asian Age to think about:
quote unquote: “Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the less developed countries?” Since wages are low in the Third World, economic costs of pollution arising from increased illness and death are least in the poorest countries. The logic “of relocation of pollutants in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that." -- Obama's chief economic adviser Lawrence Summers, in a memo dated December 12, 1991, to senior staff at the World Bank, where he was chief economist at the time.
Wikireform: We need a People's Project for Societal Reform, a Wikipedia of Change, a think tank for the rest of us....and the internet provides the tools. What's needed is a site with a series of issues open to disinterested creative ideas about all our challenges -- nuclear and other inhumane weapons, global climate change, pollution, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, economic justice, democratization, how to accelerate positive social change... All that's needed is to arrange a voting system where people can see the raw contributions, make comments, and move the best ideas to the forefront without erasing those wild and crazy contributions that might just turn out in the long run to be the most valuable. Best Practices by Winslow Myers (truthout 2010-07-24).
Noam Chomsky catches up with Impractical Proposals: "'It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,' Chomsky told me when I called him at his office in Cambridge, Mass. 'The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over.'" -- Noam Chomsky Has ‘Never Seen Anything Like This’ by Chris Hedges (Truthdig 2010-07-10).
Hail, hail rock 'n' roll:
When you hear the word "reform," reach for your gun: "Race to the Top" and Arne Duncan's so-called "national turnaround plan" are tied to a $4.3 billion fund to push for charter schools -- schools publicly funded by taxpayers, yet run privately, outside the control of local school boards -- and merit pay schemes where teachers are paid according student test scores -- using eligibility requirements to make states compete for desperately needed education money. The education secretary proposes closing some 5,000 schools across the county and firing entire teaching staffs at schools designated as failing. These national initiatives were first developed by Arne when he was CEO of the Chicago Public Schools for his "Renaissance 2010" program that closed down dozens of schools, predominately in Black neighborhoods, and converted many to charter schools or military academies. At numerous school board meetings and protests, teachers, students and community members warned Duncan that the reckless closing of schools would have dire consequences -- from the loss of cherished neighborhood schools and union teachers to an increase in gang violence. Predictably, these education advocates were proven right. Student achievement stagnated, and deadly violence soared in the schools -- with some 34 deaths and 290 shootings in 2009 as a result of students being transported to schools across gang boundaries. -- Schooling Arne Duncan by Jesse Hagopian (Socialist Worker 2010-07-19 -- Hagopian, a Seattle teacher who lost his job due to budget cuts, is a founding member of the progressive union caucus Social Equality Educators within the Seattle Education Association).
A picture is worth a thousand years: In the age of high-precision cosmology, we realize how very short is the time frame of human civilization in relation to the history of the universe. Within that frame, geneticists are providing us with ever-better maps of early human migration and settlement patterns while art originating from well before Babylon indicates what some of those migratory cultures’ cosmologies might have been like. The symbol-laden anthropological record of the Paleolithic suggests the fruition of a theretofore-nascent neurological potential for artistic and technological expression. The astronomical theories associated with Magdalenian cave art may take a long time (and substantially more evidence) in order to gel, but just considering a celestial dimension to the paintings allows our generation to look with new eyes at one of our oldest shared artistic treasures. Heavenly messages from the depths of prehistory may be encoded on the walls of caves throughout Europe by Holly Capelo (Seed Magazine 2010-07-13).
And, finally, a more benign than usual edition of Those Wacky Republicans - a series:
Meanwhile, back at the ranch: "It was a branding moment. With their lockstep vote against extending unemployment benefits, the Republicans are indelibly marked as not only heartless but also frivolous in their much-professed concern over the soaring national debt....once again the Republicans seem determined to prove that when it comes to social compassion, they are the worst." -- The Grinches Who Stole Summer by Robert Scheer (Truthdig 2010-07-21).
Not to beat a dead horse, but...It's Jobs, Stupid: "The way to get jobs back is to increase federal spending in the short term in order to make up for the gap left by consumers and businesses (the fastest way to get this money into circulation is by extending unemployment benefits and aiding stranded state and local governments). Over the longer term, we can lift the wages of the vast majority of Americans by expanding and extending the Earned Income Tax Credit -- an income supplement -- up through the middle class, and pay for it by a higher marginal income tax rate on the top. And while we’re at it, exempt the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes, and pay for that by lifting the cap on Social Security taxes on all incomes in excess of $250,000. Beyond that, and over the still longer term, America’s vast middle class and the poor more need to be more productive and innovative, so they can add more value to an increasingly integrated global economy. That means better education. Instead of firing school teachers, closing libraries, and increasing tuitions at public universities, we have to do exactly the opposite." -- Why We Can’t Rely on Foreign Consumers to Rescue American Jobs, and Why the “Jobs for America Summit” is a Bad Joke by Robert Reich (Guernica: a magazine of art & politics 2010-07-21).
It's hard not to think of this as Brother Mose's Teabagger song:
Not To Miss: How could Barack Obama nominate with such confidence a candidate for the Supremes who remains, in conventional terms, a legal and political empty suit? "The very fact that such a person could become dean of the Harvard Law School, Solicitor General of the United States, and now apparently a justice of the Supreme Court, tells us a great deal about how members of the contemporary power elite in America, whether they call themselves 'liberals' or 'conservatives,' see themselves. For Elena Kagan presents a particular kind of blank slate to the world: one that appears to have been the product of, among other things, exquisitely calculated careerism. And that sort of careerism is by necessity always grounded in the relentless pursuit of the approval of the legal and political and economic establishment — something that itself is always inimical to significant legal, political, or economic change. Kagan, in short, is the kind of candidate who is most popular with admirers of the status quo. Indeed, Obama’s nomination of Kagan suggests that, for all his talk of 'change,' he is himself at heart a comfortable denizen of Establishment America – that place where people with the right sorts of resumes rotate profitably between Wall Street, Washington, and the Ivy League, while praising each other for having 'good judgment,' and being 'reasonable' and 'non-partisan.'" -- Elena Kagan, Barack Obama, and the American Establishment by Paul Campos (Lawyers, Gun$ & Money 2010-07-21).
Action: The Investigative Fund incubates in-depth reporting with the potential for social impact. Their work is made possible by support of individuals and institutions committed to a free and independent press. The Fund is a program of The Nation Institute, a 501(c)(3) public foundation, donations to which are tax deductible to the fullest extent provided by law. If you have any questions, or would like other donation options, contact Taya Kitman at (212) 822-0252. Or just give.
File this one under #stillmissdennishopperalwayswill:
Weekly war crimes update: A recent report from Amnesty International has confirmed that 35 women and children were killed following the latest US attacks on an alleged al-Qaeda hideout in Yemen. Initially, there were attempts to bury the story, and Yemen officially denied that civilians were killed as a result of the Dec 17 attack on al-Majala in southern Yemen. However, it has been simply impossible to conceal what is now considered the largest loss of life in one single US attack in the country. If the civilian casualties were indeed a miscalculation on the part of the U.S. military, there should no longer be any doubt about the fact that cluster munitions are far too dangerous a weapon to be utilized in war. And they certainly have no place whatsoever in civilian areas. The human casualties are too large to justify." -- Cluster Bombs and Civilian Lives: Efficient Killing, Profits and Human Rights by Ramzy Baroud (truthout 2010-07-24). See, also: New study claims increases in infant mortality and cancer in Fallujah greater than in Hiroshima by Zaid Jilani (Think Progress 2010-07-24).
The Bush and Blair govs knew that the WMDs and Sadam Hussein-Al Queda links were a pack of lies: This week Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former director general of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, their version of the FBI, said Tuesday that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had greatly increased the terrorist threat to Britain and that intelligence available before the Iraq war had not been sufficient to justify the invasion of that country. Ex-Official Says Afghan and Iraq Wars Increased Threats to Britain by Sarah Lyall (New York Times 2010-07-20). The headline speaks for itself; I'm linking it mainly because The Times buried the story.
True heroes are few: "When we create a legion of heroes in our minds, we blind ourselves to evidence of their destructive, sometimes atrocious, behavior. Heroes, after all, don’t commit atrocities. They don’t, for instance, dig bullets out of pregnant women’s bodies in an attempt to cover up deadly mistakes. They don’t fire on a good Samaritan and his two children as he attempts to aid a grievously wounded civilian. Such atrocities and murderous blunders, so common to war’s brutal chaos, produce cognitive dissonance in the minds of many Americans who simply can’t imagine their 'heroes' killing innocents. How much easier it is to see the acts of violence of our troops as necessary, admirable, even noble. By making our military generically heroic, we act to prolong our wars. By seeing war as essentially heroic theater, we esteem it even as we excuse it." -- “Our American Heroes”: Why It’s Wrong to Equate Military Service with Heroism by William J. Astore (Guernica: a magazine of art & politics 2010-07-23).
Could it be that, somewhere in this nightmarish technological morass, there is something as simple as a delete button?:
"Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States. An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances. In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space." -- A hidden world, growing beyond control by Dana Priest & William M. Arkin (Washington Post 2010). Also, some perspective from The Nation: Corporate Media Discover Private Spies. In Other News, No WMD in Iraq by Jeremy Scahill (The Nation 2010-07-20).
The Asian Age can use "MNCs" in its headline and, unlike here, the reader knows what they're talking about: "Corporates seek to globalise production but they do not want to globalise justice and rights. The difference in the treatment of Union Carbide and Dow Chemical in the context of Bhopal, and of BP in the context of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico shows how an apartheid is being created. The devaluation of the life of people of the Third World and ecosystems is built into the project of globalisation. Globalisation is leading to the outsourcing of pollution - hazardous substances and technologies - to the Third World. This is at the heart of globalisation - the economies of genocide." -- The Killing Fields of Multi-National Corporations Pesticides, Pollution and the Economies of Genocide by Vandana Shiva (The Asian Age 2010-07-14).
Here's a pull-out from The Asian Age to think about:
quote unquote: “Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the less developed countries?” Since wages are low in the Third World, economic costs of pollution arising from increased illness and death are least in the poorest countries. The logic “of relocation of pollutants in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that." -- Obama's chief economic adviser Lawrence Summers, in a memo dated December 12, 1991, to senior staff at the World Bank, where he was chief economist at the time.
Wikireform: We need a People's Project for Societal Reform, a Wikipedia of Change, a think tank for the rest of us....and the internet provides the tools. What's needed is a site with a series of issues open to disinterested creative ideas about all our challenges -- nuclear and other inhumane weapons, global climate change, pollution, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, economic justice, democratization, how to accelerate positive social change... All that's needed is to arrange a voting system where people can see the raw contributions, make comments, and move the best ideas to the forefront without erasing those wild and crazy contributions that might just turn out in the long run to be the most valuable. Best Practices by Winslow Myers (truthout 2010-07-24).
Noam Chomsky catches up with Impractical Proposals: "'It is very similar to late Weimar Germany,' Chomsky told me when I called him at his office in Cambridge, Mass. 'The parallels are striking. There was also tremendous disillusionment with the parliamentary system. The most striking fact about Weimar was not that the Nazis managed to destroy the Social Democrats and the Communists but that the traditional parties, the Conservative and Liberal parties, were hated and disappeared. It left a vacuum which the Nazis very cleverly and intelligently managed to take over.'" -- Noam Chomsky Has ‘Never Seen Anything Like This’ by Chris Hedges (Truthdig 2010-07-10).
Hail, hail rock 'n' roll:
When you hear the word "reform," reach for your gun: "Race to the Top" and Arne Duncan's so-called "national turnaround plan" are tied to a $4.3 billion fund to push for charter schools -- schools publicly funded by taxpayers, yet run privately, outside the control of local school boards -- and merit pay schemes where teachers are paid according student test scores -- using eligibility requirements to make states compete for desperately needed education money. The education secretary proposes closing some 5,000 schools across the county and firing entire teaching staffs at schools designated as failing. These national initiatives were first developed by Arne when he was CEO of the Chicago Public Schools for his "Renaissance 2010" program that closed down dozens of schools, predominately in Black neighborhoods, and converted many to charter schools or military academies. At numerous school board meetings and protests, teachers, students and community members warned Duncan that the reckless closing of schools would have dire consequences -- from the loss of cherished neighborhood schools and union teachers to an increase in gang violence. Predictably, these education advocates were proven right. Student achievement stagnated, and deadly violence soared in the schools -- with some 34 deaths and 290 shootings in 2009 as a result of students being transported to schools across gang boundaries. -- Schooling Arne Duncan by Jesse Hagopian (Socialist Worker 2010-07-19 -- Hagopian, a Seattle teacher who lost his job due to budget cuts, is a founding member of the progressive union caucus Social Equality Educators within the Seattle Education Association).
A picture is worth a thousand years: In the age of high-precision cosmology, we realize how very short is the time frame of human civilization in relation to the history of the universe. Within that frame, geneticists are providing us with ever-better maps of early human migration and settlement patterns while art originating from well before Babylon indicates what some of those migratory cultures’ cosmologies might have been like. The symbol-laden anthropological record of the Paleolithic suggests the fruition of a theretofore-nascent neurological potential for artistic and technological expression. The astronomical theories associated with Magdalenian cave art may take a long time (and substantially more evidence) in order to gel, but just considering a celestial dimension to the paintings allows our generation to look with new eyes at one of our oldest shared artistic treasures. Heavenly messages from the depths of prehistory may be encoded on the walls of caves throughout Europe by Holly Capelo (Seed Magazine 2010-07-13).
And, finally, a more benign than usual edition of Those Wacky Republicans - a series:
The Long War: Why Hayden's Wrong, Why Pelosi's Lying
[I was about to post about Tom Hayden's odd, defeatist piece in The Nation seeming to hold antiwar members of Congress responsible for prolonging the war by challenging it -- "The war now has greater legitimacy" -- but David Swanson said it better than I could]
by David Swanson (AfterDowningStreet.org 2010-02-12)Challenging the security state is not going to be easy, but militarism can only be stopped by being confronted directly. Hayden's muddled incrementalism strikes me as of a piece with the magical thinking that caused him to urge Barack Obama's election even in the face of clear evidence throughout the 2008 campaign that the candidate would be just the sort of chief executive he has turned out to be. The vote in the House is a small step in a long road to peace.
Tom Hayden wants peace, but he's sincerely mistaken about how to get it. He claims that Wednesday's unsuccessful vote to end the war in Afghanistan makes ending the war less likely, and that the way to end the war is to pass a bill that would then have to pass the Senate and the President, a bill requiring an exit strategy, any exit strategy -- it could be "redeployment" to Iran in 2038 or anything else.
I'm not against moving bills forward, even meaningless bills if they send a helpful message. I'm not against ending the war in a way that leaves the president in charge of Congress, if that proves the fastest way to end the war -- even though it leaves us in a state in which more wars are inevitable. I don't think we're especially likely to force the House to cut off the funding next month.
But forcing a debate on the war, and forcing congress members to put their names down on one side or the other, does not make those members more likely to stick with those positions. It makes them more likely to oppose the wars. Why? Because it raises public awareness and public pressure. Those who voted to end the war are now being thanked and rewarded and pressured to vote no on funding what they just claimed to want to end. Those who voted to keep the war in Afghanistan going are now being pressured to change that position in a way that they were not when all was silent. Hayden, of all people, is leaving the public out of his calculations.
If we are handed an opportunity to -- at least temporarily -- block the funding, because all the Republicans vote No for some unrelated reason, we will need to seize that opportunity. It will increase the same dynamic of public involvement. It will advance a strategy that is one of the most likely to eventually end the wars. And it will advance an understanding of power dynamics in Washington that will discourage wars by shifting war powers back away from presidents, something that will also be needed in the coming months if we are to end the war in Iraq that too many people naively believe we've already ended.
Those who think that opposing wars should involve, you know, opposing wars, should build on the recent debate and vote, by joining in upcoming actions including:
Brown Bag Vigils, and Peace of the Action.
Pelosi does not sincerely want anything substantive and tends to lie whenever her lips move. And here's what she says about war and impeachment:
Pelosi: The issue that … bothers me the most is the issue of the Iraq War. There's so much evidence that there was no reason for us to go into that war at that time or to go into it period. But to think that thousands of lives have been lost, lives affected to the tune of hundreds of thousands, the cost in terms of our military readiness it has not made our military stronger, in terms of dollars to the treasury, but again most of all loss of lives our precious treasure on this war and there was really no price to pay for it so . . .So it is. And truly tragic as well is the brazenness of it. Pelosi's poodle, John Conyers, who backed off impeachment at her command, offered a wide and varying and self-contradictory list of excuses why, but never present among those excuses was any claim of lacking evidence. Conyers' committee staff spent most of the relevant years publishing books documenting the evidence. His excuses were about electoral campaigns and the corporate media and the likelihood of winning conviction in the Senate.
Maddow: Do you regret having taken impeachment off the table?
Pelosi: No, no, I believe that the if there was evidence, if we could have the evidence to impeach the president then that could come forward. Just because I say it's off doesn't mean if the evidence is there that something wouldn't go forward. It's not a question of not knowing where the culpability is, it's what you can demonstrate and what you can prove. But I do think that those who had a hand in perpetrating not just going to war but misrepresentations to the American people - . Every piece of evidence that we have points to the fact that there was no reason in terms of weapons of mass destruction to go into Iraq…. It's one of the great tragedies.
The level of mendacity in Pelosi's remarks above, her dedication to obeying the president (articulated just prior to what I've quoted), and her allegiance to the war machine: this is what we are up against. We will not defeat it without a massive public movement. We will not generate a massive public movement if we are afraid of raising the issue, pressing our demands forward, naming names, and rewarding and punishing elected officials as merited.
This is a life and death struggle, brothers and sisters, and it's not going to be won through fear, stealth, or timidity.
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