Ignorance breeds fear. Fear fosters hate. In turn, hate leads inevitably to violence.And just when I find one more small reason (or two, or three, or four) to be optimistic about Humanity's future - I stumble onto something like this, or that, or this, or that, or this, or that, or this, or that, or this.
The History of Humanity constitutes a sad and tragic testament to this senseless and vicious progression. Incidentally, there is a further underlying, self-evident axiom to this assertion which posits that violence is the last refuge of incompetence - incompetence as nations, as communities, and as thinking, reasoning human beings.
Therefore, when will we acknowledge the fact, once and for all, that it is the incompetents among us who consistently promulgate violence as a solution for anything, to everything?
For the sake of our continued existence, we must strive to forget nevermore that rationalizations supporting the use of violence - other than the need for the rightful exercise of self-defense when set upon by a genuinely clear, present and immediate danger - invariably constitute deceitful fabrications meant to conceal, disguise or justify incompetence ...
... including our very own for embracing such mendacity.
President Obama accused Iran of “development of a nuclear weapon” during a press conference. Incoming CIA director Leon Panetta declared during his testimony that “I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability.”
While the Iranian government continues to express its desire to improve relations, Obama and associates just keep hurling accusations at Iran’s civilian nuclear program. There’s one thing the administration is missing though, and that’s evidence. Officials concede there is no evidence that undercuts the 2007 findings, but like the Bush Administration, the newcomers don’t seem to want fact to get in the way of good rhetoric.
punditman says ...This does not surprise Punditman in the least; unlike a common assumption out there amongst the sheeple, there is no structural change in US foreign policy just because Obama is in charge.
So long as there is no fundamental change at the institutional level, it appears impossible for a US President to not huff and puff and threaten Iran. It's been going on since the CIA organized the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq and installed the Shaw in 1953.
Current tensions between the US and Iran are far from resolved and have the potential to become a very hot crisis. Or, the Obama administration can stop misleading the public and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton can save the day by taking Iranian overtures seriously and open a serious dialogue that could lead to detente.
Joe the Plumber suggests some members of Congress should be shotIf you think that Joe is not representative of today's devolved G.O.P., then try this for size:On Wednesday, Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher said that if he were in Congress, he would “probably be in jail” because he’d be charged with “slapping some member.” He added, “And that’s not [bull] either.” ThinkProgress asked Joe at CPAC yesterday which members he would most like to slap. “Pretty much anybody that’s stood there and said anything bad about our troops, pretty much anybody who sat there and talked treasonous talk about America,” Joe said. He then implied that some members of Congress should be shot:
Back in the day, really, when people would talk about our military in a poor way, somebody would shoot ‘em. And there’d be nothing said about that, because they knew it was wrong. You don’t talk about our troops. You support our troops. Especially when our congressmen and senators sit there and say bad things in an ongoing conflict.
Watch it:
Of course, politicians aren’t the only ones Joe thinks should be banned from speaking about war. Last month, he said that journalists shouldn’t “be anywhere allowed war.” “I think media should be abolished from, uh, you know, reporting,” he said.
Update: ThinkProgress also asked Joe about his recent trip to Israel. Wurzelbacher repeated his claim that Obama’s victory means “death to Israel.” He also seemed to say that there is no such thing as a Palestinian. Watch the video here.
And even this, as well:This morning, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton spoke to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). He tried to up the fear quotient in the room by raising the prospect of an Iranian-sent nuclear attack on an American city. “It’s [a] tiny [threat] compared to the Soviet Union,” Bolton said, “but is the loss of one American city — pick one at random: Chicago — is that a tiny threat?” The audience erupted in cheers and laughter at the idea of Obama’s home city being obliterated. Watch it:
Later during the conference, Joe Scarborough warned the audience that conservatives would have to work on their “tone.” “We’re not going to win votes, we’re not going to win elections by calling Obama a communist,” Scarborough said.
Update: The Wonk Room's Matt Duss, who attended CPAC today, notes that Bolton also fearmongered on Obama's dedication to Israel. He told an audience member that he "very much fear[s] it's right" that Obama would not aid Israel were it attacked.
The more things change ...ThinkProgress is attending the right-wing Conservative Political Action Conference today. Earlier this afternoon, Cliff Kincaid, head of a conservative group Accuracy in Media, introduced Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN). Kincaid suggested that President Obama is a communist, then suggested Obama was not born in the United States — to which the crowd cheered wildly. Watch it:
Despite the fact that it has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked, radical conservatives continue to peddle the ridiculous myth. Last weekend, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) noted that he had never seen Obama’s birth certificate. Trying to calm the ensuing firestorm, a spokesman for Shelby claimed the senator “was not saying and I’m not saying he (Obama) is or isn’t [a U.S. citizen], he was just saying he hasn’t seen one (a birth certificate).”
Bush should have executed Gitmo detainees, says former CIA officerYes, indeed - who needs fucking due process, legal representation and, worst of all, trials (like this one, as a more recent example)? Just hang/shoot/fry/put down any motherfucking person we accuse of anything and be done with this human/civil rights crap already!
A former CIA officer has said its ridiculous that the Bush administration didn't execute numerous prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, regardless of whether they have had a trial, when it had the chance.
"Many of those individuals that are there are enemy combatants and that's based on the Geneva Conventions and should be executed," said Gary Berntsen, who spent 20 years with the CIA, to Fox's Gretchen Carlson on the show, Fox & Friends. "It's ridiculous that the Bush administration, after seven years, didn't deal with many of those that we know are enemy combatants."
Two years into the Iraq war, moderately well read Westerners already knew that the insurgency there wasn't monolithic. Honest reporting repeatedly made clear that Al Qaeda, Sunni militant groups of various varieties and Sadrists didn't see eye to eye and often worked at cross purposes even while all were hostile to America and its allies.
Yet after seven years in Afghanistan, the same cannot be said about Western knowledge of militants in the region. There's a big, amorphous mass called "The Taliban" which is in cahoots with Al Qaeda - and that's about as fine grained as it usually gets.
That was sufficient back in 2001. The American-led coalition invaded to engage Osama bin Laden's group and the Taliban's organized fighters and on the battlefield itself Afghans quickly sorted into those who were either Al Qeada or Taliban, or those who were against them.
But it doesn't cover the current complex situation at all well,which means the West's voters are at a disadvantage when it comes to understanding - and approving or disapproving - their leaders' plans. As Brandon Friedman, a former officer who served in Afghanistan, put it in a recent email:
Instead of fighting organized theocratic government forces and their foreign terrorist guests, we're now arrayed against a Tatooine-esque combination actual foreign terrorists, actual Taliban fighters from two different countries, narco-warlords jockeying for regional power and influence, regular warlords jockeying for regional power and influence, angry Afghan citizens who've grown weary of civilian casualties, angry Afghan civilians who've grown weary of foreign forces and their broken promises, regular Afghan citizens who side with the Taliban out of sheer necessity for survival, angry opium farmers, Pakistani agents, and, finally, the invisible blight of government corruption.
Reducing that complexity to a simple "Us and Them" formula hinders much of the debate about Afghanistan.
So it was pleasant to see, among coverage of recent US missile strikes, a report by Mark Mazzetti, David Sanger and Eric Schmidt of the New York Times which tried to explain the various flavors of Taliban, their motives and their aims. The piece highlighted the difference between the Taliban group that Pakistan is most interested in opposing, Baitullah Mehsud's Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the network run by Jalaluddin Haqqani, which is believed responsible for the campaign against Western forces in Afghanistan.
The latter group thinks the former has no business attacking Pakistani security forces or the Pakistani government, pointing to a reciprocal tension between Pakistan and the US-led coalition in Afghanistan. While the Pakistani government is happy to do peace deals with Haqqani's network and less so with Mehsud's, the coalition is more likely to eventually do so with the latter. Meanwhile, Pakistani counter-terror efforts are always going to focus on Mehsud's groups - which isn't all that useful to the West.
We could do with more of this kind of reporting about the region. In particular, we could do with more differentiation on press reports of the four or five main current strains of Taliban of interest to Western efforts in the region. That's the plea recently made by Frederick Kagan, in a short article for the National Review Online reproduced at the American Enterprise Institute:
There is no such thing as "the Taliban" today. Many different groups with different leaders and aims call themselves "Taliban," and many more are called "Taliban" by their enemies. In addition to Mullah Omar's Taliban based in Pakistan and indigenous Taliban forces in Afghanistan, there is an indigenous Pakistani Taliban controlled by Baitullah Mehsud (this group is thought to have been responsible for assassinating Benazir Bhutto). Both are linked with al-Qaeda, and both are dangerous and determined. In other areas, however, "Taliban" groups are primarily disaffected tribesmen who find it more convenient to get help from the Taliban than from other sources.
In general terms, any group that calls itself "Taliban" is identifying itself as against the government in Kabul, the U.S., and U.S. allies. Our job is to understand which groups are truly dangerous, which are irreconcilable with our goals for Afghanistan--and which can be fractured or persuaded to rejoin the Afghan polity. We can't fight them all, and we can't negotiate with them all. Dropping the term "Taliban" and referring to specific groups instead would be a good way to start understanding who is really causing problems.
Mullah Omar's Taliban - the original Afghanistan-ruling Taliban - is nowadays more under the day-to-day direction of Mullah Bradar (or Brehadar), Omar's trusted chief of military operations but it still leans heavily towards the position of Jalaluddin Haqqani's Taliban, which has largely supplanted it as the pre-eminent force in Afghanistan. Both are based in Pakistan but mostly interested in attacking allied forces in Afghanistan and the Afghan government. As one prominent member of Omar's group told Asia Times reporter Syed Saleem Shahzad last September:
it is necessary to understand that there is a sea of difference between the people who call themselves the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Taliban [led by Mehsud] and the Taliban. We have nothing to do with them. In fact, we oppose the policies they adhere to against the Pakistani security forces.
"We individually speak to all groups, whether they are Pakistanis, Kashmiris, Arabs, Uzbeks or whosoever, telling them not to create violence in Pakistan, especially in the name of the Taliban.
Journalists in the West could do worse than refer to veteran reporter Anand Gopal's incisive look at the various competing groups of militants in the region, which also include the resurgent Hizb-i-Islami of charismatic fundamentalist Hekmatyar, who like Haqqani used to be one of those favored by both CIA and ISI intelligence agencies. Gopal writes of a "rainbow coalition" arrayed against U.S. troops, which is "competing commanders with differing ideologies and strategies, who nonetheless agree on one essential goal: kicking out the foreigners."
As Brandon Friedman writes, it's tempting to default to the soundbite term "Taliban" when talking about all these groups and to thus treat them as if they were one monolithic structure.
(...) because something/anything deemed potentially disruptive (even remotely or not at all) to "the safety and security of Canadians or the integrity of Canada's critical infrastructure" may or may not happen, this warrants the full use and deployment of the government's terrorism monitoring apparatus to spy on lawful citizens.This also implies that police and security agencies will ever demand more and more spying powers in order to fullfill their self-ascribed "mission".
Let this reality sink in for a minute or two ... or five ... or ten.
Do you get it now?
This means that anything can and will be viewed by our security agencies within the narrow, paranoid prism of terrorism and threats to security.
Anything.
From blogging to writing a dissenting letter to a newspaper editor to a journalist trying to do investigative work to gathering at a coffee shop to rant about politics to reading "suspicious" stuff (books, blogs) to organizing/participating in activist actions (letter/phone/email campaigns, peaceful protests), etc., etc., etc.
Because any such activities may or may not -immediately or at some point in time or never at all - lead to acts which may or may not "threaten the safety and security of citizens or the integrity of the country's critical infrastructure".
So just in case and to be safe, let's monitor and survey and spy away on the citizenry.
And that is the ever convenient rationale of authoritarian security states for spying on their citizens.
I repeat: no one is safe.
NSA aims to expand power: Eavesdropping agency looks to take over cybersecurityTo recap: a) we are threatened (of course); b) we need more powers to meet these threats; and c) don't worry about abusing such powers - we'll help you make us trust us.
The spy shop that brought you the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program wants to expand its power under President Barack Obama, the nation's top intelligence chief told Congress Wednesday, in a little-noticed intelligence grab.
While acknowledging that many distrust the agency for its role in eavesdropping, Obama Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair said he believed the agency should expand into a permanent role in handling government cybersecurity efforts.
In essence, his agency's move is an effort to take the responsibilities away from the Homeland Security Department. The head of Obama's cybersecurity transition team, Paul Kurtz, said he supports giving the NSA more power in handling cybersecurity.
Blair told a House committee: "The National Security Agency has the greatest repository of cyber talent."
"There are some wizards out there ... who can do stuff," Blair added. "I think that capability should be harnessed and built on."
Some critics have questioned whether the agency is already involved in surveilling domestic e-mail and other correspondence in searching for foreign intelligence threats.
Blair said that foreign countries increasingly post a threat to the US in the cybersecurity realm. The agency, in general, is tasked with foreign intelligence.
"A number of nations, including Russia and China, can disrupt elements of the U.S. information infrastructure," Blair remarked. "Cyber-defense is not a one-time fix; it requires a continual investment."
But he said that the NSA had "two strikes out" for its role in appearing to subvert civil liberties. Many critics say that Bush's wiretapping program was illegal, because taps did not go through proper court channels.
"The NSA is both intelligence and military, two strikes out in terms of the way some Americans think about a body that ought to be protecting their privacy and civil liberties," Blair said.
"I think there is a great deal of distrust of the National Security Agency and the intelligence community in general playing a role outside of the very narrowly circumscribed role because of some of the history of the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] issue in years past," he continued. "So I would like the help of people like you who have studied this closely and served on commissions, the leadership of the committee and finding a way that the American people will have confidence in the supervision."
(...) I remain staunchly opposed to the ludicrous and very dangerous wrong-headed idea that police and security agencies can get any information on us without a court-approved warrant, regardless of whatever reason they want to invoke to justify such blatant violation of civil rights - because police and security agencies will inevitably abuse such vast, indiscriminate powers of domestic spying (examples here and here). It is in their nature to do so.Word to the wise ...
Then again - I told you so, bis repetita, eh?
Obama is continuing the policy, started by his predecessor George W. Bush, of bombing suspected Taliban hideouts in Pakistan. As well, the U.S. has sent about 70 military "advisers" into that country.
We shouldn't be surprised. When he was campaigning for the presidency, Obama promised to vigorously pursue the Taliban into their Pakistani sanctuaries. At the time, he was criticized as naive. The smart money said he'd never follow through. Apparently, the smart money was wrong.
In fact, Obama's Afghan strategy seems remarkably similar to that of Bush. Bush, too, embraced the so-called three D's, defence, development and diplomacy, all of which have been U.S. and NATO orthodoxy since 2003.
It's true that in the early years of the war Bush focused solely on force of arms. As then defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously noted, America wasn't in the business of nation-building.
But by 2003, that began to change. As the Taliban regrouped, the U.S. realized that it was caught in a full-scale insurgency that required a more sophisticated response.
punditman says ... It is nice to see some honest analysis of the Afghanistan situation within the mainstream media. Given the economic position that the US and Canada and the entire western world finds itself in, it seems rather counter intuitive to spend even more money on another hopeless war. People need to stop putting Obama on a pedestal and take a hard look at his actual policies rather than his rhetoric. Is there any difference between his and Bush's approach to the Afghan quagmire? Punditman can't see it, at least not so far.
Q: Is Rush Limbaugh really a self-important, fatuous, windbag idiot?
A: Does 1+1=2?
Q: Is John McCain just another hypocritical, mendacious incompetent?
A: Yes. Nothing new, here.
Q: Is Karl Rove just another hypocritical, mendacious incompetent?
A: Does 1-1=0?
Q: Is the National Post Editorial Board comprised of shrieking, fatuous, ignorant, idiotic and incompetent buffoons?
A: Absolutely - proof here.
Q: What do these people mentionned in the previous questions have in common?
A: They are intellectual sloth-driven incompetent, primitive minds.
Afghan Foreign Minister Says ‘The Majority Of Afghans Still Support’ International Troop PresenceFunny - Spanta's claim of a "majority of Afghans" sounds quite similar to any claims by news personalities and/or political hacks that whatever their opinions are, they are shared by a "majority of (insert nationality)" (some examples to be found here).A recent ABC/BBC/ARD poll released earlier this month found that Afghans’ support of U.S. and NATO forces’ efforts in that nation is tumbling. Just 47 percent said they had a favorable view of the United States, down from 83 percent in 2005. Only 37 percent said that most people in their area support NATO and the International Security Assistance Force; 67 percent supported ISAF in 2006.
Today, ThinkProgress interviewed Afghanistan’s foreign minister, Dr. Rangin Dadfar Spanta. We asked him about the poll’s grim findings and how NATO and the Afghan government “can win back the hearts and minds of the Afghan civilians.” Spanta disputed the poll’s results, claiming that a majority of Afghans still support the U.S.-led international coalition:
(...) Spanta later said that Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and Gen. David McKiernan, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, have agreed that Afghan forces will be more “involved” in the “preparation [and] implantation of military action on operations,” including “arresting Afghans in house searching” to ensure more respect for the culture of Afghans.SPANTA: Now, this is the opinion to places that you ask the people, the ordinary Afghans, the majority of all the Afghans still support the presence of the international community because they believe that the international community came to Afghanistan after two and a half decades of tyranny in my country…and the international community brought us liberation. This is still the perception of the people of Afghanistan
Afghanistan victory unlikely, says DND manualAnd I could go on and on and on ...
Still No Rights for Bagram Prisoners
High Value Terrorist...Children
At Least 20 Killed in Twin US Attacks in Waziristan
Kabul's rift with the US widens
How we lost Afghanistan
New Afghan civilian deaths probe
No light at end of Afghan tunnel
Nato chief faults Afghan leaders
Clashes, motorbike bomb kill 32 in Afghanistan
Nato is deeper in its Afghan mire than Russia ever was
Afghanistan: a misread war
Afghanistan mission to last decades
Obama administration defends telecom immunity in new briefAah yes, indeed - meet the new boss ...
Obama administration tries to kill e-mail case
In Spy Case, Obama's Justice Department Holds Fast to State Secrets Privilege
Obama administration defending Bush secrets
Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool
Obama’s Top Lawyer Says Obama Doesn’t Want To “Weaken” Presidency
Intelligence Policy: New Perspective or Familiar Approach?
Obama eyes $200 bln for war effort: report
Obama's Iraq plan 'more like a Bush plan'
Obama Admin. Reportedly Sending Detainees to Bagram Instead of Gitmo
Colorado state senator says HIV testing for pregnant women rewards ‘sexual promiscuity’Because, yeah - you know - only women are Teh Temptation because of their sinful, promiscuous nature and therefore they are the only ones who spread STDs ... while we poor men keep on falling to the wicked witchery of their charms and all and end up being infected.
Today, Colorado State Sen. Dave Schultheis (R) caused outrage by announcing that he would vote against a bill requiring HIV tests for pregnant women because the disease “stems from sexual promiscuity” and he doesn’t think the government should reward “unacceptable behavior.” Schultheis explained his motives before casting the lone vote against the bill:We do things continually to remove the negative consequences that take place from poor behavior and unacceptable behavior, quite frankly, and I don’t think that’s the role of this body.
As a result of that I finally came to the conclusion I would have to be a no vote on this because this stems from sexual promiscuity for the most part, and I just can’t vote on this bill and I wanted to explain to this body why I was going to be a no vote on this.
RBC logs $1.05-billion profitOur banks are "relatively" healthy indeed in these trying economic times, thanks to our regulations - but - but - but - but - why then dish out billions in rescue monies to them in order to "keep credit flowing"?
CIBC makes $147-million in the quarter
JPMorgan to cut 12,000 jobs related to WaMu dealIn other words, they used the bailout monies they received as any other type of capital to do as they pleased in order to keep/increase their profits and expand their market shares.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. said Thursday it will eliminate about 12,000 jobs as it folds in the operations of Washington Mutual Inc.
According to slides on the company's Web site from an investor day presentation, the New York bank expects about $2-billion (U.S.) in net savings to be achieved through the acquisition, the majority of which will be realized by the end of this year. This includes about $1.35-billion related to the job cuts, the bank said.
JPMorgan acquired the assets of Seattle-based WaMu, the largest bank ever to fail in U.S. history, at the end of September (...).
JPMorgan has yet to post a quarterly loss during the financial meltdown that began in 2007, when mortgage defaults started spiking. The bank in January reported a modest fourth-quarter profit of $702-million — thanks mostly to its purchase of Washington Mutual, which boosted its consumer banking business.
(...)
JPMorgan, like San Francisco-based rival Wells Fargo & Co., has received $25-billion in government aid. Weaker competitors Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. have each gotten $45-billion in government capital.
GM loss hits $9.6-billion for the quarterSo - we the employees and workers on both sides of the border get the shaft both ways by losing our jobs and/or seeing our pension funds shrink away into this economic black hole we are being sucked in, while banks, financial institutions and corporate CEOs keep raking in profits and
Quebec pension giant posts $39.8B loss
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
President Lyndon B. Johnson’s policy of Great Society spending and Vietnam War is credited with the rising American inflation that persisted until checked by President Reagan’s supply-side policy.
In Johnson’s time the American economy and the US dollar were strong, and there was no current account deficit. Yet, LBJ’s policy of guns and butter did long-term harm.
The Bush/Obama 21st century policy of guns and butter makes LBJ look like a piker. The 2009 and 2010 federal budget deficits will be monstrous even without guns. But Obama is exiting (apparently) the Iraq War in order to start two, possibly three, more wars.
Obama has announced a doubling of US troops in Afghanistan. Widening that war will require the US to occupy, or attempt to occupy, parts of Pakistan. The disrespect for Pakistan’s sovereignty will further radicalize that large, nuclear-armed country and bring Pakistan, or at least parts of it, into armed conflict with the US.
Keep Reading ...
punditman says ... Is there something about the US presidency that automatically divorces the holder of the office from reality? The US economy is going off a cliff. So -- time to crank up the belligerent rhetoric and escalate military actions. Is there something in the White House water supply?
The Subhiksha experience is a graphic example of the effect of the financial downturn even in a country that has been experiencing considerable economic growth. Moreover, it is not alone: a number of other Indian outlets are in trouble, and foreign retailers (including the Britain-based Argos group) have or are planning to cease operating in the country. Since the Indian economy's projected rate of growth in 2009 is (in a pattern certain to be repeated elsewhere) far lower than it needs to be to meet social demands, the pressures on the country's social and commercial order are likely to become even fiercer.
A biting wind
The exposure of Subhiksha's problems comes at a time when official assessments of the world's economic prospects are becoming more pessimistic by the month. In October 2008, for example, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted a growth rate of 3.0% in 2009, much of it expected to be concentrated in the emerging economies of the global south; by November the figure had been downgraded to 2.2%, and by January 2009 it was further reduced to 0.5%. The fact that the world's annual population increase is of above 1.0% means that this last figure represents a fall in economic growth per person.
The developed industrialised countries of the global north - in particular those most reshaped by the neo-liberal model that has dominated for a generation, such as the United States and Britain - now face a deep recession that will see economic activity shrink by at least 2% in the next year. At the same time, these states have reasonable social safety-nets of the kind not available in the majority world. A period when the contraction of trade freezes the markets which many non-western economies have come to depend on, leading to increasing deprivation without much in the way of welfare protection, is likely to make this contrast even sharper.
Many of the least developed countries (LDCs), for example, remain dependent for the majority of their export earnings on primary commodities such as coffee, tea, sugar, vegetable fibres, copper and tin. The passing of the commodity price boom of 2007-08 intensifies the pressure on these vulnerable economies.
A previous article in this series pointed out that the recession would have a much more serious impact on the global south - a judgment equally applicable to major countries such as China and India (see "A world on the edge", 29 January 2009). Even here the effects of the downturn are for many grievous; the projections of slower growth in China compared with the near-10% of recent years translate into an inability to satisfy growing social needs and demands, with severe consequences likely as a result (see Kerry Brown, "China's giant struggle", 5 February 2009).
An array of emerging economies was experiencing social unrest even before the current recession began to bite, in part as the result of increasing awareness among more literate and aware populations of wrenching social and wealth divides (see "China and India: heartlands of global protest", 7 August 2008). The official responses have included (in China) a major new force of paramilitaries to exert control of public order, and (in India) a recognition that the neo-Maoist Naxalites waging an armed campaign in a swathe of predominantly rural states now constitute the country's biggest security threat.
There are parallels, albeit on a smaller scale, elsewhere. In January-February 2009 the French overseas territory of Guadeloupe has been convulsed by a general strike organised by a coalition of unions and citizen groups campaigning against economic marginalisation (see Angelique Chrisafis, "France faces revolt over poverty on its Caribbean islands", Guardian, 12 February 2009). The unrest has been replicated in the neighbouring island of Martinique, and in two other French overseas territories (French Guiana and the Indian Ocean island of Réunion) have threatened similar action. In an echo of the Subhiksha events, demonstrators on Martinique attacked supermarkets and forced them to close.The effects of a deepening recession are now becoming drastic (see Patrick Chovanec, "China on the brink", Asia Times, 12 February 2009). In China, the greatest cause for concern is the migrant-labour pool: the huge numbers of workers that in the last generation have moved from the countryside to the booming cities and economic zones, who have been the backbone of China's march to the status of a leading industrial power.
The scale of this phenomenon is vast (perhaps involving directly as many as 150 million people) and crucial to the internal development of China too, for these workers have sent money home that has supported their families and sustained their village economies. These remittances are both a vital instrument of rural China's development and a modest guarantee of some distribution of wealth beyond the new urban middle classes during the boom years.
The government has been very reluctant to admit to the economic impact of the decline in the size of the migrant labour pool, one recent government estimate suggesting that perhaps one in fifteen of migrant workers had lost their jobs. A senior government official is reported to have admitted that around 20 million migrant workers have lost their jobs because of the current crisis (see Willy Lam, "Beijing sets out on chaos offensive", Asia Times, 11 February 2009).
A new compass
The social discontent in India, China, and elsewhere is all the more significant in that it is erupting in what are still the early stages of a worldwide recession. The primary target of widespread resentment and anger is the mismanagement, corruption and injustice which disaffected groups attribute to domestic authorities. So far, these radical protests pay little attention to the financial misdemeanours in the minority world of the north, which have led to huge tranches of debt being pledged to save unstable banking systems. The sums involved are massively greater than those required to meet all of the United Nations's Millennium Development Goals; yet the link between the urgent bailouts in one kind of emergency and the neglect and delay in the other has not yet been fully made (see Simon Maxwell, "Development in a downturn", 4 July 2008). This, perhaps, will change with the emergence of transnational radical social movements.
Where you've been on Net not private, judge rulesI'm all for catching pedophiles and child pornographers. But it seems to me that "child pornography" is being evoked as often as "terrorism" these days to justify violating the privacy of citizens in every which way possible, by police and/or security agencies.
An Ontario Superior Court ruling could open the door to police routinely using Internet Protocol addresses to find out the names of people online, without any need for a search warrant.
Justice Lynne Leitch found that there is "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in subscriber information kept by Internet service providers (ISPs), in a decision issued earlier this week.
The decision is binding on lower courts in Ontario and it is the first time a Superior Court-level judge in Canada has ruled on whether there are privacy rights in this information that are protected by the Charter.
The ruling is a significant victory for police investigating crimes such as possession of child pornography, while privacy advocates warn there are broad implications even for law-abiding users of the Internet.
"There is no confidentiality left on the Internet if this ruling stands," said James Stribopoulos, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto.
The ruling by Judge Leitch was made in a possession of child pornography case in southwestern Ontario.
A police officer in St. Thomas faxed a letter to Bell Canada in 2007 seeking subscriber information for an IP address of an Internet user allegedly accessing child pornography. The court heard that it was a "standard letter" that had been previously drafted by Bell and the officer "filled in the blanks" with a request that stated it was part of a child sexual exploitation investigation.
Bell provided the information without asking for a search warrant. The name of the subscriber was the wife of the man who was eventually charged with "possession of child pornography" and "making available child pornography."
Most ISPs in the country require search warrants to turn over subscriber information unless it is a child pornography investigation.
Ron Ellis, the lawyer for the defendant, stressed to the judge that there was no allegation of attempted luring or of a child in immediate danger. The "making available" charge stems from peer-to-peer websites that permit the downloading of images from other users.
Mr. Ellis argued that police should have been required to seek a search warrant to obtain the subscriber information.
Judge Leitch accepted the arguments of Crown attorney Elizabeth Maguire that the information is similar to what is in a phone book.
"One's name and address or the name and address of your spouse are not biographical information one expects would be kept private from the state," said Judge Leitch.
The reasoning of the judge misses the context of what police are seeking, suggested Mr. Stribopoulos.
"It is not just your name. It is your whole Internet surfing history. Up until now, there was privacy. An IP address is not your name; it is a 10-digit number. A lot more people would be apprehensive if they knew their name was being left everywhere they went," he said.
This information should require a search warrant by police if there is suspected criminal activity, said Mr. Stribopoulos. Judges are accepting the argument that this is "just your name" because "everyone wants to get at the child abusers," he said.
The federal Personal Information Protection Electronics Documents Act permits ISPs to provide this information to someone with "lawful authority," which Judge Leitch interpreted as meaning a police officer and not requiring a court ordered warrant.
The price of oil per barrel fluctuated dramatically in the past year, and the U.S.’s dependency on foreign crude has become less stable as tensions in the Middle East have escalated. Over his long campaign, Obama laid out his strategy on how to deal with the crisis, which has been exacerbated by the war in Iraq and the potential confrontation with Iran, not to mention the oil speculator’s dubious role in the money game. But sadly Obama has been echoing old solutions to our new 21st century environmental troubles. Mainly, where is our energy going to come from if oil supplies dwindle or prices skyrocket again? And how will this all affect the dire reality of climate change?
President Obama supports an array of neoliberal strategies to deal with the country’s volatile energy situation. He is not opposed to the prospect of nuclear power, endorses capping-and-trading the coal industry’s pollution output, and supports liquefied coal.
Well, that’s a maybe on the latter.
“Senator Obama supports ... investing in technology that could make coal a clean-burning source of energy,” Obama stated an email sent out by his campaign in June 2007. “However, unless and until this technology is perfected, Senator Obama will not support the development of any coal-to-liquid fuels unless they emit at least 20 percent less life-cycle carbon than conventional fuels.”
You did not just read a lofty proclamation from the new White House change agent, but a well-crafted rationale meant to appease the environmental movement. Meanwhile, back in his Senate days, Obama’s record relays a much different position on the issue.
It was only six months before the aforementioned email that Republican Senator Jim Bunning and Obama introduced the Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2007. The bill, introduced in January 2007, was referred to the Senate committee on finance and would have amended the Energy Policy Act of 2005 as well as the Energy Policy and Conservation Act to evaluate the feasibility of including coal-to-oil fuels in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and provide incentives for research and plant construction.
Shortly after the introduction of the bill, Tommy Vietor, Obama’s spokesman, defended the senator’s proposal, "Illinois basin coal has more untapped energy potential than the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait combined. Senator Obama believes it is crucial that we invest in technologies to use these resources to reduce our dependence on foreign oil."
It's probably a while still before we see bank CEOs on street corners selling the homeless news.
But reports last week of bank presidents cutting their own pay were somewhat eye-catching. (For a little perspective: Rick Waugh of Bank of Nova Scotia will take home $7.5 million this year — after his cut.)
Still, the pay cuts suggest that even inside the most well-fortified Bay Street towers there are jitters that the people down below may start questioning how the economic pie is divided and why they are getting such a small — and shrinking — slice.
Certainly revelations of Wall Street hijinks have raised questions about the skewed nature of financial rewards and, more generally, about how far North American culture has drifted from what used to be known as the "work ethic".
We're waking up to the fact that, starting in the 1980s, a sea change swept away concerns about inequality and unleashed an era of greed and skyrocketing incomes at the top.
We're told that exorbitant pay is necessary to motivate great performance.
But that canard was surely put to rest last month by John Thain, former CEO of Merrill Lynch. Thain explained that it had been necessary to pay $4 billion in executive bonuses to keep the "best people", after those people had just steered the company to a net loss of $27 billion and helped trigger a global recession. (What might some less capable people have done? — started a nuclear war?)
Even when there is great performance, does the wild inflation in top incomes make sense?
Take baseball. In the early 1970s, Hank Aaron was the top-paid player at $200,000 a year. Last year, Alex Rodriguez, with similarly dazzling statistics, earned $27.7 million. Adjusting for inflation (but not for drugs), that makes Rodriguez's pay more than 25 times greater than Aaron's. Is Rodriguez's performance more than 25 times better?
There's no evidence that today's phenomenal pay packages — in sports, entertainment or business — are motivating today's players, performers or executives to any higher performance levels than more modest packages did a few decades ago.
Indeed, there's little logic to our approach to financial rewards. People want to be compensated for work — particularly when it involves drudgery or unpleasantness. But those at the top typically love their jobs, and are motivated by the desire to excel and win recognition. Money is one form of recognition, but there's no evidence that financial rewards have to be gigantic, or that much larger financial rewards produce any greater results.
Vincent van Gogh was motivated to produce hundreds of works of great art, even though he only managed to sell one of them, for a pittance, just before he died. Shakespeare produced the world's greatest dramas without even the prospect they'd become Hollywood blockbusters.
The pay for those at the top has gotten ridiculously out of whack in recent years.
New laws would let police eavesdrop on InternetRemember what happened back in 2007?
The federal government is preparing legislation that could force Internet service providers to let police eavesdrop on emails and chats.
Under the proposed bill, police would first have to get court approval before they could listen in.
Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan told the House of Commons Public Safety and National Security Committee Wednesday that the legislation is needed because current laws are out-of-date.
"We have legislation covering wiretap and surveillance that was designed for the era of the rotary phone," Van Loan said.
(..)
"If you find a situation where a child is being exploited live online at that time - and that situation has arisen before - police services have had good co-operation with a lot of Internet service providers, but there are some that aren't so co-operative."
"When I am President, America will reject torture without exception. America is the country that stood against that kind of behavior, and we will do so again … As President, I will close Guantánamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions … We will again set an example to the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary."
The next day, President Obama requested the military judges at Guantánamo to call a halt for four months to all proceedings in the Military Commissions at Guantánamo (the terror trials conceived by Dick Cheney and his close advisers in November 2001), to give the new administration time to review the system and to decide how best to progress with possible prosecutions.
The day after, he signed his first executive orders, stating that Guantánamo would be closed within a year, upholding the absolute ban on torture, ordering the CIA to close all secret prisons, establishing an immediate review of the cases of the remaining 242 prisoners in Guantánamo, and requiring defense secretary Robert Gates to ensure, within 30 days, that the conditions at Guantánamo conformed to the Geneva Conventions.
At first, everything seemed to be going well. Two judges immediately halted pre-trial hearings in the cases of the Canadian Omar Khadr and the five co-defendants accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, and the President even secured an extra PR victory when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed architect of 9/11, who had been seeking a swift trial and martyrdom in the discredited Commission system, expressed his dissatisfaction to the judge. “We should continue so we don't go backward, we go forward,” he said.
The first sign of dissent from the Pentagon
However, on January 29, the Commissions’ recently appointed chief judge, Army Col. James M. Pohl, provided the first challenge to the President’s plans, when he refused to suspend the arraignment of the Saudi Prisoner Abdul Rahim al-Nashiri, scheduled for February 9, stating that “he found the prosecutors’ arguments, including the assertion that the Obama administration needed time to review its options, to ‘be an unpersuasive basis to delay the arraignment.’”
Suddenly, urgent questions were raised about who was running Guantánamo, as it transpired that, although Barack Obama could request what he wanted, the Commissions, as Col. Pohl pointed out, had been mandated when “Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, which remains in effect.” He added, “The Commission is bound by the law as it currently exists, not as it may change in the future.”
Moreover, the only official empowered to call off al-Nashiri’s arraignment was Susan Crawford, the Commissions’ Convening Authority, who retains her position as the senior Pentagon official overseeing the trials, even though she is a protégée of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and a close friend of Cheney’s Chief of Staff, David Addington, the two individuals who, more than any others, established the “arbitrary justice” that Barack Obama pledged to bring to an end.
After a few fraught days, Crawford was evidently prevailed upon to call off the arraignment, which she did on February 5, dismissing the charges without prejudice (meaning that they can be reinstated at a later date). She refused to comment on her decision, and in fact has only spoken out publicly on one occasion since being appointed in February 2007, when she admitted, in the week before Obama’s inauguration, that the treatment to which Saudi prisoner Mohammed al-Qahtani was subjected amounted to torture. Instead, a Pentagon spokesman stepped forward to state, “It was her decision, but it reflects the fact that the President has issued an executive order which mandates that the Military Commissions be halted, pending the outcome of several reviews of our operations down at Guantánamo.”
This was hardly sufficient to assuage doubts about why a Cheney protégée was still in charge of the Commissions, and these doubts were amplified when the Associated Press announced that two more Bush political appointees -- Sandra Hodgkinson, the former deputy assistant defense secretary for detainee affairs, and special assistant Tara Jones -- had been moved to civil service jobs within the Pentagon. Hodgkinson had spent several years defending the Bush administration’s detention policies, and Jones, as the AP explained, worked for a Pentagon public affairs program “aimed at persuading military analysts to generate favorable news coverage on the war in Iraq, conditions at Guantánamo and other efforts to combat terrorism,” which was “shut down amid fierce Capitol Hill criticism and investigations into whether it violated Pentagon ethics and Federal Communications Commission policy.”
The mass hunger strike
However, while Col. Pohl’s dissent and the continuing presence of Susan Crawford raise serious doubts about the Pentagon’s ability -- or willingness -- to embrace President Obama’s post-Bush world, the most troubling developments are at Guantánamo itself. Although Robert Gates, the only senior Bush administration official specifically retained by Obama, has shown a willingness to adjust to the new conditions (which is, presumably, what encouraged Obama to retain him in the first place), it seems unlikely that, even with the best will in the world, he can address the problems currently plaguing Guantánamo in the remaining twelve days of the time allotted to him to review the conditions at the prison.
A month ago -- inspired, in particular, by the seventh anniversary of the prison’s opening, and by the change of administration -- at least 42 prisoners at Guantánamo embarked on a hunger strike. According to guidelines laid down by medical practitioners, force-feeding mentally competent prisoners who embark on a hunger strike is prohibited, but at Guantánamo this obligation has never carried any weight. Force-feeding has been part of the regime throughout its history, and was vigorously embraced in January 2006, in response to an intense and long-running mass hunger strike, when a number of special restraint chairs were brought to Guantánamo, which were used to “break” the strike.
As I reported last week, the force-feeding, which involves strapping prisoners into the chairs using 16 separate straps and forcing a tube through their nose and into their stomach twice a day, is clearly a world away from the humane treatment required by the Geneva Conventions, as are the “forced cell extractions” used to take unwilling prisoners to be force-fed.
Bailed-out firms rename their cash bonuses as ‘retention awards’Ah, those mendacious, hypocritical incompetents and their vain attempts at redefining reality to cover/justify their incompetence ...
The Huffington Post reports that bailed-out financial firms Morgan Stanley and Citigroup’s Smith Barney — which will soon merge — plan to reward their financial advisers with “very generous” cash bonuses. During an internal conference call last week, advisers were warned not to call the awards bonuses because it would cause a PR headache:“There will be a retention award. Please do not call it a bonus,” said James Gorman, co-president of Morgan Stanley. “It is not a bonus. It is an award. And it recognizes the importance of keeping our team in place as we go through this integration.”
Gorman said that the payments would be “based on performance numbers from 2008 instead of 2009,” which “virtually guarantees an increase in the size of the awards.” On the call, Gorman said that the advisers should be “clapping” at the “very generous and thoughtful” announcement. Listen to the audio here.
- compensation (i.e. bonus, i.e. "retention award"; for CEOs only, of course);Again - that's just from the top off my head (if you folks have more, post them in the comments below - if enough are added, I will make an additional post to list them with proper credits).
- salary (i.e. whatever cheap/exploitative pittance deemed fit to give to employees);
- severance package (i.e. same as "retention award" but, you know, for resigning or being kicked out - for CEOs only, of course);
- downsizing (i.e. layoffs);
- restructuring (i.e. moving overseas for much cheaper labor; inevitably involves "downsizing" at home);
- multi-tasking (i.e. overworking/exploiting employees);
- human resources (i.e. employees to be regarded/considered as "things");
- working retreat (i.e. paid holiday in a lavish and expensive resort);
- merger (i.e. hostile takeover with selling of bought assets and "downsizing"; sometimes used as an excuse for "restructuring");
- rescue (i.e. taxpayer monies to be used as any other capital to do whatever you want with);
- enhanced interrogation (i.e. torture);
- police action (i.e. war of choice);
- regulation (i.e. any sensible law deemed annoying by corporations);
- deregulation (i.e. removing any sensible law deemed annoying by corporations);
- free market (i.e. corporatism/corporacy rules; usually used as sweeping excuse to justify "deregulations");
- energy independence (i.e. drill baby drill, for oil, and dig baby dig, for coal and/or gas);
- clean coal (i.e. just plain "coal");
- surge (i.e. finally sending more soldiers as ought to have been done initially);
- clear skies/clean air/clean water (i.e. "deregulating" pollution laws to the point of near-non-existence);
- terminate with extreme prejudice (i.e. assassinate).
- statement repositioning (i.e. coming up with any self-serving, incompetence-justifying, mendaciousAnd so the continuing blackmail con game goes ...euphemismbullshit);
- counterpositioning (i.e. calling bullshit when served and holding bullshiters accountable);
- performance recalibration (i.e. firing the sorry ass of any incompetent without any "severance package").
And who can and should stop us from finding out who knew what about torture? John Jackson, in these three posts, takes us through the very troubling case of Binyam Mohamed. Two judges had to decide whether to make public in their judgment a summary of evidence provided by the US about the treatment of the UK-resident Ethiopian while in detention in Pakistan. It appears that David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary (and also the defendant in the case) succeeded in persuading the judges not to do so.
Has David Miliband breached the rule of law?
Will International law help Binyam Mohamed?
Having read John Jackson's posts, it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the agents of the UK Government were guilty of contraventions of the Geneva Convention and that our Foreign Secretary is now involved in a cover-up in which he claims over-riding interests of state to save itself. The suspicion is fuelled partly by a strange misunderstanding of what David Miliband told the court. But we may be seeing an executive branch with no compunction in being disingenuous in its statements on a fundamental question of its respect for the rule of law.
Cover-up could be one explanation for the behavior we see.
Obama is retreating again on his position against torture and rendition.
Bad enough that we learned last week that he had made an exception for “facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.”
This week we learned that Obama’s Administration has reaffirmed one of Bush’s egregious positions on rendition.
The case involves Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed, who had been a victim of extraordinary rendition and who claims he was tortured by guards in Morocco using a razor blade repeatedly on his penis.
The Bush Administration asked that Britain not release documents about Mohamed’s mistreatment. But it wasn’t just a request from Bush. It was a threat.
The Bush Administration said that if London released the documents, the United States would sever intelligence sharing with its traditional ally.
Now Obama, who has signed executive orders against torture and extraordinary rendition and who has vowed to improve relations with other countries, is simply following the bloody Bush script.
On Wednesday, the British high court refused to release the documents, saying that Obama’s “position remains the same” as Bush’s.
The British high court wasn’t happy about this.
“We did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials,” two justices said.
They added that it was “difficult to conceive” why the U.S. government still objected to the release of the documents, which would result in “no disclosure of sensitive intelligence mattes.”
The ACLU is not happy, either.
“Hope is flickering,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. “The Obama Administration’s position is not change. It is more of the same. This represents a complete turn-around and undermining of the restoration of the rule of law.”
Limbaugh Opposes Health IT Provisions, Fears His Medical Records Might Become PublicNow, remember this oldie from Teh Rush?As the Senate prepares to vote on its paired down version of the recovery package, Rush Limbaugh is still inventing reasons to oppose its passage. Today on his radio show, Limbaugh zeroed in on a $20 billion portion of the bill devoted to increasing the use of health care IT. Limbaugh warned, “Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system” and declared that this and similar health care provisions have “nothing to do with stimulus but have everything to do with advancing the liberal agenda”:
LIMBAUGH: Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Now there are arguments back and forth about whether or not this is a good thing. The opportunity for the loss of privacy is huge here by digitizing and making everybody’s health care records computerized. Especially having a major federal database where everybody’s health records are.
To illustrate his flawed argument about the “loss of privacy,” Limbaugh noted today’s revelations that Alex Rodriquez used performance enhancing drugs in the early part of this decade. “[A]sk Alex Rodriguez about privacy,” he remarked. Watch it:
Limbaugh can rest assured that his drug records (that have already been disclosed) and Americans’ health care records will be protected by “stringent privacy and security controls” even if they are digitized. In fact, President Bush’s former Coordinator for Health IT, Dr. David Brailer, explained that he is even concerned that “the House bill [goes] so overboard on privacy that it may inhibit the flow of information.”
In addition, Limbaugh is wrong to suggest that the recovery package would create a “major federal database” of every citizen’s health records. Rather, most summaries of the legislation explain that physicians will be offered financial incentives in the form of direct grants and increased Medicare reimbursement rates for adopting “certified electronic health records” and proving that they utilize them “effectively.” Indeed, while the government will be subsidizing the creation of this “nationwide system to exchange health data electronically” — it will not be running it.
Finally, Limbaugh’s claim that investment in health care has “nothing to do with stimulus” — a common right-wing canard — is false. The funding related to health care IT alone is projected to create over 200,000 jobs. As Igor Volsky recently noted, “Investing in Health IT not only saves money, creates jobs and reduces medical errors, but it also helps primary care physicians afford the infrastructure for expansion.”
Limbaugh, Fox's Angle repeated misleading claim that NSA program targeted only terror suspectsOf course, we all know the truth of it now - and yet, where have been Rush Limbaugh's privacy worries concerning such factual revelations?
(...)During the February 15 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh claimed that President Bush's warrantless domestic surveillance program monitored Americans that "have to be getting or placing phone calls to terrorists overseas," while Fox News chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle similarly described the NSA program as "listen[ing] in on terrorists" during the next day's edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume. But as Media Matters for America has previously noted, media reports cite administration officials who characterize the wiretapping program as having cast a broad net, monitoring the communications of thousands of people with no terrorist connection.
Limbaugh criticized Washington Post staff writer Charles Babington while reading portions of Babington's February 15 article on the Senate Intelligence Committee's deliberations into whether to investigate the program, suggesting that Babington and the Post were not "accurately presenting the facts to the readers" in stating that the NSA program "eavesdrops on an undisclosed number of phone calls and e-mails involving U.S. residents without obtaining warrants from a secret court." In doing so, he repeated, along with Angle, the defense of the program advanced by members of the administration that it targets suspected terrorists and not ordinary Americans.
(...)
Obama DOJ affirms Bush’s state secrets position in extraordinary rendition lawsuitWhich in turn explains this:In federal court today, the Obama administration signaled it would uphold the Bush administration’s state secrets position in a lawsuit regarding Bush’s use of extraordinary rendition. Five men who say they were victims of extraordinary rendition — including current Guantanamo detainee and torture victim Binyam Mohamed — sued, but the case was thrown out last year after Bush declared it to be a matter of state secrets. In an appeal today, the new administration took the same position:
A source inside of the Ninth U.S. District Court tells ABC News that a representative of the Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn’t changed, that new administration stands behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all. The DOJ lawyer said the entire subject matter remains a state secret.
Last Wednesday, Britain’s High Court of Justice revealed that the U.S. had threatened to stop sharing evidence with Britain if it disclosed evidence of the torture Binyam Mohamed has endured.
Obama signals he isn't interested in 'truth commission' to investigate Bush abuses(More here)
President Barack Obama gave a cool welcome at his Monday night press conference to Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy's (D-VT) call for a "truth commission" to probe alleged abuses under George W. Bush, offering a fresh signal that the new president may not be interested in investigating President Bush.
Obama claimed at the first press conference of his presidency that he had not seen the proposal from Sen. Leahy and would have a look at it -- "but my general orientation is to say let's get it right moving forward."
But "my view is also that nobody is above the law. And if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen," Obama said.
(...)
Obama, who has come under heavy pressure from his predecessor's Republican allies to forswear prosecutions of US intelligence personnel who used controversial interrogation tactics, declared that "generally speaking, I'm more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards."
"I want to pull everybody together, including, by the way, all the members of the intelligence community who have done things the right way and have been working hard to protect America and I think sometimes are painted with a broad brush without adequate information," he said.
A darkened stadium massed with tens of thousands of fanatics in precise formation, marching in place to patriotic music of the homeland. Powerful searchlights sending their columns up into the inifinity of the night sky in a display seen for miles around and in striking shots from an overhead Zeppelin to be used for propaganda. Nuremberg 1937 and the Nazi Party Congress?As you can see folks, the resemblance is uncanny ;-)
No, it’s Tampa 2009 and the Superbowl halftime show.
With one eye on the past and the other on the future, the Superbowl strove to outdo Nazi precedent with the massive effusions of fireworks that punctuated the show at the climax of songs, then finally and orgasmically after Springsteen and co’s twelve minutes were up and the mock referee ran on stage to throw a penalty flag and bring the show to a close. That was when all hell broke loose in a mighty fusillade. With the Nazi imagery clearly in one’s head, the rockets’ red glare was pure Eastern Front.Nazi imagery clearly in one's head? Well, inside the head of at least one professor with a big imagination -- that much is clear. I can just see the Superbowl planning committee sitting around watching Festliches Nürnberg and trying to figure how to out-do it.
The War on Terror is a Hoax
"Torture? Well, it depends on what the meaning of "is" is ..."... and so it goes.
Yoo, who is now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, insisted that he only drafted the legal memos and that other officials decided what interrogation techniques were permissible.
“Decisions about interrogation methods at Guantanamo Bay were made by the Defense Department,” said Yoo in testimony before the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution last year.
But Yoo appears to be splitting hairs. While it is true that higher-ups in the Bush administration, including President Bush, had greater responsibility for approving the techniques, indeed, Yoo admitted in an editorial published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal that George W. Bush authorized waterboarding "three times in the years after 9/11," Yoo was not just the detached legal scholar that he has portrayed.
On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Obama administration to obtain still secret memos that Yoo and others at the DOJ drafted. Yoo still staunchly defends the torture memos he wrote despite the fact that Susan Crawford, the retired judge who heads military commissions at Guantanamo, said she would not allow a war crimes tribunal against one detainee to proceed because his interrogation met the legal definition of torture.
Moreover, Jack Goldsmith, who succeeded Bybee at the OLC in October 2003 and quickly determined that Yoo's Aug. 1, 2002, memo was “sloppily written” and “legally flawed."
The DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility has been investigating whether "the legal advice contained in those memoranda [written by Yoo and Bybee] was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys."
The results of the investigation could lead to a criminal probe.
In his 2006 book, War by Other Means: An Insider’s Account on the War On Terror, Yoo described his participation in meetings that helped develop the controversial policies for the treatment of detainees.
For instance, Yoo wrote about a trip he took to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with other senior administration officials to observe interrogations and to join in discussions about specific interrogation methods.
