Mano Singham's Web Journal

THIS BLOG HAS MOVED AND HAS A NEW HOME PAGE.

Entries in "Politics"

January 09, 2012

Misleading arguments against same sex marriage

Most people have probably heard that Rick Santorum was given a hard time by a group of college students in New Hampshire because of his opposition to same sex marriage, which resulted in him being booed and jeered at the end. You can see the video at the bottom of this news story. What people may not have been noticed is that this was a group of college Republicans, which shows how the younger generation across the political spectrum views giving gays equal rights much more favorably than the old. Homophobia is dying, and dying quickly.

In responding to the question of why he opposed same sex marriage, Santorum exploited a debating trick in which one shifts the point of discussion ever so slightly away from something that is hard to defend against to something else that is easier to defend. The students were not prepared for this and though they sensed that they were getting a non sequitur, they could not quite put their finger on the flaw at that moment. This is not a good thing for Santorum because the students will figure out later what he did and why he was wrong and it will make them angry that he tried to snooker them. I think the jeers at the end were from those who already realized what he was doing but did not get the chance to make their case.

As a former debater, I have learned that there are quite a few tricks that you can use to stymie an opponent and seemingly win a point in the short term but you have to be aware that when people figure out later that they have been tricked, that will backfire on you. So, as a public service, here is some information to anyone to counter the kinds of phony arguments that Santorum made.

What happened during the exchange was this. When a student asked why he opposed same sex marriage, Santorum correctly replied that the burden of the argument is on those who advocate a change in existing law and pressed the student for a reason that made same sex marriage necessary. Put on the spot, the student said (at 2:30) that without it, gay people do not have the right to visit their partners in hospital. Santorum responded (again correctly) that gay people could sign a contract that gave their partners this particular right, so marriage was not necessary to achieve that particular goal.

But this misses the point. It is true that one can sign contracts that enable one's partner to have this or that specific right, but the fact is that when you get married you automatically get conferred on you a wide range of rights, only a few of which can be substituted contractually outside of marriage. If all the rights of marriage could be achieved by signing a single legal contract between two people, then the whole issue of same sex marriage would be moot since we would have the equivalent of civil unions and gay people could have such a legal ceremony and be done with it.

Santorum further said that if same sex marriage is allowed, then the rule that marriage is only between one man and one woman would no longer hold and one would have to allow polygamy as well. He wisely steered away from his earlier claim that allowing same sex marriage to be legal would mean that one would have to also allow marriage to animals and children. This association of homosexuality with bestiality and pedophilia was what resulted in his famous Google problem.

What Santorum was doing here was misleading the audience on the ways in which the rules for marriage can be expanded. In general, marriage has the following rules: (1) only human beings can get married; (2) the number of people who can be married is two; and (3) the two people must consist of one man and one woman. (There are other rules involving age, relationship, and so on that do not add anything to the point I am making here.) Hence when one broadens the definition of marriage, one can do it in at least three ways. One can expand it to include other species, one can increase the number of people involved, one can make more flexible the genders of the people involved, or some combination of all three. What should be obvious is that there is no logical reason why any one option would inevitably lead to any other. What supporters of same sex marriage are saying is that they have no problem with restricting marriage to human beings or that the number be two. It is that they want to relax only rule #3 and allow two people of any gender (male, female, transgender) to marry. The reason for urging this change is so that then there will be equality under the law and that people's rights are not restricted because of their gender or sexual orientation. This is a reasonable, understandable, and to my mind compelling, argument.

So what about relaxing rule #2 and allowing polygamy or rule #1 and allowing bestiality? At present there is no significant constituency pressing for either and so they are moot and bringing them into this discussion is purely a diversionary tactic. It may happen that the day will come when (say) some Mormons and Muslims lead a campaign for relaxing rule #2 and that debate will come to the forefront. I for one would have no fundamental problem with the number of people who are allowed to marry being increased to three or four or to whatever number society deems most suitable. But for the same reasons as above, I would have a problem if they increased it to three and restricted it to (say) just one man and two women. If we are going to increase the number to three human beings then, invoking the same principle of equality, the persons that comprise those three should not be restricted by gender. You should also allow one woman and two men, or three men, or three women, or one woman and one man and one transgender, and so on.

What Santorum was doing was conflating something that is arbitrary (the number of people who can be married) with something that involves a fundamental principle of justice (equal treatment under the law). As an analogy, if one should be needed, it is like the speed limit on a road. People accept whatever number is posted. People also accept speed limit changes from 55 mph to 60 mph or 65 mph as involving merely numbers that are determined based on a variety of prosaic reasons. There is no fundamental principle involved. But everyone would agree that it would be wrong to have one speed limit for male drivers and another for female drivers.

One student during the exchange pointed this out, saying (at 5:40) that she personally did not care if polygamy was allowed but that this issue was irrelevant to the issue of same sex marriage. She was absolutely correct but her view did not get a proper response.

This was not a debating competition where the point is to win. As a lawyer, Santorum should have been aware of everything that I said above and in not acknowledging it, he was either being dishonest and trying to bamboozle the audience or is so homophobic that his reasoning skills completely desert him when it comes to anything involving homosexuality. It could be the latter. As comedian Gary Shandling says in a tweet, "Rick Santorum seems so homophobic that I'm surprised he even allows another man to vote for him."

I think that the students sensed that Santorum was not discussing the issue honestly and was being patronizing and condescending and that was why he was roundly booed at the end. But thanks to the internet, people are going to wise up and the next time he, or anyone else, tries these debating tricks, I hope they get strong push back.

January 07, 2012

Another storm in a teacup

A good indicator of how degraded the political discourse has become in government is the absurd fuss over the recess appointment by president Obama of Richard Cordray to head the newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency that Elizabeth Warren designed and which she was considered too controversial to lead. She is now running for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts.

The US Senate, that has blithely ignored or gone along with all the major violations of the law and the constitution that presidents have committed over recent years, has taken umbrage over a minor issue of procedure and privilege, illustrating once again my point that it is not the issues that they fight over in Washington that one must watch closely, it is what they don't fight over.

The Daily Show comments on the latest absurd fuss. I find it impressive how, in a few short minutes, they manage to explain precisely what is at issue, with all its munitiae, while overlaying it with humor.

January 06, 2012

Now we can all be indefinitely detained

On New Year's eve, a time when no one is paying much attention to politics, president Obama signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act. This was a bill that funded the US military for the rest of the fiscal year. But within that legislation was a provision that allows the US government to indefinitely detain without trial even US citizens, by making the entire world, including the US, part of the 'battlefield' which means that anyone can be picked up anywhere and declared to be an enemy combatant and thus stripped of their rights. The administration claims it has the right to indefinitely detain anyone that they, and they alone, assert is 'at war with the United States', whatever that means. This continues the whittling away at habeas corpus, one of the bedrock protections of individual liberty.

According to the ACLU, the legislation was "drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing." It then passed easily in both houses with little or no debate, always a dangerous sign, since such speedy and secretive bipartisan harmony usually means that the general public is getting a raw deal. The Daily Show rightly ridiculed the rushed Senate debate.

The Senate finally voted 93 to 7 in favor of the bill. The only 'no' votes were Tom Harkin (D, Iowa), Tom Coburn (R, Ok), Rand Paul (R, Ky), Jeff Merkley (D, Or), Ron Wyden (D, Or), Mike Lee (R, UT), and Bernie Sanders (I, VT). Notable yes votes were from Al Franken and Sherrod Brown. Ohio's Brown, a supposed liberal, has a disgraceful record of voting for authoritarian legislation such as the Military Commissions Act in 2006 and now this. The House of Representatives voted 283 to 136 in favor with 14 not voting.

Human rights groups have been outspoken in their condemnation of the Act. Human Rights Watch has called it a 'historic tragedy for rights' and its executive director Kenneth Roth has said that, "By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law."

The far-reaching detainee provisions would codify indefinite detention without trial into US law for the first time since the McCarthy era when Congress in 1950 overrode the veto of then-President Harry Truman and passed the Internal Security Act. The bill would also bar the transfer of detainees currently held at Guantanamo into the US for any reason, including for trial. In addition, it would extend restrictions, imposed last year, on the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo to home or third countries – even those cleared for release by the administration.

As Justin Raimondo points out, this legislation "essentially repeals the longstanding Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents the military from engaging in law enforcement on US territory." Obama apologists have, as usual, said that things are not that bad but Glenn Greenwald sets them straight using the direct language of the Act to make his case. Matt Taibbi is disturbed by the muted reactions to this the new law, when the opposition should be vociferous from all sides of the political spectrum.

Those of us who have been following the steady erosion of constitutional rights under the Bush/Cheney and Obama regimes knew this was coming. As is often the case when civil liberties are involved, Obama and the Democrats have played a double game, strengthening the authoritarian powers of government while pretending to care about freedoms. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley rips into the Act and Obama's duplicity;

Ironically, in addition to breaking his promise not to sign the law, Obama broke his promise on signing statements and attached a statement that he really does not want to detain citizens indefinitely.
…
Obama insisted that he signed the bill simply to keep funding for the troops. It was a continuation of the dishonest treatment of the issue by the White House since the law first came to light. As discussed earlier, the White House told citizens that the president would not sign the NDAA because of the provision. That spin ended after sponsor Senator Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan) went to the floor and disclosed that it was the White House and insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision.
…
[T]he insistence that you do not intend to use authoritarian powers does not alter the fact that you just signed an authoritarian measure. It is not the use but the right to use such powers that defines authoritarian systems.

The almost complete failure of the mainstream media to cover this issue is shocking.
…
On the NDAA, reporters continue to mouth the claim that this law only codifies what is already the law. That is not true. The administration has fought any challenges to indefinite detention to prevent a true court review. Moreover, most experts agree that such indefinite detention of citizens violates the constitution.

There are also those who continue the longstanding effort to excuse Obama's horrific record on civil liberties by blaming either others or the times. One successful myth is that there is an exception for citizens. The White House is saying that changes to the law made it unnecessary to veto the legislation. That spin is ridiculous. The changes were the inclusion of some meaningless rhetoric after key amendments protecting citizens were defeated. The provision merely states that nothing in the provisions could be construed to alter Americans' legal rights. Since the Senate clearly views citizens as not just subject to indefinite detention but even to execution without a trial, the change offers nothing but rhetoric to hide the harsh reality.

The Obama administration and Democratic members are in full spin mode – using language designed to obscure the authority given to the military. The exemption for American citizens from the mandatory detention requirement (section 1032) is the screening language for the next section, 1031, which offers no exemption for American citizens from the authorisation to use the military to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial.

Obama could have refused to sign the bill and the Congress would have rushed to fund the troops. Instead, as confirmed by Senator Levin, the White House conducted a misinformation campaign to secure this power while portraying the president as some type of reluctant absolute ruler, or, as Obama maintains, a reluctant president with dictatorial powers.
…
For civil libertarians, the NDAA is our Mayan moment: 2012 is when the nation embraced authoritarian powers with little more than a pause between rounds of drinks.

The Daily Show rightly mocks Obama's bogus attempts at pretending that he cares about civil liberties.

So what happens if you or someone you know is captured and detained under this law? Not to worry! Tom the Dancing Bug has a handy information sheet telling you what rights you still have.

January 05, 2012

The short happy (political) life of Rick Santorum

Despite his strong showing in Iowa, there is absolutely no chance that Rick Santorum will get the Republican nomination because the party establishment will shoot him down before he rises too far. The only question is how long it will take before he is crushed. This is because his social views are too out there even for a party that likes to see itself as the guardians of morality. His obsession with sexual issues, especially his reservations about the right to contraception, is too creepy and extreme for even the oligarchy and its media allies and they will never let him get the nomination. For a sample of his positions, see here.

Furthermore, he is already the butt of relentless humor about his name as a result of Dan Savage's efforts and The Daily Show also had fun with him.

Santorum's daughter Elizabeth has complained about it, saying that "It's disappointing that people can be that mean." In her father's defense, she says that she has gay friends who support her father's candidacy based on his economic and family platforms.

One of the telling signs that a particular bigotry is on the way out is when those bigots go out of their way to insist that they do not hate the victims of the bigotry but in fact have such people among their friends. The statements "Hate the sin, love the sinner" and "Some of my best friends are black/Jews/gays/(fill-in-the-blank)" have now become jokes because they are such obvious attempts at hiding their prejudices. Major changes in social attitudes tend to be accompanied by this kind of hypocrisy just before the new attitudes become accepted.

Dan Savage notes that this stage has arrived for gays. As Savage says, "[W]hat does it tell us about this moment in the struggle for LGBT equality that even homophobes like Elizabeth and her dad perceive a political risk in being perceived as homophobic?" Rick Santorum, his daughter Elizabeth, Rick Warren, Joel Osteen, Donny Osmond, and Sarah Palin all insist that they have gay friends, though those friends are mysteriously invisible. Either they are made up or they exist but do not want to publicly identify themselves and have to explain to others how they could be friends with homophobes. Savage says that reporters should ask who these friends are. Whatever the case, the very fact that such affirmations of friendship are now obligatory is a good sign.

Savage also says that reporters who listen sympathetically when such people complain about how others are being mean to them about their homophobia are not doing their job. What they encounter is nothing compared to the meanness of the policies that they would like to inflict on gay people. It is a good article, and the short video at the end about a gay couple that waited in vain for forty years to get married is very moving.

All those who predicted dire warnings of the collapse of the US military as a fighting force as a result of the repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' (yes, you, John McCain) should apologize because the military has not fallen apart. Even the celebrated public kiss of two navy lesbians aroused little more than curiosity and celebration, the first kiss on shore being a navy tradition whenever a ship returns to port. Note that a similar photo was also featured on the official website of the US Navy.

We now have had multiple states give equal rights to gay people (at least as far as marriage is concerned), all of which were predicted to signal the end of civilization as we know it. And what has happened? Nothing. Life goes on just as before, as all rational people knew it would. Meanwhile the governor of Washington state is introducing legislation to legalize gay marriage which, if it passes, will make it the seventh state to do so, after New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Iowa and the District of Columbia.

We should just give gay people equal rights now in all areas of public life and be done with it. They are going to get them eventually anyway because it is the right thing to do and rights have always been expanded to include more groups of people, never reduced. The people who fight this trend are going to lose and lose badly and will be looked back in history as villains. And they will deserve it.

In the meantime, we can enjoy all the Santorum jokes that will fill the airwaves in the next few days before he fades off into well-deserved oblivion.

January 04, 2012

God tells Pat Robertson what to expect in 2012

Oh that god, such a tease! After promising Michele Bachmann that she would pull off a miracle in Iowa, he unceremoniously dumped her to sixth place, exactly where she was predicted to be, resulting in her 'suspending' her campaign, which is translated as 'dropping out'. I thought that she would lash out at god for making her look like a fool, but she held her tongue. That's perhaps a wise move since we know how god gets riled for the most petty things and can lash out, like the way he had forty two children attacked by bears merely because they called his prophet Elisha 'baldy'.

It looks like god also abandoned another devoted fan Rick Perry, who came in fifth and has decided to 'reassess' his campaign, which also translates as 'dropping out', although he may have changed his mind and decided to stick it out a little longer.

It looks like god decided, like with Tim Tebow, to throw his weight behind his third string quarterback Rick Santorum, the latest candidate to enjoy the anti-Romney surge. I must admit that I did not see that coming. I thought that the anti-Romney forces would be exhausted after the collapse of their previous hopes Bachmann, Perry, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich.

I think god dumped Bachmann because he is a sexist and prefers to hang out with the guys, especially football players. Via Gawker, I learn that he has also been spending a lot of time with his old buddy Pat Robertson, telling him all that will happen in 2012, including who will be president, though Robertson said he will keep that particular bit of news to himself, probably so that he can make a killing betting on the outcome on Intrade.

It looks like Robertson took notes of what god said during these chats because he gives us direct quotes. Imagine: Direct quotes from god! How cool is that? I don't know why this has not got the entire media to pay attention. Even the woman Robertson is telling all this to does not seem to get all that excited. What a jaded people we have become when god's actual words are ignored.

Did you know that Robertson also only came in second in the Iowa caucuses in 1984 when he ran for president, even though he is so tight with god? So Rick Santorum should not be disheartened that god left him just eight votes shy of first place. It looks like god has this habit of holding back just a little bit. He did go all the way with Mike Huckabee in 2008, only to crash and burn his candidacy soon after. I think god just gets a kick out of messing with his fans' minds.

God truly does work in mysterious ways.

January 03, 2012

God and Michele Bachmann

We all know that god personally told Michele Bachmann to run for president and made sure that she won the straw poll in Iowa last August. But god is somewhat promiscuous in his affections and also told Rick Perry and Rick Santorum that he wanted them to run too. Then god let his attention drift away from politics and wander to other matters, such as helping Tim Tebow get the Denver Broncos into the Super Bowl playoffs. As a result, the three candidates started tanking in the polls and Bachmann is now predicted to come in sixth in today's Iowa caucuses.

But now that the playoff picture is set and god has done right by Tebow, Bachman is sure that god is paying attention to her campaign again and is ready to stun the masses, saying, "We're going to see an astounding result on Tuesday night — miraculous." How does she know this, you ask? Because "We're believing in a miracle because we know, I know, the one who gives miracles." Yes, god has her on his speed dial and is ready to roll.

So Michele is planning on a successful Hail Mary play today, since god seems to have directly assured her that Jesus will haul down the pass in the end zone. Then god can go back to his main interest and guide Tebow to a win over the Steelers on Saturday.

January 02, 2012

Hillary Clinton hypocrisy on internet freedom

Glenn Greenwald eviscerates Hillary Clinton on the issue of internet freedom, pointing out that the things she condemns other governments of doing are the things that her own government is trying to do.

So let's review Secretary Clinton's list of grave threats to Internet freedom and see how it applies to her actions and those of the Obama administration. "Those around the world whose words are now censored . . . who are blocked from accessing entire categories of internet content" – check. Attempting to undermine the Internet's ability to "enliven public debates, quench a thirst for knowledge" – check. "Ideas are blocked, information deleted, conversations stifled, and people constrained in their choices" – check. "Companies turning over sensitive information about political dissidents" and "a company shutting down the social networking accounts of activists in the midst of a political debate" — check. "Those who push these plans often do so in the name of security" – big check.

Internet freedom — preventing government and corporate control of the Internet — is indeed one of the most vital political fights of this generation, perhaps the most vital. There are many people in a position credibly to lead and support that fight. Hillary Clinton and the government in which she serves is most definitely not among them; more often than not, they are among the enemies of those freedoms.

It never fails to surprise me how brazenly our elected officials say one thing and do the opposite on matters of extreme importance. Surely it must be because they do not fear being questioned on such things by the establishment media that reserves its belligerence for the most trivial of issues.

Blacks and the Civil War

Given that the Civil war was about slavery and the emancipation of African Americans, you would think that blacks would be keenly interested in that period of history, to understand the causes and effects of an event that had such momentous consequences for them. In an article titled Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?, Ta-Nehisi Coats says that the opposite is true and addresses the roots of this disengagement that results in "the near-total absence of African American visitors" from famous Civil War sites.

Our alienation was neither achieved in independence, nor stumbled upon by accident, but produced by American design. The belief that the Civil War wasn't for us was the result of the country's long search for a narrative that could reconcile white people with each other, one that avoided what professional historians now know to be true: that one group of Americans attempted to raise a country wholly premised on property in Negroes, and that another group of Americans, including many Negroes, stopped them. In the popular mind, that demonstrable truth has been evaded in favor of a more comforting story of tragedy, failed compromise, and individual gallantry. For that more ennobling narrative, as for so much of American history, the fact of black people is a problem.
…
The fallen Confederacy's chroniclers grasped this historiographic challenge and, immediately after the war, began erasing all evidence of the crime—that is to say, they began erasing black people—from the written record.
…
For that particular community, for my community, the message has long been clear: the Civil War is a story for white people—acted out by white people, on white people's terms—in which blacks feature strictly as stock characters and props. We are invited to listen, but never to truly join the narrative, for to speak as the slave would, to say that we are as happy for the Civil War as most Americans are for the Revolutionary War, is to rupture the narrative. Having been tendered such a conditional invitation, we have elected—as most sane people would—to decline.

It is an interesting article.

December 30, 2011

Murder by drone

Drones have become the weapon of choice that the Obama administration uses to kill people. Under his administration, their use has expanded far beyond what was done before.

In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries… But no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation's security goals.

But while the administration tries to persuade us that all the people killed are 'suspected terrorists', the whole program is shrouded in secrecy and they refuse to divulge what standards are used to order the summary deaths of people in other countries. But while the publicized deaths of civilians or Pakistani troops are shrugged off as rare mistakes, there are reports that in a large number of cases, there are suspicions that they don't even know whom they have killed. And of course, everything is shrouded in secrecy, so no one can question them.

What Obama has created is an unaccountable global assassination program that murders anyone that he decides deserves to die. But at the same time, it also murders people who are not targets, people who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, including US citizens. As the Washington Post report above states, "CIA and military strikes this fall killed three U.S. citizens, two of whom were suspected al-Qaeda operatives." So two were merely 'suspected' of terrorism, which is the new standard that justifies summary execution. But what about that third person who wasn't even suspected? As long as such people are poor and powerless, who cares if they die?

December 28, 2011

How Republicans punish rich people

It seems like I have been unfairly maligning Republicans as being interested only in enriching the extremely wealthy. It turns out that they are perfectly willing to take away some of their privileges.

In addition, Senate Republican leaders would go after "millionaires and billionaires," not by raising their taxes but by making them ineligible for unemployment compensation and food stamps and increasing their Medicare premiums.

Yes, that will show them. When Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein gets fired and applies for government aid to provide food for his family, won't he be surprised when he is turned down?

Former federal prosecutor calls for jury nullification of marijuana laws

A former federal prosecutor calls upon people, if they serve on a jury, to use nullification as a means to change marijuana laws. He uses the case of Julian P. Heicklen, which I have discussed before.

If you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote "not guilty" — even if you think the defendant actually smoked pot, or sold it to another consenting adult. As a juror, you have this power under the Bill of Rights; if you exercise it, you become part of a proud tradition of American jurors who helped make our laws fairer.
…
Jury nullification is not new; its proponents have included John Hancock and John Adams.

The doctrine is premised on the idea that ordinary citizens, not government officials, should have the final say as to whether a person should be punished. As Adams put it, it is each juror's "duty" to vote based on his or her "own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court."

He points out that, "How one feels about jury nullification ultimately depends on how much confidence one has in the jury system. Based on my experience, I trust jurors a lot."

I agree with him.

December 27, 2011

The Ron Paul conundrum

The Republican primary race is getting truly bizarre. Under normal circumstances, someone with Mitt Romney's money, credentials, and establishment support should have by now been able to take a solid lead in the race, given the absence of any other major establishment challenger. And yet his levels of support have stayed at a mediocre 25% while successive opponents have been pecking at his heels, sometimes even overtaking him in the polls for short periods. It is clear that while the party establishment has gone one way, the party faithful is not happy with their choice.

The party establishment did not have any serious concerns about Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum winning, rightly seeing them as fringe candidates who were going nowhere. They seemed to get more concerned about the rise of Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, clearly seeing them as people who could conceivably win the nomination but would flame out in the general election against an incumbent president. The attacks on Cain and Gingrich that sank the candidacy of the former and stalled and, according to some polls, reversed the rise of Gingrich have been to my mind clearly orchestrated by the Republican party establishment. This, along with the slow but steady rate of endorsements of Romney by party leaders, seem designed to send to the party's base the signal that the time for entertaining romantic notions of finding another suitor is over and they should settle down and go with the judgment of their elders.

But it is the curious candidacy of Ron Paul that is causing the party leadership to totally freak out. The problem with Paul is that he is not a loyal servant of the oligarchy. While some of his policies, such as the desire to dismantle large segments of the government, would benefit the oligarchy by ridding them of some of the oversight and regulations that get in the way of their search for unfettered profits, his articulated philosophy is not based on oligarchic subservience and this makes him an unreliable ally. What is worse, his foreign policy is totally at odds with the other leg of oligarchic interests which is to treat the world as their private property and to use the US military to bring to heel troublesome nations that seek independence of US control. And finally, his attitude that Israel is just another country that should have no special claim to US support, and that the current US policy of unwavering allegiance to it is wrong, has sent the neoconservative elements in the Republican leadership into a tizzy.

By all reasonable measures, the results of the Iowa caucuses next Tuesday should be relatively insignificant, apart from being the first official delegate-selecting process. It is an odd process in a state that is not a good mirror of the country as a whole, and in past years the winners have often not gone on to clinch the nomination. Mike Huckabee won in 2008 and faded soon after. Romney did not do well here in 2008 and initially did not put much effort into it this year. But the media has built it into this huge bellwether of public opinion and now that Gingrich is the latest anti-Romney to falter, there is a real chance the Ron Paul might win it, a possibility that is clearly giving the party leadership nightmares. His involvement with some racist newsletters in the past and the support his policies have received from extremist fringe groups are now being unearthed and publicized and you have to suspect that this is coming from sources within the Republican party who are seeking to sink his candidacy.

In case that effort fails, the message now being promulgated by some is that if Paul wins, all it would signify is that the Iowa caucuses are irrelevant. Meanwhile, others are panicking and suggesting that a Paul surge in Iowa and New Hampshire would indicate the need for the party to find a new dark horse candidate, though it is not clear who would fit the bill.

I have thought from the beginning, and still do, that Romney will be the eventual nominee. I have found that in American politics, a reliable rule of thumb is that the candidate with the most money wins. Romney has the resources to last the pace and grind out a win by steadily accumulating delegates until each of his opponents throw in the towel. Only Paul seems to have the organization to stay with him until the end. It will be an ugly win, like a football game that is decided by defense and penalties, but still a win.

The Paul candidacy raises some important general issues for those who are not partisans. When one is confronted with a politician who has a strict adherence to a particular ideology, and one does not buy into that ideology completely, one finds oneself supporting some policies and opposing others. This is the case with Ron Paul's brand of libertarianism. Broadly speaking, I like his stances on foreign policy and his libertarian attitudes towards personal rights and freedoms, laud his demands for transparency in the financial sector and the Federal Reserve, but oppose a lot of his other economic and social policies. Unlike Paul, I do not think that the elimination of government is a good thing. The government and the legal system are the only entities that are big enough to act as a counterbalance to the massive power of business over individuals, which is why we should zealously seek to make them independent agencies working for the general welfare and the rule of law.

But how does one weigh the balance and decide if one should vote for such a candidate or not? Conor Friedersdorf looks at the specific issue of the Paul newsletters and the more general issue of how to weigh the good and bad of candidates in making political choices.

It is a long and thoughtful piece.

December 26, 2011

Revelations about the Haditha massacre

The infamous Haditha massacre that occurred on Nov. 19, 2005, have faded from people's memories.

That morning, a military convoy of four vehicles was heading to an outpost in Haditha when one of the vehicles was hit by a roadside bomb.

Several Marines got out to attend to the wounded, including one who eventually died, while others looked for insurgents who might have set off the bomb. Within a few hours 24 Iraqis — including a 76-year-old man and children between the ages of 3 and 15 — were killed, many inside their homes.

As the reporter says, "Haditha became a defining moment of the war, helping cement an enduring Iraqi distrust of the United States and a resentment that not one Marine has been convicted."

When reports of this got out, it was regarded as a horrifying atrocity and, as usual, was quietly buried. But two weeks ago, purely by chance, a reporter came across in a junkyard files of interviews of the people responsible for the massacre. What the interviews reveal is just how routine was the killing of civilians on this scale.

Chief Warrant Officer K. R. Norwood, who received reports from the field on the day of the killings and briefed commanders on them, testified that 20 dead civilians was not unusual.
…
General Johnson, the commander of American forces in Anbar Province, said he did not feel compelled to go back and examine the events because they were part of a continuing pattern of civilian deaths.

"It happened all the time, not necessarily in MNF-West all the time, but throughout the whole country," General Johnson testified, using a military abbreviation for allied forces in western Iraq.

One can only imagine the bitterness and hatred engendered in the relatives of those massacred in this way.

December 24, 2011

The oligarchy's feelings are hurt

The oligarchy, so long accustomed to do their looting in peace, has been surprised by the sudden turn in the tide against their rapaciousness and the successful adoption of the Occupy movement's "We are the 99%" slogan now being used against them. You would have thought that they would be smart enough to lay low and hope that the storm passes.

But no, some of them are whining about how their feelings are hurt and contemptuously dismissing their critics as being 'imbeciles' and that those who are so poor that they pay little or no taxes have no right to complain because they have 'no skin in the game'.

Matt Taibbi points out that the reverse is true, that it is the oligarchy that has no skin in the game because are not rooted in any place and thus have no sense of obligation to a geographical community that ordinary people have.

Most of us 99-percenters couldn't even let our dogs leave a dump on the sidewalk without feeling ashamed before our neighbors. It's called having a conscience: even though there are plenty of things most of us could get away with doing, we just don't do them, because, well, we live here. Most of us wouldn't take a million dollars to swindle the local school system, or put our next door neighbors out on the street with a robosigned foreclosure, or steal the life's savings of some old pensioner down the block by selling him a bunch of worthless securities.

But our Too-Big-To-Fail banks unhesitatingly take billions in bailout money and then turn right around and finance the export of jobs to new locations in China and India. They defraud the pension funds of state workers into buying billions of their crap mortgage assets. They take zero-interest loans from the state and then lend that same money back to us at interest. Or, like Chase, they bribe the politicians serving countries and states and cities and even school boards to take on crippling debt deals.

Nobody with real skin in the game, who had any kind of stake in our collective future, would do any of those things. Or, if a person did do those things, you'd at least expect him to have enough shame not to whine to a Bloomberg reporter when the rest of us complained about it.

The oligarchy's open display of the depth of their contempt for those not in their class is quite astonishing. I actually think this is a good thing and should be encouraged. The more this Marie Antoinette attitude is put on full public display, the more likely they are to get their comeuppance. As Taibbi ends his piece, "Unbelievable. Merry Christmas, bankers. And good luck getting that message out."

December 20, 2011

Mitt Romney loses one veteran's vote

At a recent campaign stop at a coffee house in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney spotted a man wearing a veteran's cap. Since candidates love to pander to veterans, Romney glommed on to him but it was not quite what he expected. Listen to what the Vietnam veteran says after Romney leaves.

Israel, US, and WikiLeaks

Bradley Manning, alleged Wikileaks leaker, is finally getting his day in court, even if it is just a military court that does not allow for the full exercise of rights that civilian courts have.

One overlooked aspect of the WikiLeaks releases is what it says about US subservience to Israel's interests. For example, recall the failure of the talks last year between Israel and the Palestinian leadership. M. J. Rosenberg describes how the US government, both the White House and the Congress, is controlled by the Israel lobby led by AIPAC, and says that "here is only one reason that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations collapsed. It is the power of the "pro-Israel lobby" (led by AIPAC) which prevents the United States from saying publicly what it says privately: that resolution of a conflict which is so damaging to US interests is consistently being blocked by the intransigence of the Netanyahu government and its determination to maintain the occupation."

Israel has shown that it can extort what it wants from the US. Last year, the US requested that there be a moratorium on settlement building in the occupied territories. Israel refused, even rejecting the US offer of a bribe of three billion dollars in return for which Israel would simply have a moratorium on settlement for just 90 days. And despite being publicly humiliated time and again, the US government continues to be servile to Israel.

Apart from being one of the major enablers for these Israeli policies and lavishing the country with huge amounts of aid that enable Israelis to have a high standard of living, the US also provides it with diplomatic cover in the international arena. The US even vetoes UN resolutions on the settlements even when the resolutions are exactly in line with publicly stated US policy. WikiLeaks revealed that the US had secret deal with Israel to expand settlements even as they publicly decry it.

Is there any more glaring indication of the fecklessness of US political leaders and their subservience to Israel? But one notable feature is how few of the leaked WikiLeaks cables deal with Israel. Israel Shamir suggests that this is part of the western government-media subservience to the Israel lobby, which we also saw demonstrated with how they downplayed reports that the US, French, and German leaders view the Israeli prime minister as an incorrigible liar.

The Guardian and the New York Times, Le Monde and Spiegel are quite unable to publish a story unacceptable to Israel. They may pen a moderately embarrassing piece of fluff, or a slightly critical technical analysis in order to convince discerning readers of their objectivity. They may even let an opponent air his or her views every once in a blue moon. But they could never publish a story really damaging to Israel. This is true for all mainstream media.

Furthermore, no American ambassador would ever send a cable really unacceptable to Israel – unless he intended to retire the next month. Yet even supposing this kamikaze ambassador would send the cable, the newspapers would overlook it.

Even with thousands of secret cables about Israel in their hands, the mainstream media delays and prevaricates. They don't want anyone to yell at them. That is why they have postponed publishing the articles. Once forced by circumstance or competition to publish the contents of the cables, you can bet they'll twist the revelations into toady headlines and bury the truth in the final paragraph.

Robert Fisk comments on one aspect of Middle East politics gleaned from the few WikiLeaks releases:

It's not that US diplomats don't understand the Middle East; it's just that they've lost all sight of injustice. Vast amounts of diplomatic literature prove that the mainstay of Washington's Middle East policy is alignment with Israel, that its principal aim is to encourage the Arabs to join the American-Israeli alliance against Iran, that the compass point of US policy over years and years is the need to tame/bully/crush/oppress/ ultimately destroy the power of Iran.

There is virtually no talk (so far, at least) of illegal Jewish colonial settlements on the West Bank, of Israeli "outposts", of extremist Israeli "settlers" whose homes now smallpox the occupied Palestinian West Bank - of the vast illegal system of land theft which lies at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian war. And incredibly, all kinds of worthy US diplomats grovel and kneel before Israel's demands - many of them apparently fervent supporters of Israel - as Mossad bosses and Israel military intelligence agents read their wish-list to their benefactors.

As long as the US continues to be subservient to Israeli interests and impervious to justice, there will be no resolution of the Middle East conflict.

December 18, 2011

Lawrence Lessig on campaign finance reform

The corrupting influence of money on politics in the US is pervasive and entrenched. I had never found any proposed solution that satisfied me. The catch with federally funded campaigns, which is favored by many reformists, is that while it might reduce the influence of lobbyists and big campaign donors, it also tends to favor the two established parties. Until those two parties face a revolt or otherwise genuine threat to their entrenched dominance, there is little incentive for them to not be corrupt.

So I was pleasantly surprised to hear Lawrence Lessig on The Daily Show suggest a reform that might actually work. I have not read his book Republic, Lost: How money corrupts Congress - and a plan to stop it but his idea is that the government would refund the first $50 of people's taxes to them in the form of a voucher that they could donate to any political campaign. In addition, each person would be allowed to donate up to $100 of their own money.

The catch is that this would require a constitutional amendment since the Supreme Court has ruled that money is a form of speech and steadily removed restrictions on campaign contributions.

The interview is well worth watching. In the first part, Lessig describes how the current system corrupts politics and in the second, he discusses his solution, as well as some other options that modern technology allows.

Part 1:

Part 2:

December 16, 2011

The Republican debate

Once again, The Guardian's Richard Adams spares me from having to watch last night's Republican debate by providing an amusing live blog.

December 15, 2011

Donald Berwick explains the Affordable Care Act

Donald Berwick is a highly respected expert on health care who was president Obama's nominee to head the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. So of course he was opposed by the Republicans who are determined to block anything that might benefit people under the act. He was forced to serve for just a limited time by means of a recess appointment and has now stepped down from that post.

Chris Hayes had an interview with him that I highly recommended watching, especially his explanation about the important aspects of the Affordable Care Act. That begins at the 9:00 minute mark.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

December 14, 2011

Police brutality as a consequence of the war on terror

In a comment to an earlier post on the increasing paramilitarization of the police, reader Steve raised the question of the connection between the rise of such policing in the US and the work of the ominously named Department of Homeland Security that was formed in the wake of the events of 9/11.

He is of course absolutely right. At the time that the Orwellian USA PATRIOT Act was rushed through in October 2001 with almost unanimous support in Congress (357 to 66 in the House and 98 to 1 in the Senate, with Russ Feingold being the lone holdout), many of us warned that this was a Trojan horse that would be used to undermine the rule of law and the constitutional protections that had, with a few exceptions, been followed for much of its history. What exceptions had been made were at times of great stress (the Civil War and World War II) and were seen as temporary measures.

The USA PATRIOT Act institutionalized these abuses and made them part of the new normal. Under the guise of fighting the 'war on terror', a threat that is increasingly being revealed as bogus, the DHS was created under the act and has, along with the National Security Agency and the CIA and FBI, been the vehicles that have been used to create a Big Brother state that now routinely violates the rights of Americans in the permanent war on terror.

Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi both look at the roots of the increased use of pepper-spraying as standard procedure, even as concerns are being raised about whether they are as non-lethal as claimed.

One consequence has been that the spread of so-called non-lethal weapons, such as the various gases, tasers, rubber bullets, concussion grenades, water cannons, ear-splitting sound emitters, etc., have had the effect of actually increasing the violence used by police, since the innocuous term 'non-lethal' for weapons that can still cause serious harm actually encourages their indiscriminate use against people. We seem to have reached the stage where we think that as long as people are not killed or dismembered, then whatever is done to them in the name of law and order is acceptable. This is the same kind of mentality that enables people to condone torture.

Two factors are leading to a proliferation of new anti-civilian weapons. One is that massive funding for the so-called 'war on terror' has enabled the DHS to shower military-style equipment on even small police forces that transform them into paramilitary units. While the equipment has been given away freely to local units, the heavy expense of maintaining them is the responsibility of local agencies and is draining police resources away from traditional police work. The other factor at play in driving this is that the huge amounts of money now available for 'anti-terrorism' has created an incentive for companies to come up with new ways of disabling and dispersing crowds. As a result, pepper spray may soon become one of the milder forms of brutality.

James Wolcott describes how ear-splitting sound devices known as LRADs (Long Range Acoustic Devices), more popularly known as 'sound cannons' and used on the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators, can cause severe damage on the human body. He quotes an ACLU report that describes what happened to Karen Piper who was present at the scene of G-20 protests in 2009.

On September 24, 2009, Piper, then a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University, decided to observe G-20 protests in Pittsburgh's Lawrenceville neighborhood as research for her book on globalization issues and the responses of bodies like the G-20 to protest activity. She arrived at Arsenal Park around 10 a.m. and saw protestors calmly and peacefully milling around the area. After the protest began, Piper walked on the sidewalk a short distance from the marching protesters, in the company of other curiosity seekers and journalists. When Piper became concerned about rapidly increasing police activity, she tried to leave the area. As she was walking away, police officers activated, suddenly and without warning, an LRAD a short distance away from her. It emitted a continuous piercing sound lasting several minutes.

Piper immediately suffered intense pain as mucus discharged from her ear. She became nauseous and dizzy and developed a severe headache. Since then, Piper has suffered from tinnitus (ringing of the ears), barotrauma, left ear pain and fluid drainage, dizziness, and nausea. She still suffers from permanent nerve damage.

"The intensity of being hit at close range by a high-pitched sound blast designed to deter pirate boats and terrorists at least a quarter mile away is indescribable. The sound vibrates through you and causes pain throughout your body, not only in the ears. I thought I might die," said Piper, now an English professor at the University of Missouri. "It is shocking that the LRAD device is being promoted for use on American citizens and the general public."

Now come reports of the development of lasers that 'temporarily' blind people being tested as riot control weapons in England. Rest assured that they will come here soon, to be followed by 'accidents' in which people end up being permanently blinded because of equipment malfunction or improper use.

We also have the first reports of the predator drones that are being used around the world to spy on and kill people now being deployed in the US.

I remember how, when I first came to the US in 1975, I was unnerved to see police walking around with real guns. Sri Lanka at that time had a civilian unarmed police force, with weapons used only in the most extreme cases. Now it has a highly militarized police with powerful guns, armored vehicles, and checkpoints becoming routine sights. The militarization of the police in the US is now also well underway and soon it will seem normal to see police in riot gear armed to the teeth stationed with armored vehicles at various places in cities.

We should never forget that the prime role of a country's military nowadays is almost always to protect government leaders and the oligarchy from its own people, not from external threats. The external threat is an excuse to intimidate and cow its own people into acquiescence.

December 13, 2011

Yes sir, that's my Bibi

As usual, I did not watch last Saturday's Republican debate, preferring to learn about it from Richard Adams' always entertaining live blog for The Guardian. One exchange that caught my eye was when Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich fell over themselves trying to show who was more devoted to Israel, repeatedly referring to the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as their friend 'Bibi'.

Romney: Of course you [Gingrich] stand firm and stand for the truth, but you don't speak for Israel.
Gingrich: I didn't.
Romney: If Bibi Netanyahu wants to say what you said, let him say it. But our ally, the people of Israel should be able to take their own positions and not have us negotiate for them.
Gingrich: Can I just say one last thing? Because I didn't speak for the people of Israel. I spoke as a historian who has looked at the world stage for a very long time. I've known Bibi [Netanyahu] since 1984. I feel quite confident an amazing number of Israelis found it nice to have an American tell the truth about the war they are in the middle of and the casualties they're taking and the people who surround them who say, you do not have the right to exist and we want to destroy you.
Romney: I've also known Bibi Netanyahu for a long time. We worked together at Boston Consulting Group. And the last thing Bibi Netanyahu needs to have is not just a person who's a historian, but someone who is also running for president of the United States stand up and say things that create extraordinary tumult in his neighborhood. And if I'm president of the United States, I will exercise sobriety, care, stability and make sure that I don't say anything like this.

Anything I say that can affect a place with rockets going in, with people dying. I don't do anything that would harm that process. And, therefore, before I made a statement of that nature, I'd get on the phone to my friend, Bibi Netanyahu and say, would it help if I say this? What would you like me to do? Let's work together because we're partners.

I find it extraordinary that people running for the leadership of one country would so proudly proclaim their undying loyalty to another country, to the extent that they would not say anything without first getting it approved by the head of that country, even though that head is despised by world leaders as a liar.

I would like moderators at these debates to ask the candidates if there is any issue on which the interests of the US and Israel diverge. Except for Ron Paul, I expect them all to answer 'no', even though such an answer is patently absurd.

December 11, 2011

Proponent of jury nullification may not get a jury trial

I have written before about the important practice of jury nullification, in which juries exercise their option to be the ultimate judges of the validity of laws and have the right, if they think that the law itself is unjust, to acquit someone of a charge even if the person is clearly guilty of violating the law. (See here and here)

Juries have this right because they, not the legislators, are the ultimate judges of a whether a law is just and are the ultimate bulwark against governments that can manipulate the system to pass laws that are not in the public interest. Judges and prosecutors often oppose sharing information about this right with juries, another example of the desire of the elites to prevent ordinary people from exercising any power. Judges want to preserve their right to be the sole interpreters of the law while prosecutors do not want to allow another mechanism for acquittal.

This issue has once again come to the fore. Julian Heicklen, a retired Penn State professor of chemistry, is being charged with jury tampering because he handed out flyers outside a Manhattan courthouse informing those who entered the building (including prospective members of juries) of the right of juries to nullify. (I have written about this particular case before.)

Heicklen has asked for a jury trial, as is his right under Amendment VI and Amendment VII of the Bill of Rights of the US constitution, but this is being opposed because prosecutors fear that he will use jury nullification in his own trial as part of his defense against charges that he is illegally advocating jury nullification. Talk about a Catch-22.

This is exactly why the right to a trial by a fully informed jury is so important.

December 10, 2011

Newt Gingrich and the Republican establishment

As I have said many times before, the Republican party establishment had for a long time fed fiery rhetoric on social issues to its party's base in order to win votes, while following pro-oligarchic policies when in power. But the 2008 election provided indicators that the base was fed up with being used this way and wanted to wrest control of the leadership. I said that the 2012 election would bring this fault line to the forefront and show whether the establishment still had control. This has happened and the Romney-Gingrich contest is a good measure of it. News reports are emerging all over of the party establishment attacking Newt Gingrich and pulling for Romney. (See here, here, and here.) It will be interesting to see how they eat their words and support Gingrich if he should be the eventual nominee.

What is noticeable in this race is that the headliners in the Republican party establishment have so far largely steered clear of making any endorsements. They usually play safe and wait until the result is a foregone conclusion and declare their support for the likely winner. But this time around they may face pressure to endorse Romney in order to help him win.

I must admit that I am surprised that Gingrich, of all people, has emerged as the flag bearer for the anti-establishment movement. After all, he is a career politician and ultimate Washington insider, which should make the establishment favor him, but that very fact, plus that he has a lot of baggage in his past, should make the nutty base of the party skittish. The only explanation I can come up with for this weird reversal is that the party establishment is opposing him, not because they fear his policies which are reliably pro-oligarchy, but because they are rightly fearful that Gingrich is too mercurial and unstable and that he will self-destruct, giving Obama an easy re-election victory. And paradoxically, the party establishment's opposition to Gingrich may be what is making him attractive to the base, who have never quite warmed to department store mannequin Mitt Romney.

The Ron Paul camp sees this struggle, along with the revised party rules for awarding primary delegates, as providing a possible path to the nomination, though that remains a very long shot. Recall that the Obama camp in 2008 also cleverly used party rules to amass sizable delegate totals even when they were losing primaries.

December 09, 2011

After Cain, the deluge

This year's Republican primary has been so wacky that we may think that previous races did not have crazy candidates. That is not true. In the 2008 race, there were also people who were nutty as well as a whole bunch of short-lived candidacies by people who quickly faded into obscurity and whose names you have likely forgotten.

The difference this time is that the multitude of debates has given candidates a much longer shelf-life and visibility, and this is likely to increase the likelihood of attention seekers to run in the future. There is one other new wrinkle this time around. One of the side effects of the candidacies of Herman Cain and Donald Trump is that it will likely spawn a lot of future candidates in their mold: Business people who have made a lot of money and are bored with their lives and want some limelight and excitement in the twilight of their careers. They might look at the way Cain went from obscurity to household name and decide that next time around they too will run for president.

While Cain seemed utterly clueless in thinking that his past would not be examined closely, the more cautious among the future rich candidates would run only if there is nothing in their past that will cause them embarrassment. But even that may not deter some because they are so arrogant that they will not realize that what they consider normal behavior toward others may be viewed differently by regular people. These people have lived so long in the bubble that wealth provides, surrounded by toadies who tell them what they want to hear, that they tend to be arrogant and think that nothing can harm them.

So if there is no Republican incumbent in 2016, expect to see a slew of rich businessmen who have never held elected office running for president, portraying themselves as saviors of the country.

December 08, 2011

Pandering to Israel by politicians and the media

If there is one thing that exceeds the absurd extravagance with which American politicians declare their love for Jesus, it is how they describe their love for Israel. It seems like no level of pandering is enough. Just yesterday, six of the Republican candidates attended a forum of the American Jewish Coalition and fell over themselves trying to outdo each other in supporting the most extreme policies of Israel and criticizing president Obama for not doing enough, even though Obama has been as obsequious in appeasing the Israel lobby as any previous president. Ron Paul was not invited to this gathering because he alone has questioned America's massive subsidizing of Israel's economy and unquestioned support for its dangerous policies in the Middle East.

The pandering to Israel does not stop with politicians either. The mainstream media is also wary of saying anything that could be construed as anything other than whole-hearted support for Israel. The level of self-censorship in the Western media when it comes to Israel is quite extraordinary. For example, at a recent summit meeting, an open microphone picked up the following bit of dialogue:

French president Nicholas Sarkozy: "I can't stand him [Netanyahu] any more, he's a liar."
US president Barack Obama: "You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day,"

Uri Avnery says that this exchange followed a report that German chancellor Angela Merkel had told her cabinet that "every word that leaves Netanyahu's mouth is a lie."

The dialogue was broadcast live to a group of senior French media people, because somebody forgot to turn the microphone off. A piece of luck of the kind that journalists dream about.

Yet not one of the journalists in the hall published a word about it. They kept it to themselves and only told it to their colleagues, who told it to their friends, one of whom told it to a blogger, who published it.

Why? Because the senior journalists who were present are friends and confidants of the people in power. That's how they get their scoops. The price is suppressing any news that might hurt or embarrass their sponsors. This means in practice that they become lackeys of the people in power – betraying their elementary democratic duty as servants of the public.

I know this from experience. As an editor of a news magazine, I saw it as my duty (and pleasure) to break these conspiracies of silence. Actually, many of our best scoops were given to us by colleagues from other publications who could not use them themselves for the same reason.

Luckily, with the internet now everywhere, it has become almost impossible to suppress news. Blessed be the online Gods.

You would think that the news that the heads of three major economic powers so utterly despise the head of a country they publicly support unconditionally would be big news and the leaders would be repeatedly asked about this. But this news item lasted just a couple of days in the American media, disappearing as fast as it appeared.

But as Avnery said, the Sakozy-Obama exchange might not have made it into the media at all if not for bloggers on the internet, so we should at least be grateful for that.

December 06, 2011

Riddle: What is torture in Bahrain but not in the US?

An interesting report came out last week. The Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) investigating the protests in Bahrain delivered its report last week and said that the Bahraini government had used "excessive force and torture" on demonstrators. (The full report can be read here.) This was significant in that the authoritarian Bahraini government that was responsible for those actions, and was aided by the Saudi Arabian military in its harsh crackdown, was still in power. The fact that they created a commission and allowed such a report to be released is a tribute to the fact that popular protests seen worldwide against the repressive government had created considerable pressure on even such a government to try and mitigate the damage.

The commission used as its definition of torture Article 1 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment that says that:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

But although the report said that the government had used torture, the news reports that I read in the US were curiously coy about exactly what actions were considered to be torture. However much I searched for them, I could not get the details. For example, this typical report in the New York Times, which prides itself on being 'the newspaper of record' and usually provides the most details in US media shows how they skated over the issue:

Five detainees were tortured to death while in custody, the panel concluded, and other detainees endured electric shocks and were beaten with rubber hoses and wires.
…
In Washington, the Obama administration welcomed the report, but said the onus was now on Bahrain's government to hold accountable those responsible for abuses and to undertake reforms to make sure they do not occur again.

The subtle implication in this report is that being given electric shocks or beaten with rubber hoses and wires was not part of the torture regimen. I finally found an NPR story that provided more details.

Using words like torture, mistreatment and threatened rape, the head of the commission said the kinds of things that are rarely said out loud — especially in the conservative, oil-rich Gulf.

The commission head, Cherif Bassiouni, listed abuses he says were committed against protesters who were detained: They were blindfolded, forced to stand for long periods of time, whipped, beaten, subjected to electric shock, deprived of sleep, and exposed to high temperatures and insults.

These acts, Bassiouni said, amounted to torture. [My emphasis]

I now understood why the mainstream media was shy about specifying the acts. These are the very same actions, or even worse, that are done by the US on its detainees and since the US media is deferential to the claims by the US government that it does not torture, this element of the Bahraini report must have caused considerable cognitive dissonance and had to be suppressed. In the US, in an effort to excuse the Bush administration from war crimes, there was hesitancy to say that even waterboarding was torture, so all these other forms of torture have to be also not mentioned.

Eric Lewis, a lawyer whose efforts to prosecute Donald Rumsfeld and the military chain of command for torture were opposed by the Obama administration, blasts Obama for his hypocrisy on torture, comparing his statements as a candidate with his actions as president, and says that by not prosecuting those who committed such acts, he has left the door wide open for the use of torture by any future president.

The president has rejected three clear opportunities to erect a high legal wall against the return of torture: he has made it clear that criminal prosecutions for torture will not go forward; he has opposed the creation of a truth commission to examine events comprehensively; and he has affirmatively intervened to stop civil litigation by detainees against their torturers.
…
Had President Obama shown the courage of candidate Obama, he would have strongly supported civil litigation under the Constitution against officials who authorized torture. The argument that it involves the courts in foreign policy or causes officials to be wary in their actions is nonsense. The ban on torture should be absolute; it is not a foreign policy or defense issue and it is salutary for officials to know that they will be held accountable for torture.
…
The Obama administration can't just say, "Trust us." Its challenge was not only to stop the American government from torturing detainees, but to institutionalize the legal infrastructure that would prevent the resumption of torture. President Obama had the opportunity to leave an unambiguous legal legacy that prohibited torture and inhibited the torturers of tomorrow from finding legal cover. Instead, we may reap the whirlwind of his timidity, and soon.

Until such time as we are willing to bring those who commit torture to justice, irrespective of who and where they are, these abuses will continue.

December 05, 2011

Penn Jillette on the current elections

He has an interesting take on the origins of 'Christian' politics in the US and how politicians use religion.

(Via Jeff at Have Coffee Will Write.)

December 04, 2011

Deporting US citizens

The agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency "operate in a secretive judicial environment where detention hearings are held out of public view", according to this news report and this lack of oversight leads to abuses in which even US citizens are picked up, kept in detention for long periods, and even deported.

After a detailed examination of federal immigration records, Prof. Jacqueline Stevens of Northwestern University estimated this year that about 4,000 American citizens were illegally detained or deported as aliens in 2010. In a study published last summer, she found that as many as 20,000 citizens may have been wrongly held or deported since 2003.

"If they can't even protect the rights of citizens, think about the others who are being put through this system,'' Stevens said. "You have agents making life and death types of decisions and there is no check on their honesty.''

A US citizen who was detained for 43 days and almost deported is now suing the ICE agency for $1 million.

Once again, this shows the abuses that inevitably occur when people are given power that they can exercise in secret. Transparency has to be the foundation of a democracy but the government keeps steadily increasing the levels of secrecy under which it operates.

December 03, 2011

And now, peak Gingrich

This year's Republican primary race has to be the strangest in recent history.

As this graph of poll averages from Real Clear Politics shows, the party continues its lurching from one non-Romney to another, with Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and now Newt Gingrich having their peaks of support, while that of Mitt Romney and Ron Paul maintain steady but at low levels, and Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman are also steady but almost non-existent. And of course, at one time we had The Donald, the effects of whose brief cameo appearance is not recorded

It says a lot about the modern Republican party that such a repulsive opportunist blowhard like Newt Gingrich is being touted as a clever person, a man of ideas. For a party that has turned its back on science and knowledge in general, their embrace of Gingrich, a man who oozes contempt for everyone else, requires some explaining. I think Paul Krugman was right when he said: "He's a stupid man's idea of what a smart person sounds like." Republicans seem to be impressed by cocky smart mouths (Sarah Palin being the poster child), and repelled by people with real knowledge and expertise.

The person who has the most reason to be righteously aggrieved by this parade of successive contenders to Romney is Rick Santorum, who must have hoped that his smug religiosity, devotion to the oligarchy, and homophobia would appeal to the not-insignificant bloc of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals in the party. Every time the leading non-Romney stumbled, his hopes must have been raised of being anointed the next flag bearer, only to see others being awarded the prize. One can almost hear him wailing in prayer in his lonely hotel room in Iowa, "Why have you forsaken me, Lord? When will it be my turn?"

November 29, 2011

What now for the Occupy movement?

The Occupy movement in many cities have been forced to fully or partially vacate their sites and people are wondering what's next. Chris Hedges has been doing some excellent reporting on the movement and in a recent piece titled This Is What Revolution Looks Like he argues that the movement has exposed the bankruptcy of the oligarchy. The oligarchy thinks that by forcibly disrupting the demonstrations and evicting the encampments, they will destroy the movement and force the occupants to go back to meekly accepting the status quo.

The rogues' gallery of Wall Street crooks, such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs, Howard Milstein at New York Private Bank & Trust, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co., no doubt think it's over. They think it is back to the business of harvesting what is left of America to swell their personal and corporate fortunes.

He says they are wrong.

The historian Crane Brinton in his book "Anatomy of a Revolution" laid out the common route to revolution. The preconditions for successful revolution, Brinton argued, are discontent that affects nearly all social classes, widespread feelings of entrapment and despair, unfulfilled expectations, a unified solidarity in opposition to a tiny power elite, a refusal by scholars and thinkers to continue to defend the actions of the ruling class, an inability of government to respond to the basic needs of citizens, a steady loss of will within the power elite itself and defections from the inner circle, a crippling isolation that leaves the power elite without any allies or outside support and, finally, a financial crisis. Our corporate elite, as far as Brinton was concerned, has amply fulfilled these preconditions. But it is Brinton's next observation that is most worth remembering. Revolutions always begin, he wrote, by making impossible demands that if the government met would mean the end of the old configurations of power. The second stage, the one we have entered now, is the unsuccessful attempt by the power elite to quell the unrest and discontent through physical acts of repression.

Hedges draws upon his long experience as a foreign correspondent for the New York Times to draw parallels between what is happening in the US and what he saw in crumbling despotic regimes elsewhere.

George Orwell wrote that all tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but that once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force. We have now entered the era of naked force. The vast million-person bureaucracy of the internal security and surveillance state will not be used to stop terrorism but to try and stop us.

Despotic regimes in the end collapse internally. Once the foot soldiers who are ordered to carry out acts of repression, such as the clearing of parks or arresting or even shooting demonstrators, no longer obey orders, the old regime swiftly crumbles.

The signs of collapse are everywhere. It begins when bystanders, impressed by the stoicism and doggedness of the protestors, defect from their usual stance of neutrality or subservience to the state and ruling class and into the ranks of the protestors.

The process of defection among the ruling class and security forces is slow and often imperceptible. These defections are advanced through a rigid adherence to nonviolence, a refusal to respond to police provocation and a verbal respect for the blue-uniformed police, no matter how awful they can be while wading into a crowd and using batons as battering rams against human bodies.

Hedges wrote this on November 15 before the police actions that occurred at UC Berkeley and Davis. In Berkeley, 70-year old Robert Hass, a professor of poetry, former poet laureate and Pulitzer prize winner, couldn't believe what he was hearing of police viciously beating students and hurriedly went with his wife to see if the reports were true. He described what happened to them when they found themselves face to face with police in the now familiar paramilitary riot gear assembled in riot formation.

Once the cordon formed, the deputy sheriffs pointed their truncheons toward the crowd. It looked like the oldest of military maneuvers, a phalanx out of the Trojan War, but with billy clubs instead of spears. The students were wearing scarves for the first time that year, their cheeks rosy with the first bite of real cold after the long Californian Indian summer. The billy clubs were about the size of a boy's Little League baseball bat. My wife was speaking to the young deputies about the importance of nonviolence and explaining why they should be at home reading to their children, when one of the deputies reached out, shoved my wife in the chest and knocked her down.
…
My wife bounced nimbly to her feet. I tripped and almost fell over her trying to help her up, and at that moment the deputies in the cordon surged forward and, using their clubs as battering rams, began to hammer at the bodies of the line of students. It was stunning to see. They swung hard into their chests and bellies. Particularly shocking to me — it must be a generational reaction — was that they assaulted both the young men and the young women with the same indiscriminate force. If the students turned away, they pounded their ribs. If they turned further away to escape, they hit them on their spines.

None of the police officers invited us to disperse or gave any warning. We couldn't have dispersed if we'd wanted to because the crowd behind us was pushing forward to see what was going on. The descriptor for what I tried to do is "remonstrate." I screamed at the deputy who had knocked down my wife, "You just knocked down my wife, for Christ's sake!" A couple of students had pushed forward in the excitement and the deputies grabbed them, pulled them to the ground and cudgeled them, raising the clubs above their heads and swinging. The line surged. I got whacked hard in the ribs twice and once across the forearm.
…
One of my colleagues, also a poet, Geoffrey O'Brien, had a broken rib. Another colleague, Celeste Langan, a Wordsworth scholar, got dragged across the grass by her hair when she presented herself for arrest.

What popular movements have is a process of ebb and flow. Because they are loose and unorganized and lack money, they tend to occur in waves, with periods of dormancy in between. The key question is whether subsequent waves build on the previous ones and get larger.

When you see elderly and 'respectable' people, members of the class that would normally favor law and order and ally themselves with the oligarchy and against the rabble in the streets, willing to switch sides and put their own bodies on the line, you are witnessing a sea change.

November 28, 2011

Iowa faith forum

Susan Jacoby has a nice article on the Iowa debate last Saturday that turned into a faith fest, where many of the candidates competed to demonstrate their personal sufferings. She asks, rightly, why we should care about their personal tribulations in selecting a president.

Boo-hoo, gentlemen. Having endured the ordinary vicissitudes or the extraordinary and unfathomable tragedies of life and having sought the help of whatever God in whom you believe has absolutely nothing to do with your suitability for the nation’s highest office. An atheist would face the same tragedies without invoking God’s help and that, too, would have nothing to do with his or her fitness for the presidency.
…
The Iowa forum was a triumph of the union of psychobabble and public religiosity that has come to dominate American politics.
…
Honest candidates, men and women of genuine virtue, do not present their own suffering as a qualification for public office.

Christians have this bizarre notion that suffering is somehow a good thing, that we are better for it, rather than as something unfortunate to be overcome as best as one can. These people are steeped in the Christian mythology of sin and suffering followed by redemption as the way to become a better person and they want to impose that form theocratic thinking on the country.

November 27, 2011

Tribunal finds Bush and Blair guilty of war crimes

Via Glenn Greenwald, I learn that the seven-member Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal in Malaysia, that was headed by that country's former prime minister and had an American law professor as one of its prosecutors, found George W. Bush and Tony Blair "guilty of "crimes against peace" and other war crimes for their 2003 aggressive attack on Iraq, as well as fabricating pretexts used to justify the attack." Greenwald further says that the tribunal

was modeled after a 1967 tribunal in Sweden and Denmark that found the U.S. guilty of a war of aggression in Vietnam, and, even more so, after the U.S.-led Nuremberg Tribunal held after World War II. Just as the U.S. steadfastly ignored the 1967 tribunal on Vietnam, Bush and Blair both ignored the summons sent to them and thus were tried in absentia.

The tribunal ruled that Bush and Blair's name should be entered in a register of war criminals, urged that they be recognized as such under the Rome Statute, and will also petition the International Criminal Court to proceed with binding charges. Such efforts are likely to be futile, but one Malaysian lawyer explained the motives of the tribunal to The Associated Press: "For these people who have been immune from prosecution, we want to put them on trial in this forum to prove that they committed war crimes." In other words, because their own nations refuse to hold them accountable and can use their power to prevent international bodies from doing so, the tribunal wanted at least formal legal recognition of these war crimes to be recorded and the evidence of their guilt assembled.

A different panel of this same tribunal will hold hearings on the charges of torture against Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and others.

Boy, are those Malaysians dense, thinking that the Nuremberg principles were meant to be applied impartially to everyone. Don't they realize that war crimes can only be committed by those whom US presidents declare to be enemies of America? US presidents, their allies, and any one who acts under their orders can never be guilty of war crimes, whatever they do. How hard is it to understand such a simple rule? Those Malaysians must be pretty stupid.

It is worth reading the whole Greenwald piece, as he is also one of those naïve people who believes in the rule of law.

November 23, 2011

Our corrupt Congress

60 Minutes blows the lid off how members of Congress are legally allowed to use the inside knowledge to which only they have access to make money on the stock market and in other deals. This is why so many of them leave Congress as multi-millionaires.

How is this legal? Because in making the insider trading laws, Congress exempted themselves from the laws that apply to everyone else.

Notice how much bipartisan harmony there is on matters like this?

Even disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who went to prison for his role in political corruption, says in an interview about his new book Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America's Most Notorious Lobbyist that "I think the great tragedy in American politics is what is legal, not what is illegal."

In the second part of the interview he talks about what needs to be done to clean up the bipartisan corrupt rot that has set in, and which he once took full advantage of. He says the so-called reforms that Congress enacts are a joke. He provides a good way to address the problem, which is the list of reforms that he, as a lobbyist, would have hated to see enacted because they would have made his job so much harder.

First, he says that once you are in Congress or are a staffer on Capitol Hill, you should face a permanent ban on working as a lobbyist. (Elsewhere, he described how lobbyists get our 'public' servants working for them. Once they see a Congressperson or a Congressional staffer who could be helpful to them and who is also hardworking and efficient, they tell him or her, "We would like you to consider working for us once you leave here." That person usually is hooked and then willing to work on their behalf on legislation even while still working for Congress so that they don't jeopardize their chances of a lucrative career if they should leave or be forced out of government.) Second, he says that, "If you're a lobbyist or you hire a lobbyist or you're at the public trough getting government grants or contracts or whatever, you can't give one dollar politically, federally. If you make the choice yourself to do that, then you have given up the choice to give politically." Third, he recommends term limits so that lobbyists would be forced to go through the tedious process of cultivating and eventually 'buying' new members on a regular basis. Finally, Congress should not be allowed to exempt themselves from the laws they pass for others.

I think that while many people suspect that Congress is corrupt, they do not realize how deeply the rot has spread. We are not talking about a few bad apples here and there, though once in a while there will be an uproar over one or two egregious examples of corruption and someone will face a ritual punishment. Those are the equivalents of the sacrificial virgins of earlier times, designed to protest the others from wrath. In this case, what they fear is the wrath of the people not of gods.

November 22, 2011

The supercommittee throws in the towel

My prediction that the point of the supercommittee was a way to gets cuts in social programs passed in Congress was wrong. Although that may have been the plan all along, it seems like the devotion of the Republicans to enriching the already superrich was too strong to overcome their desire to inflict pain on the poor, and so no deal was reached.

So what about the automatic triggers of $600 billion each in defense and non-defense spending that are supposed to go into effect automatically, and the prospect of which was supposed to be so dire that it would force the supercommittee to come up with a plan? The $600 billion is social spending will cause severe pain to ordinary people but the oligarchs and their agents in Congress do not care about that. It is the $600 billion in defense cuts that is the cause of Congressional angst.

It looks like since those cuts only go into effect in 2013, Congress thinks that it has time to find a way to avoid it. It will not be easy. The legislation that created the deal will have to be repealed by a new law passed by Congress and president Obama has promised to veto any such measure, though Obama's promises cannot be taken seriously.

I frankly do not know how this will play out now. There are too many variables at play. But expect to see a lot of posturing and grandstanding and finger pointing. In other words, the normal working of Congress.

November 21, 2011

Invoking the mercy rule on Herman Cain

Herman Cain is continuing in full gaffe form suggesting, in response to a question about the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act, that he thinks the president can overturn US Supreme Court rulings.

Elsewhere, Cain said that the Taliban are in the new Libyan government, perhaps because he thinks that Libya and Afghanistan share a common border.

In some sports one has the 'mercy rule' in which teams, once they are sure of victory, deliberately hold back from further scoring in order to avoid embarrassing their opponents. It is time to for me to do that for Herman Cain. He has become such an easy target, such a laughing stock, and so obviously inept that it seems no longer worthwhile to comment on any more of his absurdities.

So Herman, gaffe away. I am done with you. Unless it is really, really funny.

Clever UC Davis students

Here is another view of the long silent walk of UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi to her car after the contentious press conference on Friday after the pepper-spraying atrocity.

I have to hand it to the students. This was one of the most effective strategies they could have adopted. The dead silence with which they watch her walk was far more effective at showing her impotence than her being jeered or yelled at.

A rally is being planned at noon today (Pacific time) on the UC Davis campus.

The creeping paramilitarization of the police

The government response to the Occupy Wall Street movement has been to unleash the police to forcibly clear the protestors from various sites. The crackdown has many of the signs of paramilitary actions: dark uniforms and hard enveloping black helmets with visors that hide the faces, brandishing large truncheons, with tasers and guns on their hips, widespread use of pepper spray and tear gas, rough treatment of peaceful protestors irrespective of age and whether they are resisting.

Here are some photos of recent events, where the police look like the storm troopers from Star Wars. We should note that this look by the police is deliberately created. It is not merely meant for their own protection but also to intimidate people, not just the protestors they are confronting but anyone who sees the events in newspapers and on TV and on the web who might think twice before joining the protests and having to personally confront storm troopers.

Up to now, the fact that the police still have visible names and numbers on their uniforms act as a restraint on the brutality, since they can be singled out and punished, however mildly, for excesses. The real danger comes when even those identifiers are covered up, because then there will be little restraint. This may well happen since some of the more aggressive police have already been identified for shaming and police chiefs may say they need the anonymity to 'protect' their people from retribution.

The next stage in paramilitary actions come when the uniforms become generic and the vehicles unmarked, preventing identification of even the police units involved let along individual officers. Then we are approaching the stage of the death squads that operate with impunity in so many countries and where people that are perceived as opponents of the government simply 'disappear', to be never seen again. We are not there yet, but vigilance is required to make sure we do not.

The Egyptian military government has recently been cracking down hard on demonstrators there, causing many deaths and using the police tactics in the US as justification. Gawker comments that when watching the video footage of police beating protestors with sticks and dragging them by the hair, it is hard to tell if we are seeing events in Egypt or in the US, except that the chyrons are in Arabic.

Yes, we have become the model for the Egyptian military junta.

November 20, 2011

UC Davis chancellor faces backlash

This video of students massively protesting being excluded from a media press conference by the university chancellor Linda Katehi, who is facing demands from her own faculty to resign, is gripping. Using the 'mic check' technique that is one of the great innovations of the Occupy movement, they get their voices heard.

The last minute of the video, where the chancellor walks a silent gauntlet of students to her car, is striking and should give pause to other officials who think about using the police to brutally suppress peaceful protestors.

Here's an interview with one of the students who were pepper-sprayed who describes what happened in the time leading to the police action and afterward.

Which side are you on?

From reader Tim, I received this animation from The Guardian that explains the growth of inequality in the US.

The reason I back the Occupy movement is not because they have specific demands that I agree with. Long time readers of this blog know that I, along with scattered others, have been railing against the increasing power of the oligarchy for years with little or no effect. But thanks to the heroic actions of the people in the Occupy movement, within the space of just two months that topic is now front and center, with even the mainstream media forced to discuss it.

The Occupy movement is not asking for this or that specific demand. It is a bit much to ask the movement to provide solutions to the problems facing the global economy. That is the proper role of governments. But the way the government goes about suggesting solutions depends upon the way they view the problem. And their current perspective is that of the oligarchy.

The Occupy movement is saying that the system is corrupt to the core and that the perspective that should be adopted is that of ordinary people. It is only when the oligarchy and their political and media allies are frightened of our numbers that we will see any fundamental change in perspective. That is why the oligarchy will try to crush the Occupy movement before it can gain further strength. Those who ask for specific demands or quibble about whether a march or setting up a protest line or a tent is legal are not only missing the point, they are actually diverting attention from the more important question of for whose benefit the government is working.

In an earlier age, the oligarchy unleashed similar attacks on another people's movement, the unions, which were also seen as a threat. This famous union song by the great Pete Seeger is from that time.

The Occupy movement is forcing all of us to confront the same question again: Which side are you on?

November 19, 2011

Confrontation with police at UC Davis

In a further example of the growth of paramilitary practices in the US, watch a policeman walk up and down a line of sitting students at Occupy UC Davis and squirt pepper spray directly into their faces, as if they were a row of weeds.

After some initial confusion, the other students react, chanting "Shame on you!" and massing and surrounding the police and advancing on them as they slowly back away. At some point, using the effective 'open mic' technique that has become ubiquitous as a result of the Occupy movement, the students offer the police the chance to take their weapons and leave, which they do amidst chants of "You can go!", averting further confrontation.

It is clear from the coordinated efforts to forcibly uproot the Occupy movement that the oligarchy views it as a threat, not major one at the moment, but with the potential to become so if not crushed quickly. Chris Hayes uncovers a story in which a lobbying group warns the American Bankers Association of the danger and offers to help them counter the movement.

If South American countries prosecute their war criminals, why don't we?

Latin American countries used to be notorious for having dictators who ruthlessly repressed their own people, used death squads and torture indiscriminately, and demanded and received immunity for their acts. The rest of the world looked down at them for their lawlessness. Almost all of those dictators were strongly supported by the US.

But things are different now. In this interview, Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive, talks about the changes, how those countries are opening up the dark past and revealing the details of the abuses. One country Uruguay has even revoked the amnesty that was once granted to the perpetrators and says that it will treat all the abuses as crimes against humanity.

The vaults of the CIA, FBI, National Security Council, and the State Department contain documentation that would, if released, prove invaluable in tracking down and prosecuting those criminals. But since the US is fully engaged in the same kinds of lawless practices, such as torture, murder, and self-immunity that those countries used to indulge in, it is unlikely that they will release the documents.

While the Latin American countries are trying to write their past wrongs, many of their past excesses can be seen in current practices in the US, such as the use of paramilitary tactics on the Occupy Wall Street protestors. When you see police in riot gear with batons and gases strong-arming unarmed protestors, irrespective of age or whether they are even resisting, it is eerily reminiscent of what used to be commonplace on the streets of Buenos Aires or Montevideo. We do not have (as far as I know) death squads acting within the US killing off the enemies of the government, though they do act overseas with drones being the weapon of choice.

November 18, 2011

California gay marriage verdict

The California Supreme Court yesterday ruled that the backers of Proposition 8 that banned gay marriage in that state do have the standing to sue in the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a District Court judge's ruling that the proposition violated the US constitution. Hence their appeal can go forward. If the court had ruled the other way, the District Court opinion would have gone forward and gays would have been able to marry.

I think the verdict is the correct one. Usually, it is the state government that pursues any appeals to court decisions that overturn laws but in this case the governor and attorney general of California had both declined to appeal the District Court ruling. I am uncomfortable with the idea that government officials should be given the power to prevent a full legal hearing of an issue. The backers of a proposition should have the right to pursue the legal process to its end.

Although this is a setback for gay rights, a more important principle is at stake and that is that government officials should not be given the power to determine who gets their day in court.

I think this setback for gay rights is temporary. The march for equal rights is unstoppable and that day will come soon, both in the courts and in public opinion.

Bye, bye, Herman, it's been fun

It is becoming clear that Herman Cain's 15 minutes of fame are up. So what caused the rise and fall of Cain? The fall is perhaps easier to explain than the rise. While I think he could have survived the fact that he is ignorant about almost anything other than the restaurant business or that he seems to be a creep when it comes to women, the combination of the two was too much even for the Republican party's crazy base. The relentless mockery has taken its toll. As one could have expected, The Daily Show mined a rich vein of comedy out of Cain's latest gaffe over Libya. It was brutal.

He is no longer their darling and their new heartthrob is, incredibly, Newt Gingrich. It is surely an indication of how desperate they are and how much they dislike Mitt Romney that they are now pinning their hopes on yet another arrogant blowhard, someone whose candidacy was declared dead just a short while ago and will be dead again soon.

The Republican party primaries are providing further evidence of the reality of the 27% crazification factor, that argues that 27% of the electorate is willing to support even the craziest of candidates or issues. That was roughly the size of the support that Michele Bachman, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain reached before their stars faded and that group looked for a new crazy person to venerate.

But what caused Cain's rise in the first place? Reader Tim sent along this very amusing clip in which Rachel Maddow marshals the evidence that Herman Cain is a performance artist whose entire campaign was a spoof, and that he kept sending out coded messages that indicated it was all a joke but that we missed them. And this was even before the Libya fiasco. Calling Cain a performance artist could be construed as an insult to genuine performance artists, but in recent days that term has become synonymous with anyone who is pulling a complex prank or hoax. (Incidentally, while I like Rachel Maddow, she is a little too hyper for my style. But I like that fact that she has her own show and presents views and guests that might not get a hearing otherwise.)

Maddow was being facetious (I think). I don't think Cain started out as a hoax candidacy. I think that he was just another one of those rich former businessmen who are arrogant enough to think that they are really smart and can run the country but did not seriously expect to succeed in their campaign. It likely started out as a vanity project to get him a brief moment of the limelight. I think he may have been truly surprised by the fact that crazy policies that feed the prejudices of the base, delivered with arrogance and condescension, struck a chord with so many party faithful that he started to think he had a serious shot at the nomination, not realizing that slogans only take you so far and that increased prominence brings increased scrutiny. This, coupled with the fact that Republican party's real power brokers were probably terrified that someone as unelectable as he would get the nomination, resulted in him getting hammered from even those within his party, so that his campaign started taking on water and sinking rapidly. It is noticeable that Republican party stalwarts, and this includes Fox News, did not rush to provide Cain with a full-throated defense, a sure sign that they want him gone.

Conversely, Romney has been saying all manner of contradictory and bizarre things and yet he has escaped any serious criticism from the Republican establishment commentariat. The Republican party leadership clearly wants Romney, reckoning correctly that he will advance oligarchic interests and has the best chance of winning in 2012. It will be interesting to see how they undermine the Gingrich boomlet.

The party leadership doesn't really care about Romney's dubious stands on social values that the crazy base of the party really cares about and has resulted in the latter creating a movement that is dedicated to preventing Romney from getting the nomination. The person who must be most chagrined is Tim Pawlenty. He would have been the most credible not-Romney who could have got the support of both the party leadership and the crazies except that he was knocked out by the idiotic and absurdly unrepresentative Ames, Iowa straw poll right at the beginning.

So it is time to say farewell to the Herminator.

November 15, 2011

Libya? Let me try answer #3

Herman Cain's response to a question about Libya makes Rick Perry's flub during the debate pale in comparison. It is painful to watch Cain struggling to remember what he has been told to say about Libya and not confuse that answer with other rehearsed answers. After about ninety seconds of complete incoherence, he then launches into one of those non-answer answers that seasoned politicians have perfected but he is just learning to do. He seems to make the weird claim that the US intelligence services had important information about the situation in Libya that they did not share with Obama which was why he made bad decisions, though Cain did not specify what it was he disagreed with.

The crackdown begins

It looks like cities have begun to crackdown with a vengeance against the Occupy movement all over the country. The police are using tough tactics and it is clear that the movement cannot combat such force. Stephen Colbert showed what happened at Berkeley.

But even if the protestors are driven out, they have achieved one big victory and that is to change the national conversation to the critical issue of inequality and oligarchic rule. That is the one key issue of our time and the discussion about what to do about it is long overdue.

November 11, 2011

Standing by your man

The Herman Cain harassment story is turning into a long-running saga with each day seemingly bringing forth a new complainant and him changing his story accordingly. According to initial polls, the sexual harassment settlements do not seem to have hurt his standing amongst his fan base in the Republican party. His fundraising seems to be going well too.

I am not surprised. One of the things that characterize a sizable chunk (~20%) of party loyalists is that once they make an emotional investment in a candidate because they think he or she is 'one of them', they will stick with that person whatever happens, even if that requires them to abandon positions that they once held.

I suspect that this attitude has always been there but I first noticed it in its most extreme form back in 2008. People who would condemn sex outside of marriage and look down as a bad parent someone whose child had a baby out of wedlock, completely abandoned that stance when it was revealed that Sarah Palin's daughter was pregnant while still in high school. I wrote then:

I have been impressed by the ability of some of the Republican party and its conservative Christian base to pivot so quickly, suddenly celebrating things like teenage parenthood that they would have normally been swift to condemn as incontrovertible evidence of the increasing sinfulness of the nation as a result of taking prayer out of the school and teaching evolution. Now because the person whom they like has these things going on in her family, we are hearing paeans for them as being 'real people', that such things show that the Palins represent 'heartland values'.

I suspect that had McCain nominated someone who later was revealed to be a serial killer but who said he loved Jesus, opposed abortion, and favored policies that favored the wealthy, these same people would suddenly say that 'real Americans' have prison records and the ability to kill without compunction is just the kind of toughness we need in a national leader in order to deal with terrorists. They would also decry as wimps the Democratic candidates because neither had the gumption to shoot a man, just to watch him die.

So far I have not heard anyone say that being charged with sexual harassment is a sign that Cain is a real man, someone with passion and drive who does not play by the rules of namby-pamby society but knows what he wants and goes for it and that is the kind of leader the country needs. But I would not be surprised if someone does. The closest they have come is to make the extraordinary claim that 'sexual harassment' is a 'meaningless' charge that does not exist is reality but is largely a scam to sue powerful and wealthy people. This will no doubt come as a surprise to many people in the workplace.

Things may change if the charges keep coming. Even the most loyal supporter may realize that at some point, even if they are personally willing to overlook the fact that their man is a creep, he is damaged beyond repair and unelectable.

Whatever develops on the harassment front, it is becoming apparent that Cain is an unpleasant, arrogant, egotistical, and self-important man who is used to pushing people around to get his own way. His arrogance is on display in this long profile of him in the New York Times by T. A. Frank.

And is it any wonder that Herman Cain has shed a lot of high-level campaign staff members, both within his national organization and in crucial early states like Iowa and New Hampshire? Most of these former staff members have signed nondisclosure agreements, and others would speak to me only off the record. None of them recall their former boss as a sexual harasser. But they do speak of a man so egotistical that careful self-policing would never really enter into the realm of consideration.

They also speak — bitterly — of a candidate with zero interest in policy. They speak of events canceled at the last minute to accommodate any available television interview. They speak of unrelenting self-absorption, even by the standards of a politician.

But they don’t speak of someone who can’t win.
…
Cain, when flustered, is very different from Cain the motivational speaker. He grows stiff, his jaw tightens and his blinking speeds up. Meaningless phrases (“It was a joke to the extent in the context of the views that speech”) pile up in a panic.

An interview with Piers Morgan the next day went just as poorly, with Cain, supposedly a pro-life absolutist, offering a full-throated endorsement of a woman’s right to choose. “What I’m saying is it ultimately gets down to a choice that that family or that mother has to make, not me as president, not some politician, not a bureaucrat,” Cain said.

This had to be it for his campaign. The past few days had been disastrous.

Cain’s next set of poll numbers: solid lead.

Let us pause here to make a necessarily severe assessment: to say that Herman Cain has an imperfect grasp of policy would be unfair not only to George W. Bush in 1999 but also to Britney Spears in 1999. Herman Cain seems like someone who, quite frankly, has never opened a newspaper.

Frank's article also has a long quote from Cain's book where he describes how the number 45 keeps cropping up in his life and therefore he ascribes a mystic significance to it. This is despite the fact that he majored in mathematics in college, and thus should be able to see the fallacy of his reasoning.

But there are warning signs that this support for Cain might be soft and that repeated new allegations may sap the enthusiasm of even the most ardent supporter.

November 10, 2011

Republican debate live blog

I did not watch the Republican debate yesterday but this live blog of the event by The Guardian's reporters makes for fun reading.

In defense of Rick Perry

Media coverage of yesterday's Republican debate has zeroed in on Rick Perry's inability to remember the third of the three government departments that he said he wanted to eliminate.

Commentators are saying that this is the last straw for Perry. This may be true, given the shallowness of the political campaign and the people who cover it. But looked at dispassionately, why is it such a big deal? Which one of us hasn't had such a moment? I know I have when giving public talks. Even at faculty meetings it very often happens that people forget the point that they wish to make even as they are trying to make it and we just move on because it is so common. In Perry's case, he must have been nervous because his prior debate performances have been panned so badly. So I can understand why, when he did not immediately remember something, his brain froze.

While following this crazy Republican primary, I have to say that the one candidate whom I have got to like better as it went on is Perry. All the Republican candidates favor policies that I abhor, but on a personal level, Perry has a kind of appealing goofiness, a relaxed congeniality that is really quite appealing. In my opinion, even his widely ridiculed New Hampshire speech revealed a playful side. If it was because he was drunk, we at least know that he is not a mean drunk. His fellow Texan George W. Bush had a sneering, arrogant, supercilious, and condescending attitude to mask his ignorance that made him obnoxious. Bush had all the characteristics of a cruel and petty bully. Herman Cain is in the same mold as Bush, a thoroughly unlikable character. Perry, on the other hand, does not seem to have that same meanness or think that highly of himself and seems to be self-deprecatory. His 'oops' at the end of his flub was a telling indicator that he takes these things lightly, always a good sign.

As to the other Republicans, Mitt Romney has a smarmy, phony quality, Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann seem to be crazy religious nutcases who are quite capable of instituting vicious and hateful polices because they truly believe god wants them to do so, and Newt Gingrich is under the irritating delusion that he is some kind of genius when he is just a political hack long past his expiry date. Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman, and Perry are the only candidates whom I feel I could discuss politics with without being tempted to throw things at them.

I can understand why Perry is such a political powerhouse in his home state where he has lived and worked all his life. If he is familiar with the issues, his genial personality can work powerfully in his favor. His problem is that he is simply out of his depth on national and international matters and he does not have the debating smarts to mask his lack of knowledge or the bullying arrogance to intimidate his critics.

November 08, 2011

Pandering on the pledge

Just recently I wrote about how easy it is for people to gum things up by pandering to religion and patriotism. As if to support my point, Republicans state legislators in Michigan have introduced legislation that would require all public school children to recite the pledge of allegiance each day.

In 1942, West Virginia passed a law requiring that students salute the flag each day while reciting the pledge of allegiance which at that time did not end with the words 'under God'. The US Supreme Court ruled such actions unconstitutional in 1943, with Justice Robert Jackson writing in his majority opinion:

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.

November 07, 2011

Chris Hedges speech to Occupy DC

The audio of a nice speech, accompanied by an excellent montage of photos from across the country.

Chris Hedges Speaks @ Occupy Washington from KLL Video Productions on Vimeo.

(Thanks to Tim)

Voting NO on issues 1, 2, 3 tomorrow

Tomorrow is election day and apart from local city council and school board elections, I will be voting 'NO' on all three ballot initiatives.

Issue 1 (TO INCREASE THE MAXIMUM AGE AT WHICH A PERSON MAY BE ELECTED OR APPOINTED JUDGE, TO ELIMINATE THE AUTHORITY OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY TO ESTABLISH COURTS OF CONCILIATION, AND TO ELIMINATE THE AUTHORITY OF THE GOVERNOR TO APPOINT A SUPREME COURT COMMISSION) deals with raising the mandatory retirement age for judges, among other things. I have no strong feelings either way on these matters but it is a constitutional amendment and I think that one should change the constitution only if there are very strong reasons to do so.

Issue 2 (REFERENDUM ON NEW LAW RELATIVE TO GOVERNMENT UNION CONTRACTS AND OTHER GOVERNMENT EMPLOYMENT CONTRACTS AND POLICIES) deals with repealing the law that was passed restricting the collective bargaining rights for government workers. A successful 'no' vote will result in the bill being repealed.

Issue 3 (TO PRESERVE THE FREEDOM OF OHIOANS TO CHOOSE THEIR HEALTH CARE AND HEALTH CARE COVERAGE) nullifies the federal health care reform measures. While I was not a big fan of the reform, it does provide some benefits to people who need them. In addition to opposing the measure on these grounds, it is also a constitutional amendment, another factor against it.

November 06, 2011

Why religion and patriotism make for easy pandering

One of the reasons that I dislike the concepts of patriotism and religion is that they allow people to grandstand without achieving anything substantive. For example, all it takes is for someone to suggest that meetings should begin with the pledge of allegiance or a prayer to put everyone else present in a bind. While it would make perfect sense to oppose the idea as a waste of time, some would be reluctant to do so out of fear that they would be seen or portrayed as opposed to those two sacred cows, god and country.

For example, just last week Congress actually debated and passed a bill that re-affirmed "In God We Trust" as the national motto. Why waste time on this absurdity? Because president Obama had casually said at some meeting that the motto was "E pluribus unum", which actually used to be the country's unofficial motto until 1956 when a formal motto of "In God We Trust" was adopted during the period of cold war hysteria, presumably to distinguish the US from the godless commies. And yet, this absurdity passed by a margin of 396 to 9.

The Daily Show shows what should have been the reaction to this kind of nonsense.

November 05, 2011

Michael Bloomberg plays the Democratic party leadership's game

Matt Taibbi has an excellent rant about the way that people like NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg manages to win over the upper-middle-class liberal Huffington Post types while advancing the most reactionary economic policies. He is essentially playing the traditional Democratic party con game: as long as you take progressive stands on choice, gay marriage, and the like, you can siphon money to the wealthy and beat up on the powerless and still have the crowds lap it up applaud you. The fact that he is a Republican makes him even more attractive to this crowd.

Bloomberg’s great triumph as a politician has been the way he’s been able to win over exactly the sort of crowd that was gathering at the HuffPost event that night. He is a billionaire Wall Street creature with an extreme deregulatory bent who has quietly advanced some nastily regressive police policies (most notably the notorious "stop-and-frisk" practice) but has won over upper-middle-class liberals with his stances on choice and gay marriage and other social issues.

Bloomberg’s main attraction as a politician has been his ability to stick closely to a holy trinity of basic PR principles: bang heavily on black crime, embrace social issues dear to white progressives, and in the remaining working hours give your pals on Wall Street (who can raise any money you need, if you somehow run out of your own) whatever they want.

But most of the article is devoted to ripping apart Bloomberg's analysis of the financial collapse that seeks to avoid placing blame on the financial oligarchs. You really should read the whole thing.

November 04, 2011

When acquittal still gets you a life sentence

To really appreciate how debased our legal system has become, one has to go no further than to read this news report by Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald about the pending trial of a person accused of involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

The U.S. military tribunal for the USS Cole bombing suspect has no power to free a captive found innocent of war crimes but shouldn’t be told the terror suspect could be held for life anyway, Pentagon prosecutors said in a court document made public Wednesday.

Defense lawyers want the judge presiding at the death-penalty trial of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri to notify would-be jurors that acquittal of war crimes won’t necessarily mean the Saudi-born captive walks free from the U.S. prison camps at Guantánamo.

It's bad enough that the rules of the military tribunal are such that if the accused is found guilty he can be executed, but if he is acquitted the Obama administration can still imprison him for life. But the administration does not even want the jury (consisting of all military officers) to be told this piece of information, probably fearing that they may not want to participate in what is a kangaroo court or a show trial that were emblematic of some of the worst governments in history.

Scott Horton of Harper's Magazine quotes Robert H. Jackson, a Supreme Court justice then on special leave to handle the prosecutions at the Nuremberg trials who said, "The ultimate principle is that you must put no man on trial under the forms [of] judicial proceedings if you are not willing to see him freed if not proven guilty."

But such quaint considerations of human rights and justice no longer apply. We decide first who is guilty and deserve to be punished and then have a trial to get that result.

Big Brother is watching us

[Update: Today the Associated Press reports that the CIA monitoring everybody's tweets, Facebook pages, chat rooms, etc. as well.]

Via reader Jeff, I came across this excellent article by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker on whistleblower Francis Drake and the vigorous attempts by the Obama administration to prosecute him.

At the heart of its case is the attempt by the government to invade people's privacy. The government claimed that it needed the ability to gather information on people's communications as a way to fight the war on terror. But spying on the conversations of Americans in America is against the law. Some people at the National Security Agency developed a program called ThinThread that collected information while people's identities were kept secret. It was only if terrorism was flagged that the identifiers would be revealed. This, they felt, would at least partially preserve the privacy of innocent people by identifying only those against for whom there were serious grounds for suspicion. Thus ThinThread was a way to collect data while preserving privacy. But this tool was ignored because apparently what the government wants to do is be able to single people out by name and snoop on all their communications. This makes Richard Nixon's plumbers and enemies list seem quaint by comparison.

Mayer's article reveals the extent to which the government spies on all of us all the time.

[Matthew] Aid, the author of the N.S.A. history [The Secret Sentry, 2009], suggests that ThinThread's privacy protections interfered with top officials' secret objective—to pick American targets by name. "They wanted selection, not just collection," he says.
…
[N.S.A. crypto-mathematician Bill] Binney, for his part, believes that the agency now stores copies of all e-mails transmitted in America, in case the government wants to retrieve the details later. In the past few years, the N.S.A. has built enormous electronic-storage facilities in Texas and Utah. Binney says that an N.S.A. e-mail database can be searched with "dictionary selection," in the manner of Google. After 9/11, he says, "General Hayden reassured everyone that the N.S.A. didn't put out dragnets, and that was true. It had no need—it was getting every fish in the sea."
…
In December 2005, the N.S.A.'s culture of secrecy was breached by a stunning leak. The Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau revealed that the N.S.A. was running a warrantless wiretapping program inside the United States. The paper's editors had held onto the scoop for more than a year, weighing the propriety of publishing it. According to Bill Keller, the executive editor of the Times, President Bush pleaded with the paper's editors to not publish the story; Keller told New York that "the basic message was: You'll have blood on your hands." After the paper defied the Administration, Bush called the leak "a shameful act." At his command, federal agents launched a criminal investigation to identify the paper's source.
…
The Times story shocked the country. Democrats, including then Senator Obama, denounced the program as illegal and demanded congressional hearings. A FISA court judge resigned in protest. In March, 2006, Mark Klein, a retired A.T. & T. employee, gave a sworn statement to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which was filing a lawsuit against the company, describing a secret room in San Francisco where powerful Narus computers appeared to be sorting and copying all of the telecom's Internet traffic—both foreign and domestic. A high-capacity fibre-optic cable seemed to be forwarding this data to a centralized location, which, Klein surmised, was N.S.A. headquarters. Soon, USA Today reported that A.T. & T., Verizon, and BellSouth had secretly opened their electronic records to the government, in violation of communications laws. Legal experts said that each instance of spying without a warrant was a serious crime, and that there appeared to be hundreds of thousands of infractions.
…
Mark Klein, the former A.T. & T. employee who exposed the telecom-company wiretaps, is also dismayed by the Drake case. "I think it's outrageous," he says. "The Bush people have been let off. The telecom companies got immunity. The only people Obama has prosecuted are the whistle-blowers."

Note how Bill Keller, then editor of the allegedly liberal New York Times, withheld the story for more than a year at Bush's request until after Bush was re-elected in 2004.

The government went after Thomas Drake, a senior executive at the NSA, as the suspected leaker and used the 1917 Espionage Act against him, basically accusing him of being a traitor.

Finally the case against Drake collapsed and he was let off with a minor punishment. This was reported as a setback for the government but the idea of such prosecutions is two-fold: to win if possible and punish the whistleblower but even if they lose important cases, their goal is to let all potential whistleblowers know that the government will make their lives hell if they told outsiders what the government was up to, even if it was illegal. But as Glenn Greenwald points out with case after case, Obama's hypocrisy on whistleblowers is matched by some in Congress who feel free to lecture other countries about the need to protect whistleblowers while advancing draconian legislation at home to punish them. Now the FBI is seeking even greater surveillance powers.

As this cartoon by Tom Tomorrow points out, although Obama on the 2008 campaign trail praised whistleblowing as "acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, [and] should be encouraged rather than stifled", once in office he has been one of the most vicious prosecutors. His cruel treatment of Bradley Manning for his alleged leaking to WikiLeaks is unforgivable. All this goes on while the public's attention is diverted elsewhere on relatively trivial government intrusions.

November 02, 2011

Rising tensions over the Occupy movement

The police and authorities in various cities have started to crack down on the Occupy movement and evict them from their sites. The worst such incident using force occurred in Oakland where police used tear gas and so-called 'non-lethal projectiles' (an euphemism for anything other than bullets) with one victim suffering brain injuries when he was hit by a projectile fired by the police and is now awaiting brain surgery. A general strike has been called for in Oakland today.

The Oakland mayor and police chief have received calls for their resignations and are now trying to distance themselves from the brutality that they unleashed. What makes it worse for them is that the victim, rather than someone who could be dismissed as a dirty hippie and therefore underserving of sympathy, is a US marine veteran who had served two tours in Iraq. This has put authorities everywhere on the defensive, though it hasn't stopped them from trying to remove the protestors.

This week's violent clashes with police in Oakland appear to have re-energised the Occupy movement in America, creating political liabilities for civic leaders across the United States, who had seemed poised to follow Oakland's lead and, in some cases, issued orders to clear the streets.
…
The Oakland protesters were back in force on Wednesday night, 24 hours after they were supposed to be gone for good, demanding the resignation of the city's mayor.

The Daily Show had a segment on the Oakland crackdown.

Stephen Colbert also spoke about it.

I think the authorities are underestimating the widespread but quiet sympathy that exists for the Occupy movement. A lot of people in the US feel politically impotent, that they have no say in the decisions that are made. They may not know what exactly the Occupy movement hopes to achieve but they know that that a small and very wealthy cohort of individuals are manipulating the political system for their private benefit and that the Occupy protestors are the only ones doing anything about it, and for this they are grateful. And the movement has already achieved had one major effect: The conversation has now shifted to talk about jobs and income inequality and in terms of the 1% vs. the 99%, and not about the deficit.

Meanwhile in Egypt there was a demonstration and march on the US embassy, starting at the now iconic Tahrir Square, in support of the Occupy movement and in protest of the police actions against the Oakland protestors. Given that Tahrir Square was the inspiration for protest movements around the world, this was a fitting symbol. There are also protests in Greece over the bailout package that will, like the bailouts in the US, is not meant to bail out the people of Greece but to siphon public money to recompense the big banks for the losses they sustained for their risky behavior. It is interesting how the French and German and US governments are horrified that the Greek government is planning to put the bailout plan to a referendum, as if the thought of people having a say in their country's future is something to be deplored. And big protests and a march on the G20 meeting today in Cannes resulted in the police blocking the marchers from entering the city. The war against the oligarchy is going global, as it should.

Chris Hedges and Amy Goodman, two of the best journalists around, appeared on the Charlie Rose show and provided a thoughtful look at what is going on and what the events symbolize. This took place last Tuesday before the Oakland crackdown so that was not discussed.

October 31, 2011

The Republican comedy road show

I am beginning to wonder if Herman Cain and the entire Republican field are not performance artists and the whole campaign is one big act. Take a look at this long new internet ad from Herman Cain, which is even weirder than the previous blowing smoke ad.

At least the production values have improved a lot. But this ad demonstrates perfectly the fact that the campaign seems to be oblivious to jarring notes. The first part is quite clever and amusing. Then when the actor steps out of the role at the 1:40 mark and becomes presumably himself, he acts like a egotistical and self-important jerk who is rude to the crew. Why would the ad's producers think that an endorsement from such an unlikable person would be a positive thing? And what's with that slow creepy smile at the end that seems to be becoming Cain's trademark?

Stephen Colbert generates more ad ideas for the Cain campaign in the same vein.

In a comment to my earlier post, John suggested that these odd ads may be a smart strategy on Cain's part since the smoker ad has attracted so much attention. I am not convinced. Being talked about is good to gain name recognition but Cain's among Republican voters is already high at 80%, so he does not need more buzz. What he needs to do is convince people that he is a credible leader. It is one thing to have people laugh with you at something clever and funny that you put out, it is quite another to have them laugh at you for seeming to be a little strange. Coming out with ads that are ridiculed even by the people in your own party, such as this parody by Jon Huntsman's three daughters, is not a good sign.

If it was only people like me who are laughing at the antics of the Republican field, trying to outbid each other in pandering to the looniest segments of their party's base, that would be one thing. But even Republican party stalwarts are sounding the alarm. Neoconservative columnist John Podhoretz is one of those clearly worried about the looniness that seems to have overtaken the Republican party although, as Charles Pierce correctly points out, he and his fellow 'moderate' and 'sensible' Republicans benefitted for over three decades because of their careful cultivation and grooming of the crazy base that is all grown up now and biting the hand that fed them. Podhoretz scolds Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Mitt Romney as if they were children, saying:

Memo to the Republican field: You’re running for president. Of the United States. Of America. Start acting like it.

Stop proposing nonsense tax plans that won’t work. Stop making ridiculous attention-getting ads that might be minimally acceptable if you were running for county supervisor in Oklahoma. Stop saying you’re going to build a US-Mexico border fence you know perfectly well you’re not going to build.

Give the GOP electorate and the American people some credit. This country is in terrible shape. They know it. You know it. They want solutions. You’re providing comedy.
…
Enough with the foolishness. Stop it. Stop it now.

But it is too late. All these conservatives and neoconservative Republican party stalwarts calling for sensible behavior are the ones who sowed the seeds of this behavior. They cannot complain if the plants are now strangling them. Back in November 2008, I pinpointed the precise moment when they lost control and that was John McCain's nomination of Sarah Palin to be his running mate. That let loose the furies that we now see driving the party's agenda.

If they want to pin the blame on someone, it should be John McCain.

October 29, 2011

Drone killings

Nat Hentoff cites Morris Davis, a professor of law at Howard University, who says that the continuous killing by the US of people around the world (Americans and non-Americans alike) in the CIA-run drone program is, apart from being a moral abomination, a clear violation of law because the CIA is a civilian organization and thus does not even have the fig leaf of 'combatant immunity' that the military can use to justify its killings.

October 28, 2011

Signs of strong support for Elizabeth Warren

Since I contributed to Elizabeth Warren's campaign for US senator from Massachusetts, I get email updates of the campaign. I must admit that I was impressed by the size of this turnout in Framingham when she went to a volunteer meeting. Such a huge crowd in a relatively small town for such a meeting more than a year before the election is extraordinary and augurs well for her campaign.

I suspect that such enthusiasm is a spin-off from the energy generated by the Occupy Wall Street movement, since she has been such a sharp critic of Wall Street practices.

Losing the capacity for shame

Glenn Greenwald has the details of the drone killing that killed the 16-year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki, the son's 17-year old cousin, and seven others while they were reportedly having a meal. The US government will no doubt spin some story to justify their action. The standard operation is to immediately put out some self-serving lies and not worry about them unraveling later, since few people worry about corrections once the initial impression has been made. Nowadays they don't even have to bother doing that since the killing by a US drone of a US teenager by the US government aroused hardly any interest. Just another ho-hum event.

In fact, starting with Saddam Hussein's sons and with Mohammed Gadafi being the latest, celebrating the deaths of whoever has been named a major enemy and exulting over the display of their brutalized corpses with whoops of triumph, akin to one's favorite football team scoring a touchdown, has become the norm. Glenn Greenwald is worth quoting at length:

As I wrote previously, "no decent human being would possibly harbor any sympathy for Gadaffi, just as none harbored any for Saddam." And it's understandable that Libyans who suffered for four decades under his rule (like Americans after 9/11 or Muslims after years of violence and aggression in their countries) would be eager for vengeance. Nonetheless, and regardless of what one thinks about Gadaffi or the intervention, summarily shooting a helpless detainee in the head is one of the most barbaric acts imaginable — under all circumstances — but Gadaffi's gruesome death nonetheless sparked waves of American jubilation and decrees of self-vindication this week.

It is difficult to articulate exactly why, but there is something very significant about a nation that so continuously finds purpose and joy in the corpses its government produces, while finding it in so little else. During the Bush years, I frequently wrote about how repetitive, endless fear-mongering over Terrorism and the authoritarian radicalism justified in its name was changing — infecting and degrading — not just America's policies but its national character. Among other things, this constant fixation on alleged threats produces the mindset that once the government decrees someone to be a Bad Guy, then anything and everything done to them (or ostensibly done to stop them) is not merely justified but is cause for celebration. That was the mentality that justified renditions, Guantanamo, vast illegal domestic surveillance, aggressive war against Iraq, and the worldwide torture regime: unless you support the Terrorists and Saddam, how could you oppose any of that?

That character-degradation is produced at least as much by conditioning the citizenry to stand and cheer, to beat its chest, to feel righteous and proud, each time the government produces a new dead Bad Guy. Even at its most necessary and justified, the act of ending a human life with state violence should be a somber and lamentable affair. There's something bloodthirsty about reacting ecstatically. To react that way when guilt is unproven (Awlaki), or when the person is unknown (most drone victims), or is killed by acts of pure barbarism (Gadaffi) is the mind of a savage. But it's now been more than a decade since 9/11, and this has been the prevailing mentality in America continuously since then (to say nothing about the lengthy, brutal wars fought before that). What happens to a citizenry and a nation that so frequently erupts into celebratory dances over the latest dead body its government displays?
…
What's perhaps most revealing about these death-celebrations are how reflexive — how visceral — they have become. For a President to claim the power to target his own citizens for death — and to do so in total secrecy, with no rules or oversight — is literally one of the most radical powers that a political leader can seize. The Fifth Amendment's guarantee of "due process" was intended to prohibit exactly that, as was the Constitution's heightened requirements for proving "Treason" in a court of law. Had George Bush seized this power, it would have led the list of progressive "shredding-the-Constitution" grievances against him. But all of that was washed away in the celebrations over Awlaki's death, drowned out by the blind ritualistic war cry of He was Bad and so I'm glad he's dead!
…
Constantly celebrating the people we kill — dancing over their corpses — is now one of the most significant and common American rituals shaping our political culture. One of the most consequential aspects of the Obama legacy is that this mentality has become fully bipartisan. And it's hard to see how this will change any time soon: once one goes down that road, it's very difficult to turn around and go back. That's true both individually and of a nation.

Even the Los Angeles Times notes the remarkable expansion in the use of deadly force by Obama, saying:

For a president who promised to end the gunslinger ways of his predecessor, Barack Obama has proven himself comfortable with the use of lethal force… All told this year, he has sent U.S. troops into action on land or in the skies of seven countries on two continents.

Now he has added Moammar Kadafi to the list of enemies eliminated.

"This comes at a time when we see the strength of American leadership across the world," Obama said from the White House Rose Garden, tabulating his achievements with language that betrayed a trace of bravado.

Our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president Obama is really on a roll now, deliberately killing foreigners and US citizens with abandon. And as the deaths of al Awlaki's son and nephew indicate, even adolescents and children are fair game. As Jacob Hornberger says, "The assassination of 16-year-old American Abdulrahman al-Awlaki confirms that we now live in a country whose government has the unfettered authority to assassinate anyone it wants, adult or minor, foreigner or American, and remain mute about it."

Amy Davidson wonders in The New Yorker how far along we have to go on this road of celebrating the killing and imprisoning of even children and adolescents before we begin to ask ourselves who or what we have become. How young must the victims get before we recoil in horror? At long last, have we no shame?

UPDATE: Rick Santorum raises the ante saying that the US should actually cold-bloodedly murder any scientist who may be working on nuclear weapons programs for countries the US or Israel does not like. And this person is seeking the presidential nomination of a major party.

October 27, 2011

Ron Paul causes some embarrassment

During the ritualistic chest-thumping of the last Republican debate about how the candidates would never negotiate for hostages, Ron Paul created an awkward moment when he reminded them that the sainted Ronald Reagan had traded arms for hostages with Iran. Watch.

October 26, 2011

Why US troops are leaving Iraq

Recent news reports have said that the US is making arrangements for a complete troop withdrawal from Iraq by December 31. I said five years ago that I felt that there was bipartisan agreement in the US to keep troops in that country indefinitely as part of its ambitions for global empire, mainly because the US was investing so much money to construct massive, permanent, military bases in addition to the largest embassy in the world. This did not look like the actions of a country that was planning to leave any time soon. So the announcement of a 'complete withdrawal' requires some explanation.

The picture has been confused by the White House's contradictory statements. While they try to pacify their antiwar supporters by acting as they actually wanted this outcome and are fulfilling a campaign promise for withdrawal, they are also trying to counter their Republican critics, who are blasting them for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and demanding that the US continue to keep its troops there, by pointing out that the December 31, 2011 deadline was actually negotiated by George W. Bush with the Iraqi government back in 2008, in something known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), that was subsequently endorsed by the Iraqi parliament. It was what allowed the US to continue to keep troops in the country beyond the earlier December 31, 2008 deadline.

The story gets even more complicated. The idea seemed to be that the SOFA would be re-negotiated later to extend that deadline beyond 2011. And in fact, contrary to the idea that this withdrawal outcome was something Obama wanted in order to keep his campaign promise, the Obama administration has been negotiating with the Iraqi government to extend the deadline and the withdrawal announcement was caused by the Iraqis being adamant about not allowing it. In fact, the White House is still negotiating for a continuation, even after the withdrawal announcement.

Why are the Iraqis balking at an extension? The main reason is that the US is insisting that US troops have immunity from the Iraqi government for any actions in that country. But many events involving US troops killing civilians have angered Iraqis, and the idea of giving immunity that might be seen as condoning and even encouraging further such actions was seen as a non-starter by a significant segment of the Iraqi population.

One incident that has caused particular outrage was the release in May of this year by WikiLeaks of a US diplomatic cable of a massacre in 2006 by US troops, as reported by the McClatchy news service. (Warning: Heartbreaking photo of dead young children accompanies the story.)

A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.
…
But Philip Alston, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said in a communication to American officials dated 12 days after the March 15, 2006, incident that autopsies performed in the Iraqi city of Tikrit showed that all the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head. Among the dead were four women and five children. The children were all 5 years old or younger.

It is likely that the anger at reports of such incidents, and the natural feeling that people who committed such atrocities must be brought to justice, torpedoed any efforts by the Nouri al-Maliki government to obtain the immunity required by the US.

It did not help the US that since Bush signed the agreement, party members representing cleric Muqtada al Sadr have gained significant strength in the Iraqi parliament, winning 40 seats in the 2010 elections and gaining eight seats in the cabinet. al Sadr has close ties with Iran and is adamantly opposed to any extension for US troops.

Even after the withdrawal, the US will still have a major military presence in Iraq, consisting of a small army of private military contractors working for the State Department. They have similar military capabilities to the US army and their role will be to protect US interests, including the massive embassy and five consulate-like outposts spread around the country. The State Department is keeping secret its plans for this private army and denying the usual government oversight committees any jurisdiction. This is not a good sign because these private armies lack the discipline and accountability of the regular military and the State Department has little experience with overseeing such a quasi-military operation. It was private contractors that were responsible for the 2007 event when Blackwater security personnel killed 17 civilians in a rampage at a crowded traffic circle in Baghdad. The company renamed itself Xe Services after that event.

It seems likely that the US will continue its negotiations for an extension right down to the wire.

(See Glenn Greenwald for more here and here.)

October 25, 2011

Is Herman Cain stupid?

Clearly the panel on Bill Maher's show think that Cain could give Sarah Palin a run for the title of the most ignorant and confused high-profile politician in recent times.

One thing that panelist Joshua Green said shed a lot of light and that is that although Cain is described as the former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, that was from a long time ago. What he has been doing for the last fifteen years is touring as a motivational speaker. People who do that can get used to blathering self-help messages tailored to get a rousing response from the audience right in front of them without bothering about whether it makes sense or contradicts what they said to another audience at another time and place.

Cain's latest campaign ad also has to make you wonder at his judgment. Look at what happens at the 40-second mark. Can you imagine any other candidate letting that pass?

October 23, 2011

The Occupy Wall Street movement gains allies

The Occupy Wall Street movement is broadening its base and gaining more allies every day. Now a group called Occupy Writers has joined in that contains such famous names as Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, Alice Walker, Lemony Snicket, Barbara Ehrenreich, Naomi Klein, and Ann Patchett, some of whom have contributed original writings, such as the thirteen observations by Lemony Snicket, a few of which are given here:

• People who say money doesn’t matter are like people who say cake doesn’t matter—it’s probably because they’ve already had a few slices.
  
• There may not be a reason to share your cake. It is, after all, yours. You probably baked it yourself, in an oven of your own construction with ingredients you harvested yourself. It may be possible to keep your entire cake while explaining to any nearby hungry people just how reasonable you are.
  
• Historically, a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending.

Meanwhile Saturday Night Live broadcasts a press conference by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.

October 20, 2011

Oligarchy to Democrats: Show us some love or else!

The strategy of the Democratic party has been to preach a populist message while serving the interests of the oligarchy, mollifying their supporters with support for social policies that the oligarchy does not care about. They have managed to play game successfully for some time but the Occupy Wall Street movement threatens to unmask that strategy and expose the harsh reality of politics.

The OWS movement has attracted wide popular support and the Democrats risk alienating their base if they go against it and so they have gingerly supported it. As this report says: "President Barack Obama and other top Democrats are parroting the anti-corporate rhetoric running through the Occupy Wall Street protests, trying to tap into the movement's energy but keep the protesters at arms' length."

But even this tepid support has enraged the oligarchy, who do not take kindly to the people they view as their servants getting all uppity and criticizing them, They are demanding that the Democratic party disassociate themselves from the movement or face the cut-off of contributions.

After the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent a recent email urging supporters to sign a petition backing the wave of Occupy Wall Street protests, phones at the party committee started ringing.

Banking executives personally called the offices of DCCC Chairman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and DCCC Finance Chairman Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) last week demanding answers, three financial services lobbyists told POLITICO.

"They were livid," said one Democratic lobbyist with banking clients.

The execs asked the lawmakers: "What are you doing? Do you even understand some of the things that they've called for?" said another lobbyist with financial services clients who is a former Democratic Senate aide.

Democrats' friends on Wall Street have a message for them: you can't have it both ways.

It will be interesting to see how the Democratic party tries to walk that tightrope. I predict they will try to cobble together some cosmetic changes that will appease the protestors while leaving oligarchic interests largely intact.

Obama has secret evidence of Iranian plot

There has been widespread scoffing at the claims by the Obama administration that they had uncovered an Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the US. Justin Raimondo rounds up some of the views of analysts who find the story, in which the key plotter turns out to be a bumbling, alcoholic, used-car salesman, quite incredible. Much of the skepticism centers around the fact that the alleged mastermind seems to be hardly competent to get through a normal day, let alone plan and execute a complex operation. Juan Cole thinks that he may well be clinically insane.

Julian Borger of The Guardian raises many unanswered questions about the allegations, of which one is key:

The key evidence that the alleged plot was serious was the $100,000 wire transfer. It came from a foreign bank account, but that cannot be an Iranian account because such transfers are impossible under US law. The money must have come from a third country, but which? And how can the US authorities be so sure the foreign accounts were under the control of the Quds force?

In a blog post, the editorial page editor of the LA Times asks a question that is rarely asked in the corporate media:

But wait a minute. Two weeks ago, the United States assassinated one of its enemies in Yemen, on Yemeni soil. If the U.S. believes it has the right to assassinate enemies like Anwar Awlaki anywhere in the world in the name of a "war on terror" that has no geographical limitation, how can it then argue that other nations don't have a similar right to track down their enemies and kill them wherever they're found?

It's true that the assassination of Awlaki was carried out with the cooperation of the government of Yemen. That makes a difference. But would the U.S. have hesitated to kill him if Yemen had not approved? Remember: There was no cooperation from the Pakistani government when Osama bin Laden was killed in May.

It's also true that there's a big difference between an Al Qaeda operative who, according to U.S. officials, had been deeply involved in planning terrorist activities, and a duly credited ambassador of a sovereign country. Still, the fact remains that all nations ought to think long and hard before gunning down their enemies in other countries.

As the United States continues down the path of state-sponsored assassination far from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, all sorts of tricky moral questions are likely to arise. But this much is clear: The world is unlikely to accept that the United States has a right to behave as it wishes without accountability all around the globe and that other nations do not.

Glenn Greenwald reminds us that it is extremely rare that anyone in the mainstream media points out the obvious double standards that are at play in US foreign policy.

So if the plot turns out to be yet another case of the US government using money and arms to lure some loser into agreeing to a plot that would be unmasked with great fanfare, what is the point? What is the goal of publicizing this? Stephen Walt is puzzled. Patrick Cockburn suggests a 'wag the dog' strategy now that Obama is seeking to rally support for his re-election campaign.

The most likely motive for the Obama administration's vigorously expressed belief in the plot is that it is preparing the ground for the 2012 presidential election. Mr Obama's economic and social policies are failing and his only undiluted successes have been the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan and Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. By dramatising how he frustrated the fiendish plots of the Iranians, Mr Obama can present himself as the president who kept America safe, or at least protect his national security political flank from criticism by the Republicans.

Many of the mysteries of American foreign policy make perfect sense when related to the overriding need of those in power in Washington to get re-elected.

But all these skeptics need not worry! Obama says that he can prove that it is all true and is pushing ahead with plans to plans for more sanctions against Iran, if not outright war. But, of course, the evidence must be kept secret and we simply have to take his word for it. Now that he has taken upon himself the right to order the murder of anyone he deems to be a terrorist, this seems like a small thing to ask, no?

October 19, 2011

What was that outfit?

I usually avoid commenting on the looks, clothing, and general appearance of politicians but I must say that I was startled to see photos this morning of Michele Bachmann's outfit at yesterday's debate. What with the gold buttons, Nehru jacket collar, and epaulets, she looked like she was auditioning to be the commander of the spaceship in the next film in the Star Trek series.

I am curious if people who are knowledgeable about such matters think it was a good choice for a presidential debate.

Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan under fire

This chart from the Tax Policy Center shows that Herman Cain's much publicized 9-9-9 plan will raise taxes on those earning less than $200,000 per year while lowering taxes for those above, with a huge windfall for the millionaire class. Matt Yglesias puts the numbers into a chart that show how incredibly regressive it is.

Cain's plan got him attention because of its catchy title. But because it is his only concrete proposal, it is going to hurt badly as the reality of its impact sinks in. He can stave off the inevitable for a while by claiming that all his critics are wrong or have misunderstood it or by weirdly repeating the phrase 'apples and oranges', but when even rabid anti-tax nutcases like Rick Santorum says that this plan will raise taxes on 84% of the people, he is in trouble. There is no way that this turkey is going to fly.

I was amused by Cain in yesterday's debate urging people to ignore all the analysts and do the math themselves. He must be depending on the poor math skills of the general public to save his plan.

Update: jpmeyer in the comments gives an even better graph by Jared Bernstein of the impact of Herman Cain's plan.

October 18, 2011

What Occupy Wall Street has achieved

There are those who criticize the Occupy Wall Street movement, complaining that they don't have concrete demands and have not proposed any solutions to the problems. I disagree with that criticism. It seems to me a bit much to expect an unorganized group of people scattered over the globe to come up with solutions to big problems at a time when the US government is so dysfunctional, when it lurches from one crisis to another and is not even able to carry out its minimal function of passing a budget, and when the global economy seems to be so shaky that world leaders seem to be at a loss as to what to do.

What is important is that the movement has highlighted the fact that the problem is with the system itself, not with specific policies that the system creates. As Glenn Greenwald says:

Anyone who expressed difficulty seeing or understanding what motivates these protests revealed many things about themselves. None is flattering. The only thing that’s surprising is that these protests didn’t happen sooner and that they’re not more widespread and intense. I think it’s become increasingly clear that that is likely to change, and soon. Like the Arab Spring, the rapid growth of these protests should be a permanent antidote against defeatism. It’s unclear what these protests will accomplish — that still depends on how many people join them and what they cause it to be — but, already, they prove that the possibility always exists for subverting even the most seemingly invulnerable power factions. That hasn’t happened yet, but the possibility that these protests are only in their incipient stages is one of the more exciting and positive political developments in some time. It’s been clear for quite awhile that unrest and disruptions — and the fear which they alone can put in the hearts and minds of those responsible for widespread ills — are absolute prerequisites for meaningful reform (our fundamentally corrupted electoral process certainly can’t and won’t accomplish that). These protests at least reflect the possibility, the template, for that to happen. And anyone expressing confusion about why these protests are erupting is almost certainly someone invested in keeping things exactly the way they are.

What I am surprised at is how much the movement has achieved. It has spread across the country and the globe. The Guardian has an interactive map of the 951 protests in 82 cities. It has galvanized people who had thought things were hopeless. From being largely ignored or viewed with scorn and derision, it is now being taken seriously by the ruling elites. It is dominating the news with even the corporate media being forced to give respectful coverage. It has changed the conversation, with the focus now aimed squarely at the income and wealth gaps between the oligarchy and the rest of us, and the excessive power of the global financial elites. The slogan "We are the 99%" has caught on and brought scrutiny to bear on the 1%.

The movement has also forced politicians to tread gingerly, to avoid being seen as on the wrong side. President Obama and the Democratic party leadership, although friends and protectors of the oligarchy, have taken pains to try and act as if they sympathize with the movement. Even Eric Cantor, the Republican party leader who initially condemned the movement as a 'mob', now says he can understand their frustration. The bankers on Wall Street are complaining that the politicians that they bought are not publicly siding with them against the protestors. But even they have been forced to grumble privately because to attack the protestors publicly is too hot politically.

(Cartoonist is Drew Sheneman. See also Tom Tomorrow.)

The general public is also warming up to the movement with significant majorities agreeing with the main points being made. Even Karl Denninger, one of the founders of the Tea Party, expresses sympathy with the Occupy Wall Street movement and says that the strategy of having a permanent occupation and avoiding calls for a single set of demands is a good one. "The problem with protests and the political process is that it is very easy, no matter how big the protests is, for the politicians to simply wait for the people to go home. Then they can ignore you…. One of the things that the Occupy movement seems to have going for it is it has not turned around and issued a set of formal demands. This is a good thing, not a bad thing."

As Matt Taibbi points out, the Occupy Wall Street movement transcends the tired left-right, liberal-conservative, Democrat-Republican narrative that the oligarchy and its media like because once you do that, partisans respond to the bugle call and line up accordingly and fight with each other. They do not like to see a critique of the system as fundamentally corrupt because that is a unifying message that will work against them.

All this must be causing some concern to the oligarchy. Will the political allies of the oligarchy try and disperse the movement by force? There have been attempts at this but the use of seemingly excessive force by some NYPD officers has backfired and now there are investigations of two senior officers. Nowadays almost everyone has mobile recording devices and I am surprised that the police seem oblivious that the days are gone when they could randomly attack peaceful demonstrators and escape repercussions because they could not be identified.

It is only when the oligarchy is fearful that they have overplayed their hand and are losing control of the discussion that any meaningful change will occur. The Occupy Wall Street movement is starting to create that fear. That is why it must be supported.

October 14, 2011

To vote or not to vote

Recently at a dinner someone made a comment that one hears often, that those who do not vote in elections have no right to then complain about the government's actions or the way society is run. The speaker was implying that voting is the admission price one pays for the privilege of entering the public debate.

I disagree with this sentiment, for many reasons. For one thing, one can have principled non-voting. If one thinks the system is rigged, and that elections are merely a façade designed to give legitimacy to a corrupt political system, then not voting can be a very principled and political act. In such cases, not voting is akin to a boycott, or voting with one's feet. There is a reason that almost all totalitarian societies still feel obliged to hold fraudulent elections in which the ruler gets an overwhelming majority, because elections tend to confer at least some legitimacy on the winner, even if it is rigged, as long as participation is reasonably high. This is why in many autocratic countries people are forced to vote or the ballot boxes are stuffed with counterfeits, while opponents of the regime urge people to boycott them.

Those who say that one must vote in order to have a public voice in policy debates tend to be of the opinion that elections in the US still provide us with real choices and thus not voting must mean that people are too lazy or indifferent to bother to register and vote, and thus are not deserving of a voice. Even if it were true that people are too apathetic to vote, why should such people not be entitled to have a say in public debates? When people have been beaten down and see no hope, while they may not actively boycott elections, they may simply disengage from a political system that is perceived as merely a game of musical chairs. Yet they may well have valid concerns and deserve to be heard.

The election system in the US is partially rigged, not in the sense of pre-determining which individuals will be the winners but in that the nominees of the major parties are in the pockets of the oligarchy and their eventual nominees will be servants of the oligarchy. Thus the only choices we have are those involving social issues that do not affect oligarchic interests. But one cannot totally dismiss the value of even that limited choice. At least on the margins, it could matter who wins office, since the holders of elective positions can affect the lives of real people. Who gets appointed to judiciary and regulatory bodies and how much money is allocated to serve the needs of the underprivileged can have a major impact on the lives of some of the neediest people.

Yes, both major parties care mostly about protecting the interests of the oligarchy but the supporters of Republicans tend to be more callous and ruthless about the poor than the supporters of Democrats. Countering that is the fact that Democratic party can more easily get away with hurting the poor because of the perception that they care about them.

And this is what poses the quandary. Should we not vote to show our displeasure with an oligarchic system? Or should we vote so that we can influence policy on at least social issues? Those of us who see the election system as rigged to present us largely with choices between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, both controlled by the oligarchy, always face a wrenching decision at election time. It would be nice if the system in the US made it easier for third parties to form to give us more choices. In the UK and Canada, they now effectively have three-party systems. It is true that third parties have not resulted in fundamental changes in those countries as yet, but it does provide more choice and opportunities for a break from oligarchic control.

I have on occasion broken free of the two-party trap. In 2000 I voted for Ralph Nader because there really was little difference between the stands that Al Gore and George W. Bush took on the issues of that election. I have to admit that after the Bush-Cheney regime unleashed its mayhem in Iraq and Afghanistan, I felt some guilt about possibly being complicit in helping them come to power, even though no one could have foreseen the events of 9/11 that provided the opening for those actions. But now that Barack Obama, who promised even more change than Gore, has been elected and has turned out to be terrible on issues of civil liberties and war, I suspect that Gore would have likely been as bad as Bush if he had been president after 9/11. The oligarchy keeps a tight leash on those who it allows to hold high office.

It is also not clear that third parties are good agents of change. Maybe true change comes about through pressure politics, by actions in the street that can really frighten the elected officials, whoever they are, that they are losing control. The Arab spring was a model, as is the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Because of all these reasons, I feel conflicted every time elections come around and there is no candidate that I feel strongly positive about. I come from a tradition that inculcated in me a sense that it is one's duty to vote and I have a long history of voting whenever the occasion comes around. I feel strongly the tug to the polling place that I find hard to resist. And yet I often feel almost dirty after doing so, that by voting I am simply perpetuating a bad system by participating in it and voting for the least worst candidate. This is why I refuse to wear the "I voted" stickers that they hand out at polling places. I do not necessarily see it as a badge of honor or a sign of civic virtue.

I personally feel much better about voting on issues, where one can take a definite stand. In elections in Ohio on November 8th, I will enthusiastically vote NO on Issue 2, the referendum that seeks to repeal the law that the Republican-controlled legislature and governor passed removing collective bargaining rights for state employees, and another NO on Issue 3 that seeks to pass a constitutional amendment that effectively nullifies the health care reforms that were passed.

October 12, 2011

Rising Cain

I must admit that the rise of Herman Cain to becoming a major player in the Republican primaries took me by surprise. According to the latest PPP poll, he leads nationally with 30%, followed by Romney with 22%. "If the race came down to a two way match between Cain and Romney, Cain leads 48-36. Cain would pick up Bachmann, Gingrich, Perry, and Santorum's supporters. Romney would get Huntsman and Paul's. Cain would absolutely crush Perry in a head to head, 55-27. He would win over the supporters of every other candidate, including Romney's by a 56-24 margin."

Since I had not given much credence to the idea that Cain would win the nomination or the presidency, I had not really taken the time to examine too closely his stands on the issues or ponder what kind of president he might make.

But even if Cain is a truly awful person to lead the nation, the fact that there is a possibility that the two parties' nominees for the next presidential election could both be people of color signals that the nation has come a long way in its acceptance of minorities in leadership positions.

Both Obama and Cain are obliging servants of the oligarchy, no doubt, but that is a given the way that the election system is currently set up. That particular hurdle will be harder to overcome than even electing a gay, non-Christian, minority woman as president.

The latest scary terror plot

So I turn on the radio this morning and hear Tom Gjelten of NPR regale me with a sensational story of how the US government had busted a plot by the Iranian government to collude with a hit man associated with the Mexican drug cartels to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador in a restaurant in the US, along with hundreds of bystanders. As always, faithful government stenographer that he is, Gjelten (in his case NPR stands for National Pentagon Radio) excitedly passes on uncritically what he hears from the US government.

But I no longer believe what the US government says (unless it provides credible evidence, which it almost never does) because they have proven themselves to be serial liars. It does not seem to give Gjelten pause that all the other breathless revelations of plots against Americans in the US turned out to be cases in which the perpetrators were lured by US government agents who then unmasked the plots with great fanfare.

Glenn Greenwald (The "very scary" Iranian Terror plot) and Justin Raimondo (Iranian Terror Plot: Fake, Fake, Fake) share my skepticism.

Here's Greenwald:

To begin with, this episode continues the FBI's record-setting undefeated streak of heroically saving us from the plots they enable. From all appearances, this is, at best, yet another spectacular "plot" hatched by some halpess loser with delusions of grandeur but without any means to put it into action except with the able assistance of the FBI, which yet again provided it through its own (paid, criminal) sources posing as Terrorist enablers. The Terrorist Mastermind at the center of the plot is a failed used car salesman in Texas with a history of pedestrian money problems. Dive under your bed. "For the entire operation, the government's confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents," explained U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, and "no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere and no one was actually in ever in any danger.'"

But no matter. The U.S. Government and its mindless followers in the pundit and think-tank "expert" class have seized on this ludicrous plot with astonishing speed to all but turn it into a hysterical declaration of war against Evil, Hitlerian Iran.
…
Then there's the War on Terror irony: our Hated Enemy here (Iran) is a country which had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. Meanwhile, our close ally, the victim on whose behalf we are so outraged (Saudi Arabia), is not only one of the most tyrannical and aggressive regimes on the planet, but produced 15 of the 19 hijackers and had extensive and still-unknown involvement in that attack. If the U.S. is so deeply offended by the involvement of a foreign government in an attack on U.S. soil, it would be looking first to its close friend Saudi Arabia, where "elements of the government" were likely involved in an actual plot rather than a joke of a plot.

Here's Raimondo:

This story is very scary – not because it's credible, or believable, because it is neither. However, it's the most frightening story I've heard in quite a while because it shows that the US government is bound and determined to go to war with Iran, no matter what the consequences. Throwing caution to the winds, our rulers have decided to go all out against Tehran – all the better to mask our current economic malaise under the damage done by the tripling and quadrupling of oil prices. This way, Obama can blame our crashing economy on Tehran, rather than his own discredited policies – and sideline the Republicans, who have been criticizing him for being "soft" on Iran.

The making of American foreign policy is all about domestic politics. By preparing the country for war with Iran, Obama will not only defang the GOP, but also appease the all-important Israel lobby, which has been beating the war drums for years.

What Obama and his gang are hoping is that the American people are too tired, too beaten down, and too broke to care enough about this latest exercise in war propaganda to question it. Certainly the "mainstream" media, which is Obama's loudest cheering section, isn't about to question it.

Will the public buy this story uncritically? Or have they wised up enough to demand, "Show us the evidence"?

October 11, 2011

"Why the elites are in trouble"

Chris Hedges has been doing some powerful writing on the Occupy Wall Street movement. Here is an excerpt from his latest essay with the above title.

Even now, three weeks later, elites, and their mouthpieces in the press, continue to puzzle over what people like Ketchup want. Where is the list of demands? Why don't they present us with specific goals? Why can't they articulate an agenda?

The goal to people like Ketchup is very, very clear. It can be articulated in one word—REBELLION. These protesters have not come to work within the system. They are not pleading with Congress for electoral reform. They know electoral politics is a farce and have found another way to be heard and exercise power. They have no faith, nor should they, in the political system or the two major political parties. They know the press will not amplify their voices, and so they created a press of their own. They know the economy serves the oligarchs, so they formed their own communal system. This movement is an effort to take our country back.

This is a goal the power elite cannot comprehend. They cannot envision a day when they will not be in charge of our lives. The elites believe, and seek to make us believe, that globalization and unfettered capitalism are natural law, some kind of permanent and eternal dynamic that can never be altered. What the elites fail to realize is that rebellion will not stop until the corporate state is extinguished. It will not stop until there is an end to the corporate abuse of the poor, the working class, the elderly, the sick, children, those being slaughtered in our imperial wars and tortured in our black sites. It will not stop until foreclosures and bank repossessions stop. It will not stop until students no longer have to go into debt to be educated, and families no longer have to plunge into bankruptcy to pay medical bills. It will not stop until the corporate destruction of the ecosystem stops, and our relationships with each other and the planet are radically reconfigured. And that is why the elites, and the rotted and degenerate system of corporate power they sustain, are in trouble. That is why they keep asking what the demands are. They don't understand what is happening. They are deaf, dumb and blind.

October 10, 2011

The oligarchy exposed

Critics of the Occupy Wall Street movement have asserted that their goals are not clear and they don't have solutions, although it is pretty obvious (as this Tom Tomorrow cartoon says) that economic injustice is their main grievance. But Paul Krugman points out that the hysterical response to the Occupy Wall Street movement is a telling indicator of the fact that the protestors have achieved one major goal: they have put the role of the financial oligarchy in causing the nation's problems in the spotlight and they are squirming and want to shut down the discussion. They much prefer to do their work in the shadows.

The answer, surely, is that Wall Street's Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They're not John Galt; they're not even Steve Jobs. They're people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they're still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can't bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny.

October 08, 2011

Ted Rall on RT America

Political cartoonist and columnist Ted Rall is one of the people indefinitely occupying Freedom Square in Washington DC as part of the October 2011 movement. He talks about what they are hoping to achieve, the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the state of US politics. Well worth listening to.

October 07, 2011

There really are death panels

Unlike the ones that exists only in the fevered imagination of opponents of health care reform who labor under the delusion that these panels exist to decide who should get medical treatment and who should be left to die, these death panels are real and consist of people who decide in secret which Americans deserve to be killed by the president, using the entire military apparatus at his disposal.

This report confirms what was reported as far back as in February 2010 when Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, said in a Congressional hearing that the intelligence community had the right to kill Americans abroad who have been deemed to be a threat.

So our government thinks it has the right to send roving gangs of assassins anywhere in the world to murder anyone whom the president has decided must die. It is astonishing to me that people are not outraged.

Glenn Greenwald has more. As usual, political cartoonist Ted Rall nails it.

October 06, 2011

Police beat and pepper-spray the Occupy Wall Street protestors

It looks like the trouble with the police that I feared has already begun.

Occupy Wall Street Arrests; Fox 5 Crew and Protesters Hit by Mace, Batons: MyFoxNY.com

The Guardian covered the march and also the clash with police, with more video.

How will the oligarchy respond to Occupy Wall Street?

As long as the Occupy Wall Street movement remains fairly small and contained, the oligarchy can treat it with condescension, in the expectation that it will dissipate with time. The reaction of the political leadership has been cautious with few venturing comments. Mitt Romney, as unoriginal as ever, has called it (sigh) 'class warfare' and that it was 'dangerous' but dangerous for whom he did not specify. Herman Cain reached new levels of the smugness that afflicts so many rich people, saying, "Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself!" Some people at the Chicago Board of Trade seem to think that mocking the movement is a good idea and, like the champagne swillers in New York, display a sense of ignorance to the legend of Marie Antoinette. These people have no idea of the rising level of anger in the country.

The movement has latched on to succinct slogans that capture the essence of the problem, like "We are the 99%" and the chant "Q: How do we end this deficit? A: End the wars, tax the rich." These are dangerous messages for the oligarchy because they are simple and right on target. As a result, the movement is gaining public support nationwide and growing, and even linking to global protest movements. Nearly a 1000 people turned up in Philadelphia on Tuesday night merely to organize the occupation in that city on October 6th.

The movement is also gaining mainstream acceptability. Even chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke (Ben Bernanke!) said in Congressional testimony that there was "some justification" for the protests and that "At some level I can't blame them. Nine percent unemployment and slow growth is not a good situation." Editorial cartoonists are also spreading the message about the revolt against the 1% epitomized by Wall Street.

Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! interviewed Kevin Zeese and Dr. Margaret Flowers, two key organizers of the October 2011 movement that was planned six months ago for an indefinite occupation of Washington DC starting today, and that has coincided in a symbiotic way with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

As the movement grows and expands, I fully expect at some point in the near future that the repressive apparatus of the state will be brought in to quash it. I am certain that right now there are high-level discussions amongst members of the oligarchy on how to derail the protests. It will be difficult to forcibly disperse the peaceful occupiers since the initial protestors were mostly educated, white, middle-class, young people (though yesterday's march was much more diverse in terms of age and color) and baton-charging, tear-gassing, and arresting them in large numbers would not look good on TV. The usual method of dealing with such situations is to dispatch some provocateurs to mix in with the protestors and then create divisions and destruction and confrontations. The purpose will be two-fold: to lower public sympathy for the movement by associating it with violence and to provide an excuse for harsh measures to 'restore law and order'. I hope the organizers are prepared to combat this tactic

The rising tensions surrounding the Occupy Wall Street movement reminds me of the mood in the classic 1967 song For What It's Worth written by Buffalo Springfield band member Stephen Stills in the wake of an assault by the Los Angeles Police department on young people during that turbulent period.

October 05, 2011

The Occupy Wall Street movement spreads

Movements in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement are springing up in 184 cities and growing rapidly.

Locally, tomorrow (Thursday, October 6th) Occupy Cleveland begins its action at noon at the Free Stamp sculpture site at Willard Park at East 9th and Lakeside. On Saturday the 8th there will be an Occupy Cleveland General Assembly in Public Square from 3:00-6:00 pm. More details are here. As one might expect with a fast-moving, all-volunteer spontaneous movement, things are somewhat chaotic.

Graphic artists have donated downloadable posters for people to use.

Today is National Student Walk-out Day, where college students around the nation are encouraged to walk out of their classes at noon to protest rising tuition and debt.

Meanwhile, read the moving testimonies of people from all walks of life who explain why they are the 99%.

"We Are the 99%"

The idea that increased unemployment and a vast and growing gap between a rampaging oligarchy and the rest of the population could lead to riots and other forms of trouble in the US is something that some of us have been warning about for some time. But it was still startling to hear someone in the oligarchy like the mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg say the same thing. He suggested that the popular uprisings that happened in Egypt and Spain could happen here too. Of course, he thinks that this would be a bad thing, but the fact that a member of the oligarchy saw the potential of such a thing happening here is significant.

He said this just before the Occupy Wall Street movement began on September 17 to create a permanent protest site to block off Wall Street. Initially they were stopped by the police but they managed to overcome that obstacle and have now set up permanent camp. Glenn Greenwald says there are signs that the oligarchy is getting nervous and they are, as usual, using their lackeys in the establishment media to try and belittle and undermine the protests.

Mass movements rarely have very targeted goals, at least at the beginning. They tend to have overlapping areas of concern that coalesce around one or two ideas that everyone can identify with. In Egypt for example, there was widespread dissatisfaction with the cost of living, unemployment, corruption, censorship, repression, etc. that coalesced around the goal of getting rid of Mubarak. Even the American Declaration of Independence consisted of a long list of complaints, many of them quite esoteric that hardly anyone remembers anymore. But all agreed on the need to eliminate rule by the king of England.

The current unrest in the US is qualitatively different from those that took place in the 1960s. Those were fueled by the Vietnam war and racial tensions due to the civil rights movements. While those were also dominated by young people, the current unrest seems to encompass a wider group that is more diffuse and less focused on specific issues and consisting more of an inchoate sense that somehow the system is completely rigged to benefit the very few at the expense of the many and needs to be changed. But the central focus that the rule by the 1% oligarchy located largely within the confines Wall Street is bad and must go is a message that is catching on. The slogan "We are the 99%" is ingenious in the way it highlights the essential problem. More and more attention is being focused on the 1% problem in the US.

Just like the people in the Arab spring, it is young people who have seized the initiative to actually get out and do something about a problem that old fogeys like me have been merely complaining about. Journalist Chris Hedges visited the scene and described what he saw as a ray of hope. Hedges writes that the young people camping out there represent the best among us because they have identified the enemy and are taking a stand and now the rest of us have to choose where we stand.

There are no excuses left. Either you join the revolt taking place on Wall Street and in the financial districts of other cities across the country or you stand on the wrong side of history. Either you obstruct, in the only form left to us, which is civil disobedience, the plundering by the criminal class on Wall Street and accelerated destruction of the ecosystem that sustains the human species, or become the passive enabler of a monstrous evil. Either you taste, feel and smell the intoxication of freedom and revolt or sink into the miasma of despair and apathy. Either you are a rebel or a slave.
…
Choose. But choose fast. The state and corporate forces are determined to crush this. They are not going to wait for you. They are terrified this will spread. They have their long phalanxes of police on motorcycles, their rows of white paddy wagons, their foot soldiers hunting for you on the streets with pepper spray and orange plastic nets.
…
Those on the streets around Wall Street are the physical embodiment of hope. They know that hope has a cost, that it is not easy or comfortable, that it requires self-sacrifice and discomfort and finally faith. They sleep on concrete every night. Their clothes are soiled. They have eaten more bagels and peanut butter than they ever thought possible. They have tasted fear, been beaten, gone to jail, been blinded by pepper spray, cried, hugged each other, laughed, sung, talked too long in general assemblies, seen their chants drift upward to the office towers above them, wondered if it is worth it, if anyone cares, if they will win. But as long as they remain steadfast they point the way out of the corporate labyrinth. This is what it means to be alive. They are the best among us.

The choice of which side we should be on is not that hard. After all, we are the 99%.

October 04, 2011

So how's 'the most transparent White House in history' faring?

In yesterday's post I wrote about an anonymous government official who said that the justice department had prepared a secret memo saying that Obama's order to murder Anwar al-Awlaki was legal but they refused to release it or reveal the reasoning.

David Shipler and Conor Friedersdorf pose the obvious question: Why is this document secret?

The usual arguments for secrecy, that it will put some people in harm's way or impinge on their privacy rights or reveal some critical government information that would be harmful to the country's national interests clearly do not apply in this case. This is presumably a legal document that would be of interest mainly to scholars. So why not tell us how the government arrived at the important conclusion that Obama can order the death of any US citizen without any oversight by any body?

The only answer that I can think of is that the government is afraid that legal scholars will rip their argument to shreds and that it will be seen to have no merit. Much better for them to keep it secret, using the "If we reveal this information, the terrorists will have won" mantra that seems to inexplicably satisfy so many people.

During his 2008 presidential campaign Obama promised that his administration would "run the most transparent White House in history" and some commentators even wondered if such excessive transparency might be a bad thing. It is clear that that worry is unfounded because that promise has turned out to be a joke. Obama is making even the Bush White House seem like a glass house.

UPDATE: Scott Horton rips apart the Obama hypocrisy on this issue. The exchange between Jake Tapper and White House press secretary is quite incredible.

The 'Occupy Wall Street' movement

I must admit that the Occupy Wall Street movement took me by surprise. Back in June, I had written that one of the lessons of the Arab spring was that one needed sustained protests and demonstrations and occupations, day in and day out, to bring about major changes and that the US practice of one-day demonstrations, usually on a holiday, was ineffective however large the turnout. I pointed to the October 6 movement to create a permanent protest site in Washington DC in the vicinity of the White House and Congress, as a sign of such a movement emerging.

When I first heard reports of groups of young people occupying Wall Street to protest the corporate takeover of the US government, I thought it would be ephemeral, that these idealists would be there for a short while and then it would fizzle out. I also worried that it might shift the focus away from the October 6th movement and thus harm it. But I was wrong. What started out as a seemingly spontaneous occupation and protest movement that was greeted with condescending snickering of the "Oh, these kids today, what will they think of next?" has grown into something quite big. They have used their own website to publicize their message, and there is even a newspaper called The Occupied Wall Street Journal, with a starting print run of 50,000, that has been published.

These protests were initially treated with some disdain by the media, portraying the protestors as young and clueless with no clearly defined goals and agenda. We even had the sight of well-dressed people, possibly Wall Street executives, drinking champagne and laughing at the protestors from the balcony of a tony restaurant, as if they had never heard of the legend of Marie Antoinette. Even some liberal commentators treated them with disdain. But the message of the young people is quite clear and correct. They have identified the business interests symbolized by Wall Street as a maleficent force in American politics and are using the occupation to demonstrate it. What they are doing is inspiring people to get off the couches, leave their keyboards behind, and take direct action.

What is interesting is that it is also ceasing to be purely a young people's movement. The protests seem to be catching on and spreading with trade unions and community groups joining in. Pilots in uniform also showed up. The protests are now spreading to other cities including major ones like Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and smaller ones.

As a result, after some initial silence, the media have been forced to pay attention. Although the protests began on September 17, up until September 26 NPR had scorned the protests as not worth covering with its executive editor for news saying that it was because "The recent protests on Wall Street did not involve large numbers of people, prominent people, a great disruption or an especially clear objective", although it covered small groups of Tea Partiers with great gusto. But after NPR was shamed by media commentator Jay Rosen pointing out their neglect, they have now started giving coverage on a regular basis. Another journalist got arrested along with many others and wrote about his experience. Some 'prominent people' like Susan Sarandon and Michael Moore have dropped by, which should make NPR happy that its news standards had been met.

As the occupation and protests have grown, so has the repressive police tactics being employed by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. It is clear that the occupation has stopped becoming a laughing matter for the oligarchy as the police have started to use considerable force to disrupt the protests. In this scene, it looks like mace or pepper spray was used on some women who had been penned in by plastic mesh and did not seem to have done anything threatening that could have warranted it. Then last Sunday the police seemed to have first encouraged the protestors to march across the Brooklyn bridge and when they were halfway through, penned them in using plastic netting (a process known as 'kettling') and arrested over 700 of them. You can watch a video of the event.

What do the demonstrators want? Given that it is a loose and spontaneous coalition of young people, it is too much to expect a coherent single platform. Bloomberg has tried to deflect attention from the real targets of the protests, the oligarchy centered on Wall Street of which he is a member and protector, by saying that the protests are targeting the middle class, which is patent nonsense.

The movement has in fact issued a manifesto that lists their demands. But the specific demands are, in some sense, less important than the general goal. What these young people have done is placed their collective finger unerringly on the problem: 1% of the population in the US has become a monster that is devouring the other 99% and the heart of that beast lies is in the financial sector in Wall Street.

Their slogan "We are the 99%" has increasingly resonated with the public because in their bones people know that it is true, which is why the movement seems to be growing.

October 03, 2011

A lawless nation

There were some responses to my post on the topic of state-sanctioned murder, with defenders of the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki saying the usual things, that the US is at war with al Qaeda and since al-Awlaki was supposedly a leading member of that organization, Obama was justified in ordering his killing. It is now being reported that another US citizen was killed in the attack but since he was in the same car as al-Awlaki he was presumably a Very Bad Person Who Also Deserved to Die, since the bar for killing anyone has become so low.

It should be pointed out that all the claims of al-Awlaki's importance, his supposed links to various actions, have come almost entirely from anonymous government sources in leaks to the media, with little or no evidence provided in support. There has been no attempt whatsoever to follow the normal procedures of even starting the process of establishing guilt, including the most minimal ones like issuing an indictment. But of course those things are now seen as the quaint obsessions of pedants, to be readily discarded in our lust for the blood for whoever happens to be the current Enemy of the People.

Of course, foreigners have long been considered entirely expendable in the Great War on Terror, in which hundreds and thousands now lie dead. We have already decided that the president can pick up people anywhere in the world, hold them indefinitely without access to family or lawyers, torture them, and create kangaroo courts with guaranteed convictions for those occasions when we want to create a facade that we still have some sort of legal system operating. What al-Awlaki's killing has done is crossed a boundary that says that Americans overseas can also be summarily killed. That is progress of a macabre kind, that no nationality exceptions exist.

The only boundary that has not been crossed is the president's right to murder US citizens within the US itself. But this is a mere technicality. It looks like all Obama has to do to cross even that line is churn out massive amounts of propaganda to convince the public that some person is a public enemy and then the entire military machine of the US, plus the FBI and the police, will be put into operation to carry out his execution orders. And the people will cheer when the execution is carried out because they will have been repeatedly told (by the president of course) that a Very Bad Man Who Wanted to Harm Us 'has received justice' and that our glorious and benevolent leader has saved us from that fate without wasting tax-payer money with frivolous concerns about legality and morality.

Is all this legal? Who cares? Laws and due process and the constitutional guarantees of protections of life and liberty are the concerns of wimps who don't understand that We Are At War With a Mighty Enemy Who Seeks to Destroy Us, even though estimates of their number are pitifully small and they are scattered about the globe and poorly armed. We must fear them because those people are Evil Incarnate and are devious enough to find a way to take over the entire US and enslave us all.

But for those who have some niggling qualms about whether we are acting within the rule of law, don't worry. Of course it is legal! Why, the president's own justice department has issued a ruling saying it is legal, so that's all right then. Actually it did not actually issue such a ruling. What it did was anonymously leak a story to reporters that such a ruling existed somewhere.

The Justice Department wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting of Anwar al-Aulaqi, the American-born radical cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone strike Friday, according to administration officials.

The document was produced following a review of the legal issues raised by striking a U.S. citizen and involved senior lawyers from across the administration. There was no dissent about the legality of killing Aulaqi, the officials said.
…
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. The administration officials refused to disclose the exact legal analysis used to authorize targeting Aulaqi, or how they considered any Fifth Amendment right to due process.

But hey, these days, that's all we need, right? We have got used to being informed by those infallible, authoritative, and impartial sources, the anonymous government official, that things are being done in our name according to secret policies that we cannot be told about but that we must have faith in our great and benevolent leader that he always acts in our best interests. That's the new democracy, folks!

Let's look at the state of play. We have now reached the stage where the president has the sole power to (1) decide when we are at war; (2) decide with whom we are at war; (3) decide where the battlefield is (the whole world, apparently); (4) decide who is deserving of summary death; (5) use the entire police and military apparatus to carry out the murder; (6) judge whether his own actions are legal; and (7) keep everything secret.

Woe unto anyone who has the temerity to cross this mighty ruler. He can find himself declared to be an Enemy of the People and crushed like an ant or blasted out of existence by a drone, along with any other unfortunate persons who happen to be in the vicinity. And the people will cheer. The despots of the past could only dream of having such powers.

My question to those who think that all this is perfectly fine and morally justified is whether they think, now that they have abandoned the constraints of the constitution, that there exist any limits whatsoever on the president's power. Is there anything that he cannot legally do in the War on Terror?

October 02, 2011

We're #1 …

… when it comes to imprisoning people. More than 1% of Americans are in jail. The US has 4.25% of the world's population and but 25% of all prisoners.

Even I was surprised at some of the statistics about the use of cheap prison labor in the US. According to Stephen Fry, American prisons produce "100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet proof vests, ID tags and other items of uniforms, 93% of domestically used paints, 36% of home appliances, 21% of office furniture, which allows the United States to compete with factories in Mexico… You get solitary confinement if you refuse to work!"

(Via Boing Boing.)

September 30, 2011

State-sanctioned murder

Reports are coming in that a US drone strike in Yemen has killed Anwar al-Awlaki. If confirmed, this would mean that the US government has murdered a US citizen purely on the orders of president Obama. The media are relaying the anonymous and self-serving claims of the intelligence community that al-Awlaki was a top al Qaeda operative, 'seemed' to have instigated attacks against the US, and was 'reported' to have had links with terrorist groups, and similar allegations. But all skirt the issue of the legality of this act, let alone its morality.

When the dust settles, what we are left with is the stark fact that the US president ordered and carried out the murder of a US citizen without any due process of any kind. He had no trial, no formal charges were made against him, no efforts to extradite him back to the US, nothing. Obama decided that al-Awlaki must die and he was killed by Obama's agents. It has all the hallmarks of kings in medieval times ordering the beheadings of their opponents or mob bosses ordering hits on their rivals.

Back in 2002, another US citizen Kamal Derwish was killed in an airstrike in Yemen but back then in the bad old George W. Bush days, the government felt obliged to say that his death was collateral damage and that they were unaware that he was in the car that was destroyed. But with our Nobel Peace Prize winning, constitutional scholar president, even such transparent excuses are not required because many of those who were on the alert for abuses by Bush now seem quite comfortable if the death sentence is signed by Obama. Even before this event, Jonathan Turley said that the Obama presidency may be the most disastrous in our history for civil liberties. One can only shudder at what further abuses are in store.

What I would like to know is in what way the killing of al-Awlaki differs from the heinous crime of 'killing his own people' which was laid at the feet of people like Saddam Hussein and Muammar Ghadafi and which formed the basis of war crimes accusations against those two people and war against the countries they led.

Glenn Greenwald has more.

September 28, 2011

Brave Saudi women

It looks like scores of Saudi women are challenging the absurd ban on them driving and are willing to bear the barbaric punishment for doing so, which consists of a lashing. I am not sure if any woman has actually received that punishment or whether fear of international embarrassment has prevented the government from actually carrying it out.

The seductive appeal of the mega-rich politician

During the 2008 presidential election and for a brief time during the current election, there was a boomlet of support for billionaire mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg and for windbag Donald Trump to run for president. They were part of an enduring pattern in American politics in which some people yearn for a rich man to ride in and save the nation. The thinking seems to be that since they are so rich, they must be smart and competent and also do not need to seek funding from big money sources and can thus be independent and not beholden to 'special interests'.

A couple of decades ago, H. Ross Perot was the person that elements of a desperate nation turned their eyes to. The Perot phenomenon was a puzzle. Not the man himself, who seemed to be typical of the kind of person who has spent his life acquiring great wealth, used his subsequent power to push people around, and now, in the twilight of his career, wants more power, a bigger stage, and a greater share of the limelight. Nor is it puzzling to observe people with such blatantly autocratic tendencies constantly talking about how much they want to do 'what the people want'. This kind of hypocrisy is so common in public life that it only causes surprise to the most naive of political observers. No, it is not Perot the person that was the enigma. It is the question of why so many millions of people, both in the 1992 presidential campaign and again in 1996, found him so attractive as a leader, just as they do Bloomberg or Trump now.

There is a possible explanation, one that is inspired by a typically lucid essay written by George Orwell over seventy years ago, titled simply Charles Dickens. Orwell analyzed the politics of Dickens as revealed in his writings. He pointed out that Dickens "attacked English institutions with a ferocity that has never since been approached." In that sense, Dickens "was certainly a subversive writer, a radical, one might truthfully say a rebel". And yet, Orwell points out, Dickens managed to be a ruthless critic of many venerated aspects of English society without becoming personally disliked, becoming an English institution himself in his own lifetime. "Dickens seems to have succeeded in attacking everybody and antagonizing nobody'" Orwell notes. How could this happen?

Orwell answers his own question by pointing out that Dickens' real subject matter in his novels was that of the urban middle class, not the working class. While his protagonists suffered enormous hardships, Dickens seemed to imply that their problems were mainly due to the qualities and personalities of the people with wealth and power who controlled the institutions that impinged on his protagonists' lives, and not because of the structure of the institutions themselves. In other words, Dickens' criticism of society was almost exclusively moral, not structural. Orwell summarizes Dickens' message as simply: If people would behave decently, the world would be decent.

Orwell supports this thesis by pointing out that the happy endings in Dickens' books were largely achieved by the timely arrival of a wealthy person who solved all problems by scattering money around to the deserving. Dickens never seemed to explore the possibility that the institutions themselves, by their very nature, might tend to favor the rise of people with the very qualities he deplored. Dickens also ignored the question of how the rich benefactors who finally saved the day could remain so prosperous if they flouted the laws of the currently operating economic system by giving pay raises and gifts all around.

The huge success of Dickens' books, even in his own lifetime, shows how appealing is his view of the world. It provides a simple explanation for society's problems and, more importantly, provides hope that things could be improved quickly, provided the appropriate well-intentioned rich man shows up. The timelessness of that message was nowhere better illustrated than in the enthusiasm that billionaire H. Ross Perot generated. Journalists breathlessly reported on Perot's activities and people all over the country responded enthusiastically to his candidacy. What is interesting is that the support for Perot came before people had even heard exactly what his message was or what he planned to do for the country. Somehow, that did not seem to matter. Perot, an inexhaustible fount of homespun phrases, was going to 'look under the hood, figure out what was wrong, and fix it.' It was that simple.

In many ways, Perot then and Bloomberg now fit the model of the classic Dickens savior, the rich person whose possibly dubious methods of acquisition of wealth are conveniently obscured by the haze of time. Perot liked to be portrayed as a disinterested rich man who was appalled by the way the country was run and simply wanted to make everything right and was willing to use his own money to do so. Even his lack of experience in politics and government was seen as a plus. Given Orwell's analysis, it is perhaps not surprising that many members of the middle-class seized on his presence in politics as the one that provided the most hope for them. If Warren Buffett were twenty years younger, you would see likely similar enthusiasm for him to run for president too.

Ultimately, the most significant aspect of the periodic upsurges of enthusiasm for Perot then, and Bloomberg and Trump now, may be that they provide a measure of the number of voters who feel left out of the system, fearful for their future, and yet unable to see that the root cause of their problems lie with the nature of the institutions of power and the kind of people they nurture and produce. For such voters, the search is still going on for Dickens' good, rich man, untainted by the evils of the system, who will solve all their problems.

September 26, 2011

The dumbness of crowds

Whoever coined the phrase 'the wisdom of crowds' may have second thoughts about it after seeing the crowd reaction at the Republican debates. Most people do not watch political debates at such an early stage in the process, so what gets registered in the public consciousness is what the media and pundits focus on after each debate. So far, appalling audience reactions seem to have become the story and this cannot be good news for the Republican party.

In the first debate, there were loud cheers for the record number of executions carried out in Texas. In the second, what is remembered was the yelling out that the person without health insurance deserved to die. In the third debate, Rick Perry even got booed for standing by his policy of allowing the children of undocumented people to pay in-state tuition for college, saying "If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they've been brought there by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart."

Yes, Rick Perry, who got such loud cheers in his first debate for his cheerful attitude towards executing people, got booed for being a softie.

In the third debate we had a gay soldier asking Rick Santorum what he would do as president about gays in the military. Santorum gave a weird answer (to loud cheers) where he not only said that he wanted to bring back 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' (a policy that had long become an embarrassment even for those who opposed equal rights for gays), but seemed to go further and suggest that everyone in the military should not even talk about or have sex of any kind. Good luck with that policy!

But what was astonishing was that the soldier got booed for just asking the question. Yes, the crowd's intense homophobia even overcame their normal desire to grandstand about patriotism and pander to the military, and not a single candidate on the stage spoke out against that awful display. Either they approved of the behavior, were stunned that the crowd reacted that way and were rendered speechless, or did not have the guts to rebuke those who booed because they feared alienating the nutters who seem to be the most energetic segment of their party and the ones who bother to come for these debates.

It is true that noisy mob reactions are rarely representative of the feelings of a large crowd, and reflect merely those of its more vocal elements. But still, the theatrics are not good. I have no idea how this is playing out in Republican homes across the nation but surely it can't be helping? Is the Republican party in increasing danger of alienating even its own supporters? Surely even many Republicans, except for the loonies, must be turned off by their party's image as one of angry haters who revel in death and discrimination?

Who knows what the crowd will do at the next debate but this cartoon suggests that we should be ready for anything.

September 25, 2011

Baby steps

The Saudi king has decreed that women in that country will be allowed to vote and hold office. Of course, women still face immense restrictions in that repressive and backward country due to the dominance of Islamic law, but this is progress nonetheless.

September 24, 2011

Highlights of the Republican debate

For those of us who did not watch the last Republican debate, The Daily Beast has compiled a set of what it considers the best moments.

Ridiculous hypotheticals

Rick Perry is taking a beating even from conservatives for his poor showing in the debates. While conservatives have focused on his fluffing of a chance to attack Mitt Romney, others have pointed to is his incoherent response to what he would do if told at 3:00 am that Pakistani nuclear weapons had fallen into the hands of the Taliban.

I have to partly defend Perry on this particular point. Granted, his stringing together of non-sequiturs (what was India doing in that mix?) was Palinesque in its baroque quality. But posing these kinds of ridiculous hypotheticals to people is unfair. Do they expect a candidate to have thought through every possible emergency situation and have a readymade strategy to articulate? If Perry is to be criticized at all, it is for even attempting any specific answer instead of simply saying, whatever the crisis presented, that he would immediately convene a meeting of his national security advisors to devise a response.

Also, why do these questions always have the dreaded phone call coming at 3:00 am? What difference does the time make? Do they think that the president, groggy from being awakened and annoyed at a pleasant dream being disrupted and wanting to go back to sleep would say, "Dammit, just nuke 'em!"

September 22, 2011

Elizabeth Warren on Morning Joe

I feel sorry for Elizabeth Warren. Now that she is running for the US Senate in Massachusetts, she will have to deal with an endless stream of preening media personalities who delude themselves that they are journalists.

A prime example is Mark Halperin, who asks her what she would do about the military threat from China. My first reaction was, "What the hell? Why are you asking about something that is so far down the list of concerns?" But the smug expression on Halperin's face answered my question. I recognized immediately the obnoxious student that all teachers have encountered who thinks up a question on an obscure topic because he thinks it will impress his peers if he can stump the teacher. There is, of course, no reason why Warren should have thought deeply about this particular issue since it is clearly not high on her list of priorities and, being a veteran college instructor, she knew exactly how to deal with such smart-alecks.

Similarly another so-called journalist Mike Barnicle framed his question with such a long preamble that one lost interest in it long before he got to the end. What these people want is to get face time on television, not inform and educate the viewer.

Watch Warren answer these questions well enough and with much greater patience than I would have been able to muster.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

September 21, 2011

Elizabeth Warren on the underlying social contract

What she says is absolutely correct. What is sad is that it needs to be said at all.

September 20, 2011

Surprising showing by Warren

Initial polls show Elizabeth Warren has jumped to a small 46-44 lead over incumbent senator Scott Brown, and that Brown's approval numbers are declining.

The Tea Party mentality

The Plain Dealer had a story on the front page yesterday that summed up perfectly the attitude of the Republican party.

The concrete sound barriers erected along the highways to shield nearby residents from noise were crumbling long before the advertised 20-year life expectancy was reached, presumably because inferior concrete had been used. Repairing them will cost the Ohio transportation department more than $1 million per mile, money that is hard to come by these days when governments are being squeezed by the demand for tax cuts.

What struck me was the comment of one resident who said, "It looks terrible. I know they don't have the money, and I don't want my taxes to go up to fix it. But they need to do something."

Really? No doubt she expects magic elves to do the repair work for free once they have finished helping out the shoemaker.

September 19, 2011

Public opinion on civil liberties and security

Glenn Greenwald points out that the popular claim by politicians and media figures that the public is willing to sacrifice civil liberties in return for security is in fact not supported by opinion polls.

September 18, 2011

A prime example of Villager idiocy

The dream world of Villager punditry is truly something to behold. Take William Cohan who has a suggestion in the Washington Post for Elizabeth Warren, who has just declared her candidacy to run for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts currently held by Republican Scott Brown.

Seven weeks removed from the political reality that cost her a job as one of the nation’s best-known — and controversial — advocates for consumers and the middle class, Elizabeth Warren now officially wants to return to Washington as the junior senator from Massachusetts. But if she is really serious about wanting to help working Americans and reform Wall Street, Warren should consider a different line of work: She should get a job as a partner at Goldman Sachs.

The idea isn’t as crazy as it sounds.

No, it is as crazy as it sounds, if not crazier. The idea that Elizabeth Warren, after railing for years at how banks like Goldman Sachs have been profiting while impoverishing the middle classes by taking advantage of deregulation and lax oversight by the government, could simply pick up the phone and ask Goldman Sachs to hire her to reform it, and that Goldman Sachs would offer her a partnership in order to reform itself is doubly bizarre.

The only way that this could happen is if there is cynical collusion between Warren and Goldman Sachs in which Warren is just another cynical academic on the make and agrees to uses her reputation for integrity to get a high-paying job providing cover for Goldman Sachs for the pretense that it is serious about reforming itself. But if that is the case, then this demolishes Cohan's argument that this move would help in reforming Goldman Sachs and Wall Street.

What amazes me is that these Villager pundits actually get paid to churn out this drivel.

September 17, 2011

Cornel West also becomes shrill

The occasion of the unveiling of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial causes Cornel West to decry the oligarchic control of the US.

The age of Obama has fallen tragically short of fulfilling King’s prophetic legacy. Instead of articulating a radical democratic vision and fighting for homeowners, workers and poor people in the form of mortgage relief, jobs and investment in education, infrastructure and housing, the administration gave us bailouts for banks, record profits for Wall Street and giant budget cuts on the backs of the vulnerable.

As the talk show host Tavis Smiley and I have said in our national tour against poverty, the recent budget deal is only the latest phase of a 30-year, top-down, one-sided war against the poor and working people in the name of a morally bankrupt policy of deregulating markets, lowering taxes and cutting spending for those already socially neglected and economically abandoned. Our two main political parties, each beholden to big money, offer merely alternative versions of oligarchic rule.

September 16, 2011

Sexual politics in the US

Michele Bachmann is continuing to take a well-deserved pounding on her irresponsible publicizing of a claim by some person she said she met who said that her daughter had become mentally retarded as a result of taking the HPV vaccine.

What started out as an effective attack on Rick Perry, suggesting during Monday's debate that he had issued an executive order mandating that the vaccinations be given to all young girls in Texas in return from contributions from the vaccine manufacturer Merck, has now become an albatross around her own neck. In doing so, she has deflected attention not only from Rick Perry but from the important question of how drug companies are unduly influencing decisions about health policy.

NPR interviewed Steven Miles, the bioethicist at the University of Minnesota who offered a $1,000 reward if Bachmann could provide "a properly signed medical release form so that these documents can be reviewed by highly qualified neurologists to see if this claim is true." Bachmann has not responded to NPR's queries about this challenge to produce the document. Miles further said that, "If we had a vaccine that would prevent a nonsexually caused cancer that affected 10,000 women a year, this would be a no-brainer. This controversy over the HPV vaccine is about the sexual politics in the United States. It is not about the medicine."

Miles is absolutely right. The thought that somewhere some people might be having sex outside of marriage totally freaks out the religious right.

The end of the US postal service?

In a further sign of the steady deterioration of the US infrastructure, the US postal service may become the next victim of the oligarchy's drive to eliminate anything that does not benefit themselves. The US postal service is an institution that is committed to serving people all over the nation and it delivers mail to even the remotest parts of the country at the same cost to anyone anywhere. So those of us in the cities where the volume of mail is large essentially subsidize the mail services of the more remote areas. It is a socialized system (i.e., one that spreads the cost over the entire population and thus makes it affordable to everyone) and thus targeted by those who oppose any measure that promotes the general welfare. Chuck Zlatkin describes the campaign to destroy the postal service. If it succeeds, the US will be the rare (only?) country that does not have a national mail system.

Phil Rubio explains to Stephen Colbert how the postal service has been shackled and the efforts being made to save it.

September 15, 2011

Elizabeth Warren for US Senate

She made the announcement yesterday that she will be running for the US senate in Massachusetts. Her website is ElizabethWarren.com.

The oligarchy will pull out all the stops and pour money into this race to try to prevent her winning. People are going to troll through her past and drag her through the mud. This election will be a good indication of whether an earnest, centrist, political amateur can defeat the oligarchic machine and its professional cadres. I sincerely hope so.

My daughter moved to Massachusetts last month to go to graduate school and will likely work on this campaign. Although I live in Ohio, I gave the Warren campaign a contribution yesterday because improbable candidacies need money early.

Searching for Bachmann's source

Two bioethicists are offering up to $11,000 for the identification and release of the medical records of the person whom Michele Bachmann claimed became mentally retarded after getting the HPV vaccine. These kinds of irresponsible statements can cause great harm if not quickly challenged, as we saw with the claim that the MMR vaccination causes autism, and the media's idiotic 'balanced' approach that treats even empirical questions as matters of opinon ("Some say this but others say that") does nothing to dispel them.

I am glad that in this vacuum, private citizens are stepping up to clear the record.

"These types of messages in this climate have the capacity to do enormous public health harm," [Steven Miles, a U of M bioethics professor] said of why he made the offer. "The woman, assuming she exists, put this claim into the public domain and it's an extremely serious claim and it deserves to be analyzed.

Bachmann is sensing trouble and trying to wriggle out.

Bachmann somewhat walked back her comments Tuesday on Sean Hannity's radio show, where she said she had "no idea" if the HPV vaccine was linked to mental illness. "I'm not a doctor, I'm not a scientist, I'm not a physician," Bachmann said. "All I was doing is reporting what this woman told me last night at the debate."

No, you are none of those things. But you are a high profile elected official running for the presidency, which means that your words get hugely amplified and so should know not to pass along stories that have the potential to cause panic and harm until you have had time to substantiate them. Why is that so hard to understand?

Cold-hearted libertarians

During Monday night's Republican debate, in response to a hypothetical question from the awful Wolf Blitzer, the audience and Ron Paul seemed comfortable with the idea that a young person who is uninsured but suffers a life-threatening condition should be allowed to die because he chose not to buy health insurance. The alternative of a socialized single payer medical system where everyone is covered without exception, the norm in almost all developed countries, is of course too ghastly to contemplate for these lovers of personal freedom.

It turns out that the question was, at least as far as Paul was concerned, not that hypothetical after all. Kent Snyder, Ron Paul's campaign manager in his run for the presidency in 2008, died at the age of 49 of complications from pneumonia, penniless and uninsured, because the premiums he would have had to pay to buy insurance were too high because of pre-existing conditions. The death of someone who was so close to him, purely because he could not afford health insurance, does not seem to have influenced Paul in the least. Instead, being the true believer he is, he eulogized Snyder as a martyr to the libertarian cause, which I am sure Snyder's bereaved mother, who was also stuck with her son's medical bills, deeply appreciated.

A self-described libertarian posted this comment on the above article about Snyder's death: "My personal belief is that it is not society's responsibility to deal with the uninsured. In extreme circumstances (national disasters for example), perhaps. My tax dollars need to go to basic government services, nothing else. I don't need to fund the NEA, someone's family planning mistake or alternative energy companies, etc, etc. I'm sorry to appear callous but its not my responsibility to take care of a total stranger. We are all adults here, presumably, lets deal with our own issues ourselves."

I am always amused by libertarians' careful inclusion of the 'basic government services' and 'national disasters' exemptions to their general 'keep the government out of everything' policy. It usually means that they want the government to intervene only to help when they themselves are in need. These libertarians tend to be well off owners of property and are self-centered hypocrites, wanting the government to provide only the services that they want and benefit from. So they want things like police and a military and a fire department and good roads because those things benefits and protect their property, and they can afford to pay for everything else. They also want a national disaster exemption because earthquakes and hurricanes do not distinguish between the rich and poor and could hit them too. If you are a consistent libertarian, surely you should support the idea that those services too should also be the product of the free markets? Why shouldn't people organize and pay for their own police and fire departments and pave the roads they drive upon?

Fortunately, not everyone embraces the cold-hearted libertarian philosophy that the wellbeing of total strangers is not our concern. Watch this video in which a motley group of strangers from all walks of life spontaneously come together, risking serious injury, to rescue a motorcyclist who was trapped under a burning car. They are hesitant and frightened, not sure what to do, but something about the plight of a fellow human being drives them to feel they must help and they come together to lift the car and drag him out.

Of course, there is a difference between the way one responds to an immediate need that one sees in front of one's eyes and how one reacts to people who are suffering out of sight. But the difference is not as great as one might think. The impulse to help others in need is universal. News reports afterwards said that the motorcyclist survived. The rescuers did not know what drove them to help but as soon as the woman who looked under the car said that he seemed to be alive, it galvanized everyone to take collective action.

This is why I think that the libertarian philosophy of having the government not take responsibility for the general welfare of the people will never take root beyond the ranks of a small, smug, affluent, minority. There is something deep within most people that causes them to be stirred and respond to the plight of others in need. I believe that it is biological and primeval and cannot be extinguished by the oligarchy and the manipulative politicians who are its servants, who seek to stoke the selfish instincts of people in order to benefit themselves.

I will trust my life in the hands of ordinary people over doctrinaire libertarians any day.

September 13, 2011

An easily frightened nation

In his weekly radio address just prior to the orgy of memorializing on September 11, 2011, president Obama boasted that "They wanted to terrorize us, but, as Americans, we refuse to live in fear."

How long are we going to deceive ourselves that that is true? You may have read about the panic aboard an airplane on September 11 when some passengers were reported by their fellow passengers to have acted suspiciously. Now read the account of one of those people who was deemed to have been acting strangely.

Home of the brave, indeed.

Religion in American politics

One cannot help but observe a sharp rise in religious belief and anti-science feeling in American politics. Almost all the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination either wear their religion on their sleeves and proudly proclaim their religious fervor at every opportunity (Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain) or support at least some policies that are counter to science and seem to be religion-based (Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich). Only Jon Huntsman seems to be exempt from this particular feature although his policies in general are extremely pro-oligarchy. The fact that he's getting nowhere, at least in 2012, shows how strong this religious feeling is.

This has created a sense of alarm in some circles, with people fearing the emergence of some kind of theocracy if any of these candidates should win. When people see Bachmann praying lyrically about the end times in the clip below, they get fearful of what she might do if she were to become president.

On the radio program Fresh Air, Terry Gross recently interviewed Rachel Tabachnick about her series of articles on the rise of the Dominionist movement in American politics. This religious strain says that it is the duty of Christians to take over the government and run it on Christian principles. These Dominionist groups are close to Rick Perry and helped sponsor his recent day of prayer. (See the box for links to Tabachnick's articles.)

But despite the increasingly visible and vocal role that religion is playing in politics, I myself am not too alarmed about the seeming rise of the so-called religious right. Rather than seeing it as a precursor to a revival of religious obscurantism or the establishment of a theocracy, I see it instead as the last gasp of a dying movement, a fire that burns brightly just before the flame sputters out. This does not make it harmless because a bright but short-lived flame can still cause serious burns. But it does mean that we can afford to be more measured in our response and not over-react.

The reason that the religious right has been able to achieve the current level of prominence is because their beliefs have been given legitimacy in the public sphere, as if they were deserving of being taken seriously as part of the national dialogue on important questions, rather than as holders of fringe beliefs akin to astrology. The public and media have treated religion talk in politics with kid gloves. If a politician says, "My faith requires me to promote policy X", that is treated as something that cannot be questioned, when the proper response should be, "Why should your faith have any relevance in this discussion?"

It is often the case that movements take their most extreme form when they feel they are under siege and that the end is near. The leadership tends to fall into the hands of the true believers who tend to double down, becoming more rigid and doctrinaire, adopting an increasingly Manichaean mindset that sees the world split between friend and foe, true believer and heretic, with so-called 'moderates' weeded out as being unreliable allies. For a brief time, the movement gains cohesion and purpose and strength, before finally collapsing.

This is what I see happening in American religious politics. The Republican candidates mistook the rabid enthusiasm by some for Sarah Palin and Tea Party ideas as a sign of a mass movement and started catering to them, when in reality they are a minority and an increasingly disliked one at that. While this attracted more true believers, it also alienated others who felt this was too extreme. This has led to a negative spiral where party events have turned into almost cult-like religious events where the candidates who say the most extreme things get the most enthusiastic response, inspiring them to even greater extremism. This is what seems to be happening in the Republican debates and caucuses. This essay by a Republican operative who left/was forced out from the cult (thanks to readers Peter G. and Norm for the link) and this cartoon by August J. Pollack pretty much says it all.

While one reason why I think that truly religious politicians will ultimately be defeated is due to the general decline in religion, the other is that the oligarchy has little patience for this kind of thing. While the oligarchy is ruthless, greedy, and self-serving, they are not stupid. They are quite willing to use religious zealots as foot soldiers in their campaign to get the government to serve their needs, but they do not want these people to actually occupy the seats of power because they want political leaders who take their directions from them and not from god. What we will see in the coming days is a slow and steady campaign to undermine the candidacies of those who seem likely to really believe the religious rubbish they utter, as opposed to someone who adopts a religious stance out of political expediency. (The verdict on where Rick Perry stands on this spectrum is not yet in.) The process has already started with Republican functionaries and even Fox News and other conservative outlets starting to leak negative stories and provide negative commentary about Palin and Bachmann.

If, by some remote chance, a truly religious nutter manages to overcome this internal opposition and actually become the Republican nominee, watch the oligarchy swing its support behind their reliable ally Barack Obama.

September 12, 2011

What, me worry about terrorism?

Via Progressive Review, I learn that the chance of:

Being killed by a terrorist is 1 in 20 million
Being struck by lightning is 1 in 6 million
Being executed in Texas is 1 in 1 million
Dying in a bathtub is 1 in 800,000
Dying in a building fire is 1 in 99,000
Dying in a car accident is 1 in 19,000

Until the terrorism threat approaches that of a car accident, I don't see any point in worrying. So let's shut down the national security state and bring back civil liberties and the rule of law.

September 11, 2011

The reckoning to come

In this interview on Canadian television, journalist Chris Hedges, author of the book The Death of the Liberal Class adds texture to the bleak picture that I have been painting of the consequences of the complete oligarchic takeover of the US.

(Thanks to Norm)

The ACLU on the state of civil liberties

Glenn Greenwald's discussion on the ACLU report on the steep decline of civil liberties in in the US in the wake of that event is well worth reading.

The preamble to the ACLU report highlights the four major ways in which freedoms have been seriously compromised.

Everywhere And Forever War

The report begins with an examination of the contention that the U.S. is engaged in a "war on terror" that takes place everywhere and will last forever, and that therefore counterterrorism measures cannot be balanced against any other considerations such as maintaining civil liberties. The report states that the United States has become an international legal outlier in invoking the right to use lethal force and indefinite military detention outside battle zones, and that these policies have hampered the international fight against terrorism by straining relations with allies and handing a propaganda tool to enemies.

A Cancer On Our Legal System

Taking on the legacy of the Bush administration's torture policy, the report warns that the lack of accountability leaves the door open to future abuses. "Our nation's official record of this era will show numerous honors to those who authorized torture – including a Presidential Medal of Freedom – and no recognition for those, like the Abu Ghraib whistleblower, who rejected and exposed it," it notes.

Fracturing Our "More Perfect Union"

The report details how profiling based on race and religion has become commonplace nationwide, with the results of such approaches showing just how wrong and ineffective those practices are. "Targeting the American Muslim community for counterterrorism investigation is counterproductive because it diverts attention and resources that ought to be spent on individuals and violent groups that actually pose a threat," the report says. "By allowing – and in some cases actively encouraging – the fear of terrorism to divide Americans by religion, race, and belief, our political leaders are fracturing this nation's greatest strength: its ability to integrate diverse strands into a unified whole on the basis of shared, pluralistic, democratic values."

A Massive and Unchecked Surveillance Society

Concluding with the massive expansion of surveillance since 9/11, the report delves into the many ways the government now spies on Americans without any suspicion of wrongdoing, from warrantless wiretapping to cell phone location tracking – but with little to show for it. "The reality is that as governmental surveillance has become easier and less constrained, security agencies are flooded with junk data, generating thousands of false leads that distract from real threats," the report says.

September 10, 2011

'Campaign Obama' returns

After selling out to the oligarchy during his presidency, now that election season is back, expect to see Obama return to his feisty populist campaign mode and try to fool ordinary people once again that he really cares about their interests.

In January 2010, my disgust with Obama had reached the point where I said the following:

It used to be the case that I would detest hearing or watching George W. Bush speak. The disjunct between his smug and lofty words about democracy and freedom and the reality of his crass polices was simply too much to take. During the campaign I enjoyed hearing Obama's speeches because he seemed to be making thoughtful statements about important issues and appealing to the best in people. But now I cannot bear to listen to him either. I find galling the unctuous hypocrisy of his words. If anything, the gap between his words and his deeds is even greater than that of Bush, because he promises more and delivers less.

Now Matt Taibbi has also reached that stage. Recently at an airport he was forced to choose between sitting at a crowded gate with lots of screaming children and another area that was nearly empty and quiet except for a TV showing Obama giving his Labor Day speech. He says he chose the former:

Listening to Obama talk about jobs and shared prosperity yesterday reminded me that we are back in campaign mode and Barack Obama has started doing again what he does best – play the part of a progressive. He's good at it. It sounds like he has a natural affinity for union workers and ordinary people when he makes these speeches. But his policies are crafted by representatives of corporate/financial America, who happen to entirely make up his inner circle.

I just don't believe this guy anymore, and it's become almost painful to listen to him.

I wonder how many people have come to the same realization.

September 09, 2011

Undeserving poor

In Act 2 of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion (which became the hit play and film My Fair Lady), Eliza Doolittle's father Alfred complains to Henry Higgins how 'middle class morality' tends to shun poor people like him because they are the wrong kind of poor.

"What am I, Governors both? I ask you, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving poor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means that he's up agen middle class morality all the time. If there's anything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it's always the same story: "You're undeserving; so you can't have it." But my needs is as great as the most deserving widow's that ever got money out of six different charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I don't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less hearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement, cause I'm a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band when I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as they charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything."

I was reminded of this when reader Norm sent me this news clipping.

A lawless elite

Glenn Greenwald talks with Chris Hayes about the increasingly lawless class that we have created.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

September 08, 2011

What happened to the others?

I did not watch yesterday's debate, of course, but in reading the coverage today was startled by the fact that it seemed as if only two people, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, took part. There was practically zero coverage of any of the other six though they presumably said things. Ron Paul, Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich might as well have not been there, and Buddy Roemer was actually not there, not having been invited in the first place.

It looks like the media has started the winnowing process in earnest by deciding who is worth covering.

This must be particularly galling for yesterday's media darling Bachmann who just a couple of weeks ago was sought after by every news talk show following her first place showing in the meaningless Ames Iowa straw poll. She is learning that media suitors are awfully fickle. She is not one to go quietly into the night so watch for her to ramp up the crazy to try and regain the spotlight.

Applause for death penalty

Look at what happened during the Republican debate yesterday.

Although I disagree with them, I can understand those who support the death penalty as an unpleasant necessity. What I find sick is enthusiasm for it.

August 31, 2011

Iowa Tea Party fiasco

There is an interesting soap opera developing with Sarah Palin and Christine ("I am not a witch") O'Donnell over who will appear at some event in Iowa on Saturday.

So will they both show up on Saturday and exchange icy stares? Or will they both skip the event, leaving the organizers in the lurch? Tune in and see!

August 29, 2011

Important First Amendment ruling

Recently there has been a spate of events where police have prevented ordinary people from recording them and even public meetings of congresspeople.

In a ruling on Friday, the First Circuit Court of Appeals has now said that such prohibitions violate the First Amendment.

Simon Glik was arrested for using his cell phone's digital video camera to film several police officers arresting a young man on the Boston Common. The charges against Glik, which included violation of Massachusetts's wiretap statute and two other state-law offenses, were subsequently judged baseless and were dismissed. Glik then brought this suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, claiming that his arrest for filming the officers constituted a violation of his rights under the First and Fourth Amendments.

In this interlocutory appeal, the defendant police officers challenge an order of the district court denying them qualified immunity on Glik's constitutional claims. We conclude, based on the facts alleged, that Glik was exercising clearly-established First Amendment rights in filming the officers in a public space, and that his clearly-established Fourth Amendment rights were violated by his arrest without probable cause.
…
It is firmly established that the First Amendment's aegis extends further than the text's proscription on laws "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," and encompasses a range of conduct related to the gathering and dissemination of information. As the Supreme Court has observed, "the First Amendment goes beyond protection of the press and the self-expression of individuals to prohibit government from limiting the stock of information from which members of the public may draw." First Nat'l Bank v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 783 (1978); see also Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 564 (1969) ("It is . . . well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas."). An important corollary to this interest in protecting the stock of public information is that "[t]here is an undoubted right to gather news 'from any source by means within the law.'" Houchins v. KQED, Inc., 438 U.S. 1, 11 (1978) (quoting Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 681-82 (1972)).

The filming of government officials engaged in their duties in a public place, including police officers performing their responsibilities, fits comfortably within these principles. Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting "the free discussion of governmental affairs." Mills v. Alabama, 384 U.S. 214, 218 (1966). Moreover, as the Court has noted, "[f]reedom of expression has particular significance with respect to government because '[i]t is here that the state has a special incentive to repress opposition and often wields a more effective power of suppression.'" First Nat'l Bank, 435 U.S. at 777 n.11 (alteration in original) (quoting Thomas Emerson, Toward a General Theory of the First Amendment 9 (1966)). This is particularly true of law enforcement officials, who are granted substantial discretion that may be misused to deprive individuals of their liberties. Cf. Gentile v. State Bar of Nev., 501 U.S. 1030, 1035-36 (1991) (observing that "[t]he public has an interest in [the] responsible exercise" of the discretion granted police and prosecutors). Ensuring the public's right to gather information about their officials not only aids in the uncovering of abuses, see id. at 1034-35 (recognizing a core First Amendment interest in "the dissemination of information relating to alleged governmental misconduct"), but also may have a salutary effect on the functioning of government more generally, see Press-Enter. Co. v. Superior Court, 478 U.S. 1, 8 (1986) (noting that "many governmental processes operate best under public scrutiny").

In line with these principles, we have previously recognized that the videotaping of public officials is an exercise of First Amendment liberties. (All emphases mine)

This is an important blow against the repressive use of the state apparatus.

The shape of things to come

I tend to be generally optimistic about progress in almost all areas of life. For example, I think we are making progress on important areas of social values. We have seen huge improvements in attitudes on race and gender and it is only a matter of a short time before equal rights for gays will also be taken for granted. The rights of animals are also increasingly being respected. Compared to even just a century ago, we have made tremendous advances in expanding the circle of those we think worthy of treating justly.

On the religious front too, the prognosis is good. I think the decline of religion is irreversible. We may never be able to eliminate religion completely but relegating it to irrelevancy is likely although that will take time and pockets of religious fervor will continue to exist. I think that religion will end up like astrology, something that never goes away but becomes largely harmless, with those who take it seriously being looked upon with amused indulgence.

When it comes to the environment, I have mixed feelings. While there is some serious concern about the degradation we have caused, I think that there is still hope that it can be turned around and that we have not passed the point of no return.

The one exception to this generally sunny outlook is when I turn my gaze to the economic and political situation in the US. Here I think the future looks very bleak indeed and I see nothing but disaster in store. The rapacious looting by the oligarchy, the domestic war being waged to further impoverish the poor and middle class, the interminable and multiplying foreign wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, the semi-war in Pakistan, and possible soon-to-be wars in Iran and Syria), coupled with a political system that seems increasingly disconnected from reality, have created the conditions for collapse.

The US ruling class elite are in a state that is typically found during the last gasp of an empire: greedy, wasteful, bloated, hypocritical, contemptuous of the needs and feelings of the mass of people, arrogant in its view that its military supremacy will enable it to meet all challenges, and unmindful of the rot that is eating away at the foundations of the republic

I occasionally get the question as to what we should do to reverse this trend. To be quite honest, I don't know that we can. I feel like we are on a massive ocean liner headed straight towards a reef. Although the speed does not seem to be that great, the sheer momentum of the massive vessel is such that there is nothing that can be done to stop or reverse its direction in time before the crash occurs, even assuming that the people on the bridge commanding the vessel (i.e., the oligarchs) want to do so. The only thing to be done is to alert people so that they can brace themselves for the impact and prepare them to start anew picking up the pieces and repairing the damage.

What form the crash will take and what the fallout from the crash will be is something that I cannot foresee, just as I cannot predict what will emerge from the rubble. Post-collapse situations, like post-revolutionary ones, are highly unpredictable and their direction can be swayed by relatively minor events. What we can say for sure is that many people are going to be hurt.

When the crash will occur is also hard to predict. What keeps civilized societies functioning is the social compact that persuades people to voluntarily obey certain norms of behavior with the expectation that others will too. When that compact is seen as being ignored with impunity by some people, you breed general contempt for the norms and open the door to chaos. When people see how the ruling class loots in open contempt of the general expectation of having responsibility for the greater good, they begin to wonder why they should subject themselves to those norms. The symptoms of impending trouble are a rising level of social unrest consisting of grumblings, protests, demonstrations, strikes, vandalism, and even rioting as people begin to realize how bad things are, how bleak their own futures are, and start to take the law into their own hands.

The warning signs are so obvious that I cannot believe that the oligarchy and its political and media lackeys do not see them. I think they do, which is why the looting has reached such reckless levels. In the excellent documentaries Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2006) and Inside Job (2010) you see the top people on the inside realizing that the situation is unstable and too far gone to remedy, that the crash is coming, and trying to make as much money as possible and escape while they can, destroying the lives of millions of people in the process. It would be a big mistake to think that the corruption was confined to just the institutions depicted in the films. They are merely indicators of a rot writ large.

In watching the Enron documentary, what struck me was that the key perpetrators of that fraud were actually prosecuted, convicted, and sent to jail. Chairman Ken Lay (a close friend of the Bush family) was found guilty in 2006 and faced 20 to 30 years in prison but died before sentencing. Chief Executive Office Jeffrey Skilling was sentenced to 24 years in jail and fined $45 million. Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow was sentenced to six years in prison and fined.

Those were the good old days. It seems so quaint that at one time people actually went to jail for major financial crimes. The oligarchy soon put a stop to that nonsense. Now they control the government and the regulatory agencies so thoroughly that no one risks going to jail for using their big institutions to enrich themselves at the expense of others. Despite the massive scale of malfeasances during the financial debacle of 2008, as far as I am aware not a single person went to prison. The only people who are prosecuted are relative small-timers like Bernie Madoff who make the mistake of swindling other rich people.

We now have a class of people who seem to believe that they have immunity from any legal consequences for their financial actions. That should tell us all we need to know about how bad the situation is.

August 28, 2011

How the US outsources torture

Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill says that the US government and the CIA now use secret prisons in Mogadishu, Somalia to house and torture prisoners that they pick up in the rest of the world.

August 25, 2011

What the Pledge of Allegiance is really doing

Having young children recite the Pledge of Allegiance always seemed to me to be a somewhat disturbing thing, smacking of childhood indoctrination, even leaving aside the 'under god' part. This video captures the problem with it.

(Thanks to Fu Dayi)

August 24, 2011

The Bush-Obama presidency

David Bromwich, a professor of literature at Yale, argues that there is a remarkable continuity between the Bush and Obama presidencies. He repeats the warning that I have made earlier, that Obama and the Democrats are in fact more dangerous to the fortunes of the not-wealthy than the Republicans were.

In these August days, Americans are rubbing their eyes, still wondering what has befallen us with the president’s "debt deal" -- a shifting of tectonic plates beneath the economy of a sort Dick Cheney might have dreamed of, but which Barack Obama and the House Republicans together brought to fruition. A redistribution of wealth and power more than three decades in the making has now been carved into the system and given the stamp of permanence.

Only a Democratic president, and only one associated in the public mind (however wrongly) with the fortunes of the poor, could have accomplished such a reversal with such sickening completeness.
…
A certain mystery surrounds Obama's perpetuation of Bush’s economic policies, in the absence of the reactionary class loyalty that accompanied them, and his expansion of Bush’s war policies in the absence of the crude idea of the enemy and the spirited love of war that drove Bush. But the puzzle has grown tiresome, and the effects of the continuity matter more than its sources.

Bush we knew the meaning of, and the need for resistance was clear. Obama makes resistance harder. During a deep crisis, such a nominal leader, by his contradictory words and conduct and the force of his example (or rather the lack of force in his example), becomes a subtle disaster for all whose hopes once rested with him.

Bromwich looks in detail at which advisors the president likes to keep and which ones he is quick to jettison and sees a pattern that points to Obama's willing complicity in the looting by the oligarchy.

Meanwhile Glenn Greenwald argues that the increasing surveillance powers that the US and UK governments have developed to spy on and monitor their own citizens is because they are afraid of the growing anger among their populations at the fact that most people are being marginalized while a very few are doing well. The governments will need this information to crack down on possible mass protests in the future.

This year, the Obama administration began demanding greater power to obtain Internet records without a court order. Meanwhile, the Chairwoman of the DNC, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, is sponsoring a truly pernicious bill that would force Internet providers "to keep logs of their customers’ activities for one year." And a whole slew of sleazy, revolving-door functionaries from the public/private consortium that is the National Security State -- epitomized by former Bush DNI and current Booz Allen executive Adm. Michael McConnell -- are exploiting fear-mongering hysteria over cyber-attacks to justify incredibly dangerous (and profitable) Internet controls. As The Washington Post's Dana Priest and William Arkin reported in their "Top Secret America" series last year: "Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications." That is a sprawling, out-of-control Surveillance State.

One must add to all of these developments the growing attempts to stifle meaningful dissent of any kind -- especially civil disobedience -- through intimidation and excessive punishment. The cruel and degrading treatment of Bradley Manning, the attempted criminalization of WikiLeaks, the unprecedentedly harsh war on whistleblowers: these are all grounded in the recognition that the technology itself cannot be stopped, but making horrific examples out of those who effectively oppose powerful factions can chill others from doing so.

There is already a lot of anger in the US. This is often taking inchoate forms and directed at the wrong targets out of ignorance (the Tea Party is a good example of this) but the ruling class cannot depend on that happy state of affairs continuing forever.

August 22, 2011

The escalating war on the poor

The ruling class and their media lackeys do not even make an attempt anymore to hide their contempt for the poor and their desire to crush them completely. If they keep this up, who knows what will happen.

Part 1:

Part 2:

August 21, 2011

Matt Taibbi talks with Keith Olbermann on the SEC covering up Wall Street crimes

August 19, 2011

How John McCain destroyed the Republican party (and Tim Pawlenty)

When the history of the Republican party is written, John McCain will have to share the brunt of the blame for its demise, and the central piece of evidence will be his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008. To support this contention, I am going to indulge myself with a highly self-referential post.

I wrote on September 3, 2008, soon after he announced her selection:

Someone once said that the most common last words expressed by reckless men before they do something stupid is: "Hey guys, watch this!" The McCain decision strikes me as exactly one of those ideas, something that looks bold and daring and exciting in the heat of a brainstorming session where a few people are trying to "think outside the box" and make a stunning impression, but where all the negatives only show up in the cold light of day. It is then that you realize that there is a very thin line separating 'thinking outside the box' from 'being out of your mind'.

I think that this decision is going to haunt McCain. His and her ardent supporters are trying to put on a good face and saying that this move is a 'game changer'. I think they are right but not in a good way for him. It risks changing a narrow race into a blowout victory for Obama.

And so it turned out.

I believe that the seeds of Tim Pawlenty's failure as a presidential candidate were also planted by that same event. As I wrote a few days after the 2008 election:

On election night, Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, one of the reported four finalists to be McCain's running mate, was interviewed just after Obama had become elected. I knew the others in the running (Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge) and I could see why the campaign might not be excited about them, since they both seemed kind of dull and stodgy, not adding much to McCain's appeal. But I had never seen Pawlenty before and he seemed to me to have many of Palin's positives (youth and energy and ideology) without all of her obvious negatives.

Pawlenty spoke fluently and well about the issues that drove the campaign, and graciously about Obama. Furthermore he is an evangelical Christian and is solidly in step with their anti-abortion, anti-gay agenda, although in the early 1990s he was not quite as hard-line. As he spoke, I became increasingly mystified as to why McCain had overlooked him for Palin.

But while being the vice-presidential candidate in 2008 would undoubtedly have helped Pawlenty in 2012, it was not being overlooked that hurt him so badly. The real problem was that the Palin selection opened a Pandora's box within the Republican party, releasing furies that have divided the party and in the process destroyed his presidential hopes. As I predicted in November 2008:

This is where the battle lines are going to be drawn within the Republican party. What is happening now is that the culture wars that were used in the fights against Democrats is becoming a weapon to be used within the Republican Party, to determine who the 'real Republicans' are. The Southern strategy tactics of dividing the country on cultural issues that worked so well for the Republicans on the national level for nearly four decades, has now suddenly turned in on itself and is being used to divide up the party internally in order to see who will lead it and in what direction it will go.

This is why the jockeying for leadership within the Republican party will be interesting to watch, as various candidates try to keep their names in the public eye while at the same time trying to gauge which way the wind is blowing.
…
Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who was short-listed as a possible vice-presidential candidate, might serve the bill. He seems to have the required positions on social issues such as abortion, gay rights and stem-cell research, though he does not seem to flaunt his religion, perhaps because of that famous Minnesota reserve.

But earlier in his career he had softer stands on abortion and stem-cell research and supported anti-discrimination laws against gays. He is also one of the few evangelicals to support actions to combat global warming, and these will hurt him with the true believers.

While Pawlenty should be acceptable to the social values base of the party, it is not clear if he gives out that special frequency signal that only true believers can hear that enables them to identify those who are truly one of them and thus support them enthusiastically.

We now know the answer to that last question: No. For Michele Bachmann, the answer is yes.

The final nail that McCain drove into the Republican party coffin is that by putting one of their own into the running mate slot, he gave the social base their first real taste of power. Until then, they had been successfully manipulated by the Republican leadership into delivering their votes and energy to the establishment candidates the party chose, while being kept out of leadership positions. That changed in 2008. As I wrote in July 2009:

The old-style conservatives seem to have been routed and are even more marginalized than before. At this stage, they look like people unhappy with what the Republican Party has become and not sure if they can bring it back to what they see as sanity or whether it is hopelessly under the control of nutcases and they need to look for a new home.
…
The second group [the rank-and-file social values base for whom guns, gays, abortion, stem-cell research, flag, religion, homosexuality, and immigration are the main concerns] has not grown larger but has grown more militant. It is digging in its heels and demanding to be in the party leadership and will not go back to their former role as mere foot soldiers. This group has always been made use of by their party leaders but never given a real shot at leadership. McCain's choice of Palin changed that. For the first time, they felt that one of their own was close to the driver's seat and they are not returning to the back of the bus.

And so it has turned out. We saw the rise of the Tea Party as the manifestation of this phenomenon. We now see candidates for the nomination swearing fealty to the most extreme positions of this group. It seems obvious that the Republican party establishment is worried that they have lost control of their party's agenda to a bunch of loonies. Republican David Frum has been quite harsh about the direction his party has taken, and the desperate search for a 'savior candidate' (Paul Ryan or even people like Chris Christie and Mitch Daniels who have been emphatic about not seeking the nomination) are further symptoms of this unease.

The oligarchy cannot be happy about this development. They need both party leaderships to be smooth manipulators of the system who can deliver the fiscal and economic policies that enrich them under cover of the noise generated by extreme social policies, so that whichever party wins, the oligarchy's interests are advanced. They are not social issues ideologues that believe in the crazy policies and slogans that are used to inflame voters, particularly at election time. As the process moves forward, it will be interesting to see how the oligarchs try to shoot down the candidates they dislike and advance the candidacies of 'sensible' people like Romney or Huntsman.

This is the headache that John McCain created for the Republican party with his impulsive and ill-thought out decision in 2008.

August 18, 2011

Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, and the media narrative

The Daily Show had an excellent piece on the extreme lengths that the media have gone to in ignoring Ron Paul's candidacy for the Republican nomination, that reached comical levels following his near tie with Michele Bachmann in the Ames straw poll.

Glenn Greenwald points out that both Paul and former two-term New Mexico governor Gary Johnson have been effectively declared non-persons and makes the persuasive case that this is because neither of them fit into the pre-ordained media narrative because of their stances on war and civil liberties.

[W]hat makes the media most eager to disappear Paul is that he destroys the easy, conventional narrative -- for slothful media figures and for Democratic loyalists alike. Aside from the truly disappeared former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson (more on him in a moment), Ron Paul is far and away the most anti-war, anti-Surveillance-State, anti-crony-capitalism, and anti-drug-war presidential candidate in either party. How can the conventional narrative of extremist/nationalistic/corporatist/racist/warmongering GOP v. the progressive/peaceful/anti-corporate/poor-and-minority-defending Democratic Party be reconciled with the fact that a candidate with those positions just virtually tied for first place among GOP base voters in Iowa? Not easily, and Paul is thus disappeared from existence. That the similarly anti-war, pro-civil-liberties, anti-drug-war Gary Johnson is not even allowed in media debates -- despite being a twice-elected popular governor -- highlights the same dynamic.
…
GOP primary voters are supporting a committed anti-war, anti-surveillance candidate who wants to stop imprisoning people (disproportionately minorities) for drug usage; Democrats, by contrast, are cheering for a war-escalating, drone-attacking, surveillance-and-secrecy-obsessed drug warrior.

Greenwald also makes the important point is that the media pouring so much resources into covering the trivialities of politics during the interminably long election cycle (now lasting 18 months) means that government can act without much scrutiny during that time.

NPR's Talk of the Nation on the Monday following the straw poll, devoted a large segment of their program to discussing the candidacies of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, showing that they follow the media herd as well. They had to fend off questions from annoyed listeners as to why they were ignoring Paul. The host's weak response was that they were focusing on the 'new' people who were getting the 'buzz' and that Paul did not fit the category.

Justin Raimondo also looks at what the media silence on Paul's candidacy says about their agenda, and how the very brazen way in which they are deliberately ignoring Paul is now becoming a story in itself.

The media's refusal to report Paul's growing support, beyond grudging acknowledgement that he's come in from "the fringe," reflects its institutional bias in favor of the right-left red-blue narrative that has, up until now, dominated American politics, and in which so much of the news industry is heavily invested. This narrative doesn't allow for any significant deviations, and certainly not on the presidential level: all must submit to its tyranny, in spite of its archaic and increasingly obstructionist character. What it obstructs is any meaningful challenge to the functioning of the Welfare-Warfare State. If one party is in power, welfare is given more weight than warfare, if the other takes the throne, then welfare is given the axe. In any case, these two aspects of the modern American state are inextricably intertwined, as "defense" spending in the age of empire becomes just another dollop of pork to be ladled out to corporate and political interests – and welfare becomes a way to keep the disgruntled quiescent in wartime.

Think of the media as the Greek chorus to the two "majors," with different media actors cheerleading one party and razzing the other – but never straying outside the bounds of the red-blue narrative, with its rigid definitions and litmus tests. This mindset is encoded in the two-party system, and institutionalized in our ballot access laws, which privilege the two "major" parties – the very same two parties that have led us down the path to endless war and imminent bankruptcy, and are now running away from their dual responsibility for the present crisis.

Roger Simon also thinks that Paul is getting shafted and finds some telling clues about how political narratives are structured.

There was a deliciously intriguing line in The Washington Post's fine recap of Ames on Sunday. It said had Paul edged out Bachmann, "it would have hurt the credibility and future of the straw poll, a number of Republicans said."

So don't blame the media. Here are Republicans, presumably Republican operatives, who said if one candidate wins, the contest is significant, but if another wins the contest is not credible.

I myself have mixed feelings about Ron Paul. I like the fact that he opposes all these wars that the US is waging and the militarization of foreign policy and his civil libertarian and anti-Wall Street stances. I dislike his positions on some social issues, find his desire to eliminate almost all of government too extreme, and do not understand economics well enough to confidently judge his desire to return the US to the gold standard. But there is no doubt that he is far and away the candidate who discusses the issues most substantively and not in clichés and sound bites aimed at pandering to the base. He undoubtedly elevates the level of political debate. But that is another reason for the media to ignore him. It would require them to actually talk about monetary and foreign policy and other boring stuff. It is much easier and way more fun to talk about Michele Bachmann's husband or Sarah Palin's latest publicity-seeking stunt or Rick Perry's swagger.

I hope that Paul does well if for no other reason than to have the smug condescending looks of the media establishment wiped off their faces.

August 17, 2011

Obama worshippers

I recently had a conversation with a liberal friend and pointed out how shocking it was that Obama had asserted the right to summarily order the killing of American citizens abroad. My friend was not aware of this until I told him. I expected him to be appalled but instead he said that he trusted Obama to do the right thing and that if he ordered such a killing, the person probably deserved to die. When I continued to criticize Obama for his assertion of autocratic powers, he asked me whether I would vote for Obama or Michele Bachmann in the next election. He seemed to think that this argument clinched his case.

I find such attitudes truly incredible. Even if people think that Obama is a good guy looking out for the interests of ordinary folks (a doubtful proposition at best), it is astonishing that they are unconcerned that whatever dictatorial powers they give to him will also be available for use by any future president, including a Bachmann.

The protection of freedoms and civil liberties has to lie in the hands of laws and constitutional protections that are vigilantly guarded, not in assuming the good intentions of individuals.

August 16, 2011

The idiotic Ames straw poll

I watched with some amazement the Ames straw poll. The process is truly bizarre and yet for some reason it was treated as some kind of major political event. A straw poll, as the name implies, is a quick way to see which way the wind is blowing at one particular instant, and it is absurd to use it for anything more. And yet, such a poll resulted in the elimination of Tim Pawlenty from the Republican race.

Just think about it. Less than 17,000 votes were cast. As of 2008, there were 206 million voting age citizens. So 0.008% of the voting age population, all located in a small part of the country and representing very narrow interests, denied the rest of the country the chance to decide if they thought Pawlenty would make a good president.

Let me make it clear that I am not holding a brief for Pawlenty. I did not like his politics and he showed that he was willing to pander to the nutty base of the party as enthusiastically as the rest. For all I know, he may have run an awful campaign in Ames. But he did not seem to be obviously insane and did serve as a governor of a major state for two terms and this should at least count for something. The point I want to make is that it is crazy to allow such a narrow segment of the population to have such a major voice in determining who should or should not be the president and allow them to summarily eliminate candidates who, at least on the basis of their resumes, deserve to be taken seriously.

In his fine book Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (2010), constitutional scholar Richard Beeman describes the extended discussions the Founding Fathers had during the summer of 1787 as they tried to figure out the best way to elect a president. The problem they faced was that the president had to represent the nation as a whole but the state of communications was so poor and travel so difficult that, apart from war hero George Washington, they feared that the public scattered across the thirteen states would not have the knowledge to vote for someone who was outside their region or state. They feared that a truly democratic election in which each citizen cast one vote directly for the president would result in each state's voters choosing their 'favorite son' for president, leading to an inconclusive result. They were also somewhat contemptuous of the wisdom, integrity, and intelligence of ordinary citizens and feared that they could be easily manipulated into voting for self-seeking and unscrupulous but charismatic politicians.

Hence the Founding Fathers developed the complicated indirect voting system that we call the Electoral College, whereby the voters in each state would vote for Electors who would in turn vote for the president. The hope was that these Electors would be from among the best and the brightest people in the state and most knowledgeable about national affairs and thus would cast an informed vote. But even this safeguard was considered insufficient since they feared that the numbers of Electors from each state was so small (varying from three each from Rhode Island and Delaware to twelve from Virginia) that they could be too strongly influenced or manipulated or even bribed by ambitious state politicians to vote for them. Hence they put in an additional requirement that each Elector had to cast two votes, at least one of which should be for someone from outside their own state. The hope was that it was from the votes cast for an out-of-state candidate that a truly national figure would emerge.

But they added even more precautions. If as a result of this process, no single candidate emerged with a majority of votes in the Electoral College, then the House of Representatives would vote from among the top five candidates. In this final election, each state's delegation would have just one vote. They hoped that this elaborate process would allow for the election of someone who could rise about the parochial interests of his home state and represent the interests of the new nation as a whole.

In April 1789 George Washington was elected the first president under this system, having received every one of the Electoral College votes cast. But of course, the main concern was not about Washington, who was always expected to be a shoo-in for the post, but to ensure that someone close to his stature would be elected once he left office.

But look what we have now. Unlike in 1787, we have rapid travel and almost instantaneous universal communication so that all voters everywhere have access to information about all the candidates. The difficult conditions that the founders designed their system to overcome no longer apply. And yet, rather than having a system that takes advantage of the elimination of those constraints to select a truly national candidate, what the Ames straw poll illustrates is that we have actually gone into reverse, granting a tiny, self-selected, and highly parochial group the right to decide who are the candidates worth considering and whom to eliminate.

The whole process is also profoundly anti-democratic and corrupt. The candidates buy tickets ($30 each) to enable people to participate, with the candidates acting like carnival barkers luring people to their particular sideshow. Michele Bachmann spent $180,000 to buy 6,000 tickets, of which almost 5,000 voted for her.

The media elevated this non-event to something of significance and also skewed the interpretation of the results. Ron Paul essentially tied with Bachmann in the vote (the difference was less than 1%) and yet the media treat her as if she was the sole winner and ignore Paul.

The most important quality that a candidate needs to possess to win the Ames straw poll is the ability to coax and bribe a tiny group of people to vote for them. This is precisely what the Founding Fathers sought to avoid. So why are we giving this non-event so much prominence instead of consigning it to the oblivion it deserves?