Honoring public figures when they die

The 19th-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard argued that the only truly unselfish kind of love we experience is love for the dead. Because one has no hope of reciprocal reward in loving a person who has passed away.

While this is an insightful and even beautiful thought, it would be hard to defend it unequivocally. Freud's concept of mourning deals with how the ego holds on to the cherished individual even after their passing, a process not without elements (ego needs) that could be called selfish. Familial and inheritance considerations can also affect both the public and the individual experience of mourning, again elements not without their selfish aspects.

And the public mourning of famous individuals moves into a different dimension, in which selfish or partisan interests often stand at the forefront.

Glenn Greenwald recalls how this process worked in a thoroughly propagandistic way with the passing of Ronald Reagan. The media was happy to cooperated with Republican politicians in canonizing him as a secular - or even more than secular - saint. (Christopher Hitchens and the protocol for public figure deaths 12/17/2011):

... the most notable aspect of that intense public ritual was the full-scale canonization of this deeply controversial, divisive and consequential political figure. Americans - including millions too young to remember his presidency - were bombarded with a full week of media discussions which completely whitewashed Reagan’s actions in office: that which made him an important enough historical figure to render his death worthy of such worldwide attention in the first place. There was a virtual media prohibition on expressing a single critical utterance about what he did as President and any harm that he caused. That's not because the elegies to Reagan were apolitical - they were aggressively political - but because nothing undercutting his deification was permitted. ...

The key claim there was that "politics is put aside." That’s precisely what did not happen. The entire spectacle was political to its core. Following Woodruff's proclamation were funeral speeches, all broadcast by CNN, by then-House Speaker Denny Hastert and Vice President Dick Cheney hailing the former President for gifting the nation with peace and prosperity, rejuvenating national greatness, and winning the Cold War. This scene repeated itself over and over during that week: extremely politicized tributes to the greatness of Ronald Reagan continuously broadcast to the nation without challenge and endorsed by its "neutral" media - all shielded from refutation or balance by the grief of a widow and social mores that bar one from speaking ill of the dead. ...

Though he became more popular after leaving office (like most Presidents), it was that week-long bombardment of hagiography that sealed Reagan’s status as Great and Cherished Leader. As media and political figures lavished him with politicized praise, there was virtually no mention of the brutal, civilian-extinguishing covert wars he waged in Central America, his funding of terrorists in Nicaragua, the pervasive illegality of the Iran-contra scandal perpetrated by his top aides and possibly himself, the explosion of wealth and income inequality ushered in by "Reagonmics" which persists today, his escalation of the racially disparate Drug War, his slashing of domestic programs for the poor accompanied by a deficit-causing build-up in the military budget, the racially-tinged (at least) attacks on welfare-queens-in-Cadillacs, the Savings & Loan crisis resulting from deregulation, his refusal even to acknowledge AIDS as tens of thousands of the Wrong People died, the training of Muslim radicals in Afghanistan and arming of the Iranian regime, the attempt to appoint the radical Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, or virtually anything else that would undermine the canonization. The country was drowned by a full, uninterrupted week of pure, leader-reverent propaganda. [my emphasis]

Glenn makes an important distinction that loops back to Kierkegaard's concept: "This happened because of an unhealthy conflation of appropriate post-death etiquette for private persons and the etiquette governing deaths of public figures. They are not and should not be the same." Honoring the departed out of love or personal respect does include the kind of unselfishness to which Kierkegaard referred.

As the title of Glenn's article indicates, he is applying these reflections to Christopher Hitchens' passing and the generally highly positive commentary he received in even left-leaning media. As he puts it, Hitchens " particularly over the last decade, he expressed views — not ancillary to his writings but central to them — that were nothing short of repellent."

Not least among those was his rabid support of the Iraq War. Glenn retweeted a comment by cartoonist Matt Bors, "Why aren't Iraqis writing tributes to Christopher Hitchens?"

And he suggests that the general cheerful refusal to take Hitchens to task in the commentary last week has a lot to do with the Look Forward Not Backward view of the Iraq War: "Part of that is the by-product of America's refusal to come to terms with just how heinous and destructive was the attack on Iraq."

Tags: christopher hitchens, glenn greenwald, iraq war, ronald reagan

Iran War talk

Not satisfied with the disaster known as the Iraq War, the neocons and assorted other warmongers want to attack Iran and create an even bigger disaster for US foreign policy.

The latest flurry of Iran War propaganda came with the recent report of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquartered in Vienna. Seymour Hersh, who has been doing great reporting on this for years, addresses the latest IEAE report in Iran and the I.A.E.A. New Yorker 11/18/2011:

The new report ... leaves us where we've been since 2002, when George Bush declared Iran to be a member of the Axis of Evil—with lots of belligerent talk but no definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons program.

He includes an important bit of information on the current management of the IAEA:

The shift in tone at the I.A.E.A. seems linked to a change at the top. The I.A.E.A.’s report had extra weight because the Agency has had a reputation for years as a reliable arbiter on Iran. Mohammed ElBaradei, who retired as the I.A.E.A.'s Director General two years ago, was viewed internationally, although not always in Washington, as an honest broker — a view that lead to the awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. ElBaradei's replacement is Yukiya Amano of Japan. Late last year, a classified U.S. Embassy cable from Vienna, the site of the I.A.E.A. headquarters, described Amano as being "ready for prime time." According to the cable, which was obtained by WikiLeaks, in a meeting in September, 2009, with Glyn Davies, the American permanent representative to the I.A.E.A., said, "Amano reminded Ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77 [the group of developing countries], which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the U.S. court on every strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program." The cable added that Amano's "willingness to speak candidly with U.S. interlocutors on his strategy ... bodes well for our future relationship."

Part of the mainstream US press dissing of Wikileaks was the claim that none of the information they are leaking is particularly important. Actually, there have been important leaks, including this one. It would be a shame if Wikileaks gets shut down, because they are doing investigative reporting that much of the Establishment press in the US is unwilling to do.

Our US national press really makes you wonder how much people can or do actually learn from history. Even recent history. As Glenn Greenwald puts it (The media and Iran: familiar mindlessness Salon 11/22/2011):

The lesson supposedly learned by the U.S. establishment media from the Iraq debacle was the danger of relying on anonymous government sources to disseminate unverified fear-mongering accusations. Rather obviously, no such lesson has been learned, as this continues to be the primary reporting method for accusing the Supreme Hitlers of the Moment — Iran — of anything and everything the U.S. Government can dream up.

Gareth Porter adds some information relative to the report in Former Weapons Inspector: Iran Does Not Have Nuclear Weapons Test Chamber Alternet 11/20/2011. Gareth also links to this interview with nuclear engineer Robert Kelley of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), who has been an IAEA inspector by The Real News Network, Former IAEA Inspector: Misleading Iran report proves nothing 11/14/2011:



Tags: glenn greenwald, gareth porter, iaea, iran, iran war, seymour hersh

Occupy Wall Street and the Money Power

Matt Stoller has a perceptive take on Occupy Wall Street and its political significance at the moment in Occupy Wall Street: The Primary the President Never Had? Alternet 10/24/2011: "What the occupiers have done, perhaps unwittingly, is force political elites to choose, at least publicly, between their funding stream and their popular legitimacy." And he writes:

The gravitational pull of the occupiers is remarkable to behold. Tea Partiers are angry at the stolen thunder. Wall Street tycoon Larry Fink (who is on the investor, not the banks side) offered praise for the protests. Liberal Democratic groups like Moveon and Democracy for America have a new language and group to organize around, instead of defending the White House. Labor now has another horse to back, a motley energetic group calling itself the 99 percent, rather than a mild center-right Democratic elite class. Big-dollar liberal donors are excited to find a way to tap into this "energy." The occupiers are considered a new pole in the political system, "Krugman's army," perhaps.

Glenn Greenwald has a perceptive take in The importance of protests Salon 10/30/2011:

Ever since I began writing about politics, the most frequently asked question I’ve encountered has been: but what can we do about all of this? The reason I find the Occupy movement to be one of the most important, exciting and inspiring political developments of the last decade is that it provides the definitive answer to that question. Though still in what I hope is its incipient stage, this protest movement proves that citizens of all different backgrounds and even ideologies (though sharing common interests) possess the ability to unite, pose a threat to seemingly invulnerable power factions, and demand change beyond the mere act of voting once every two years — and that they can endure and even grow in the face of abusive police force. Though it has already accomplished substantial good, the protest movement hasn’t yet achieved all of that, but it has provided the template and made manifest the possibility.

... oligarchs in a corrupted society will be free from any meaningful checks from the government they own and control, and will continue to pilfer from the rest of the society until resulting social unrest on the part of ordinary citizens becomes too disruptive and threatening to their interests. Put another way, an oligarchical class that operates without any fear in its collective heart of the citizenry will continue to assemble and protect its ill-gotten gains without limits. That is why this protest movement is so vital — so indispensable — because it is precisely that fear in the hearts and minds of the elite classes that has been so destructively lacking. [my emphasis in bold]

I'm happy to see that a group of progressive media figures has decided to put more of a focus on the anti-democracy Citizens United Supreme Court decision. (Paul Blumenthal, Campaign Finance Reformers Launch Progressive Effort To Remove Money From Politics Huffington Post 10/26/2011)

The current crooked Supreme Court is not only corrupt but more and more crassly partisan. Just as in the New Deal when the "nine old men" on the Supreme Court did all they could to torpedo the New Deal programs, today's Roberts Court is using their position to more permanently entrench the power of money to control the political institutions that are supposed to be representative democratic institutions but are failing to play that role at this moment in some very serious ways, Greece possibly being the most painful example right now.

Tags: glenn greenwald, occupy wall street

The assassination of US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki

However bad a guy Anwar al-Awlaki may have been, he was an American citizen who had never been charged with a crime, much less convicted in a legal process. And he was just reportedly assassinated by the US military, possibly along with another American citizen. This is a big problem, even if everything the US government that killed Awlaki is saying about him really is true. There have been claims before than Awlaki had been killed, but this one apparently has more confirmation than the typical Awlaki-is-dead-again reports.

Here is President Obama's triumphalist announcement of having successfully assassinated an American citizen:



Again, the claims Obama is making of Awlaki's misdeeds have never produced an indictment, much less a conviction. "Only" an assassination.

This is a 09/30/2011 report from Aljazeera English:



The headline on Glenn Greenwald's commentary isn't an exaggeration: The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality Salon 09/30/2011. This is a seriously bad precedent, a direct violation of US law. Greenwald writes:

It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki. No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was "considering" indicting him). Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even has any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt. When Awlaki's father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were "state secrets" and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts. He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner. When Awlaki's inclusion on President Obama's hit list was confirmed, The New York Times noted that "it is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing."

This is seriously bad stuff. There were good reasons the US got its agencies completely out of the assassination business in the 1970s. But this is the first time a US Administration has proclaimed its authority to put out a hit on US citizens solely on the authority of the Executive Branch. This is one way in which the Obama Administration has extended its claims of illegitimate Executive power beyond anything Cheney and Bush had declared.

Greenwald notes grimly, "The government and media search for The Next bin Laden has undoubtedly already commenced."

Tags: anwar al-awlaki, glenn greenwald

Appeals Court validates torture of American citizens on American soil

I keep saying the torture issue isn't going away. One big reason is because the torture policy initiated by the Cheney-Bush Administration and left unprosecuted by the Obama Administration is corrupting the American system and will continue to do so until the trend is reversed by our political and legal institutions realizing how deeply criminal it is.

Glenn Greenwald explains the implications of a brutal 11th Circuit Federal Appeals Court decision that validated the torture of American citizen Jose Padilla, who was held in federal custody for three years in the United States and severely tortured (Jose Padilla and how American justice functions Salon 09/20/2011).

As Glenn reminds us, Padilla was dramatically accused of being involved in a "dirty bomb" plot, i.e., one involving radioactive material. So fare as anything in the public record shows, however, there was never anything more substantial than John Ashcroft lying imagination. Padilla was convicted of "supporting Islamic terrorism overseas" and sentenced to 17 years in a super-max prison. He was never charged with anything connected to a "dirty bomb" and nothing in the government's case on the actual charges linked him to that scary-sounding plot. Our crippled media, however, still commonly refer to him as the "dirty bomber."

Glenn summarizes the grim story of Pedilla's torture:

The story of Jose Padilla, continuing through the events of yesterday, expresses so much of the true nature of the War on Terror and especially America's justice system. In 2002, the American citizen was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, publicly labeled by John Ashcroft as The Dirty Bomber, and then imprisoned for the next three years on U.S. soil as an "enemy combatant" without charges of any kind, and denied all contact with the outside world, including even a lawyer. During his lawless incarceration, he was kept not just in extreme solitary confinement but extreme sensory deprivation as well, and was abused and tortured to the point of severe and probably permanent mental incapacity (Bush lawyers told a court that they were unable to produce videos of Padilla's interrogations because those videos were mysteriously and tragically "lost").

Needless to say, none of the government officials responsible for this abuse of a U.S. citizen on American soil has been held accountable in any way. That's because President Obama decreed that Bush officials shall not be criminally investigated for War on Terror crimes, while his Justice Department vigorously defended John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld and other responsible functionaries in civil suits brought by Padilla seeking damages for what was done to him.

Eric Holder's Justice Department demanded more punishment for the convicted man:

Not content with what was done to Padilla, the Bush DOJ -- and then the Obama DOJ -- contested the sentence on appeal, insisting that it was too lenient; Padilla also appealed, arguing that the trial court made numerous errors in excluding his evidence while allowing the Government's. Yesterday, a federal appeals panel of the 11th Circuit issued a ruling, by a 2-1 vote, rejecting each and every one of Padilla's arguments. It then took the very unusual step of vacating the 17-year-sentence imposed by the trial court as too lenient and, in effect, ordered the trial judge to impose a substantially harsher prison term ...

And in our Republican-dominated federal judiciary, the partisan affiliation of the Appeals Court judges is telling:

It should be said that part of what happened here is just the typical politicization of the judiciary, as the two-judge majority was comprised of a hard-core right-wing Reagan/Bush 41 appointee from Alabama (Joel Dubina), while the other was one of Bush 43's most controversial appointees, the former Alabama Attorney General who was filibustered by the Democrats and allowed onto the bench only by virtue of the "Gang of 14" compromise (William Pryor). Meanwhile, the dissenting judge was born in Mexico to Syrian parents and, after moving to Miami at the age of 6, became the first female judge (as well as the first Hispanic and Arab American judge) on the Florida Supreme Court (rising to Chief Justice), and was a Clinton appointee to the federal appeals court (Rosemary Barkett); Barkett, incidentally, dissented from an 11th Circuit ruling denying a habeas petition to Troy Davis, the African-American death row inmate scheduled to be executed by the State of Georgia this week despite mountains of evidence showing his innocence. So this episode highlights one of the few genuine differences that remain between the two parties that can truly impact people's lives: their judicial appointments.

The torture issue isn't going away.

Tags: accountability for torture,, glenn greenwald, jose padilla, accountability for torture

Bachmann and the press: when will the standard script emerge?

Glenn Greenwald provides us a timely caution about getting caught up in the Presidential campaign spectacle that our collapsed media culture treats as "reality-TV" entertainment to the exclusion of substantive reporting: The misery of the protracted presidential campaign season 08/16/2011.

The article also contains some fairly non-critical praise of Old Right isolationist Ron "Papa Doc" Paul, good friend of the Patriot Militia movement. Ron Paul is against crony capitalism? Please. Papa Doc wants to do away with pretty much all government regulations on business. It would be more accurate to call him an advocate for unimpeded crony capitalism. And, in his fondness for the idea of third party candidacies, Greenwald manages to engage in some superficial "both sides do it" griping about Democrats and Republicans.

This clip from CNN reporter Don Lemon also got me thinking about how our broken media cover Presidential candidates: Don Lemon Calls Out Michele Bachmann, Thanks Sarah Palin. Lemon has apparently made it a regular schtick of his to show politicians repeating the same talking points over and over. In this case Michelle Bachmann. The clip shows her repeating the same phrases on various Sunday morning talks shows. And it winds up praising non-candidate Sarah Palin who wasn't on all the Sunday morning shows for being oh-so-much more responsive than Bachmann. (?!?)

Not having seen any of the original segments, I can't say whether Lemon is taking a cheap shot or not here. But it reminds me of the way pool reporters on the Presidential campaign trail have acted in the past. As Bob "the Daily Howler" Somerby documented repeatedly in the days before he fell in love with the Tea Party and decided that liberal bloggers were the bane of the media universe, the pool reporters behave a lot like a group of fraternity and sorority party animals on a trip to see an out-of-state football game. They fell in love with the great Maverick McCain and his honor and moderation after spending time on his press bus in 2000 drinking with him and listening to his stories about war and sex. It's not an environment conducive to critical thinking and careful reflection.This is one important source of the groupthink campaign reporters use to develop their handy and often indelible scripts about the candidates.

And part of what following a candidate on the campaign trail means is that they hear the candidate speak over and over, week after week, often several times a day. And candidates tend to say a lot of the same things and work from a basic stump speech, to the point that the reporters along for the ride get to the point they can recite their own version of it. So what sounds mindlessly repetitive to one of the pool reporters may be fresh and original to large parts of the candidates' audiences.

Don't get me wrong. I certainly done mind the press highlighting Bachmann's s glazed-eyed zombie habits. Jesus' General describes that Charles Manson stare of hers as "the "Eyes of the Anointed," the eyes God employs to mark His chosen." (It's a satire site, people!) "They are the eyes Mrs Bachmann uses when she rebukes sorcerers, witches, and teachers." Joan Walsh uses a phrase from a geezer rock song to describe that look, writing that Rick Perry went "to Iowa to save the GOP from the little Christian lady with the faraway eyes."

Laura Clawson at Daily Kos sees a standard script for Bachmann congealing already: Emerging media narrative: Bachmann is running a 'celebrity' campaign 08/15/2011.

Will any of those scripts come to include serious questions about her Christian Right theocratic ideas and allegiances? Don't bet on it.

Tags: establishment press, glenn greenwald, mainstream media, mainstream press, michelle bachmann

Glenn Greenwald "fisks" the Shields and Brooks Clown Show on the national surveillance state

I often post the video of the PBS Newshour Political Wrap segment from Fridays because it provides a good glimpse of the conservative and liberal version of Beltway Village conventional wisdom of the moment. Every now and then, Mark Shields will suddenly aware from the semi-somnolent condition of torpor in which he usually functions in this segment and say something actually insightful.

I didn't catch any of that happening on the 05/27/2011 edition:



Glenn Greenwald in Establishment thought and the War on Terror Salon 05/27/2011 looks at the happy acceptance of the renewal of the PATRIOT Act substantially unchanged by both conservative David "Bobo" Brooks and Sleepy Mark. His comment on Bobo's endorsement of the surveillance state:

Our Leaders know secret things that we don't that make them know better [according to Bobo], and justify their complete abandonment of what they promise when campaigning (and as I've said many times, if that's really what happened -- if Obama got into office and learned Secret Things that showed him that his criticisms of Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies were misguided -- then don't he and his defenders owe the GOP a serious apology for the inaccurate harsh criticisms they spewed all those years?).

His comment on Sleepy Mark's endorsement of the surveillance state:

Now that we killed bin Laden [according to Sleepy Mark], we need civil-liberties-eroding measures like the Patriot Act more than ever. The notion that the death of bin Laden would trigger a winding down in the War on Terror -- as though bin Laden was the cause of those policies rather than pretext for them -- will prove to be one of the more absurd notions advanced on such matters. [emphasis in original]

Tags: david brooks, glenn greenwald, mark shields, patriot act

Torture, the rule of law and Bin Laden

Glenn Greenwald sums up the issues of international law as it relates to the death of Osama bin Laden and the broader question of applying the rule of law to terrorism cases in The Osama bin Laden exception Salon 05/06/2011:

For me, the better principles are those established by the Nuremberg Trials, and numerous other war crimes trials accorded some of history's most gruesome monsters. It should go without saying for all but the most intellectually and morally stunted that none of this has anything to do with sympathy for bin Laden. Just as was true for objections to the torture regime or Guantanamo or CIA black sites, this is about the standards to which we and our Government adhere, who we are as a nation and a people.

The Allied powers could easily have taken every Nazi war criminal they found and summarily executed them without many people caring. But they didn't do that, and the reason they didn't is because how the Nazis were punished would determine not only the character of the punishing nations, but more importantly, would set the standards for how future punishment would be doled out.

I should note here that we also need to apply a critical understanding to the Nuremberg Trials, even though I agree with Glenn's characterization. There was an aspect of "victor's justice" to them. Some charges - like shooting survivors of a ship sinking - were not used because the United Nations Allies (including the US) had often committed them as well.

Joan McCarter calls attention to this interview with "Matthew Alexander" (a pseudonym) in which he discusses the morality, legality and effectiveness of torture. That is: it's immoral, illegal, and at best marginally effective in obtaining useful information. Dan Froomkin weighs in on the same, including information from an interview with Michael Alexander, in Torture May Have Slowed Hunt For Bin Laden, Not Hastened It Huffington Post 05/06/2011:

It now appears likely that several detainees had information about a key al Qaeda courier -- information that might have led authorities directly to bin Laden years ago. But subjected to physical and psychological brutality, "they gave us the bare minimum amount of information they could get away with to get the pain to stop, or to mislead us," Alexander told The Huffington Post.

"We know that they didn’t give us everything, because they didn’t provide the real name, or the location, or somebody else who would know that information," he said.

The torture issue isn't going away.

Tags: accountability for torture, glenn greenwald, michael alexander, torture

Presidential hit lists for American citizens

Glenn Greenwald weighs in on the Obama Administration failed assassination attempt on the American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in U.S. tries to assassinate U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki Salon 05/07/2011. Such a power was always implicit in Dick Cheney's Unitary Executive theory of Presidential power. But it was the Obama Administration, so far as we know, that first made it operational for the President to decide to execute American citizens without a trial or formal legal charges. As Greenwald says, "one policy where Obama has gone further than Bush/Cheney in terms of unfettered executive authority and radical war powers is the attempt to target American citizens for assassination without a whiff of due process." A Presidential hit list of four American citizens was first reported by the Washington Post in 2010.

There are certain civil liberties debates where, even though I hold strong opinions, I can at least understand the reasoning and impulses of those who disagree; the killing of bin Laden was one such instance. But the notion that the President has the power to order American citizens assassinated without an iota of due process -- far from any battlefield, not during combat -- is an idea so utterly foreign to me, so far beyond the bounds of what is reasonable, that it's hard to convey in words or treat with civility. ...

And if someone is willing to vest in the President the power to assassinate American citizens without a trial far from any battlefield -- if someone believes that the President has that power: the power of unilaterally imposing the death penalty and literally acting as judge, jury and executioner -- what possible limits would they ever impose on the President's power? There cannot be any. Or if someone is willing to declare a citizen to be a "traitor" and demand they be treated as such -- even though the Constitution expressly assigns the power to declare treason to the Judicial Branch and requires what we call "a trial" with stringent evidence requirements before someone is guilty of treason -- how can any appeals to law or the Constitution be made to a person who obviously believes in neither? [emphasis in original]

This is one of the biggest reasons to be skeptical on the prospect of Obama taking the opportunity of Bin Laden's death to withdraw from Afghanistan and otherwise dial back the War On Terror. Glenn Greenwald is also extremely skeptical on that point:

A civil liberties lawyer observed by email to me last night that now that Obama has massive political capital and invulnerable Tough-on-Terror credentials firmly in place, there are no more political excuses for what he does (i.e., he didn't really want to do that, but he had to in order not to be vulnerable to GOP political attacks that he's Weak). In the wake of the bin Laden killing, he's able to do whatever he wants now -- ratchet down the aggression or accelerate it -- and his real face will be revealed by his choices (for those with doubts about what that real face is). Yesterday's attempt to exterminate an American citizen who has long been on his hit list -- far from any battlefield, not during combat, and without even a pretense of due process -- is likely to be but a first step in that direction. [emphasis in original]

Tags: glenn greenwald, targeted assassination

I think there could be a problem with this arrangement...

Glenn Greenwald:

NBC News and MSNBC were long owned by GE, and now by Comcast, both of which desperately need good relations with government officials for their profits. The same is true of CBS (owned by Viacom), ABC (owned by Disney), and CNN (owned by TimeWarner). For each of these large corporations, alienating federal government officials is about the worst possible move it could make -- something of which all of its employees, including its media division employees, are well aware.

Tags: establishment press, glenn greenwald, mainstream media, mainstream press

Glenn Greenwald on the Predator State

Glenn Greenwald provides a memorable description of what Jamie Galbraith calls the Predator State in The leaked campaign to attack WikiLeaks and its supporters Salon 02/11/2011:

But the real issue highlighted by this episode is just how lawless and unrestrained is the unified axis of government and corporate power. I've written many times about this issue -- the full-scale merger between public and private spheres -- because it's easily one of the most critical yet under-discussed political topics. Especially (though by no means only) in the worlds of the Surveillance and National Security State, the powers of the state have become largely privatized. There is very little separation between government power and corporate power. Those who wield the latter intrinsically wield the former. The revolving door between the highest levels of government and corporate offices rotates so fast and continuously that it has basically flown off its track and no longer provides even the minimal barrier it once did. It's not merely that corporate power is unrestrained; it's worse than that: corporations actively exploit the power of the state to further entrench and enhance their power.

That's what this anti-WikiLeaks campaign is generally: it's a concerted, unified effort between government and the most powerful entities in the private sector (Bank of America is the largest bank in the nation). The firms the Bank has hired (such as Booz Allen) are suffused with the highest level former defense and intelligence officials, while these other outside firms (including Hunton & Williams and Palantir) are extremely well-connected to the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government's obsession with destroying WikiLeaks has been well-documented. And because the U.S. Government is free to break the law without any constraints, oversight or accountability, so, too, are its "private partners" able to act lawlessly. That was the lesson of the Congressional vesting of full retroactive immunity on lawbreaking telecoms, of the refusal to prosecute any of the important Wall Street criminals who caused the 2008 financial crisis, and of the instinctive efforts of the political class to protect defrauding mortgage banks.

The exemption from the rule of law has been fully transferred from the highest level political elites to their counterparts in the private sector. "Law" is something used to restrain ordinary Americans and especially those who oppose this consortium of government and corporate power, but it manifestly does not apply to restrain these elites.

A private security company had offered its services to Bank of America to fight Wikileaks and suggested smear and pressure campaigns against journalists, specifically including Greewald himself. This is the topic around which he builds this particular analysis.

Tags: glenn greenwald, predator state

Glenn Greenwald on Julian Assange, Wikileaks and the sad state of the Establishment press

This interview with Glenn Greenwald on Julian Assange and Wikileaks is not only informative on those topics. It also puts on dramatic display the all-too-typical dysfunctions of our US national media, especially television.



Greenwald expands on this interview in The merger of journalists and government officials Salon 12/28/2010.

Our national press has very serious problems. The cynics who dismiss politics altogether are happy to say, oh, of course the press is totally corrupt and useless. And overstating the problem in that way harms our understanding of it rather than furthers it. It's important to see what the press currently delivers that still contributes to democratic government and what its specific problems are. Even a softball interview with a senior government official or leading politician can be revealing, sometimes entirely unintentionally. Just as the video above shows the two alleged journalists from CNN, one of which was the Homeland Security Adviser to George W. Bush as President, taking a straight-up polemical stand in favor of the federal government's case against Wikileaks.

At one level it's superfluous to say, but it's still worth noting sometimes that we're not hearing a lot in defense of freedom of the press and open government around the Wikileaks controversy from the Tea Party activists who profess to love freedom and the Constitution so much.

Greenwald's observation here is very much consistent with the interview:

Over the last month, I've done many television and radio segments about WikiLeaks and what always strikes me is how indistinguishable -- identical -- are the political figures and the journalists. There's just no difference in how they think, what their values and priorities are, how completely they've ingested and how eagerly they recite the same anti-WikiLeaks, "Assange = Saddam" script. So absolute is the WikiLeaks-is-Evil bipartisan orthodoxy among the Beltway political and media class (forever cemented by the joint Biden/McConnell decree that Assange is a "high-tech Terrorist,") that you're viewed as being from another planet if you don't spout it. It's the equivalent of questioning Saddam's WMD stockpile in early 2003.

As Gene Lyons, also writing about the press and democracy in Salon on 12/22/2010 says in a line that also became the article's headline, People, we're in deep trouble.

I find it frustrating to write about this without falling into some meaningless generalization, e.g., "we don't have a real democracy." We don't have a generally understood vocabulary in US politics to talk about degrees of democracy. The Deep South in which Haley Barbour (and others including me) grew up spoke the language of democracy. But the Mississippi of the 1950s and 1960s was qualitatively different in the kind of government it practiced than most of the country. It and several other Deep South states could be said to be democracy for whites only until after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed and enforced.

Similarly, it's nothing new to see newspapers and other media siding with local business interests against labor, or to see corrupt old-style city political machines fix elections.

Even today, despite great and continuing efforts by the Republicans to establish 1950s-Deep-South levels of election manipulation in various parts of the country, the voting procedures in the US right now are generally pretty clean.

But when the Supreme Court picks the loser in the Presidential race to place into office, as they did in 2000, that is something new and bad that has happened that reduces the degree of democracy we have. When the national press has travelled the road it has from Whitewater (1992) to Judith Miller and her "weapons-of-mass-destruction" propaganda fraud (2002) to the empty-head-propaganda standard of infotainment passing for journalism that we see in the clip above, something bad has happened that reduces the degree of democracy. When the Supreme Court opens the floodgates of corporate money to influence election outcomes, relying on a legal theory of the corporation as a legal person that was reactionary even in the 19th century, something bad has happened that reduces the degree of democracy.

At the same time, the Internet has created alternative forms of political participation in the last 15 years or so that has been on balance a positive contribution up to now. The political system as a whole doesn't move uniformly in one direction. Progress in one area can come at the same time as retrogression in another.

But the current state of our national press is a danger to democracy in the United States. Not the only one, but certainly one of the most serious. Maybe in the long run, the most serious.

Tags: glenn greenwald, wikileaks

Glenn Greenwald on national security abuses, the war on drugs and other things

Glenn's position on a third party option for Democrats is unrealistic, though worth hearing. In a two-party system, there are ways for dissenting ideological or interest groupings to assert their distinct perspectives without a third party, such as primary challenges. The "movement conservatives" that were considered a failed, sectarian faction in the Republican Party after the 1964 electoral fiasco have long since become dominant within the Republican Party without coalescing around a third party option. At the same time, rightwing third parties like the Constitution Party have played a significant role in the growth of far-right dominance in the Republican Party without throwing elections to the Democrats.

Tags: glenn greenwald

Two resignations, two columns and the American press today

High-level resignations have been in the news lately.

Greg Craig, chief White House counsel, resigned after being targeted by press leaks blaming him for the failure to close Guantanamo by next January, a goal Obama announced this past January and has now abandoned. On Tuesday, Phil Carter, an attorney, former blogger and Iraq War veteran, resigned from his Pentagon position as the top official there for detainee affairs.

Glenn Greenwald writes about the latter in Phil Carter's resignation from key detainee policy post Salon 11/25/09. He puts Carter's resignation into the context of Craig's and of the rule-of-law disputes over trying terrorism suspects that have been held for years at Guantanamo and other stations of the Bush Gulag. He also states straightforwardly that both men "remained loyal to Obama by refraining, at least thus far, from publicly criticizing any administration policies." He provides some careful speculation about what policy differences might have been part of their decisions but does so in a way that his information and analysis is still informative and useful even if both resignations turn out to be effectively unrelated to policy issues.

This is what not so long ago in the United States, and still today in much of the world, is called "journalism".

(On the Carter resignation, see also Noah Schactman's Danger Room piece, Why Phil Carter Left the Pentagon 11/25/09.)

Then there's Maureen Dowd. Her column Thanks for the Memories New York Times 11/24/09 is actually an example of why many of us once thought of MoDo as a good columnist of a generally liberal bent. If you didn't know anything about her track record, this piece would probably read like a liberal Democratic criticism of Obama for not delivering to the Democratic base on some important issues. And the Craig resignation is a big part of her analysis. (She doesn't mention the Carter resignation.)

But if you follow MoDo as closely as I do for some sad reason, or if you were a casual MoDo readers and concentrated on what she's actually saying, you would notice what she's really saying is: Obama sucks as a President and it's Bill and Hillary Clinton's fault. By some miracle - or maybe her editor had a brief moment of diligence - she doesn't mention her favorite female character from the Clinton story that The Voices in her head continually remind her about. She does mention Lani Guinier and Kimba Wood as obvious examples of the Clintons' badness. Quick, without using a search engine: who is Kimba Wood?

MoDo winds up telling us nothing worth remembering about Craig's resignation. The Huffington Post gives MoDo's column credit for revealing that Bill Clinton lobbied against Caroline Kennedy being appointed to fill Hillary's New York Senate seat: Maureen Dowd: Bill Clinton Lobbied Gov. Paterson To Keep Caroline Kennedy Out Of Senate 11/25/09.

I see two problems with this. One is that I never take MoDo as an authoritative source on anything because she makes stuff up. Second, MoDo is such a committed Clinton-hater that I doubly discount her claims of knowing Bill Clinton's motive for this alleged anti-Caroline-Kennedy lobbying. And she doesn't cite even an anonymous source for the claim. She writes:

Gov. David Paterson was dragging [Kennedy] through mud and refusing to announce a decision on the appointment for the New York Senate seat. Paterson was being lobbied by a vengeful Bill Clinton. Bill was still upset at Caroline for bestowing the Camelot mantle, which he had tried to claim during his campaigns, on Obama.

And then she says what probably for her is the nastiest thing she could say about Obama: she compares him unfavorably to Bill Clinton.

And she notes in a chipper tone that Obama's alleged actions are:

... especially puzzling given that Obama faces tough midterms and a less-than-certain re-election - and given that we all now know someone on the unemployment line. (A new poll shows Obama and Sarah Palin neck and neck among independents, but then it is a Fox survey.)

She's pumping up Sarah Palin again like she was doing in her previous column. But if she doesn't think the FOX News "survey" is reliable, then why is she using its results to make her point?

So, a story of two columns. One, from Glenn Greenwald in Salon, which says something useful and is careful with facts. The other, from one of the countries leading pundits writing at the "paper of record", the New York Times, filled with pointless speculation about what might be going through the heads of Obama and of Bill and Hillary Clinton, without any particular concern for facts. But then, who needs facts when you have The Voices?

Tags: glenn greenwald, maureen dowd, obama administration

Bob Nietzsche Somerby on reporters exposing "lies"

Bob Somerby's Daily Howler column often reminds me of reading Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Anyone that has spent some time wrestling with Nietzsche's work has encountered passages that seemed at first glance to be wild polemics that, on closer inspection and in the context of the larger work, are actually well-thought-out analysis. His concept of Judaism and Christianity as being based on "slave morality" comes to mind.

Somerby is in full Nietzschian mode in his post of 06/25/09 as he undertakes rhetorical jihads against Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Eugene Robinson for a frivolous obsession with stories of sex and adultery ("We're all Ken Starr now") and at Glenn Greenwald and Jay Rosen for failing to take into full account the state of our national press corps during the 1990s.

And he makes some great points in the process, though someone not really familiar with his work might be taken aback by his polemics against such well-known liberals and, in the case of Glenn and Jay, outspoken critics of the Establishment press.

Anyone who has read a few consecutive posts of mine knows that I quote Glenn Greenwald every other day or so, normally with approval. He's been great on the torture accountability and NSA spying issues, for instance.

But Nietzsche-Somerby in that column touches on one of the weaknesses of Glenn's approach in criticizing the national press is that he often frames it in lawyerly abstractions about the press catering to power. What Glenn sometimes misses or at least understates is the way that the dysfunctions of the national press more often than not benefit the Republican positions on issues of the day. Or, as the Howler puts it in full-throated Nietzsche mode:

What makes Glenn’s work so mushy? He walks away from some profoundly basic distinctions — distinctions which have been universally observed for millennia. As Froomkin tends to do, he draws no distinction between "false statements" and "lies." Everyone in the western world has observed this (important) distinction, for several millennia. But we progressives have become so ardent that we now tend throw this distinction away. In the process, we seek a world where "objective establishment journalists" should be empowered to tell us who’s lying.

But guess what, dumb-asses? Establishment journalists have felt quite free to make such judgments in recent decades. ...

Can we talk? Establishment journalists have felt quite free to identify "LIARS" in recent decades. The problem is this: To the extent that they’ve had this freedom, they have kept calling Democrats LIARS. Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton were endlessly described as the world’s biggest LIARS. And uh-oh! In the future, this is likely the way the mainstream press corps will work - to the extent that they’re given this power.

In fairness, Professor Rosen knows nothing of this, being newly arrived from Pluto. He think the press corps’ problems began under Bush - and only because these elite professionals lacked imagination to deal with his outlier ways. (They were doing their best.) But if we continue to have an establishment press corps, it will be very unwise for liberals or progressives to task them with telling us who are the LIARS. Their track record on this point is clear. The establishment press is a tool of power. They will tend to call Big Pols of the more liberal party LIARS. They’ve done this for the past twenty years. Once financial regularity returns, they will likely resume this practice as the looting starts up again. [my emphasis in bold]

It can be very misleading to try to interpret the national press dysfunction as partisan or ideological; a lot of it is just plain weird. Their deference to power is primarily a deference to economic and corporate power which often does not translate into deference to the Democratic President and Congressional delegation, even when they are at a high tide of popularity as of the current moment.

Three defining features of today's national press corps are their deference to corporate power; their general practice of their profession as infotainment rather than as anything that deserves to be called journalism; and, a locker-room-style groupthink that strains at a gnat and swallows a fly (to borrow a famous King James Biblical phrase). Mix that all together, and you get Maureen Dowd writing about how Obama's cigarette smoking is like Silvio Berlusconi's sex life, Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann trashing Hillary Clinton so hard a year ago that both would up apologizing on-air for their excesses, and leading celebrity press figures stewing in outrage because Obama called on a writer for the Huffington Post in his press conference this week. (Bush's people hiring a male prostitute to act as a ringer at dozens of his press conferences? Not so much.)

Tags: bob somerby, glenn greenwald, nietzsche

Glenn Greenwald harshes on the Senate Dems for being such punks about Joe Lieberman

Looking at the seeming probability that the Senate Dems will let Holy Joe Lieberman get off with no consequences for pimping for the Republicans for the last eight years, Glenn Greenwald writes (The Democrats of 2002 and 2007 haven't gone anywhere Salon 11/12/08):

It is worth remembering that the Democrats who are going to exert dominant political control are the same ones who have provoked so much scorn -- rightfully so -- over the last several years, and particularly since 2006. This is the same Democratic Party leadership which funded the Iraq War without conditions (and voted to authorize it in the first place); massively expanded the President's warrantless eavesdropping powers; immunized lawbreaking telecoms; enacted the Patriot Act and then renewed it with virtually no changes; didn't even bother to mount a filibuster to stop the Military Commissions Act; refrained from pursuing any meaningful investigations of Bush lawbreaking; confirmed every last extremist Bush nominee, from Michael McConnell to Michael Mukasey; acquiesced to even the worst and most lawless Bush policies when they were briefed on them; and on and on and on. None of that has changed. That is still who they are.

Joe Lieberman didn't merely campaign against Barack Obama and several other Democrats. That's the least of his sins. He was not only among the most vocal supporters of the Iraq War, but at least as bad, has endorsed and supported every last radical Bush policy to expand executive power and surveillance activities while destroying core constitutional liberties and checks and balances. He used his Chairmanship for only one purpose: to block oversight into Bush scandals and corruption. He has spouted the most defamatory attacks, not only against Barack Obama, but against war opponents generally. More significantly still, Democrats in his own state -- his own constituents -- booted him out of the party, no longer wanting to be represented by him.

That is who Senate Democrats appear well on their way to selecting to serve as their Chairman of Homeland Security, of all committees. That's because nothing that Lieberman has done really bothers them. Endorsing the Iraq War and the full panoply of radical Bush policies isn't disqualifying in the least because so many of them also endorsed that and support it, or, at the very least, it's not a priority for them. They care even less what their "base" thinks, what the so-called "Left" wants. Few things in this world are less likely than them ever taking even a mild stand - such as stripping Lieberman of his Chair - in order to defend some sort of political principle, or to punish ineptitude, or to announce that there are certain lines to the Right that can't be crossed. They don't do that. They never have. And it shouldn't surprise anyone that they won't now. [my emphasis in bold]

This is what we (the Democratic base!) are up against. And this advice of Glenn's is a very appropriate reminder:

Politicians respond to constituencies and pressure. Constituencies which announce their intention to maintain respectful silence all but ensure that their political principles will be ignored.

It can't be emphasized enough that the election last week was but the first step to changing things meaningfully. None of that is likely to matter much unless as much energy and effort is now devoted to changing the Democratic Party as was just expended to remove the right-wing from power. [my emphasis]

Tags: glenn greenwald, joe lieberman

More on the Bush Doctrine that is now so perplexing to our national press

Glenn Greenwald also has some useful things to say about the Bush Doctrine, aka, the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, in Where is the debate over the Bush Doctrine? Salon 09/14/08. He writes:

Before it became clear that Sarah Palin had never heard of it, nobody -- including the presidential candidates themselves -- ever had difficulty answering questions about what they believed about the Bush Doctrine, nor ever suggested that this Doctrine was some amorphous, impossible-to-understand, abstract irrelevancy. Quite the contrary, despite some differences over exactly what it means, it was widely understood to constitute a radical departure -- at least in theory -- from our governing foreign policy doctrine, and it is that Doctrine which has unquestionably fueled much of the foreign policy disasters of the last eight years.

I don't quite know what to make of the fact that our national press corps is widely pretending they don't even know what it is. What if they're not just lying now and playing us for rubes? What if, six years after it became the official US policy in September 2002, they really have never had a clue about what it is?

He also asks an important question, one to which I would also like to know the answer:

One last point, perhaps the most important one: as the above-excerpted exchanges from the debates make clear, both Obama and McCain understand what "the Bush Doctrine" is and have fundamentally different positions on it, at least as they've expressed those positions during the campaign (whether that would translate into any real differences is a separate question). McCain supports the Bush Doctrine and Obama opposes it. Where is the debate over that fundamental difference? Why isn't the Obama campaign making an issue of John McCain's hair-trigger willingness -- desire -- to start even more wars against countries that haven't attacked us?

... One of McCain's greatest political weaknesses as a candidate is the fact that he's even more willing and eager than Bush was to involve America in new wars -- to start new wars. The virtually complete absence of that vulnerability -- in stump speeches, ads and news reports -- is quite glaring and difficult to understand. The fact that Obama has committed himself to more imperialistic and militaristic approaches than many people would like doesn't negate the fact that McCain has explicitly embraced the underlying premises of the Bush foreign policy -- the Bush Doctrine -- and Obama hasn't. [my emphasis]

Greenwald mentions the following articles on the Bush Doctrine:

In Praise of the Bush Doctrine by Norman Podhoretz (godfather of the neoconservatives) Commentary Sept 2002

The Underpinnings of the Bush Doctrine by Thomas Donnelly (a leading neoconservative), American Enterprise Institute (AEI, Neocon Central) 01/31/03

Here are some additional ones he didn't mention in that post:

The New Bush Doctrine by Richard Falk The Nation 06/27/02 (07/15/02 edition)

Policy Implications of the Bush Doctrine on Preemption by Ivo Daalder, Council on Froeign Relations 11/16/02

Today, It is We Americans Who Live in Infamy by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. CommonDreams.org 03/23/03 (orig. Los Angeles Times 03/23/03)

Present at the Dissolution The Nation editorial 07/31/03 (08/18/03 edition)

Inauguration Speech Marks a Second 'Bush Doctrine', James Lindsay interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman Council on Froeign Relations 01/20/05

Zbigniew Brzezinski testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee 02/01/07

Rescinding the Bush Doctrine by Andrew Bacevich Boston Globe 03/01/07

What Bush hath wrought by Andrew Bacevich Boston Globe 07/01/08

Is Perpetual War Our Future? Learning the Wrong Lessons from the Bush Era by Andrew Bacevich, TomDispatch.com 08/14/08 (an excerpt from The Limits of Power [2008])

Tags: bush doctrine, glenn greenwald

Accountability: What happens when Jeb Bush comes?

Brother Jeb is still waiting in the wings

In the spirit of Tankwoman's post about the urgency of this year's election (Presidential and Congressional), I wanted to post about the issue of accountability, which was prominent at the Netroots Nation convention this past week. A lot of the videos are now available online.

Cass Sunstein was one of the speakers on Friday's panel on "The Next President and the Law". His presentation is available from Ustream.tv (use this link if the embedded video doesn't play correctly; that's John Dean concluding his presentation at the start of this video):

Free TV Show from Ustream
Ari Melber reports on the "accountability" controversy that came up during this panel in Netroots Summit Grapples with Bipartisan Attacks on Rule of Law The Notion blog 07/18/2008.

Both Sunstein and John Dean argued that an Obama administration should avoid prosecuting members of the Cheney-Bush administration. Another panel participant, Michael Waldman, argued that something like a Truth Commission (which would expose facts but not prosecute people) would avoid partisan entanglements over the investigation. (I don't believe he used the term "Truth Commission" himself.)

Glenn Greenwald addressed Sunstein's argument in Political harmony v. the rule of law: an easy choice for the political establishment Salon 07/19/08 and in a radio appearance with Sunstein on Democracy Now 07/22/08.

While I certainly pay attention to Greenwald's arguments on these matters, my impression of Sunstein's appearance at Netroots Nation isn't so negative as Greenwald's. Sunstein said that Republican judges had made "a kind of quiet but massive revolution" in the law over the past 20 years. He distinguished between two kinds of "unitary Executive" arguments that could be made. One is based on the Constitutional grounds that the Executive Branch executes the laws and federal agencies work for the President. Sunstein saw this particular kind of argument as "not alarming".

But the Dick Cheney/David Addington position on the Unitary Executive argues that there is inherent Executive authority to operate to operate outside of legislative authority and even against the legislature. He made it very clear he opposes this version.

On the accountability issue, Sunstein said that the main thing was to get things right going forward. He said we need to be careful about imprisoning member of the prior administration because it creates a "spiral going forward" that leads to things like the Clinton impeachment.

This way of putting it strikes me as wrong to the point of being weird. (One of the big problems is that many people like Sunstein aren't willing to confront the extent to which the Republican Party has become an authoritarian institution that is willing to defy the law, the Constitution and institutional precedent.

If I had been live-blogging, I would have used the words I wrote down at the time, "I really object to this." And that Waldman's idea that a Truth Commission would avoid partisan entanglements over the investigation is an illusion.

The panel got strong pushback on this from the audience and from several questioners. Dean stuck to his position in his response. Though I disagree with Dean's position, he speaks with direct personal experience on the matter of Executive lawbreaking. But, as Melman notes in his piece - though Sunstein himself had to contact him to get it included as an update - Sunstein tried to walk back his position by stressing that he wasn't in favor of ignoring "federal crimes".

This struck me as somewhat contradictory. Because from the Iraq War to the torture policy to phony partisan prosecutions at the Justice Department involve very serious crimes. Sure, an Obama administration should be "careful" in such prosecutions. But the prosecutions themselves are vitally necessary, even if the new administration has to rely on international law to pursue the criminal cases because of Bush pardons as he leaves office.

Dean mentioned in his presentation that Obama has said that he would investigate criminal acts in the previous administration. I think it would be great if Obama would nominate California's current Attorney General, Jerry Brown, for his federal Attorney General. Brown has the integrity and the stones to pursue such prosecutions.

Sunstein's walk-back suggests to me that he might not have encountered the kind of reaction he got at Netroots Nation, of immediate outrage at the notion that war crimes and other felonies in the current administration such just get a pass by the incoming administration. There is an emerging Establishment consensus that the criminals should just be allowed to get away with it. And that could well have been the first time that he encountered outrage at the proposal.

Here's an example of an argument for giving torturers and those who created the torture policy a get-out-of-jail-free card: The Truth About Torture by Stuart Taylor Jr. Newsweek 07/12/08 (07/21/08 issue).

I'm almost done reading Jane Mayer's new book on the torture policy, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. The "war on terrorism" and the Iraq War in particular provided the key enabling for the torture policy. The Iraq War involved other war crimes, as well. And unwinding the worst abuses of the Cheney-Bush administration requires getting the US out of the Iraq War.

But Mayer's book has solidified in my mind that the torture policy is Dick Cheney's real knife in the heart of the Constitution. Unless the torture policy is reversed and those involved held criminally responsible, the likelihood is enormous that the next Republican Presidency will carry the authoritarian dismantling of the Constitution and the rule of law even further than this administration has.

And what would that involve? I'm sure that we'll find out later that even the awful things we know about aren't the limits of the abuses of this administration. And we already know about widespread torture, including at least two American citizens, massive illegal spying and shamelessly partisan prosecution like that of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, who also spoke at Netroots Nation.

Taking that appalling record "to the next level" would seemingly have to mean things like more widespread torture of American citizens; overt censorship of TV, radio, and the Internet; shutting down persistently critical opposition papers and Web sites; more blatant suppression of public dissent at political rallies and demonstrations; even more massive partisan prosecution of Democrats (and dissenting Republicans, if there were any left); and more extensive COINTELPRO type operations against democratic opposition.

Legal accountability is absolutely essential.

As a questioner at about 51:00 on the video puts it, if the Obama administration doesn't pursue prosecution and acts lawfully himself, we might be all right for the next 4-8 years. "But that doesn't do anything for when Jeb Bush comes."

Tags: authoritarianism, cass sunstein, glenn greenwald, john dean, netroots nation 2008

The FISA/telecom amnesty travesty

The bill hasn't passed yet. The Senate is still set to debate it last year. But Obama's position on this has been terrible. And, as it stands now, the Senate Democrats are happy to capitulate - actually, to give the administration more than it expected to get. This is where the Democratic base needs ways to bring heavy pressure on Congress in a very short time frame. Some Democrats, including Obama, should live up to their promises to attempt to filibuster this thing. I'm down with Glenn Greenwald's take on this on in Obama's support for the FISA "compromise" Salon 06/21/08:

It's either that he "chickened out" or - as Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin asserts and Digby wonders - Obama believes he will be President and wants these extreme powers for himself, no doubt, he believes, because he'll exercise them magnanimously, for our Own Good. Whatever the motives - and I don't know (or much care) what they are - Obama has embraced a bill that is not only redolent of many of the excesses of Bush's executive power theories and surveillance state expansions, but worse, has done so by embracing the underlying rationale of "Be-scared-and-give-up-your-rights." Note that the very first line of Obama's statement warns us that we face what he calls "grave threats," and that therefore, we must accept that our Leader needs more unlimited power, and the best we can do is trust that he will use it for our Good.

Making matters worse still, what Obama did yesterday is in clear tension with an emphatic promise that he made just months ago. As the extremely pro-Obama MoveOn.org notes today, Obama's spokesman, Bill Burton, back in in September, vowed that Obama would "support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." MoveOn believes Obama should be held to his word and is thus conducting a campaign urging Obama to do what he promised -- support a filibuster to stop the enactment of telecom amnesty. ...

Incidentally, Chris Dodd made an identical promise when he was running for President, prompting the support of hundreds of thousands of new contributors, and he ought to be held to his promise as well. (my emphasis)

This crass example of class justice and dangerous concessions of police-state powers to the Executive Branch really, really needs to be stopped.

Over at Firedoglake - which is now being edited by Dave Neiwert - Ian Welsh has a good post framing the dilemma the Democratic base faces right now, Building a Progressive Democratic Party 06/21/08. The word "labor" doesn't appear in it, so it's far from comprehensive. A progressive Democratic Party without a reinvigorated labor movement that represents a significantly larger portion of workers than it does today doesn't appear likely to me. But Welsh does get this right:

Whatever sympathies Obama may have for liberalism, or even for the Constitution, he cannot be trusted to fight for either if he feels it is not politically in his interest.

The calculation is simple enough: liberal and progressive voters will hold their noses and vote for him anyway. Moving right increases the range of people he can appeal to and costs him very few votes. Three supreme court justices, after all, are held hostage.

And he discusses two essential elements of getting the Democratic Party to where it needs to be: money and votes. He writes:

What this means is not just donations, nor volunteering. It means building up an infrastructure and a cadre. It means being able to put a machine on the ground which can do registering, canvassing and GOTV. It means having a message machine, from think tanks to ad agencies to reporters and columnists who actually believe in liberalism. It means being able to funnel money to those who need it and can use it. It means having a media machine which can reliably communicate with both the base and the population in general.

With that you remake the party. You do it one incumbent at a time. When they retire you make sure that the person who replaces them is as liberal as possible. When they don't retire, you pick your fights and primary the most egregious ones. Even if you fail (and the right fails more often than they win) the near-death experience is a warning shot across the bows that changes behaviour. (Notice how quiet Specter has been since his near-death experience.) You can do that because you can put a machine on the ground, you can provide policy through your think tanks, you can spread messages through your media and you can pump money where it needs to be when it needs to be. ...

Because no single person is going to save the Democratic party, or the US. Obama, as he just proved, won't. But, to be fair, neither will anyone else. No one person can do it, not even someone who really wanted to. As FDR once said "now make me do it." To get the government and the politicians you deserve you'll have to deserve them. And you'll deserve them by making them do the right thing, not expecting them to. (my emphasis)

Obviously, it's easier to write or talk about than to do. But that's the situation we need to bring into being. If it sounds a bit familiar, it's because Welsh is looking at the example of the transformation of the Republican Party since 1964. That's why they have a solid phalanx pushing for telecom immunity and police-state powers for the President, and we have some big portion of the Democratic Party elected officials trembling in fear that they'll be accused of being sissies if they defend the Constitution.

The Balkinization blog has been providing coverage on the FISA bill and related issues for years now. The Jack Balkin post to which the Greenwald quote above refers is Why Obama Kinda Likes the FISA Bill (But He Won't Come Out and Say It) 06/20/08. Balkin gives an unsentimental, Jeffersonian view of why Obama likely supports the FISA bill:

Barrack Obama plans to be the next President of the United States. Once he becomes President, he will be in the same position as George W. Bush: he wants all the power he needs to protect the country. Moreover, he will be the beneficiary of a Democratic-controlled Congress, and he wants to get some important legislation passed in his first two years in office.

Given these facts, why in the world would Obama oppose the current FISA compromise bill? If it's done on Bush's watch, he doesn't have to worry about wasting political capital on it in the next year. Perhaps it gives a bit too much power to the executive. But he plans to be the executive, and he can institute internal checks within the Executive Branch that can keep it from violating civil liberties as he understands them. And not to put too fine a point on it, once he becomes president, he will likely see civil liberties issues from a different perspective anyway.

So, in short, from Obama's perspective, what's not to like?

Balkin stresses that there are two major parts of the bill. Telecom amnesty is one. Expanded Executive power on surveillance is the other. He concludes:

If you really care about civil liberties in the National Surveillance State, you have to recognize that both parties will be constructing its institutions. The next President will be a major player in its construction, as important if not more important than George W. Bush ever was. That President will want more authority to engage in surveillance, and he'll be delighted for Congress to give it to him officially.

Balkin warns that the expanded surveillance portion of the bill is "where your civil liberties will be defined for the next decade." The scare talk from the administration about this bill has to do with cleaning up some technical issues (e.g., having to do with e-mail) on monitoring foreign-to-foreign communications. Modernizing this aspect is widely accepted even by the most severe critics of the administration's proposed changes. The controversial aspects have to do with expanded powers for warrantless surveillance on American citizens in the US.

All this is on top of the Unilateral Executive doctrine supported by Cheney, Bush and McCain that says the (Republican) President has "inherent" powers to spy on anyone he wants any way he wants, legal or not, as long as he claims it's about "national security". And what isn't, these days?

For a fairly detailed description of what is involved in the FISA update part of the bill, see Modernizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [n.d, accessed 06/21/08]: A Working Paper of the Series on Counterterrorism and American Statutory Law, a joint project of the Brookings Institution, the Georgetown University Law Center, and the Hoover Institution by David Kris. Kris is also currently blogging on the issues covered in that paper in a more compact form at the Balkinization blog.

For reference, earlier Salon posts by Glenn Greenwald on the topic:

McCain, spying and executive power: A complete reversal in 6 months 06/03/08

NYT circulates fear-mongering claims on FISA debate 06/10/08

British debate highlights the cravenness and complicity of congressional Democratic "leaders" 06/15/08

Obama, telecoms and the Beltway system 06/19/08

George Bush's latest powers, courtesy of the Democratic Congress 06/19/08

Tags: authoritarianism, barack obama, glenn greenwald

House Dems git that ole time religion today

Glenn Greenwald is really, really hard to please when it comes to Democrats and FISA renewal. That makes it all the more notable when he writes in House Democrats reject telecom amnesty, warrantless surveillance Salon 03/14/08:

As impressive as the House vote itself was, more impressive still was the floor debate which preceded it. I can't recall ever watching a debate on the floor of either House of Congress that I found even remotely impressive -- until today. One Democrat after the next - of all stripes - delivered impassioned, defiant speeches in defense of the rule of law, oversight on presidential eavesdropping, and safeguards on government spying. They swatted away the GOP's fear-mongering claims with the dismissive contempt such tactics deserve, rejecting the principle that has predominated political debate in this country since 9/11: that the threat of the Terrorists means we must live under the rule of an omnipotent President and a dismantled constitutional framework.

It is possible that the House will ultimately end up capitulating to the President, but I have real doubts about whether that will happen. They have defied the standard GOP Terrorism-exploitation attacks for weeks, allowed the Protect America Act to expire (once the President refused to extend it), and now passed a very good bill even in the midst of intense GOP/media attacks. They did so as a result of a shrewd strategy and a willingness to frame and engage the debate aggressively.

Y'all done good this time, Dems! And so did the base for putting the street heat under their often-reluctant rear ends.

democrats, glenn greenwald