Achieving Our Country

The Hundred Years Health Care Wars continue - The Continuing Effort to Reform Health Care

2009-12-24T10:25:00.008-06:00

The most recent battle ended today, Christmas Eve morning, with final approval of the Senate compromise bill, after which Congress and the President recessed for the holidays, leaving the reform process in a "good news/bad news" state of flux. Work resumes after the holidays, when a House conference committee commences to craft final legislation from the respective House and Senate bills, ostensibly culminating in the end of the Hundred Years Health Care War's current major campaign. The legislation institutionalizes a federal mandate of universal health care for US residents (the good news being the de facto articulation of medical care as a right for all). Unfortunately (the bad news), little - if anything - is on track via the Senate bill to improve health care access or to control the financial effect on health care consumers and Point-of-Service providers.

Ancillary to to the nuts and bolts of the federal intervention into health care delivery and finance, which lawmakers, citizens, and the courts will continue to tweak over the coming decade or two, is the issue of power politics, which will provide some intense - variously amusing, infuriating, and gratifying - drama during the more immediate months and years. In the media, the battle lines have been drawn as a Democratic/Republican Party or a left/right divide. The truth is a bit more complicated; since what we are witnessing now is actually the result of an alliance among Congressional Democrats and Republicans (and Independents!), the White House, Health Care Insurers, and big pharmaceutical corporations arrayed against the expressed desire of the majority of U.S. health care consumers.

I believe this moment in the ongoing war, this Christmas armistace, presents interesting opportunities for working Americans, the poor, and organizations that advocate on their behalf to consolidate power and exert influence on a process that has worked effectively to shut them out of the process, on health care and a variety of other issues including the environment, the economy, foreign affairs, and civil liberties. On these issues, legislation and policy have almost universally reflected the will of entrenched moneyed powerful elite interests (the political class and corporations) at the expense of the will of the people. The kind and amount of pressure we exert during the House conference proceedings could set the stage for altering the frustrating power imbalance between the government and the governed, if we play our guerilla warfare options intelligently. One potential pressure point of leverage is President Obama’s stated desire for final passage ahead of his 2010 State of the Union address to Congress. Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake is already strategizing this kind of asymetrical warfare, by forging alliances with Libertarians and small government conservatives in service of mutual goals. Her bold audacious initiative is risky and represents a controversial new way of achieving progressive goals; the potential for backfire and unintended consequences is great, Say what one will, though, it does not represent repeatedly doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

We'll see (h/t Charlie Wilson's War).

Cliff Stearns, Born Again Regulator

2008-09-25T08:05:00.003-05:00

Imagine my surprise last night when I decided to watch Rachel Maddow's new show on MSNBC for the first time. Early in the show, she interviewed one of my heroes, Senator Chris Dodd, about his efforts to bring some sanity to the Wall Street bailout proposal originally put forward by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The interview with Dodd was immediately followed by this interview:

As a resident of Cliff Stearns' district, this was quite a surprise to me. It follows on the even more surprising appearance of Cliff Stearns on the House floor on Tuesday morning, where Stearns appears, with his hair flying and his diction failing, to decry the Paulson proposal (Stearns' comments begin at 5:47 into the clip):

Note especially Stearns' comments at around 8:35 of the clip, where he rails against the fact that in 2003, he was holding hearings on the application of FASB accounting standards to Freddie Mac, but oversight of Freddie Mac was suddenly taken away from his committee.

Why wait five years before protesting this change? It does appear that the hearings he references had the potential to have an impact on operations of Freddie Mac. Here is a statement from Congressman John Dingell commending Stearns for holding the hearings, but cautioning that perhaps better witnesses could be called and warning about the massive lobbying firepower being amassed against any efforts at reform.

Later in 2003, the New York Times would write in a prescient opinion piece:

Even without signs of an imminent calamity, it is hard to argue that these financial enterprises -- essentially two huge hedge funds -- should continue to evade the type of rigorous oversight that banks face on issues like capital requirements and new lines of business. Yet it looks as if Freddie and Fannie, along with the home builders' lobby, may succeed in blocking legislation to transfer regulatory oversight to the Treasury.
The two mortgage enterprises have helped to add liquidity to the housing market and put more working families in new homes. That mission need not be threatened by stronger oversight of their finances. Indeed, it will be protected.

So, although Stearns was holding hearings, he ultimately had oversight of Freddie Mac stripped from his subcommittee. This should have been a situation for him to rise up in righteous indignation and insist that his subcommittee get the jurisdiction back. After all, his party was in charge of both the White House and the both branches of Congress. Instead, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae continued on their path to destruction with powerful lobbyists paving the way for them to avoid meaningful oversight. Is it possible that Stearns' agitation this week results from a realization that he was in the perfect position to prevent this catastrophe five years ago and failed miserably?

What makes Stearns' behavior this week especially odd (besides his agitation to the point of stumbling over his words a lot) is that this behavior is entirely at odds with his historical voting record. Progressive Punch notes that in the category of "Government Checks on Corporate Power" Stearns receives a score of only 7.57% and ranks him 267th out of 422 members. When the analysis is confined to votes on banks and credit card companies, his score drops to 6.45% and his rank to 283rd of 422. Further, the Washington Post reports that Stearns votes with the Republican position 90.9% of the time, making him, as Maddow noted shaking her head after the interview, "very conservative" and a "strange bedfellow" for this position.

A further point is that if any one bill passed by Congress can be said to be at the root of the current financial crisis, it would have to be Phil Gramm's legislative nullification of Glass-Stegall in 1999. As expected, Stearns voted in favor of this massive roll-back of regulation of the financial industry.

But rest assured, Stearns' rediscovery of regulation is not uniform. In his most recent abuse of the Congressional franking privilege, Stearns warns against the re-imposition of the Fariness Doctrine:

Since the demise of the Fairness Doctrine, talk radio has emerged as a dynamic forum for public debate and an asset to the nation.

/snip/

Bringing back the Fairness Doctrine would amount to government control over political views expressed on the public airwaves. It is dangerous to suggest the government should be in the business of rationing free speech.

Now that's the Cliff Stearns I know. Yeah, we can't have the government require that someone should have air time to refute Rush Limbaugh's daily dose of hate.

Cross-posted on The Case Against Cliff.

My Letter to Chris Dodd

2008-09-20T14:03:00.001-05:00

September 20, 2008

Senator Christopher J. Dodd

448 Russell Building

Washington, DC 20510

FAX (202) 224-1083

Dear Senator Dodd,

My name is Jim White and I am writing you from Gainesville, Florida. I was the commenter on Glenn Greenwald’s blog at Salon.com who first suggested last year that we work to find someone in the Senate to place a hold on retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies. Although we did not win that battle, I want to express my sincere gratitude for your very hard work on behalf of our Constitution and on behalf of the citizens of the United States.

I am writing today to urge caution with regard to the Wall Street bail-out legislation being proposed this weekend by the Bush Administration. As we have learned from Naomi Klein’s well documented research in The Shock Doctrine, it is in times such as the currently ongoing crisis when significant damage can be done to the rights and the interests of the common citizen. Please examine the proposed legislation closely with regard to whether it decreases regulatory oversight of the markets and whether it enables a massive transfer of public wealth to private parties. Experience teaches us that those are the goals of many of those who likely have crafted this legislation, and yet, those goals also lie at the root cause of the current crisis.

Rather than merely creating a government agency to act as a virtual “toxic waste dump” for the bad debt many firms have accumulated, Ian Welsh at Firedoglake yesterday suggested that the efforts instead should center on the government entity buying individual mortgages, re-valuing the homes and then writing new, fixed mortgages at low rates. Such a program could place strict limits on subsequent refinancing and could allow government participation in profits when the home is sold later.

At the very least, if massive off-loading of debt from troubled companies is going to occur, my plea is that provisions are included in the legislation to insure that the highest levels of management in these troubled companies suffer economic losses at least as severe as those suffered by stockholders in those companies. If management in these companies is allowed to emerge from the crisis with their massive wealth unscathed, then our country truly will have entered a perverted form of socialism in which we have privatized the profit and socialized the risk of the highest levels of our economic activity. Economic losses for these upper level managers need to be personal, direct and significant. Of special importance is that the personal assets these managers have sent overseas need to be subject to these fines. The unifying theme I have seen expressed for this idea is “Seize ill-gotten gains”. If this is not a part of the overall program enacted, I fear massive civil unrest coupled with even more massive repression. The history and the warnings in Klein’s book should be heeded on this point.

If at all possible, I urge your committee to seek input from Naomi Klein. Her interview on BBC recorded on Thursday of this week provides evidence of the value of her interpretation of current events and what should be done. She would be able to point out the flaws in proposals that would tend toward exacerbating rather than relieving the crisis. Similarly, input from Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman could provide counter-arguments to those who insist that the only solutions are centered on unregulated free markets and privatization of government functions.

As you so elegantly stated in the battle over retroactive immunity, our Constitution is a vital document whose genius lies in part in the system of checks and balances. Many of the problems our country now faces come from the loss of this function. The Wall Street crisis could serve as the opportunity finally to start turning our country back toward those principles on which it was founded. The Congress does not need merely to accept whatever legislation the Bush Administration crafts and to implement it without examination. Please take the lead in assuring that the legislation put forward will be based on Constitutional principles and that it will protect the rights and interests of all citizens, not just the wealth of large corporations.

Thank you for your continuing dedicated and distinguished service to our country.

Sincerely,

Jim White

Two Thirds Disagree with John McCain on Presidential Powers

2008-09-15T08:58:00.006-05:00

In a poll released today by AP in conjunction with the National Constitution Center, we find the results of a poll of 1000 adults in the US. I want to concentrate on only one question and its responses:

Only 29% of those polled favor, either strongly or even somewhat, giving the president more power at the expense of the power of Congress or the courts. A full 67% oppose that idea, with 50% opposing it strongly.

That is a very interesting result in light of John McCain's recent actions regarding the powers of the president. In September of 2006, the Senate passed the Military Commissions Act. Prior to passage, McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner staged a bit of political theater, pretending to want to remove all possibility for detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere in US custody to be tortured. In the end, however, they capitulated entirely to George W. Bush, and did so in a way to undermine just those Constitutional protections that the people in the poll above want protected.

Here is how the New York Times described what happened:

The bill would set up rules for the military commissions that will allow the government to proceed with the prosecutions of high-level detainees including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, considered the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
It would make illegal several broadly defined abuses of detainees, while leaving it to the president to establish specific permissible interrogation techniques. And it would strip detainees of a habeas corpus right to challenge their detentions in court.

So, after pretending to be upholding a righteous stand against torture, McCain, as the leader of this stand, then brokered a "compromise" which would leave it "to the president to establish specific permissible interrogation techniques."

The New York Times, in the same article, noted reaction to the bill:

Human rights groups called the vote to approve the bill “dangerous” and “disappointing.” Critics feared that it left the president a large loophole by allowing him to set specific interrogation techniques.

It is hard to imagine how out of touch with the thinking of US citizens John McCain is when it comes to presidential power and torture. A full two thirds of Americans disagree with his views and only 15% strongly favor them.

For the record, it should be pointed out that while John McCain voted in favor of the Military Commissions Act, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton all voted against it.

Would Ivins Really Have Been Allowed in the Hot Suite After Stopping the Special Immunization Program?

2008-08-07T08:27:00.005-05:00

At Emptywheel, Marcy Wheeler has assembled another of her very impressive timelines, in which she has integrated information from yesterday's document dump with other facts from the investigation of the anthrax attacks of 2001. Of particular interest are two early entries on the timeline:

Spring 2001: Ivins taken off Special Immunization Program

September 7, 2001: Ivins put back on Special Immunization Program

From the documents, it is clear that Bruce Ivins was taken off the Special Immunization Program in the spring of 2001 and then immunizations re-started on September 7. That information is impossible to rectify with the chart in the first search warrant attachment, where the government lays out the case for Ivins spending extra time in the laboratory around the time that the materials in the mailings could have been prepared. Note the discussion of Suite B3:

USAMRID containment Suite B3 is a Biological Safety Level-3 (BSL-3) suite of laboratories used by USAMRIID Bacteriology personnel for research on dangerous animal and human pathogens. The flask identified as RMR-1029 was stored in Suite B3 at the time of the letter attacks. Suite access is obtained via a Security Access Control (SAC) badge reader at the door to the cold-side change room, which is secured by a magnetic-lock. A central security system monitors and records a time stamp for each SAC badge and keypad request.

A review of Dr. Ivins's laboratory access records for Building 1425 was assessed to determine trends in working hours and evening times (after 6 p.m.) spent in Suite B3. His regular working hours on average consisted of a 7:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. shift, but he would periodically return in the evenings, presumably to check on the status of various experiments. Beginning in mid-August 200 1 ; however, there was a noticeable spike in Dr. Ivins's evening access to the B3 hot Suite.

If Ivins was taken off of the Special Immunization Program, he should not have had access to the "hot Suite". Here is a chart with a detailed summary of Ivins' after-hours activity from the same document:
As stated above, if Ivins was taken off the Special Immunization Program, it makes no sense that he would have retained access to Suite B3. If that is the case, how can there be access records, after hours, for him to have been in B3 when he was off the immunization program? From the chart, it appears he did not enter the suite after hours in March or May of 2001 and only briefly in April. After hours activity began to build in June and July and then went very high in August, peaking in September and then continuing in October through December. The August time is especially troubling, since he would have been off the immunization program for several months by that time.

Here is a portion of an email in the same document that supports the information above:

September 7,2001, "I was taken off the Special Immunization Program because of what happened last spring, and I've just gotten back on it, getting my anthrax and Yellow fever shots. We are currently finishing up the last of the AVA, and when that is gone, there's nothing to replace it with. I don't know what will happen to the research programs and hot suite work until we get a new lot.

This email confirms that anthrax vaccination was part of the Special Immunization Program. I repeat: How could Ivins have had access to the hot suite while he was off the program?

The First Search Warrant in the Ivins Case; Updated

2008-08-06T14:32:00.004-05:00

The Department of Justice has just released documents in the case against Bruce Ivins as the anthrax killer. In this post, I want to address just the genetic and other technical issues relating to the attack material and whether it can appropriately be linked to Ivins. I will rely only on the first search warrant in the release, other relevant information may be lurking in the other documents.

The CDC examined isolates of the Bacillus anthracis extracted from the powder contained in the letters and compared it to body fluid samples collected from the five decedents. The CDC has determined that the strain of Bacillus anthracis found in each of the decedents' bodies is the same strain of anthrax found in the threat letters mentioned above. This particular strain is commonly known as the Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis.
/snip/
Determination of Origin of Anthrax Contained in 2001 Mailings

The mail attacks are believed to have occurred on two separate occasions, which are delineated by the postmark dates of the recovered letters. Letters used in the first attack were postmarked on 09/18/2001 and were focused to media establishments located in the New York area. Three weeks later, letters postmarked 10/09/2001 were sent to two U.S. Senators in Washington, DC.

In order to fully characterize the threat letters and their contents, the Task Force has conducted numerous physical (phenotypic) and genetic (genotypic) analyses. Physical comparison of the spore powders taken from the Post and Brokaw letters versus the Senator Leahy and Senator Daschle letters reveals obvious differences. The spore powders recovered fiom the Post and Brokaw letters were granular and multicolored in consistency, while the Senator Leahy and Senator Daschle letters contained fine spore powders that were uniform in color.

Microscopic examination of the evidentiary spore powders recovered from all four letters identified an elemental signature of Silicon within the spores. This Silicon signature had not been previously described for Bacillus anthracis organisms.

Much more information is needed here on the physical description of the attack material. See the immediately preceeding post for the information especially relating to "silicon". Professor Matthew Meselson of Harvard has told the FBI that silicon is present in closely related spores. The information in the search warrant is not sufficient to determine whether the Daschle and Leahy samples especially were treated with advanced materials using advanced techniques to make them more deadly. The FBI needs to release electron mircrographs of the attack material, of known highly purified spores and of spores which have been "weaponized" by the scientists at Dugway. Similarly, they need to provide raw X-ray spectrometry data of these three types of samples, as well. This will go a long way toward understanding the expertise involved in preparing the attack material.

Genetic Analysis of the Anthrax Used in the Attacks

Upon visual inspection of the Bacillus anthracis organisms used in the mail attacks, researchers have discovered numerous phenotypic variations, which distinguish it fiom the original Ames anthrax isolated in 1981, which is the earliest known sample. The phenotypic variations were identified as differences in morphology (i.e. shape, color, texture) fiom the original Ames anthrax. Changes in morphology can be attributed to individual genetic mutations within the Bacillus anthracis DNA. As a whole, the collection of all of the genetic mutations found in the anthrax used in the 2001 mailings, serve to provide a "DNA fingerprint" which can, and has been used to investigate other Ames isolates collected from laboratories possessing the Ames strain. Four individual, highly sensitive, and specific molecular assays capable of detecting four of the genetic mutations discovered in the Bacillus anthracis used in the mail attacks have been developed and validated.

Following the mailings, sixteen domestic government, commercial, and university laboratories that had virulent Ames strain Bacillus anthracis in their inventories vrior to the received Arnes strain Bacillus anthracis isolates or samples from all sixteen domestic laboratories, as well as, fiom laboratories in Canada, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. All total, the Task Force has obtained more than 1000 isolates of the Ames strain of Bacillus anthracis fiom these laboratories and archived these isolates in the FBI Bacillus anthracis Repository (hereinafter "FBIR").

The four aforementioned molecular assays have been applied to each of the more than 1000 Bacillus anthracis samples contained within the FBIR. Of the more than 1000 FB'R samples, only eight were determined to contain all four genetic mutations.

The Task Force investigation has determined that each of the eight isolates in the FBIR is directly related to a single Bacillus anthracis Ames strain spore batch, identified as RMR-1029. RMR-1029 was stored in the B3 biocontainment suite within Building 1425 of the United States Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick, Maryland. Access to the suite is afforded only to those personnel who are approved by the USAMRIID Security, Safety, and Special Immunizations Program to have the required background check, training, and medical protection (vaccination or personal protective equipment (PPE)). Dr. Bruce Ivins has unrestricted access to the suite and has been the sole custodian of RMR-1029 since it was first grown in 1997.

The language of that first paragraph is very hard to decipher. The "phenotypic" variations they are describing here (shape, color, texture) I think must be referring to the bulk properties of the samples being analyzed and would depend far more on the culture conditions and post-culture processing than on the underlying genetics of the sample. However, the discussion does then move on to actual genetics. It appears that after original DNA sequencing of the attack material identified it as the Ames strain, the FBI then found 16 domestic and several foreign sources of live Ames strain. They then obtained over a thousand different isolates from these sources and carried out a detailed sequence analysis of all of these isolates. They report a combination of four unique mutations that are specific to the attack material. It appears that only 8 of the individual isolates in the analysis shared the four mutations with the attack material. Each of these 8 isolates appeared to have been derived from a single flask, designated RMR-1029, produced in 1997. Bruce Ivins was the sole custodian of this flask from the time it was produced.

The search warrant goes on:

Bacterial contaminant found in attack letters

Both of the anthrax spore powders recovered from the Post and Brokaw letters contain low levels of a bacterial contaminant identified as a strain of Bacillus subtilis. The Bacillus subtilis contaminant has not been detected in the anthrax spore powders recovered from the envelopes mailed to either Senator Leahy or Senator Daschle. Bacillus subtilis is a nonpathogenic bacterium found ubiquitously in the environment. However, genomic DNA sequencing of the specific isolate of Bacillus subtilis discovered within the Post and Brokaw powders reveals that it is genetically distinct from other known isolates of Bacillus subtilis. Analysis of the Bacillus subtilis from the Post and Brokaw envelopes revealed that these two isolates are identical.

Phenotypic and genotypic analyses demonstrate that the RMR-1029 does not have the Bacillus subtilis contaminant found in the evidentiary spore powders, which suggests that the anthrax used in the letter attacks was grown from the material contained in RMR-1029 and not taken directly from the flask and placed in the envelopes. Since RMR-1029 is the genetic parent to the evidentiary spore powders, and it is not known how the Bacillus subtilis contaminant came to be in the Post and Brokaw spore powders, the contaminant must have been introduced during
the production of the Post and Brokaw spores. Taken together, the postmark dates, the Silicon signature, the Bacillus subtilis contaminant, the phenotypic, and the genotypic comparisons, it can be concluded that, on at least two separate occasions, a sample of RMR-1029 was used to grow spores, dried to a powder, packaged in an envelope with a threat letter, and mailed to the victims. '

Several crucial pieces of information are missing here. First, we don't have the amount of material that is in RMR-1029 or its status in terms of processing with regard to purity or possible processing to weaponize it. In later sections of the warrant, Ivins is said to also refer to this flask interchangeably as "Dugway Ames Spores -- 1997", so it is entirely possible that the spores in RMR-1029 are treated with advanced materials. Notice also that this description does not have the previously leaked information regarding carbon-14 dating showing that the attack material was produced in the previous two years before the attack. Nevertheless, the presence of B. subtilis in the attack material is taken as evidence that RMR-1029 was the parent material for the attack material. That simply doesn't follow--if RMR-1029 contained sufficient material, the attack material could have been taken from that flask and mixed with other material, including the B. subtilis. Only with age data could one conclusively determine which sample is the parent. The presence of B. subtilis in one set of samples and its absence in another is also used to argue that RMR-1029 was sampled twice to obtain starter cultures. This also does not follow, as the two sets of attack material, if started from RMR-1029, simply could be from different stages in a purification process after culturing. Finally, the silicon content is referred to with regard to attack material but doesn't appear to be described for the RMR-1029 flask material.

The bottom line is that this search warrant does not solve many of the mysteries surrounding the nature of the material distributed through the mail. Most importantly of all, it is silent on the original source of RMR-1029. These are the critical questions that MUST be answered regarding RMR-1029:

1. Who grew that culture?
2. How large was the culture?
3. Who harvested the culture?
4. How was the material processed?
5. Where was RMR-1029 produced?
6. It it was produced at Dugway, does RMR-1029 contain all of the material produced in that batch?

Sadly, this search warrant leads to more questions than it answers with regard to the source of the anthrax attack material.

Update:

I have just noticed that the introductory "Overview" section of the warrant includes this:

At the time of the attacks, he was the custodian of a large flask of highly purified anthrax spores that possess certain genetic mutations identical to the anthrax used in the attacks;

So we do know that the material in RMR-1029 is highly purified. We still don't know if it is treated in any way to make it more dangerous. We also know that the flask is "large" but still have no idea how much material is there.

More Speculation on the Source of the Spores in the 2001 Anthrax Attacks

2008-08-04T10:32:00.005-05:00

In multiple comments over the past several days on Glenn Greenwald's blog and at Emptywheel, I have stated a belief that the material in the anthrax attacks of 2001, especially in the letters sent to Senators Daschle and Leahy, could only have come from the Army's Dugway Proving Grounds facility operated by Battelle Memorial Institute. However, after reading an article posted in a link in comments last night at Emptywheel, I now am much more open to the possibility that the material could have been produced outside of a sophisticated facility.

There are two key components to this change in my thinking. First, the article in Chemical and Engineering News by Lois Ember calls into question the early reports that the Dashcle material contained silica. It appears that the scientist in that report mis-spoke and that while silicon was detected, silica was not. Relaying information from Professor Matthew Meselson of Harvard, Ember further points out that closely related bacterial spores are reported to contain silicon, so the silicon in the early analysis may not have been from a source other than the spores themselves. Even more importantly, Ember reports that Meselson and another unnamed scientist have seen electron micrographs of the the attack material and there is no evidence that the spores have been treated with either silica or bentonite, as various media reports over time have suggested. In addition, Meselson and "Ken Alibek" (who previously worked for the Soviet bioweapons program) published a letter in the Washington Post, reprinted here, that makes the same contention.

To illustrate this point, and how straightforward the interpretation would be when looking at electron micrographs, I have copied some images from this website. I can't vouch for the authenticity or provenance of the photos, but they do serve to illustrate the points under discussion.

This photo is purported to be an anthrax spore coated with fumed silica and prepared at Dugway:
Note the "fuzzy" appearance of the spore and that, from the scale bar, it is in the 1 micron size range for a single spore of anthrax. Compare that to another photo said to be from the same publication from Dugway, where there is a clump of uncoated spores:

Note that the uncoated spores have a much smoother appearance. Also note that the scale is different here, as the bar is two microns instead of one. Also, the spores in the upper right part of the clump appear to have a little bit of the coating on them. Now compare these coated and partially coated spores with the following photo:
The photo above is specially important in another way. This appears to be a very clean, "pure" sample of spores labeled as anthrax and coming from USAMRIID (which is at Ft. Detrick). Clearly, it is possible to produce very clean preparations of anthrax spores, if the provenance of the photo is correct.

Any person with a significant amount of training in microbiology, sterile technique and basic biosafety standards, in my opinion, could produce highly purified anthrax spores that are untreated, using only equipment costing a few thousand dollars. Only if the spores are treated with a sophisticated material such as fumed silica does the requirement for an advanced facility and more advanced biosafety protocols come into play. The silica itself is highly dangerous to work with and would require much more sophisticated practices to protect the person preparing the material.

Also reported by Ember and elsewhere, is that DNA sequence information has definitively linked the attack material as genetically identical to the strain used at Ft. Detrick and that the water used to grow and/or process the material came from the northeastern US.

However, if the attack material is not treated in a way that requires sophisticated equipment, then anyone who had access to the Ft. Detrick strain could have produced the attack material without being detected. Further, they did not necessarily have to do the work in the northeastern US, since sterile filtered water from a company formerly named Bethesda Research Laboratory (Bethesda, MD) can be purchased. In fact, someone working on their own, without a sophisticated facility, possibly would find it easier to purchase sterilized water to work with, although they also could rely on simple filter sterilization of local water, as well.

If the FBI closes the antrhax case and releases its information in the next few days, it will be crucial to examine their evidence on the analysis of the attack material. If the material was simply purified, untreated spores, it will be very important to see how they connect this material with Bruce Ivins. The amount used in the attacks was millions of times more than he would have used in his experiments, so it is unlikely he would have produced it at Ft. Detrick without his colleagues noticing. This is especially important since producing this amount would begin to run up against the treaty prohibitions against producing amounts that could be used offensively, so he would have had to do it secretly outside the lab.

Further, there needs to be an explanation of the targeting of Senators Daschle and Leahy, with their letters being mailed after the first fatality was known. That mailing is most easily described as trying to get approval for the Patriot Act, and there has been no introduction of evidence that Ivins was even paying attention to that issue. The first death, even if unintended, should have been sufficient to bring attention to the need for an improved anthrax vaccine such as the one Ivins was working on, and thus fulfilling the motivation most have ascribed to his actions if he were the one behind the attacks.

Connecting Some Dots

2008-08-01T17:16:00.003-05:00

As first announced this morning by the Los Angeles Times, a new suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks is dead of an apparent overdose of prescription pharmaceuticals. Like previous suspect Dr. Steven Hatfill, Dr. Bruce Ivins worked at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick, MD. Reports in the press are now saying that Ivins' rationale for releasing the anthrax was to test an anthrax vaccine on which he had been working.

It turns out that the US government got behind that idea of testing the vaccine in a very big way. As reported in the New York Times on September 18, 2006, the government, in response to the anthrax attacks, embarked on

Project BioShield, a $5.6 billion effort to exploit the country’s top medical and scientific brains and fill an emergency medical cabinet with new drugs and vaccines for a host of threats.

What is interesting about BioShield is that one company, Vaxgen, was awarded a contract for $877.5 million to produce a large amount of an anthrax vaccine. That vaccine was described in this way:

VaxGen's rPA102 vaccine is composed of a purified protein called recombinant Protective Antigen (rPA) and an aluminum salt routinely used in many vaccines. This design produces a vaccine that is expected to be well characterized and consistent across manufacturing runs. Recombinant Protective Antigen induces antibodies shown to neutralize anthrax toxins. rPA102 cannot cause anthrax infection.
/snip/
rPA102 is based on work conducted at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). VaxGen has exclusive, worldwide rights to develop and commercialize a recombinant anthrax vaccine candidate based on patented technology developed by USAMRIID.

And yes, Dr. Ivins is an author of a publication in the journal Vaccine titled "Defining a serological correlate of protection in rabbits for a recombinant anthrax vaccine."

Looking further, Ivins is the first listed inventor of patent number 6,387,665 "Method of making a vaccine for anthrax", which does specifically reference rPA102.

So, the pieces do fit that the anthrax attacks did result in testing of Ivins' vaccine. However, it remains to be proven conclusively that Ivins is indeed responsible for the attacks. What is abundantly clear, however, is that the United States government wasted no time in putting nearly a billion dollars into testing Ivins' vaccine.

Please respond to this appeal from our friends in Pakistan

2008-07-30T10:27:00.006-05:00

FAISAL, who blogs at United4Justice, sent this to AOC's email comments:

A Pakistani Dr. Afia Siddiqi who was kidnapped(with her little children) by Pakistani and USA agencies in 2003 is in Bagram Jail in Afghanistan.

According to media reports she has faced severe torture and due to constant rape by allied force members she has lost her mind.

Please support the appeal for Dr. Afia :

http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/support.php?ua=UAC-167-200

Here is a full reprint of additional material from The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) by way of FAISAL:

Where is Dr Afia Siddiqui? AHRC

Dr. Afia Siddiqui [Photo] left her mother’s house in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi, Sindh province, along with her three children, in a Metro-cab on March 30, 2003 to catch a flight for Rawalpindi, Punjab province, but never reached the airport. The press reports claimed that Dr. Afia had been picked-up by Pakistani intelligence agencies while on her way to the airport and initial reports suggested that she was handed over to the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). At the time of her arrest she was 30 years and the mother of three sons the oldest of which was four and the youngest only one month.

A few days later an American news channel, NBC, reported that Afia had been arrested in Pakistan on suspicion of facilitating money transfers for terror networks of Osama Bin Laden. The mother of the victim, Mrs. Ismat (who has since passed away) termed the NBC report absurd. She went on to say that Dr. Afia is a neurological scientist and has been living with her husband, Amjad, in the USA for several years.

On April 1, 2003, a small news item was published in an Urdu daily with reference to a press conference of the then Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat. When questioned with regard to Dr. Afia’s arrest he denied that she had been arrested. This was followed by another Urdu daily article on April 2 regarding another press conference in which the same minister said Dr. Afia was connected to Al Qaeda and that she had not been arrested as she was absconding. He added: “You will be astonished to know about the activities of Dr. Afia” A Monthly English magazine of Karachi in a special coverage on Dr. Afia reported that one week after her disappearance, a plain clothed intelligence went to her mother’s house and warned her, “We know that you are connected to higher-ups but do not make an issue out of your daughter’s disappearance.” According to the report the mother was threatened her with ‘dire consequences’ if she made a fuss.

Whilst Dr. Afia’s whereabouts remain unknown, there are reports of a woman called ‘Prisoner 650′ is being detained in Afghanistan’s Bagram prison and that she has been tortured to the point where she has lost her mind. Britain’s Lord Nazeer Ahmed, (of the House of Lords), asked questions in the House about the condition of Prisoner 650 who, according to him is physically tortured and continuously raped by the officers at prison. Lord Nazeer has also submitted that Prisoner 650 has no separate toilet facilities and has to attend to her bathing and movements in full view of the other prisoners.

Also, on July 6, 2008 a British journalist, Yvonne Ridley, called for help for a Pakistani woman she believes has been held in isolation by the Americans in their Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan, for over four years. “I call her the ‘grey lady’ because she is almost a ghost, a spectre whose cries and screams continues to haunt those who heard her,” Ms Ridley said at a press conference.

Ms Ridley, who went to Pakistan to appeal for help, said the case came to her attention when she read the book, The Enemy Combatant, by a former Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg. After being seized in February 2002 in Islamabad, Mr Begg was held in detention centres in Kandahar and Bagram for about a year before he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay. He recounted his experiences in the book after his release in 2005. Mr. Imran Khan, leader of Justice Party (T.I) suspects that prisoner 650 is the Dr. Afia Siddiqui and USA and Pakistani authorities are hiding facts of ‘Prisoner 650′.

To date, neither the American nor the Pakistani government have come out about the arrest and detention of Dr. Afia in either Bagram or Guantanamo Bay where suspected terrorists are held. On December 30, 2003 Dr. Fawzia Siddiqui, Dr. Afia elder sister met with Mr Faisal Saleh Hayat at Islamabad with Mr Ejazul Haq, MNA, regarding the whereabouts of Dr. Afiai. Mr Faisal told Dr. Fawzia and Mr Ejazul Haq that according to his information Dr. Afia Siddiqui had already been released and that she (Dr. Fawzia) should go home and wait for a phone call from her sister.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

Dr. Afia Siddiqui, who studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, for about 10 years and did her PhD in genetics, returned to Pakistan in 2002. Having failed to get a suitable job, she again visited the US on a valid visa in February 2003 to search for a job and to submit an application to the US immigration authorities. She moved there freely and came back to Karachi by the end of February 2003 after renting a post office box in her name in Maryland for the receipt of her mail. It has been claimed by the FBI (Newsweek International, June 23, 2003, issue) that the box was hired for one Mr Majid Khan, an alleged member of Al Qaeda residing in Baltimore.

Throughout March 2003 flashes of the particulars of Dr. Afia were telecast with her photo on American TV channels and radios painting her as a dangerous Al Qaeda person needed by the FBI for interrogation. On learning of the FBI campaign against her she went underground in Karachi and remained so till her kidnapping. The June 23, 2003, issue of Newsweek International was exclusively devoted to Al Qaeda. The core of the issue was an article “Al Qaeda’s Network in America”. The article has three photographs of so-called Al Qaeda members - Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Dr. Afia Siddiqui and Ali S. Al Marri of Qatar who has studied in the US like Dr. Siddiqui and had long since returned to his homeland. In this article, which has been authored by eight journalists who had access to FBI records, the only charge leveled against Dr. Afia is that “she rented a post-office box to help a former resident of Baltimore named Majid Khan (alleged Al Qaeda suspect) to help establish his US identity.

John McCain, Torture Enabler

2008-07-28T08:42:00.002-05:00

In an interview for the upcoming issue of Newsweek, John McCain had this exchange about the role of the CIA in the interrogation of prisoners:

On torture, why should the CIA be treated differently from the armed services regarding the use of harsh interrogation tactics?
Because they play a special role in the United States of America and our ability to combat terrorists. But we have made it very clear that there is nothing they can do that would violate the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act, which prohibits torture. We could never torture anyone, but some people misconstrue that who don't understand what the Detainee Treatment Act and the Geneva Conventions are all about.

The number of lies in this statement, and the personal role that John McCain has played in promulgating these lies, is staggering. As a victim of torture at the hands of the North Vietnamese when he was a prisoner of war, McCain should be in a unique position in the Senate to lead the charge to abolish torture of prisoners from Iraq and Afghanistan, yet, time after time, he has yielded instead to political expediency and has allowed himself to be used as a pawn by the Bush Administration in an attempt to cover up the war crimes that have been committed and that continue to this very day.

There were attempts to abolish torture in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, but this fell short and the issue was taken up again with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. As with the previous bill, McCain played the role of the righteous fighter against torture, but in this case wound up brokering a “compromise” that handed Bush everything he wanted. As described by the New York Times, the compromise “would make illegal several broadly defined abuses of detainees, while leaving it to the president to establish specific permissible interrogation techniques.”

Anyone who believes that this President would hold anything back when given the power to determine what comprises torture is living in a fantasyland. For proof, here (see 06-F-01532 doc 07 from the April 13, 2007 entry, page 6) is a portion of a briefing of the Pentagon’s “military analysts” regarding treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo:

In GTMO, that ego down translated down to telling the detainee that his mother and sister were whores, he was forced to wear women's lingerie, multiple allegations of his homosexuality, he was forced to dance with a male interrogator, he was strip searched for control measures, and he was forced to perform dog tricks on a leash.

Now, the basic line there - you say that sounds, you know, like I did - that sounds like degrading. Well, we said yes, it could be. The basic line though in the charter for those interrogations was humane treatment. And humane treatment is spelled out by the President. It's a safe, secure environment that provides medical care, food, water, and the basics of that person's security. Not this. Was this person injured, harmed?

Note that this briefing outlining horrendous treatment clearly constituting torture takes place well after enactment of the Military Commissions Act and goes on to state that this treatment is not torture because the President has said that these prisoners have a “safe, secure environment”, so they are not being tortured. McCain had to know that this is how Bush would interpret the freedom given him by the “compromise” in the MCA and so he had to know that he was the central figure in enabling the ongoing torture at Guantanamo and other detention facilities around the world.

As for the specific role of the CIA in interrogation techniques, McCain played a large role in that, as well. On February 13 of this year, McCain interrupted his campaign for President to come back to the Senate to vote against HR 2082, the Intelligence Authorization Act. The specific provision of this act which McCain wanted to vote against was its extension of the Army Field Manual interrogation techniques to the CIA as the only allowable techniques to be employed. This provision would remove the bulk of the “enhanced techniques” employed by the CIA which are responsible for much of the torture carried out by US personnel. Despite McCain’s “No” vote on this bill, it passed the Senate by a vote of 51 to 45, only to be vetoed by Bush on March 8, based in part on McCain’s call for a veto. The override attempt failed in the House before getting to the Senate.

So now we have McCain’s hands directly on the specific exemption of the CIA from the Army Field Manual interrogation techniques behind his brazen statement in Newsweek that the CIA should be allowed to torture because of its “special role” when it is time to “combat terrorists”. His addition of a disclaimer that we don’t torture simply rings hollow based on the evidence of how prisoners have been treated both before and after the passage of both the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act. McCain’s personal role in enabling further torture by US personnel is inexplicable given his personal history as a victim of torture.

Finally, one more aspect of the “special role” of the CIA is being made clear as the military tribunals for prisoners at Guantanamo are beginning. According to the Los Angeles Times, in a story on July 27:

The name of the Central Intelligence Agency cannot be spoken in the war crimes trial here.

No records of the agency's interrogations of Salim Ahmed Hamdan can be subpoenaed, and no agent can be called to testify about what he or she learned from Osama bin Laden's former driver.

When defense attorney Harry H. Schneider Jr. attempted to demonstrate how many interrogations Hamdan had undergone in the months after his November 2001 arrest -- at least 40 -- he couldn't list the CIA along with more than a dozen other agencies including the Secret Service and what was then known as the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The prohibition against naming the CIA came in a "protective order" issued by the court at the government's request. The tribunal's deputy chief prosecutor, Army Col. Bruce A. Pagel, couldn't say which agency sought the shield or what arguments were made to justify it.

"It's a bit absurd to go through an entire trial pretending that the CIA doesn't exist," said Matt Pollard, a legal advisor for Amnesty International here to monitor the proceedings.

"The CIA plays a role with the detainees at Guantanamo Bay that has never been fully acknowledged, and the bottom line is that national security should never be claimed against any evidence of torture or human-rights violations."

So now the charade becomes a bit clearer. Legislative efforts to present a false picture that the US does not torture specifically exempt the CIA from torture prohibitions and vest in the President the sole authority to determine what comprises torture. Not surprisingly, the President then allows a wide range of torture techniques and the government takes action to prevent any evidence of the involvement of CIA personnel in interrogations. Sitting smack in the middle of this enabling of war crimes is the one man with the personal history to understand it in its fullest, John McCain.

I truly wonder how he can sleep at night.

Our Potential Leaders Visiting the Middle East

2008-07-22T11:50:00.006-05:00

Now that Barack Obama has visited the Middle East in his role as the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, how can we assess his progress toward looking like a leader, especially when compared to the "more experienced" John McCain. Here's a photo AP just put out of a press conference where Obama is flanked by his traveling companions Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed:

That looks pretty leader-like to me. Last March, John McCain went to the same area with Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham. The Washington Post showed us how well that one went:

There really is nothing more to add.

There Is No Political Center

2008-07-21T09:20:00.003-05:00

One of the biggest treats to me at Netroots Nation was a session late Thursday afternoon in which Democracy for America hosted Professor George Lakoff in their small hospitality suite for a live audio webcast of a session of their Night School. They also videotaped the presentation and it is likely a link to the video will be posted here. The topic for the session was Lakoff’s latest book, The Political Mind. In this photo, Professor Lakoff and Matt Blizek, Training Director for Democracy for America , are speaking into the speaker phone while Jim Dean, Chair of DFA, is a blur of activity in the background.

As a cognitive scientist, Lakoff gets our attention immediately by informing us that an estimated 98% of our thought is not conscious. That leads us to the shocking conclusion that our brains constantly make decisions of which we have no awareness. Working from this premise, Lakoff contrasts the “18^th Century brain” of the Enlightenment, which is purely based on conscious reason applied to known, verifiable facts with the “21^st Century brain” where most thought is not conscious. He then warns us of the dangers of using the older model to address the politics of today.

Because of the prevalence of unconscious thought, Lakoff informs us that when it comes to politics, we think in terms of frames based on moral values. Further, he sees two main modes of political thought, progressive and conservative.

His description of progressive thought is found on page 47 of the book:

Behind every progressive policy lies a single moral value: empathy, together with the responsibility and strength to act on that empathy. Never forget “responsibility and strength,” because there is no true empathy without them.

That is contrasted with the description of conservative thought on page 60:

It begins with the notion that morality is obedience to an authority—assumed to be a legitimate authority who is inherently good, knows right from wrong, functions to protect us from evil in the world, and has both the right and duty to use force to command obedience and fight evil…Obedience to legitimate authority requires both personal responsibility and discipline, which are prime conservative values.

To me, the key concept that Lakoff is presenting is that there is no linear scale from progressive to conservative (or left to right). Instead, on any particular issue, individuals will have a progressive or a conservative view. Further, individuals may be bi-conceptual. That is, it is possible to adhere to the progressive worldview on one issue and the conservative worldview on another.

To illustrate the concept that there is not a linear scale, Lakoff holds up the brilliant example of Senators Joe Lieberman and Chuck Hagel. The popular press incessantly describes both as “centrists”, yet they share virtually no views. On social issues, Lieberman is consistently progressive and Hagel is solidly conservative. On the war, Lieberman is conservative and Hagel is progressive. They share views on nothing, yet both are branded as centrists. How can there be such a thing as a centrist, or a center, if these two agree on nothing?

This brings us to Lakoff’s prescient admonition about the dangers of progressive politicians “moving to the middle”. Note that this book was released in June, so the final version went to press before Barack Obama became the presumptive nominee and started his move to the middle. Lakoff’s warning against this move, I believe, captures entirely the anguish and frustration of progressives who fought hard to make Obama the nominee, only to see him abandon them. From page 59:

Accepting the left-to-right scale leads to the logic—and the claim—that to get more votes you have to move to the right. This actually has three counterproductive effects for progressives:

1. Giving up on policies that fit the progressive moral worldview and hence alienating your base;

2. Accepting policies that fit the conservative moral worldview, thus activating the conservative worldview in voters, which helps the other side; and

3. Not maintaining a consistent moral worldview at all, which makes it look as though you have no values.

I would add that I think it is this third observation, of appearing to have no values, that has led to the widespread complaint in progressive circles that Obama has become “just another politician”, in that politicians are commonly seen as not having values. The “change” that many progressives thought they saw in Obama during the primary battle was his apparent adherence to progressive worldviews without the unprincipled, calculating moves of the politician who readily abandons ideals.

It is truly a shame that Senator Obama did not read an advance copy of this book and follow its very valuable advice.

Showing It To The Speaker

2008-07-19T09:37:00.004-05:00

Madam Speaker,

Did you see me? I think you did. When you took the stage at Netroots Nation 2008 this morning, I was the DFH who held my pocket copy of the Constitution high for you to see. I held it there the entire time you were speaking. I thought that perhaps you needed a reminder of the oath you swore to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…”

For the past seven and a half years, our Constitution has been under fierce attack from domestic enemies. Just this month, the Fourth Amendment was eviscerated. Our founders blessed us with a system of government based on checks and balances with three co-equal branches of government. Today, we have a unitary executive and the Congress and the Courts are reduced to mere spectators as our country careens away from consent of the governed. In fact, the press reported that Congress “bowed” to President Bush when it passed the FISA Amendment Act.

The list of offenses is too long to repeat here, and I am sure that your office receives hundreds of communications daily reminding you of just how this government has gone wrong. What I want you to know from my protest is that I am especially appalled at the bipartisan effort to prevent holding anyone in the Bush Administration accountable for the many criminal offenses they have committed.

Those efforts started with you. Despite an overwhelming mandate to punish the Bush Administration for its crimes as evidenced in the 2006 Congressional elections, you, instead, chose to take impeachment off the table.

Now that we have additional, iron-clad evidence of systematic torture of prisoners, which the International Committee of the Red Cross termed “categorically torture”, there is now an even louder drumbeat from apologists to prevent accountability.

Even here, at Netroots Nation 2008, the apologists are out in force. Yesterday, Cass Sunstein, legal advisor to Senator Obama, after a long exposition of the legal morass facing the next President, told us that prosecutions create a cycle of criminalizing political behavior.

However, there is a huge difference between prosecutions undertaken because of a political agenda and prosecutions undertaken to uphold the rule of law. Also appearing yesterday was Governor Don Siegelman. During the question and answer session after his discussion with Sam Seder, I asked the Governor whether he felt, as a victim of a politically based prosecution, that the citizens of the United States could distinguish that from prosecutions to uphold the rule of law. He affirmed, very quickly and vehemently, that our citizens can indeed tell the difference.

Another interesting case is Congressman Bob Barr. Just yesterday, he joined the bipartisan effort known as Accountability Now (and Strange Bedfellows) to call for accountability for the crimes that have been committed in our name. Now we have a veteran of pursuing politically based prosecution of President Clinton calling for bipartisan enforcement of the Constitution. It should be noted that his position on upholding privacy rights is not a new position for his Presidential campaign, but comes from the traditional conservative position of respect for the Constitution and the rule of law.

As Speaker of the House, you have been the one person in the world best positioned to bring this lawlessness to an end. Multiple articles of impeachment have been introduced, and you have sent them to committee to die. Acting almost entirely on your own, it would be possible, even now, for you to see that these charges receive appropriate hearings and then proceed to a vote. Your failure to act in this way makes you an accomplice in these crimes against humanity. Check out the international law terms jus cogens and obligatio erga omnes. The heinous nature of these crimes, your awareness of them and your failure to take action make you equally guilty.

Recently, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court filed charges against Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan. Because you will not force Congress to hold this administration accountable, when Prosecutor Moreno-Ocampo files his charges against US officials, I suspect the first three charged will be George W. Bush, Richard B. Cheney and Nancy P.D. Pelosi.

The Face of Evil; Updated With the Face of Justice

2008-07-13T15:40:00.006-05:00

Do you know who this man is?

He is Stuart Taylor, Jr. and he is yet another hack for Brookings Institution. He also writes for Newsweek Magazine and his latest excrement at Newsweek is among the lowest things I have ever seen in print. Just read the first two paragraphs yourself:

Dark deeds have been conducted in the name of the United States government in recent years: the gruesome, late-night circus at Abu Ghraib, the beating to death of captives in Afghanistan, and the officially sanctioned waterboarding and brutalization of high-value Qaeda prisoners. Now demands are growing for senior administration officials to be held accountable and punished. Congressional liberals, human-rights groups and other activists are urging a criminal investigation into high-level "war crimes," including the Bush administration's approval of interrogation methods considered by many to be torture.

It's a bad idea. In fact, President George W. Bush ought to pardon any official from cabinet secretary on down who might plausibly face prosecution for interrogation methods approved by administration lawyers. (It would be unseemly for Bush to pardon Vice President Dick Cheney or himself, but the next president wouldn't allow them to be prosecuted anyway—galling as that may be to critics.) The reason for pardons is simple: what this country needs most is a full and true accounting of what took place. The incoming president should convene a truth commission, with subpoena power, to explore every possible misdeed and derive lessons from it. But this should not be a criminal investigation, which would only force officials to hire lawyers and batten down the hatches.

Oh such high and mighty pronouncements on what is "seemly", and all this from a person who was there front and center when the pummeling of Bill Clinton over his sex life began. Here's Howard Kurtz on Taylor in the Washington Post in March, 1998:

Friends worry that Taylor, by so constantly and unambiguously assailing Clinton as a liar, may be tarnishing his hard-won reputation as a dispassionate legal analyst. The "NewsHour," concerned about the appearance of bias, has stopped using him to talk about Clinton and Lewinsky.
Says Taylor: "There's hardly anyone in the city of Washington who believes him. I don't see much point in pretending the evidence is in equipoise when it isn't."

Or how about Frank Rich, in April, 1998 on Taylor:

Then there's Stuart Taylor Jr., the writer whose 15,000-word article in 1996 declaring Ms. Jones's evidence ''highly persuasive'' -- and describing her as ''a curvaceous, big-haired, outgoing, eye-catching woman'' -- somehow persuaded the mainstream press to find latent legal merit in a case it had originally dismissed as summarily as Judge Wright later would. Second only to Ms. Carpenter-McMillan and William Ginsburg in forging a TV career out of Sexgate, Mr. Taylor has written a new essay titled ''Why Clinton Will Miss Paula Jones'' -- but who's really going to be missing her now?

So there we have it, one of the chief occupants of the fainting couch over Bill Clinton's private life now tells us it would be unseemly to prosecute Bush, Cheney or any of their accomplices for torture, even though he admits, right up front, that these crimes have occurred.

Just yesterday, Glenn Greenwald presented the perfect counterarguments to the drivel Taylor just put out. First, Glenn takes on the assertion by Taylor that "Any prosecutions would also touch off years of partisan warfare." No sir, we can't have that partisan warfare,that is, if Republicans are the ones in the wrong, even if it encompasses crimes against humanity.
Nope, we can only argue for partisan warfare when a Democrat has done something wrong, even if it is only a sexual dalliance.

Here's Greenwald's response to such claims about prosecuting torture:

There are many political disputes -- probably most -- composed of two or more reasonable sides. Whether the U.S. Government has committed war crimes by torturing detainees -- conduct that is illegal under domestic law and international treaties which are binding law in this country -- isn't an example of a reasonable, two-sided political dispute. Nor is the issue of whether the U.S. Government and the telecom industry engaged in illegal acts for years by spying on Americans without warrants. Nor is the question of whether we should allow Government officials to break our laws at will by claiming that doing so is necessary to keep us Safe.

There just aren't two sides to those matters. That's what the International Red Cross means when it says that what we did to Guantanamo detainees was "categorically torture." It's what the only federal judges to adjudicate the question -- all three -- have concluded when they found that the President clearly broke our laws with no valid excuses by spying on our communications for years with no warrants. It's why the Bush administration has sought -- and repeatedly received -- immunity and amnesty for the people who have implemented these policies. It's because these actions are clearly illegal -- criminal -- and we all know that.

No, this isn't an opportunity for revenge for the punishment of Bill Clinton. Any person with any humanity will want acts that are "categorically torture" to be punished to the full extent of the law.

Finally, the main point of Greenwald's post yesterday was to point out that our country now has arrived at the point where the rule of law is gone and the rule of a few men has been substituted:

This is what a country becomes when it decides that it will not live under the rule of law, when it communicates to its political leaders that they are free to do whatever they want -- including breaking our laws -- and there will be no consequences. There are two choices and only two choices for every country -- live under the rule of law or live under the rule of men. We've collectively decided that our most powerful political leaders are not bound by our laws -- that when they break the law, there will be no consequences. We've thus become a country which lives under the proverbial "rule of men"...

If our country intends to return to the fold of civilization, it is imperative that those responsible for torture are held fully accountable for their crimes. That is the only way that the rest of the world would be able to believe us when, after the trials are completed and sentences delivered, our country stands up as one to say "Never Again!"

Taylor sees the evil that has been perpetrated by the Bush cabal, but he piles even greater evil upon it by calling for pardons. When he looks in the mirror in the morning, he is seeing the face of evil looking back at him.

Update, July 14:

Do you know who this man is?
He is Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Today, he filed charges of genocide against Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan. In an interview with CNN's Nic Robertson, this exchange was particularly enlightening:

Q. Sudan's representative, ambassador to the U.N. has already said on the strength of this -- that you are playing with fire by going after Sudan's president.
A. I have a responsibility to the security council -- the security council referred the case to me and requested me to investigate. After 3 years I have strong evidence that al Bashir is committing a genocide -- I cannot be blackmailed -- I cannot yield. Silence never helped the victims. Silence helped the perpetrators. The prosecutor should not be silent.

What a contrast! Ocampo-Moreno understands that silence in the face of crimes against humanity only further enables the perpetrators. Taylor, on the other hand, not only wants silence, but also wants overt acts to pardon the perpetrators. My only hope for the future, is that when George Bush or Dick Cheney looks in the mirror, they will be looking to see if the face of justice is gaining on them.

The Past Through the Looking Glass, Darkly

2008-07-08T10:29:00.007-05:00

Today, attention for stopping the FISA Amendment, H.R.6304, is turning towards the Bingamen amendment, which would delay the retroactive immunity that Title II of the bill grants to the telecoms until the review, in Title III, is conducted and Congress has 90 days to review it. The amendment is seen as the last best hope of passing something to prevent the immunization of the companies involved, dismissing the lawsuits, and finding out how the program worked. The review, for its part, identifies several government agencies, and asks for all communications with and participation of individuals and entities in the private sector.

Tellingly, it begins review at September 11, 2001, and ends it at January 17, 2007. Since we have benchmarks for when the intelligence agencies began breaking the law elsewhere in the handiwork of the Congress, perhaps the final date should be moved to the present. A year and a half is a long time in the computer and surveillance industries. And since it's good enough for the intelligence agencies with respect to other lawbreaking (war crimes, for instance), perhaps that earlier date should be moved to November 26, 1997.

And then, since the list of participants is incomplete, we should add in those that are conspicuously missing from the list of public and private sector entities: Companies and governments outside the United States. I'd like to add Singapore, for instance. Singapore implemented the John Poindexter's TIA program when the Congress here shut it down. That means the program got a beta test offshore, and you can take it to the bank that a group already operating illegally isn't going to ask for permission to bring it online once it works. And we really ought to know what foreign R&D labs of American companies have been cooking up in the way of products that our government can access off-the-shelf. So we should add those R&D labs, if any of their product was ever used by the U.S. government, even if they developed the product for other governments, like China, Pakistan, or other places where the government makes deals to listen to, or restrict, communications.

Sadly, though, any investigation, no matter how detailed, is just looking through the glass darkly, and every revelation of lawbreaking will simply be a way of telling the American citizen what is presently being done legally. The new bill gives such sweeping power to eavesdrop that it is hard to know where to start. I put up a note to this effect on FireDogLake yesterday, I will embellish it here:

As I and others have warned many times before, it is very necessary to look at this bill as stating what queries and artificial intelligence, what data mining, they will be allowed to do on a database of enormous proportions containing the information on the internet, including the traffic of communications (emails, text messaging, etc.). Any interpretation that brings to mind a guy up on your telephone pole splicing wires and some guys in a dark van with lots of glowing LEDs outside your house is simply the wrong picture entirely. The machine that Mark Klein saw being installed in San Francisco takes a snapshot of the web as it is being transmitted at any instant, and reconstructs it to web pages, images, videos, emails, text messages, VoiP, not to mention phone calls and the rest, directly from the optical signals in the fiber optic trunk lines where it is installed.

There are very thoughtful opinions available online that such information quantities are not useful because of things like false positives. In actuality, there are many ways around the problems with false positives if you have the capital in equipment, people to monitor output, and money to spend on research and development. And false positives don't wreck the intelligence so much as make it hard to find. Hard to find intelligence results in spying on more people than you have to, not in abandoning the program. It also results in more and more intense spying on the target, the same way that failure to get usable information out of prisoners results in harsher and harsher torture.

Another thing. I think you could call it toponoesis, since I can't find a term for it, the gut perception that one is in a space. It pervades all of our talk about the internet. The feeling is palpable that one is looking out into a vast virtual place where websites live and spiders and bots roam, where people get together in groups, and movies and various -casts get shown. The intelligence people see it much the same way, in fact, it may not be possible for people to see it as what it really is, a large number of one-to-one and one-to-many communications, with requests made by your browser and fulfilled by a server on the other end of a routed, packetized communication stream.

So there is no way to sit quietly at some vantage point and look with binoculars for some bad guy out there, because there isn't really an out there, and there are no vantage points. What seems like a vantage point, if that vantage point is somewhere in our toponoetic world that can see everything, is actually an enormous vacuum cleaner sucking down a copy of every piece of communications going through it. Think of the guy in the Matrix that points to the vertical strings of numbers and characters and says, "I don't even see the numbers anymore, I see a person here, and agent there..."

Got it? The vacuum cleaner and the database and all that? Because it's important not to let people frame what's going on as just listening in when al Qaeda makes a phone call.

The bill allows surveillance of targets for whom the names and addresses are still not known. Under the circumstances, the requirements in the minimization rules that they delete such information are meaningless.

Consider the following information: Each of 7 people are members of a database and each is a member of one of 7 groups. No two members are members of more than one group, all members are members of at least one group as any other. Under these circumstances, regardless of whether you destroy the personal information of any member, you can always use group memberships to target a single individual. Group memberships in this kind of set up are who you call on the phone, or even which vocabulary words you use most frequently, not to mention nationality or political affiliation.

This is the simplest possible example of what is called an admissible set for an inverse finite Radon transform, sometimes in more general situations called a Galois connection, in very constrained form like in this particular example it is also called a BIBD (balanced incomplete block design), sometimes it is called a finite projective geometry. With all those names, its a good bet that the phenomenon in the previous paragraph is well studied. It needn't be 7 and 7 and 2, it can be a lot of combinations, it can contain more categories than it needs, it can contain more overlaps than 2.

What it means is that if a database exists that contains enough categorical (who is in what group) information, it can always target individuals even though the identification information has been deleted. If part of the identification information is where the individual is (and it is), then one can claim that there was a reasonable expectation that the person is outside the United States with as just as much surety and impunity as one can testify under oath before a Senate committee that one “does not remember” even though it is obvious to everyone watching that one does.

I hope this helps clarify whether, after the passage of this bill, there is anybody they cannot legally target temporarily (for 7 to 60 days depending on court interations after the targeting has started). Once they narrow to a specific individual, this bill, together with those passed before (Patriot Act, FISA upgrades), allows them to claim what this bill says needs to be claimed to get a warrant, and continue the surveillance.

Any bill that does not include rolling back information as a requisite for minimization, and allows targeting without personal information, as this one does, allows spying on you. You. Not just some guy in a turban with a rocket launcher, You. Period and end of story. Go to the White House complaint list for the Leahy bill (SJC version from last Fall) and read what the Bush people hated in that bill, if you don’t believe me.

Oh, and there is that extra kicker I've been trying to warn about, too. Part of the quest for power of this administration is built on developing a class of people who have no rights, and then making that class as large as possible. The designation whenever the class needs to be justified to the public is terrorist. The designation whenever the offender is a country, is proliferator or creator of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Barbara Olshansky's book, Democracy Detained, contains an excellent account of how the class of no rights is intimately involved with mixing up criminal/police work with military/intelligence work until the distinctions between the laws of war and the laws of civil society have been so blurred as to render both meaningless and create the place with no law. Conflating of weapons definitions, emergency medical definitions, civil rights laws, and international human rights laws does the person thing: It creates the person so evil that they belong in the place in which there is no law, and the situation so dangerous that they need to be put there so good people will be allowed to do evil to stop them.

Section 110 of this bill makes everyone that transgresses in any way in the "Global War on Terror" into a trafficker in Weapons of Mass Destruction. If they are persons, they become agents, if they are nations they become proliferators. The IED and any similar weapon becomes a WMD -- a mushroom cloud, to use Condi Rice's characterization. By blurring the lines between a homemade improvised bomb and what the Geneva Conventions commentary refers to as "weapons of annihilation", everyone in the class of people with no rights becomes as evil as if they had detonated a nuclear weapon. Thereby cementing in the public consciousness why they have absolutely no rights and can be tortured. Every country accused of trafficking to such people in weapons or parts, has then been accused of a major act that can, and has been, used as a casus belli for pre-emptive war.

This bill ought to be called the Democratic Version of the Patriot Act. Just like the Republican version, it seeks to remove from living memory whatever it was that patriots once stood for.

My Fax to Barack Obama

2008-07-07T09:02:00.004-05:00

July 7, 2008

Senator Barack Obama
713 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Via Fax (202) 228-4260

CC: Senator Bill Nelson Fax (202 ) 228-2183

Dear Senator Obama,

In 1755, a brave founder of our country said “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

In 1776, another founder wrote “…that so far as we approve as monarchy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”

On January 28, 2008 another patriot said :

Ever since 9/11, this Administration has put forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand.

The FISA court works. The separation of power works…..

No one should get a free pass to violate the basic civil liberties of the American people – not the President of the United States and not the telecommunication companies that fell in line with his warrantless surveillance program.

Tomorrow the Senate will take up H.R. 6304. Will you stand with Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine and the Barack Obama of last January? It will not be enough merely to vote for the Dodd-Feingold amendment to strip retroactive immunity from the bill and then to vote in favor of the bill if immunity fails. There are many flaws in this bill and they all err on the side of sacrificing liberty for safety. The Barack Obama of January would not make that sacrifice.

The citizens of the United States also would not make that sacrifice. In a poll released July 3, Rasmussen Reports, an organization with a distinctly Republican flavor, reports that Americans overwhelmingly support the Constitution. Especially telling from the poll is that when faced with the question of which is the bigger danger to the country, a government that is too powerful or one that is too weak, a resounding 59% of the voting public believe that the bigger danger lies in a government that is too powerful.

You sir, stand poised at a unique tipping point in the history of our country and your actions this week will say much about our joint futures. I urge you to stand with those brave patriots who founded our country on its love for liberty. To take this stand is not to appease the “loony left”. To take this stand is to join with our founders and a majority of voters today to endorse liberty as the only true course to security. Should you choose instead to “triangulate” to the middle on this issue, your action this week could well be seen by future historians as a missed, last, chance to prevent our Constitution being relegated to the dustbin as another failed experiment.

Sincerely,

Jim White

Please help in the fight against retro-active immunity! (Update below)

2008-06-18T20:42:00.008-05:00

This is the site for a broad-based coalition of activist groups, comprising all colors of the political rainbow (the ACLU, Ron Paul supporters, various liberal/progressive blogs like FireDogLake, and civil libertarians like Glenn Greenwald), united against the House Democratic leadership's craven and cowardly capitulation to a corrupt Republican agenda.

To read about the issue, efforts to fight back, and to donate(!), click on the embed above.

UPDATE (6:54 CDT 20 June) Media issues blogger, Simon Owens, has an interview with three of the driving forces behind the Strange Bedfellows coalition here.

Pakistan Emergency Update

2008-06-15T13:04:00.003-05:00

Pakistan Emergency Update

This arrived in my mailbox this morning. [with some minor edits to facilitate formatting]:

Faisal has left a new comment on your post "The Pakistan Emergency: Update!":

Here are some personal experiences of mine related to the historic Long March in Islamabad.

I hope you people will be interested in knowing this.

---------------------------

Congratulations Pakistan for showing display of solidarity and commitment with the cause of justice and freedom - and we specially congratulate the lawyers, students, civil society and political workers who joined hands with each other under the leadership of Aitzaz Ahsan for the great cause.

I think PPP (especially Mr. 10% Zardari), Mush and company, Dogar and company and PML with ANP should realize that they don’t have time to waste and that they must act now in favor of the country and restore the judiciary (without any unconstitutional package) and get rid of that dictator Musharraf.

InshaAllah the success is near and Pakistan will experience the true justice and freedom.

Some personal experiences: I am very tired (I have arrived today at Karachi) so not in a position to write much, but would like to share some personal experiences (In a random and brain storming way).

It was great to see people coming all from Pakistan (Sind,Balauchistan, Sarhad, Punjab, Kashmir, Tribal areas) for a common cause belonging to different backgrounds.
Especially would like to thank Fastring guys(students, alumini, and faculty of FAST-NU) for showing great hospitality, especially Hasan (for picking me up and helping me with many things) and Usman of YPL (for sharing his room).
It was great to be with faculty members of FAST-Lahore and openly discussing views with them especially Dr. Durrani, Pr. Liaquat Majeed Shaikh, and their former entrepreneurship faculty member Zia sahab.
Also to CCP and SAC guys for their cooperation and support throughout the journey.
It was great to see that people were so disciplined and united.
Still feeling in my ears “Go Musharraf Go”, "Adlia ki Azadi tak Jang rahai gi , jang rahaigi”,” Ai Khuda mera CJ salamat rahai” and …
Cannot forget the warm welcome throughout the journey.
Thanks to the family of Islamabad who invited us at their home and their hospitality.

After thought: We are ready for further struggle and inshaAllah the success will be of the “Right”!

Posted by Faisal to Achieving Our Country at 15 June, 2008 11:20

A Congressional Cheerleader for Torture

2008-06-02T18:07:00.009-05:00

My Congressman, Cliff Stearns (R, FL-6), visited Guanatanmo Bay Naval Base on May 8. In describing the trip in a press release on his website prior to departure, he said "I look forward to touring the facilities, evaluating the procedures, and getting a better picture of the role of Guantanamo in the War on Terror." After returning, he gleefully posted pictures of his trip, including this one:
I thought the pose looked familiar, especially in the context of foreign detainees, and then I remembered this photo:

It certainly looks to me that Congressman Stearns is capable of producing a "thumbs up" for Guantanamo Bay worthy of the Lynndie England "thumbs up" at Abu Ghraib. Congressman Stearns' attitude about Guantanamo Bay is so disgusting because the Bush Administration's use of Guantanamo Bay has been a blatant violation of international law from the start. Coupling the violations of the Geneva Convention with the fact that 55% of the detainees at Guantanamo have committed no "hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies" and only 8% of detainees are actual fighters for al Qaeda, it is a true mystery why the Congressman would visit this facility with such enthusiasm.

In the documents released by the military to the New York Times in its story on the use of retired military officers as military analysts for the press, we find this passage about treatment of detainees at Guantanamo, taken from the transcript of a briefing of the officers (see 06-F-01532 doc 07 from the April 13, 2007 entry, page 6):

In GTMO, that ego down translated down to telling the detainee that his mother and sister were whores, he was forced to wear women's lingerie, multiple allegations of his homosexuality, he was forced to dance with a male interrogator, he was strip searched for control measures, and he was forced to perform dog tricks on a leash.
Now, the basic line there - you say that sounds, you know, like I did - that sounds like degrading. Well, we said yes, it could be. The basic line though in the charter for those interrogations was humane treatment. And humane treatment is spelled out by the President. It's a safe, secure environment that provides medical care, food, water, and the basics of that person's security. Not this. Was this person injured, harmed?

Dog leash? At Guantanmo Bay? Where have we heard of that before? Oh, that's right, that comes from Lynndie England at Abu Ghraib, as well:

Clearly, the abuses at Abu Ghraib were not isolated instances of a few "bad apples" getting carried away, as many in the conservative press have suggested. From the Rent-a-General briefing excerpt above, it is clear that the very abuses England was prosecuted for are part of the approved program of detainee torture at Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon's talking point, that this torture does not constitute abuse because the President says it is legal and because the detainees were in a safe, secure environment with medical care would be laughable were it not so disgusting.

So, when Congressman Stearns says, in his press release, that treatment of detainees complies with international law, there are those who would disagree with him. According to the National Lawyers Guild, both those who mistreated prisoners and those involved at all levels of approving of this abuse have violated international law:

The prohibition of torture is a jus cogens norm (these are principles of international law so fundamental that no nation may ignore them or attempt to contract out of them through treaties). The United States has consistently prohibited the use of torture through its Constitution, laws, executive statements and judicial decisions and by ratifying international treaties that prohibit it. The prohibition against torture applies to all persons in U.S. custody in times of peace, armed conflict, or state of emergency. In other words, the prohibition is absolute. However, the legal memoranda drafted by government lawyers purposely or recklessly misconstrued and/or ignored jus cogens, customary international law, and various U.S. treaty obligations in order to justify the unjustifiable, claiming that clearly unlawful interrogation “techniques” were lawful.

Further, the NLG also states, in the same white paper, that "all those who approved the use of torture and committed it—whether ordering it, approving it or giving purported legal advice to justify it—are subject to prosecution under international and U.S. domestic law."

The white paper from the NLG tells us that because torture of prisoners is under a jus cogens norm, it is not made legal by the flawed memos of John Yoo, or by the pronouncement of President Bush, or by a vote of Congress in the Military Commissions Act. That is why Stearns has it exactly backwards when he ends his report on the Guantanamo Bay trip with a reference to a released detainee who became a suicide bomber. Taking innocent people off the street, placing them beyond the reach of international law and then subjecting them to needless physical and psychological torture for years is a guaranteed recipe for creating enemies. It was Guantanamo Bay and the methods employed there that are directly responsible for the unleashing of that particular bomber.

Update (June 10): The photo is no longer on Cliff Stearns' website. Hmm, getting a bit nervous are we?

Open Letter to the United States Congress

2008-05-02T11:42:00.004-05:00

We are waiting. It has been 22 days since the ABC News report and subsequent interview with the President, revealing that the Principals group of the National Security Council met in the Situation Room at the White House and planned interrogation procedures rising to the level of torture step by step, and that they did so with full knowledge and approval of the President of the United States. Examination of extant news reports, interviews with high ranking officials from the CIA, interviews with CIA interrogators like John Kiriakou, clearly show that during the interrogations, permission was sought, technique by technique, and that results were reported up the chain before getting orders for the next technique. [on pages 20-21 of the ABC transcript of the Brian Ross interview with Kiriakou it says they went to the Deputy Director of Ops on each slap. We now know that the CIA didn't want to be left in the cold on this so they took each slap to the White House [ABC report on the Principals]. So the Principals were, in effect, conducting the torture of high-value detainees in real time: supervising torture directly by cable.]

You are the People's Representatives, responsible, among other things, for calling for independent investigators, prosecutors, and drawing up articles of impeachment against the President, the Vice-President, and his cabinet secretaries. Below are the laws that apply to you. They apply to you because, under our treaty obligations we are required not just to abstain from torture, but to vigorously prosecute torturers. If you draw up articles, or appoint a prosecutor, you are obeying those laws. If not, you are failing your oath of office (to uphold the Constitution), and you are in violation of the treaties named: the Convention Against Torture, and the Geneva Conventions of 1949. Since those treaties are implemented in U.S. law, you are in violation of the War Crimes Act as well. There's no end to how wrong this administration can be, they are totally lawless, and without humanity and shame. You are a willing participant in the event that you know, and from your position of power, you do nothing. History will not forgive a Congress too timid to act.

The people are waiting for criminal action. You are in the situation that you, the Congress, are in violation of international law for your lack of prosecution of torturers. And still no action. You are, by silence, participating in the greatest national shame in modern times. There is only so much the American people should be asked to endure in their names. After that, it becomes necessary to dissolve the bonds that tie men into nations, since our government has become a paragon of evil and lawbreaking and no longer represents us. And we shouldn't need to sign our signatures as large as John Hancock for the government to be able to read them without their glasses.

Please act with courage to end this national shame and horror.

__________________________________

Article IV paragraph 2, U.S. Constitution, on the status of treaties:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

Article 4, United Nations Convention Against Torture, Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment (CATCIDT)

1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.
2. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.

Article 6, CATCIDT, paragraphs 1 and 2.

1. Upon being satisfied, after an examination of information available to it, that the circumstances so warrant, any State Party in whose territory a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is present, shall take him into custody or take other legal measures to ensure his presence. The custody and other legal measures shall be as provided in the law of that State but may be continued only for such time as is necessary to enable any criminal or extradition proceedings to be instituted.

2. Such State shall immediately make a preliminary inquiry into the facts.

Article 12, CATCIDT

Each State Party shall ensure that its competent authorities proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction.

Geneva Conventions, Articles 129, 130, 131

Art 129. The High Contracting Parties undertake to enact any legislation necessary to provide effective penal sanctions for persons committing, or ordering to be committed, any of the grave breaches of the present Convention defined in the following Article.

Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed. or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts. It may also, if it prefers, and in accordance with the provisions of its own legislation, hand such persons over for trial to another High Contracting Party concerned, provided such High Contracting Party has made out a prima facie case.

Each High Contracting Party shall take measures necessary for the suppression of all acts contrary to the provisions of the present Convention other than the grave breaches defined in the following Article.

In all circumstances, the accused persons shall benefit by safeguards of proper trial and defence, which shall not be less favourable than those provided by Article 105 and those following of the present Convention.

Art 130. Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, compelling a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of the hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a prisoner of war of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in this Convention.

Art 131. No High Contracting Party shall be allowed to absolve itself or any other High Contracting Party of any liability incurred by itself or by another High Contracting Party in respect of breaches referred to in the preceding Article.

An Open Letter to Senator Barack Obama

2008-04-28T06:42:00.003-05:00

Dear Senator Obama,

I was disappointed to read on April 27, that you plan to vote to confirm General David Petraeus to lead Central Command. Although widely heralded with "success" for the surge in Iraq , a closer examination of his efforts in Iraq (note: the reduction in violence is not likely due to his leadership) reveals Petraeus' record to be an abject failure that is simply covered over by political gamesmanship.

Petraeus made his move into the political realm in September, 2004 with the publication of an Op-Ed in the Washington Post. This Op-Ed was clearly meant to influence public opinion in favor of President Bush for the upcoming election. The column by Petraeus primarily focused on the "success" he had in training Iraqi troops to take over their own defense. However, despite the rosy numbers spouted by Petraeus in the column, then, as now, Iraqi troops remain completely incapable of defending their country, as demonstrated by the failed al Maliki offensives in Basra and Sadr City last month.

Yet, despite the failure as commander of the Multinational Security Transition Command to develop a battle-ready, independent Iraqi army, Petraeus was promoted to command all forces in Iraq, quite possibly as a reward for his political support of President Bush. In fact, there was one report that after his first meeting with his then commanding officer, Admiral William Fallon, Fallon referred to Petraeus as an "ass-kissing little chickenshit". This same report makes it clear that Admiral Fallon opposed the concept of the surge from the beginnng and that Petraeus was appointed to his role as commander in Iraq to serve as the public face of the Bush surge policy.

It is particularly galling that Petraeus should be chosen to head CentCom because Fallon widely was seen as the last hope for preventing a US attack on Iran. Fallon was widely quoted as having said such an attack would not occur "on my watch". With Fallon now out of the way, appointment of Petraeus to his post would appear to pave the way for such an attack. Given that Tony Snow revealed recently that 80% of President Bush's advisers were against the surge, (note: the link to the Tony Snow quote no longer seems to function, but the quote was repeated on a number of other blogs before the Desert Sun took the article down) yet Bush appointed Petraeus to command troops in Iraq so that he could be the public voice of the surge, why should we believe that Petraeus' role as head of CentCom will be for any other purpose than to advocate for invasion of Iran?

Our military is facing a crisis through the loss of the best and brightest among potential senior officers:

In 2005, internal Army memos started to warn of the "disproportionate loss of high-potential, high-performance junior leaders." West Point graduates are leaving at their highest rates since the 1970s (except for a few years in the early 1990s when the Army's goal was to reduce its size). Of the nearly 1,000 cadets from the class of 2002, 58 percent are no longer on active duty.

Very high on the list of reasons for leaving was "dissatisfaction with the way the Army leadership is managing the war, and the part that played in their decision to leave." Confirmation of General Petraeus as head of CentCom only will exacerbate this situation.

Congressman Steve Cohen (D - TN 9th) Questions FBI Director Mueller About Torture

2008-04-26T12:41:00.007-05:00

Steve, in committee (Judiciary) on 23 April 2008, asked the Director specifically about the FBI's legal obligation to notify other agencies of what it believed to be illegal actions that those other agencies were performing. He followed up by asking if FBI had indeed fulfilled its statutory requirement. From Steve's web site:

Responding to my questions, Mueller recalled that he had warned the Justice Department and the Pentagon that some U.S. interrogation methods might be illegal. The FBI’s admission of their disapproval of other departments’ interrogation techniques is new evidence of the Bush Administration’s reluctance to follow the law, and Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and I will continue to investigate this issue. You can view a video of the exchange:

I am extremely pleased by Steve's representation of the TN 9th during this term, the first of what I hope will be many, many more. Steve Cohen's vigorous defense of our Constitution of the United States of America and his commitment to Human Rights make Steve one of the Good Ones!

For more on torture, expertly examined in depth, see Humanity Against Crimes blog.

Violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

2008-04-25T06:52:00.002-05:00

One of the most dominant stories in yesterday's news was the United States' denunciation of Syria and accusations that Syria was pursuing nuclear weapon technology at the Syrian facility bombed by Israel on September 6, 2007. Today, we learn from the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradai, that Israel was in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by taking unilateral action. As reported by AFP:

Nevertheless, the watchdog was critical of both the US and Israel for their handling of the matter.
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei "deplores the fact" that the information was not immediately passed on the the Vienna-based watchdog in accordance with the guidelines of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)," the statement said.

"Under the NPT, the agency has a responsibility to verify any proliferation allegations in a non-nuclear weapon state party to the NPT," the statement said.

"In light of the above, the Director General views the unilateral military action by Israel as undermining the due process of verification that is at the heart of the non-proliferation regime," it added.

By destroying the facility instead of reporting it, Israel (presumably with the blessing of the US) prevented inspection of the facility to determine its true purpose. The world is left to wonder whether US claims of a Middle Eastern country to develop weapons of mass destruction can be believed this time. The recent track record on this , of course, is abysmal.

Why can Israel get away with violating the NPT? Because it is not a party to the treaty.

With One Voice

2008-04-22T14:02:00.002-05:00

The striking revelation on Sunday by the New York Times of the recruiting, briefing and deploying of retired military officers into the media to promulgate the Pentagon's version of the Iraq war is staggering in many respects. I would like to concentrate on one aspect of the story that stands as an example of dangers to our country that its founders warned us against. Writing in The Federalist No. 10, James Madison wrestled with the problems inherent in the natural outbreak of factions with differing interests and the inherent struggle between factions with differing views.

Madison starts with a definition of faction:

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

He then goes on to state that there are two possible approaches to dealing with the difficulties inherent in factions:

There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.
There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.

A strong argument can be made that George W. Bush has employed both of these approaches to removing causes of faction when enforcing his policies in the United States. The destruction of civil liberties as seen in suspension of habeas corpus, illegal warrantless wiretapping and torture, although clothed as tools in the war on terror, undoubtedly also have served to reduce open expressions of dissent.

The New York Times article, however, is an example of Bush's efforts to "give every citizen the same opinions". The drive to have only one opinion expressed is a hallmark of Bush's presidency. In October, 2005, Nick Turse, writing at TomDispatch.com, told us of "the seemingly endless and ever-growing list of beleaguered administrators, managers, and career civil servants who quit their posts in protest or were defamed, threatened, fired, forced out, demoted, or driven to retire by Bush administration strong-arming." He called this list The Fallen Legion and it can be viewed here at CommonDreams.org. That list is undoubtedly much longer now.

With the Fallen Legion as backdrop, it is interesting to look at the New York Times' description of the incident known as The Generals' Revolt:

The full dimensions of this mutual embrace were perhaps never clearer than in April 2006, after several of Mr. Rumsfeld’s former generals — none of them network military analysts — went public with devastating critiques of his wartime performance. Some called for his resignation.

How is it that none of these retired officers who came out against the handling of the war were employed as military analysts by the networks? Glenn Greenwald reports today that "in CNN's case, contrary to the gist of its denials to the NYT, it actually seemed to be a source of pride that the military analysts they were using were explicitly approved of by the Bush administration."

That brings us full circle to how the Bush Administration has achieved a news media that speaks with one voice. The Pentagon recruits and informs retired military officers who then are "chosen" from lists provided by the networks to be the "independent" analysts for discussion of the war. This does not explain just why the networks, or at least CNN, choose to "clear" their choices with the Pentagon. Do they fear consequences if they do not use approved analysts?

Despite these efforts by Bush to remove all dissent from his inner circle and those speaking for the Administration, we learn (via ThinkProgress) of a very interesting revelation by Tony Snow that Bush chooses his own voice over that of his advisers:

He praised Bush for increasing U.S. troop levels in Iraq despite widespread unpopularity for the war at home and abroad. He said 80 percent of Bush's advisers opposed last year's military surge in the nation, which still faces an uncertain future.
"Everybody was telling him, 'You're crazy, don't do this,'" Snow said. "You get the chills He's really unafraid to take the hits if he thinks he's doing the right thing."

I get chills for another reason. I think Madison knew that someday George W. Bush would be our president when he said (again in The Federalist No. 10) "Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm." Let us hope that the next person at the helm is enlightened enough to realize that the very liberties our country cherishes so much come with a diversity of voices.

A Call to Action

2008-04-17T06:33:00.002-05:00

Democracy for America, USAction, True Majority and Brave New Films have come together to produce a hard-hitting video outlining the case for why Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice must resign. They are collecting signatures on a petition at condimustgo.com and when they achieve 100,000 signatures (they had over 37,000 signatures at 7:30 am ET April 17, less than 24 hours after launching the campaign), they will deliver the petition to Senators Clinton, McCain and Obama. Here is the video:

In the video, we are reminded that at the "Principals Meetings" disclosed by ABC News last week, government officials at the highest levels orchestrated interrogation sessions including torture. At one of these meetings, Secretary Rice said to CIA officials, regarding the interrogation of a new detainee using these techniques, "This is your baby. Go do it."

Please take a moment to sign the petition by clicking the Democracy for America link above and then send the link on to your friends. For more information on torture as committed by the United States government, please visit Humanity against Crimes.

Each of us, after becoming aware of the crimes against humanity that are being committed by our government, in our name, has a responsibility to do everything we can to see that these atrocities stop immediately.

Rates of Change: A Meditation on the Calculus of Societal Revolution

2008-04-11T14:08:00.006-05:00

Revolutionary societal changes occur in increments. A complex array of conditions must be in place for pendulum shifts of change to occur, and it is useful (in the context of pendulum shifts of societal change) to view the "body politic" holistically, that is as a single body, a single organism composed of multiple smaller organisms in the same way that a living body is composed of multiple and varying structures, systems, cells, molecules, and atoms. (One might alternately allude to a "Systems Approach," meaning that everything affects - and is affected by - everything else.)

One of the requisite conditions for a societal pendulum shift is the oppression of a critical mass of citizens to the degree that that mass is impelled by tyranny to rebel. Another needed element is tested charismatic leadership, but it would be a fallacy to think that the charismatic leader drives change; the truth is that she responds to the impetus of the masses, serves as a focal point of the people's discontent, and simultaneously harnesses the energy of the disaffected mass of people. All of this occurs in an organic process that has a life progression (power) of it own, the pace of which cannot be forced, not even by the tested charismatic leader.

Up until now, the pressure of tyranny has not been present in enough force to stimulate change. The constitutional abuses that the Bush administration has inflicted upon the nation - and the world - thus far do not affect a large segment of the U.S. population viscerally. The real pain of catastrophic economic downturn has not made itself excruciatingly known, yet. The ravages of combat born by an all-volunteer professional military do not touch the masses. Eventually though, a tipping point of one or all of these (and likely other conditions as well) will be reached. Could public revulsion toward Bush's enthusiastic embrace of torture emerge as that tipping point? Whicever iniquity does finally push the citizenry beyond its tolerance for oppression, some fiery individuals will push back in response, with varying degrees of effect. In other arenas, groups will respond. If history is a guide (and there is good reason to believe it is), the pendulum will swing. In all likelihood, many more people - mostly largely innocent - will suffer during the process. It is a pity, but no less true for it, nor in any way avoidable for the knowing.

Why We Are Here

2008-04-11T13:28:00.005-05:00

From the AOC Mail Bag:

For as long as I can remember, lip service has been paid to our "inalienable rights" as citizens of this country. Yet even as we have been parroting those words, to ourselves and to others, the very institutions responsible for upholding, educating, protecting etc. have been systematically eroded by a small group of powerful people who really only believe in those rights for themselves.

Halting that erosion is the task we have set for ourselves.

“Pedinska”

Pakistan Emergency Update - Karachi outrage: HRCP for probe by world experts

2008-04-11T05:25:00.009-05:00

From the HCRP Blog:

Press Release, April 10
Lahore: While condemning the Tuesday’s violence in Karachi, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has called for a probe by international experts. In a statement issued here today, the commission said:

What happened in Karachi on Wednesday, especially the burning alive of several innocent Pakistanis, can only be condemned as acts of utterly horrible bestiality. The hands behind what is obviously a counter-offensive by the camp hostile to lawyers’ campaign must be exposed and the culprits, if it is possible to apprehend them, made to face justice....

Read the rest of the post here

Salon.com has an understated AP account "Strains Show in New Pakistani Government" here

AOC contributors ondelette, RMP, and Jim White have new posts up (including beautiful Farsi text and Persian poetry) at Humanity Against Crimes (HAC) blog. The subject is torture.

Examining the Decrease in Violence in Iraq

2008-04-07T17:35:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker begin Congressional testimony on the situation in Iraq. Look for lots of self-congratulatory talk of dramatic reductions in violence levels, marred only by the minor hiccup of violence in the past few weeks. Further, look for lots of chest-thumping and bragging by Republicans claiming that victory now is within reach.

Despite the claims that will be made that the US military is responsible for the decrease in violence, I think the case can be made that the decrease can be ascribed almost entirely to four other factors. I will list each below, describe the flawed strategy that got us there, describe how the situation is not sustainable and then suggest what really should be done.

1. Four million Iraqis have been displaced from their homes, with two million of them no longer in the country. A major result of this displacement is that the country effectively has been ethnically cleansed. The previous level of integration in neighborhoods no longer exists and a full 16% of the pre-war population is displaced. That would be equivalent to 48 million US citizens displaced from their homes and with neighborhoods becoming exclusively Christian or Jewish.

This situation is a direct result of the original US invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of the government. The situation was made even worse by the subsequent disbanding of the Iraqi military and police organizations.

I would expect Petraeus and Crocker to ignore this situation completely and to perhaps put out a few platitudes if asked about the refugee problem by a Democrat during the hearings. What needs to be done is to provide massive amounts of humanitarian aid to the countries housing the refugees, primarily Jordan and Syria, and to engage them in developing plans for repatriation to occur in concert with withdrawal of US troops.

2. Moqtada al-Sadr declared a cease fire on August 29, 2007, and the stand-down of his Mahdi army has played a major role in the decrease in violence. This was confirmed recently, when Nouri al Maliki declared an offensive against the Mahdi army in Basra and the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad. The dismal failure of this offensive seemed only to demonstrate that violence levels can rise and fall at the command of al Sadr, not the Iraqi government or US forces.

The key failure in this instance is the US strategy of supporting an individual rather than an institution. By clinging to al Maliki, the US is ignoring the many other political factions within Iraq. Political reconciliation cannot occur when the US supports only one small faction. Instead, we should be supporting the entire Iraqi Parliament and working to ensure that all political parties are given a voice in determining the future of the country. The original justification for the surge was to provide “breathing space” for political reconciliation, yet the US , by supporting only al Maliki, has prevented any such reconciliation.

3. A key feature of the violence reduction in summer and fall of 2007 was the development and funding of the Sunni Awakening Councils, beginning in Anbar Province and spreading from there. With the enticement of weapons and funds, Sunni tribal leaders were convinced to switch their allegiance from supporting al Qaeda to fighting al Qaeda. In starting this program, General Petraeus ironically chose to ignore the lesson of history in which the US initially funded and armed Osama bin Laden for his fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. That one worked out just fine, didn’t it?

As should have been expected, this situation is not sustainable and is leading to questions, as reported by BBC:

Meanwhile, the Shia-dominated government is distinctly wary of the Awakening movement.

It fears the Americans are arming and funding groups who represent a potential threat.

Tribesmen are famously independent-minded.

Having switched sides once, might they not do so again - especially when the Americans begin to draw down their forces later this year?

Again, this particular failure is another example of supporting individuals over institutions. As stated above, the US should be supporting the Iraqi Parliament and ensuring all political factions are afforded representation and a voice in moving the country forward.

4. Over 50,000 Iraqis have been detained since the beginning of the surge. The New York Times reported in February that Iraqi forces have detained 26,000 prisoners and US forces separately hold 24,000 prisoners in American military prisons. Given the abuses that Iraqi prisoners have been subjected to in the past, when there were fewer prisoners at Abu Graib putting this many new detainees under control of US troops is quite possibly the biggest strategic error of the entire occupation. Recent events, with the publication of the Yoo torture memo Bush’s veto of the Intelligence Authorization Act that would ban waterboarding by all US personnel, will only serve to fan the flames of US hatred by the immediate family and friends of those detained. It is very easy to imagine that each detained “insurgent” will lead to the creation of very many more vowing revenge for the mistreatment of those detained. and

Don’t expect Petraeus or Crocker to address this issue. In fact, it will be stunning even if Congressional Democrats ask about it, but this behavior by the US guarantees that hatred of the US will continue throughout the occupation. The only solution is to turn over all detainees to the Iraq government, cease combat operations by US troops and begin an orderly withdrawal.

In summary, a number of factors besides US combat operations have contributed significantly to the downturn in violence in Iraq since early 2007. Upon examination, it is unlikely that the violence decrease can be sustained in any meaningful fashion and that US strategic errors committed by General Petraeus will lead to continued instability in Iraq. Significant strategy changes will be needed to reduce violence sustainably and allow withdrawal of US forces. Don’t look for Petraeus or Crocker to suggest any moves that would achieve these results.

In Memoriam, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

2008-04-04T06:55:00.003-05:00

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. His words ring just as true today as when he made this historic address in Washington.

Thank you for your dream, Dr. King, and for your inspiring leadership in how to change our great country.

Gearing Up for the Next Petraeus and Crocker Show

2008-04-02T11:57:00.001-05:00

The Congressional elections of November, 2006 were widely seen as a resounding rejection of the war in Iraq by the citizens of the United States. Seen by everyone that is, except the President. In his January, 2007 State of the Union address, he said:

We're carrying out a new strategy in Iraq -- a plan that demands more from Iraq's elected government, and gives our forces in Iraq the reinforcements they need to complete their mission. Our goal is a democratic Iraq that upholds the rule of law, respects the rights of its people, provides them security, and is an ally in the war on terror.
In order to make progress toward this goal, the Iraqi government must stop the sectarian violence in its capital. But the Iraqis are not yet ready to do this on their own. So we're deploying reinforcements of more than 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq.

And so was born the surge. The new Democratic majorities in the House and Senate then flexed their muscles, and gave the President everything he asked for as they funded the surge through the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act of 2007. In a minor fit of conscience, however, they did append language to the bill establishing a set of benchmarks against which progress in Iraq was to be judged.

The first review of these benchmarks was in September, 2007. Knowing that a complete lack of credibility would prevent Congressional testimony by Bush, Cheney, Gates or Rice, it was decided that the surge report card would be delivered by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Despite the rosy picture painted by Petraeus and Crocker in their testimony, the Government Accountability Office also presented its own report on the 18 benchmarks that were established in the funding bill. They found that as of September, 2007, three of the 18 benchmarks were met, four were partially met and 11 were unmet.

On January 24, 2008, the Center for American Progress published an updated report on the Iraq benchmarks on the one year anniversary of the State of the Union speech announcing the surge. They found three benchmarks met, five partially met and 10 unmet. Below is a list of these benchmarks, with their description from the GAO report, their status in September, 2007 from GAO and their status in January, 2008 from the Center for American Progress. On a few of them are some added comments about events since January. A new report by Petraeus and Crocker is scheduled for Congressional testimony on April 8, so this analysis is meant as an aid in preparing for the testimony to follow.

1. Forming a Constitutional Review Committee and completing the constitutional review.
Unmet in both reports, although there is a recent report of members of this committee traveling to Northern Ireland to study conditions there.

2. Enacting and implementing legislation on de-Ba’athification.
Unmet in the GAO report and partially met in the CAP report.

3. Enacting and implementing legislation to ensure the equitable distribution of hydrocarbon resources of the people of Iraq without regard to the sect or ethnicity of recipients, and enacting and implementing legislation to ensure that the energy resources of Iraq benefit Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs, Kurds, and other Iraqi citizens in an equitable manner.
Unmet in both reports. Even worse, during Cheney's trip the region, it was reported that Crocker and Petraeus are now negotiating directly with oil firms for new contracts with the Iraq government.

4. Enacting and implementing legislation on procedures to form semi-autonomous regions.
Partially met in GAO report and unmet in CAP report.

5. Enacting and implementing legislation establishing an Independent High Electoral Commission, provincial elections law, provincial council authorities, and a date for provincial elections.
Unmet in both reports. The prospect of provincial elections was a point Bush touted prominently in the 2007 State of the Union speech, but still, over 15 months later, no elections because conditions are simply too unstable.

6. Enacting and implementing legislation addressing amnesty.
Unmet in both reports.

7. Enacting and implementing legislation establishing a strong militia disarmament program to ensure that such security forces are accountable only to the central government and loyal to the Constitution of Iraq.
Unmet in both reports.

8. Establishing supporting political, media, economic, and services committees in support of the Baghdad security plan.
Met in both reports.

9. Providing three trained and ready brigades to support Baghdad operations.
Patially met in both reports. This really should be considered an abject failure. Note that much of the talk prior to the surge was about how the US will "stand down" as the Iraqis "stand up". Also, before assuming overall command of Iraq, Petraeus' primary duty was in training Iraqi security forces. So, 15 months after starting this glorious surge, we are only partially to the point of training and implementing a measly three brigades. That is pathetic.

10. Providing Iraqi commanders with all authorities to execute this plan and to make tactical and operational decisions, in consultation with U.S. commanders, without political intervention, to include the authority to pursue all extremists, including Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias.
Unmet in GAO report and partially met in CAP report. I suspect that CAP would withdraw the partially met designation after the abject failure last week of Iraqi forces taking on the al Sadr militia in Basra.

11. Ensuring that Iraqi security forces are providing even-handed enforcement of the law.
Unmet in both reports.

12. Ensuring that, according to President Bush, Prime Minister Maliki said “the Baghdad security plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of [their] sectarian or political affiliation.”
Partially met in GAO report, unmet in CAP report.

13. Reducing the level of sectarian violence in Iraq and eliminating militia control of local security.
Unmet in GAO report, partially met in CAP report. Again given the events of last week indicate that security in Sadr City is still under the control of al Sadr, so the partially met designation by CAP is no longer warranted.

14. Establishing all of the planned joint security stations in neighborhoods across Baghdad.
Met in both plans.

15. Increasing the number of Iraqi security forces units capable of operating independently.
Unmet in both plans. As discussed above, the inability to develop security forces, after 15 months of trying, is inexcusable and calls into question whether Iraq will ever be able to develop security forces while the US continues its occupation.

16. Ensuring that the rights of minority political parties in the Iraqi legislature are protected.
Met in both plans.

17. Allocating and spending $10 billion in Iraqi revenues for reconstruction projects, including delivery of essential services, on an equitable basis.
Partially met in both reports.

18. Ensuring that Iraq’s political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of the Iraqi security forces.
Unmet in both reports.

Summarizing, the Center for American Progress found that status on two benchmarks that were partially met in September, 2007 had deteriorated to unmet. They found that status on three benchmarks unmet in September, 2007 had improved to partially met. Unfortuantely, the increased violence last week, and the demonstrated ability of Muqtadq al Sadr to both increase and decrease violence at his command, demonstrated that two of those areas of partial progress are no longer warranted.

At this point, 15 months after the funding of the surge, three benchmarks are met, three are partially met and 12 are unmet. The net change since September, 2007 is negative in this analysis, by one partially met benchmark. It will be quite interesting to see just how Petraeus and Crocker try to put lipstick on this pig.

Wall Street Journal Propaganda

2008-04-02T11:56:00.006-05:00

N=1 (an AOC contributor, AKA "Annie"), who can turn a phrase with the best of 'em, has a new post up at Home of the Brave (HOB) blog about corporate and journalistic meddling in Public Health higher education issues. AOC is committed to helping good citizens everywhere, and is thus happy to comply with N=1's request to share this column with readers. The nursing profession comprises a vital cog in the mechanisms that enable societies to move forward, yet it would be difficult to name a less appreciated field of hard-working educated professionals. Elite nurses who pursue doctoral level studies are now finding themselves in a ridiculous and short-sighted confrontation - not of their choosing - with turf-conscious doctors and their corporate enablers. Here's an excerpt:

The WSJ Health Blog put on its best gender biased, turn of the Nineteenth Century paternalistic presentation of a fabricated problem with the nursing profession’s push to educate more nurses at the doctoral level. The public is ill served by tripe such as this. Readers will come away with the message that those nasty, not legitimate handmaidens of physicians are acting up, are defying their vows of obedience and obsequious, and are trying to take over medicine’s turf...

N=1 is soliciting comments at HOB and asking for readers to send their comments to the WSJ Health Blog.

A Post From Retired Military Patriot: Murat Kurnaz's Five Years at Guantanamo

2008-04-01T15:11:00.006-05:00

The 60 Minutes piece Sunday on Murat Kurnaz, a Turk living in Germany, who at the age of 19 vanished into America's shadow prison system in the war on terror, has created a furor by RW commenters on CBS’s blog site. These commenters are trying to refute Kurnaz’s credibility ala Dan Rather’s report on president Bush’s Air Guard service. Some of the over 2,000 postings and counting are disgusting in their blood thirsty vitriol and dismiss any rights that captured detainees should have simply because our government or foreigners on behalf of our CIA believe them to be enemy combatants.

Kurnaz was snatched off a Pakistani bus three months after 9/11 and if his story of no involvement with either the Taliban or al-Qaeda is true as he tells it to Scott Pelley, then he truly lived an awful nightmare in the hands of our government. Even if he did at first seem to be a security risk as Germany's Federal Office of Criminal Investigations claimed and may have embellished the severity of his torture to discount his story as these RW bloggers are doing only shows the effectiveness of the Busheviks' fear mongering propaganda among believers.

Scott Pelley and CBS said “there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed. But once he was picked up, Kurnaz found himself in a prison system that required no evidence and answered to no one.” It’s hard to believe that CBS and its lawyers did not thoroughly vet Kurnaz’s story in light of the Dan Rather suit.

Kurnaz’s credibility is not the main lesson to be learned from his nightmare of living inhuman years in a legal, human rights limbo under the jurisdiction of our government and constitution. His story is not the only rare look inside as Pelley hauntingly said, “that clandestine system of justice, where the government's own secret files reveal that an innocent man lost his liberty, his dignity, his identity, and ultimately five years of his life.” A book by Andy Worthington, “The Guantánamo Files” tells the story of how on January 11, 2002, the first of 774 prisoners arrived at Gitmo and until the book came out in the fall of 2007 the story of these men was largely unknown.

They were held without charge, without trial, without access to their families, and, initially, without access to lawyers, and Worthington says “they are part of a peculiarly lawless experiment conducted by the US administration, which has chosen to disregard both the Geneva Conventions and the established rules of war, holding the men not as criminals or as Prisoners of War, but as “illegal enemy combatants,” a category of prisoner which is itself illegal.”

A Huffington Post story by Worthington in September of 2007 provides details of the release of 16 Saudis. Since then,we have heard from lawyers representing Gitmo prisoners of one horror story after another. Candice Gorman who represents two “detainees,” said in her comments on the book, “Perhaps most disturbing, from a personal point of view, is the author’s unraveling of the US government’s manipulation of classified information, not to protect national security, but in a vain attempt to hide the truth about Guantánamo. The fact that the prison’s real story has been ignored by our corporate media, by politicians on both sides of the aisle and, most distressingly, by the judiciary, makes this book an important historical contribution to this dark period. If the US happens to survive this episode of cruelty and lawlessness, The Guantánamo Files will be an important tool for coming to grips with how we as a nation allowed indefinite detention without charge, extraordinary rendition and torture to become national policies.”

Col. Morris Davis, the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo, told why in a New York Times op-ed piece that he had to resign from his commission. He has charged his Gitmo and DoD superiors with illegal polticial influence. The latest story charges that the DoD wants to have show trials take place this fall during the height of Johnny McSame’s campaign for president. Colonel Davis was placed under a gag rule and ordered not to testify at a Senate hearing. He said, “While some high-level military and civilian officials have rightly expressed indignation on the issue, the current state can be described generally as indifference and inaction.”

Once again the M$M has virtually ignored the 60 Minutes report by Pelley even though the RW blog world hasn’t. There seems to be so much trashing of the rule of law and our constitution by the Busheviks that it just seems to the M$M as old news not worthy of much attention. That is an extremely disturbing and sad reflection on the state of our fourth estate and balance of powers. American and foreign political leaders have insisted that Gitmo be closed and our president simply ignores them. Like FISA, it is just another attempt to cover up illegal activities until he leaves office. Unless he does a signing statement that clears him of all legal liabilities, we need to go after him and his collaborators until they end up in prison themselves. And we should deny them the same rights they have denied thousands in prisons under our control in Afghanistan, Iraq and who knows where else.

The Pakistan Emergency: Update!

2008-03-24T17:09:00.006-05:00

Faisal in United4justice's Weblog announces:

Congratulations Pakistan!
Chief Justice Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhary Released after months of illegal detention from 3rd November 2007 by the dictator’s government.

The newly elected Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gillani issues his first order as PM of the release of all the judges who refused to surrender in front of the dictator.

The genuine CJ of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhary thanked the society (while addressing a large number of members of civil society, lawyers community and political parties) of their great support for him and all the deposed judges and showed his expectation that they will also support them in future.... [read more]

In "comments" to an AOC post dated 16 March, Faisal says:

I am really happy to share this news with us that Chief Justice of Pakistan is finally released from the illegal detention.
Though he is not yet reinstated but i hope by the grace of Almighty(Who is the Lord of everyone) this will soon happen....
Thanx alot! for your support in the cause for the Justice and rule of law in Pakistan.

Also thanx alot for showing us a different or probably the real America(which supports justice,protection of basic rights and freedom for all without any discrimination).

Thank you Faisal, for the update and for the gracious "pat on the back."

2008-03-21T16:11:00.022-05:00

The aroma of AXE wafted from inside the metallic gray four-wheel drive Extra Cab Chevy Silverado pickup as the driver powered down his window. I had crossed the street from the opposite corner of the intersection, where about 90 of us were standing in vigil to observe the fifth anniversary of the onset of ground operations in Iraq. I wanted to engage the owner of the truck and see what he had to say about this sign, posted above the grill of his imposing vehicle.

A bright-eyed red-cheeked young man with a trimmed beard looked questioningly at me. I told him that I liked his sign and he seemed pleased. I asked him what it meant, and he replied conspiratorially and with gusto that it meant just what it said! Because I had sincerely been unable to divine the meaning (nor was I even certain that he was not acting in solidarity with our vigil), I asked, "Well, are you demonstrating with the people across the street, are you against them, or is it some sort of 'third angle,' like an anarchistic - or Performance Art kind of thing?" In reply he began an enthusiastic rant about how he couldn't believe we were going to bring them all home. The fire in his eyes intensified as he went on, "The Muslims are just going to come over here and kill us all!" He told me that he remains in regular contact with his best buddies serving in The Special Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq (it's always Special Forces with these armchair warriors, isn't it?), that they are perfectly OK with the job they're doing, and that even after three tours, they don't want to come back home.

A this point, I introduced myself, he gave me his name, and we shook hands. I exhorted him to write his congressional representatives and he assured me he had been. Just before I could ask him why he was not serving in the military, he informed me with all earnestness that he would have been over there with his buddies himself if his back hadn't blown out on him. I assured him that I already knew that, and that I would pray for his friends overseas. We shook hands again and I returned to the vigil.

I wish I could remember his name. I'd bet that if I "googled" him, I'd find a blog post somewhere recounting his brave stand against the traitors in Memphis, TN.

[PS - In retrospect, perhaps the young man was coining a malapropism of an imperative to "Wage War!" That could explain his failure to see why I needed clarification of his meaning.]

UPDATE from Mike13833 in comments:
This one seems like old times revisited .
http://tinyurl.com/2ksmw7
My mother was passing through and ended up in the middle of it . As far as she can tell, a verbal exchange between 3 or 4 protestors(out of ~60) and a couple police officers , over the advisability of crossing such a busy road,resulted in the police breaking up the whole thing. Of course chaos ensued. It was complicated by an accident on the other side of the road .
The shoulders are wide , and students have to cross the road, individually , on an everyday basis, so shouldn't have been that much trouble. My mother's opinion was that some were incautious, and the police overreacted. As usual , disorderly conduct charges were filed to justify it .

McCain: Iran is training Al Queda agents and sending them into Iraq

2008-03-18T14:20:00.004-05:00

CNN has video of remarks John McCain made in Jordan, where he accuses Iran (predominantly Shia) of training agents for Al Queda (Sunni) and sending them into Iraq. See the two minute mark of the video.

Several blogs are reporting that Lieberman then corrected McCain by whispering into his ear, and he amended his comment to say Iran is training extremists. That is the version being carried in AP stories. It's nice when the press allows a candidate to gloss over such a bad mistake.

This man has no right to be president if he can't distinguish Shia and Sunni.

Update: After this post went up, the AP article in the link has magically transformed into a story on McCain's error. It's likely there were just too many reports on McCain repeating the lie three times before Lieberman finally corrected him, so AP had to report it.

Are We a Nation of War or Peace?

2008-03-18T07:23:00.003-05:00

The upcoming presidential election will hinge on a variety of issues, but with the Iraq war now entering its sixth year, this is a good moment to look at the positions of the remaining candidates regarding the war. The war is increasingly unpopular with the general public, as noted by USA TODAY:

In the USA TODAY poll, six in 10 Americans said the United States should set a timetable for withdrawal and stick to it no matter what. Just 35% said U.S. troops should remain until the situation in Iraq gets better, a number as low as it's ever been.

Barack Obama, although not serving in the US Senate when the war began, has opposed it from the very beginning:

"A war that should have never been authorized, a war that should have never been waged. I've been against it 2002, 2003, 2004, 5, 6, 7, 8. And I will bring this war to an end in 2009."

Hilary Clinton voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force, but has defended that vote by saying that President Bush was claiming to need the authorization as a negotiating tool. She now is clear about her intentions to end the war if elected:

Clinton said that if elected she would begin bringing troops home within 60 days of taking office. She said she would push for legislation reducing the length of troops' overseas deployments.

"No more talk of permanent occupation, no more policing a civil war, no more doing for the Iraqis what they need to be doing for themselves," she said.

John McCain, on the other hand, says that staying in Iraq for 100 years would be fine with him:

With the war now costing our country $12 billion a month and with our economy now in a recession that, according to Alan Greenspan, is "the most wrenching since the end of the second world war", the war position of the new President will have a huge impact on the economy over the next several decades. From an economic view alone, our country simply cannot afford a McCain presidency.

Of course, from a moral standpoint, the US already has lost significant stature in the world as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. With hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead and millions displaced from their homes, Iraq faces a staggering job of recovery. With the US nearing its 4000th death in Iraq, its costs are much more than economic, as well.

Finally, in case anyone thinks that John McCain would be a good choice to lead us out of the quagmire that is Iraq, we should never forget that he also has chosen our next war for us:

What's Next?

2008-03-16T18:07:00.008-05:00

Yesterday was the end of Black Flag Week in Pakistan, though interest in - and solidarity with - the cause of Pakistani Rule of Law will continue. In the U.S. the project brought various web authors and blog sites together, yielding a gratifying by-product of the work we engaged in: friendship. I feel that many of us at AOC deepened our friendships with each other, and we gained new friends among the participating blogs around the world. Look for periodic updates concerning Pakistan's noble struggle to hold onto its cherished constitution, even as we in the U.S. continue efforts to rehabilitate and protect ours.
This coming Wednesday 19 March 2008 will mark the 5th anniversary of the commencement of ground operations in the Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation. Observances all around the country will honor the sacrifice of all Armed Services personnel and their families, including the ultimate sacrifice of the nearly 4,000 U.S. sons and daughters who gave their lives. The highest honor we can now accord our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines is to acknowledge their value to us and therefore bring them home, as quickly and as safely as possible. On the upcoming day of observance it would also be altogether fitting and proper to consider the millions of U.S. citizens at home contending with the myriad consequences of a mismanaged economy in their struggle to hold onto their homes, their jobs, their health, and their standard of living, while simultaneously trying to figure out how to send their children to college, fund their retirements, and care for their aging parents. It is time for all to weigh the costly Iraq occupation against other priorities.

What goes around comes around? -- by ondelette

2008-03-12T15:48:00.000-05:00

At first glance, there would seem to be no reason to turn our attention to a lawyer’s protest in a place 10 time-zones away on the other side of the world. After all, don’t we have enough on our plate in the U.S.? When it comes to rule of law, we have our current debate over amendments to FISA and NSA wiretapping. We have our debate over waterboarding and other newly fashionable U.S. approved tortures (or ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’). We have our current debate over an amorphously defined War on Terror, and our own very real problems with al Qaeda, and terrorists, and war. Why worry about the Pakistani judiciary? Why worry about the restoration of democracy there?

In truth, it is probably always a smaller world than we imagine. Black Flag Week, which starts Monday, is set to commemorate the deposition of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry last year on March 9, 2007, the catalyst of a courageous lawyers' movement - and a political firestorm - that has engulfed Pakistan for months. Along with the subsequent State Emergency declared by President Musharaff on November 3, 2007, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto on December 27, 2007, and the free elections of February 18, 2008, it was a pivotal event, with implications, as things have turned out, worldwide. In Pakistan, many tens of thousands have protested in solidarity with the lawyers, and over the course of the turbulence and the elections, hundreds, like Ms. Bhutto, have lost their lives.

As Aitzaz Ahsan has noted, Iftikhar Chaudhry was at first an unlikely figure to serve as a rallying symbol for human rights and against the military government. The bench in Pakistan is generally conservative, and has gone along with the President Musharraf, the military and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). But Justice Chaudhry decided to begin looking at human rights cases: he looked at the rights of women (80% of the women in prison are there for ‘illegal fornication’) and took on forced marriages and the rapes that were behind some of the detentions. He started looking at the plight of the Pakistani ‘disappeared prisoners’, hundreds of people, mostly men, many of whom were activists (some militant) who have been swept up on the premise of the War on Terror and held incommunicado and without charge. It would be as if the U.S. government had arrested hundreds of Americans and whisked them off to Guantanamo.

Justice Chaudhry ordered the government to produce the prisoners in court, and to either charge them or release them. Meanwhile the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), Amnesty International, and other human and civil rights watchdog groups documented the various cases of prisoners who had been released and subsequently intimidated into not speaking of their detainment, neither to the advocacy groups, nor to the press. Nevertheless, some did speak, and as time went on a picture emerged of detentions that included harsh interrogations, deprivation of food and medicine, and, ominously, many released prisoners said they had been interrogated in the presence of American CIA. Other human rights groups have documented that some prisoners were sent to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan into United States' custody.

All of these actions gave Musharraf and those around him the feeling that Justice Chaudhry could not be trusted to allow Musharraf to change the rules and run for another term. Furthermore, he was questioning some privatization deals that were rushed through. So Musharaff sacked Justice Chaudhry. The lawyers protested throughout the summer, and Justice Chaudhry refused to go gently into that good night. When the case made it to the Supreme Court, they unanimously voted to reinstate him. The court ruled against Musharraf numerous times, and ordered him to produce documentation about the disappeared prisoners in court by November 13th . On November 3^rd President Musharraf suspended the Constitution and arrested thousands, including the lawyers, and judges, and the human rights commissioners. He constituted for himself a new court - and a new verdict - and got himself elected to a new term. HRCP Chairperson Asma Jahangir wondered rhetorically, when called during her house arrest, if President Musharraf was so concerned with terrorists that he suspended the Constitution, why were the people being arrested secular lawyers and human rights activists, while the President made deals with militants, many of them sworn to al Qaeda?

In the end, it really is a small world. Preventing the release of the disappeared prisoners protects our government from charges of mistreatment and torture in the same way that the FISA retroactive immunity does – it prevents cases from coming to court. The torture, the waterboarding? Many of its victims were arrested and disappeared in Pakistan. Detention without charge at Guantanamo? The same goes on in Pakistan, and some prisoners in Guantanamo were arrested there. And the justification? Why, the War on Terror, of course. It’s the Pakistanis country and their struggle for democracy.; but no small part of what they’re struggling with is related to what we question over here.

Aitzaz Ahsan, Newsweek: Pakistan’s Forgotten Man

http://www.newsweek.com/id/107546

Frontline Rough Cut. Pakistan: Disappeared

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/2007/09/pakistan_the_di.html

Carlotta Gall, New York Times: Picture of Secret Detentions Emerges in Pakistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/world/asia/19disappeared.html

PEOPLEINBLACK: IMAGES FROM BLACK FLAG WEEK - USA

2008-03-11T16:39:00.009-05:00

Mid-West, USA...

Mid-South, USA

Reprinted from Blawgletter® - Open Letter: US Should Support Pakistani Lawyers and Rule of Law

2008-03-10T12:36:00.005-05:00

November 06, 2007

General Musharraf ordered his forces to beat and jail protesting lawyers.

Blawgletter can't recall writing an open letter before, but the courageousness of judges and lawyers in Pakistan impelled us to compose our first.

To President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Attorney General-Elect Michael B. Mukasey:

In the British Empire's American colonies, the King of England suspended laws, fired judges, and ignored court judgments. He put citizens in jail, ransacked their homes, read their private papers, and shot public protesters. He was a tyrant.

History repeats itself today in another fomer British colony, Pakistan, where a modern King George III assumed the powers of the crown on Saturday. Unlike other countries in the Middle East, including Iraq and Afghanistan, Pakistan has fragile but longstanding democratic traditions, including an independent judiciary. But its President, General Pervez Musharraf, dissolved the Supreme Court after learning that the justices were about to void his third term as President, ruling him ineligible for election while acting as the military chief. The general also suspended the Constitution and delayed elections indefinitely. Plus he ordered his security forces to threaten, detain, and beat up the thousands of Pakistani lawyers who have taken to the streets to object. The gendarmes followed Musharraf's directive with gusto -- cracking lawyers' heads and putting judges under house arrest.

American lawyers, like our Pakistani counterparts, draw wills, close home purchases, defend against traffic tickets, and counsel businesses and families. Many represent companies and individuals in disputes. But all of us know a threat to the rule of law when we see it. And we see a big one in Pakistan.

Our brave colleagues in Pakistan are fighting to save a democracy. They are trying to rally the Pakistani people against despotism. They are telling the powerful that the rule of law is so precious and so fundamental to democracy that they will risk their careers, their freedom, and their lives to protest its subversion.

We can only hope we would be so brave. Can we do more?

Yes. We can, and do, urge our President, Secretary of State, and Attorney General-Elect to say plainly that the United States condemns General Musharraf's acts and demands an immediate restoration of constitutional democracy. Release the judges, restore them to their benches, and obey the courts' lawful decrees. Reinstate the Pakistani Constitution. Allow peaceful protests. And proceed with elections, on schedule, in January 2008.

Our own fidelity to the rule of law requires at least that.

If you agree with our sentiments, please send your own email -- with some, all, or none of our text, as you choose -- to president@whitehouse.gov and askdoj@usdoj.gov. Sorry, we don't have an email address for the State Department.

Barry Barnett

Just Breaking....Declaration: PML-N, PPP take Musharraf Head On

2008-03-08T16:50:00.005-06:00

From the Pakistani Spectator:
By Ghazala Khan • Mar 9th, 2008 • Category: Lead Story • (1,043 views)

Say it the the stroke of coincidence or the lesson of history that on 9th March 2007 process of deposition of judiciary was started by General (r) Pervez Musharraf, and now on 9th March 2008 though the sixty judges including Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhary remains deposed and locked up, at last the newly elected winning parties PPP and PML-N has announced that the judges will be restored within 30 days after the first session of new assembly through a resolution in the parliament.

This is the one thing which is the decisive factor between the forces of status quo and the forces of change. Forces of status quo which are led by President Musharraf with the help of establishment and lotas of PML-Q and opportunists of MQM and covert JUI-F are nail bitingly fighting for their grim survival while the forces of change have signed the Murree Declaration in which they have decided on various factors for the flourish and flowering of democracy and justice.

On the eve of this joint declaration, some rifts in the PPP have also surfaced. Makhdoom Amin Fahim wasn’t present at the meeting in Murree and he was really angry and demanding at the channels that the PM should be from Sindh, while another PPP leader Ahmad Mukhtar was demanding that PM should be from Punjab. But these petty clashes within the PPP are not that much important and they fail to mar the fragrance which is coming out of the joint declaration.

This declaration charts out many pertinent and important things for the future, like the speaker and deputy speaker of national assembly will be from PPP while PML-N will hold these slots in the Punjab. Give and take policy was seen at the meeting, when PML-N conceded that though they didn’t deem it appropriate but they would take oath from Pervez Musharraf and would join the federal cabinet, and PML-N would support the PPP candidate for the premiership.

I wonder what the President Musharraf would be thinking. One thing is clear and done that he wont’ be thinking of retreat. He has said the CJP the ‘Scum of Earth and a third rate person’. Musharraf also intends to stay for another five years. Will Musharraf allow the reinstatement of the judges? In the presence of 58 2B, and if history is any guide, then only a fool could believe that Musharraf would accept this declaration gleefully.

We can only hope that the establishment doesn’t get too excited and try to rollback this newly aligned democratic process. If it does so, it will be quick curtains for the establishment, and this time revolution is round the corner if they don’t allow democracy to have its way.

Additional BLACK FLAG WEEK Sites - From Karen M

2008-03-08T16:50:00.004-06:00

Via email, Karen relayed the following additional sites (which will join the Resource list at left):
WATANDOST: Inside News about Pakistan and Its Neighborhood

Watandost in Urdu and farsi means "friend of the country". The blog contains news and commentaries about Pakistan (and its neighbors) that are intriguing and insightful but often are not part of the news headlines. Issues related to "Islam and the West" are also covered here.

An illuminating WATANDOST entry dated Saturday 8 March is entitled A Tribute to the Unknown Lawyer.

Karen notes that it is "(n)ot just a tribute... also has info about efforts to set up a trust fund for lawyers to offer more substantial support.... Sounds like an idea that really needs some help."

an excerpt:

In the course of the last one year, countless lawyers and several judges stepped forward, at considerable personal cost, to fight for this cause. While some resigned from public offices as a mark of protest, there were many others who actually carried their protest onto the streets. Certainly, none of them were trained to endure the physical hardship of long arduous marches in inclement weather, arbitrary imprisonments or police beatings and teargas, or for that matter the ensuing financial hardship. Only a small number of these lawyers had the strength to carry the inevitable financial burden. A large number of them were junior, subsistence lawyers who depended upon the daily court proceedings to earn a living. Many of them belonged to the smaller districts where the opportunity to work was in any event limited and several were supporting families who depended upon them for their livelihood....

...Even more than the leaders, we must honour and salute these nameless thousands because they are the true heroes and the beacons of the lawyers' movement....

Karen refers us further to these two blog posts for some personal takes on the Emergency, the protests, and Black Flag Week:

KO: Of Judges and Hope

Anupam Chander writes about "Globalization and digitization through the eyes of a California law professor."

A tribute to the Lawyers and People of Pakistan - Protest (h/t N=1)

2008-03-08T16:50:00.003-06:00

Recent News Stories on Black Flag Week...

2008-03-07T20:59:00.012-06:00

March 8th:

‘Lawyers will not accept any deal on judges’ reinstatement’ from International News...

From The Post:

Lawyers to start Black Flag Week
LAHORE: The Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan and other statutory bodies of the lawyers' community have finalised the programme to observe the Black Flag Week starting from March 9.

Also From The Post:

KARACHI: Pakistan People's Party (PPP) has dedicated International Women's Day 2008, being observed on Saturday (today) to party's slain Chairperson Benazir Bhutto.

And...

Munir Malik inaugurates black flag week: The Black Flag Week being observed by all sections of society on the call of Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) all over the country from 9th to 16th March to press the demand to restore pre-3rd November judiciary, was inaugurated on Friday in Karachi by Munir A Malik, former President SCBA by hoisting a black flag on Karachi Press Club in the presence of journalists, lawyers and civil society activists.

March 7th:

A tribute blog to the real heroes of Pakistan...

The Emergency Times, An Independent Pakistani Student Information Initiative, posts a video of Aitzaz Ahsan's call for Black Flag Week...

Also from International News:

Lawyers stage sit-in, boycott court proceedings
Karachi

City Courts’ lawyers staged a sit-in on main MA Jinnah Road on Thursday in connection with their ongoing protest week, demanding for the restoration of Justice Iftikhar and other judges of superior courts.

The lawyers took out a procession from City Courts and marched on MA Jinnah Road in the morning, suspending vehicular traffic for an hour during peak rush time. They were carrying placards and shouting slogans against the government.

They stayed away from the court proceedings for the whole day, however, judges were present in their chambers. Oath commissioners and stamp vendors also kept their businesses partially off.

About 300 under trial prisoners were brought at the court but they had to return without the hearing of their cases owing to the non-appearance of lawyers. [read more]

NaiTazi.com has some suggestions of things one can do to support Black Flag Week... for example, 2) Take a picture of yourself, your friends and/or your family holding a black flag or wearing black clothes and send it to blackflagweek@gmail.com. If you are uncomfortable revealing your identity you can have the picture taken from your backside or cover your face before taking the picture. You can also help us by taking pictures of your friends, family members, relatives and others who may not be able to take pictures.

March 3rd

TPS Supports Black Flag Week

From the Guardian: [an excerpt]

Pakistani police have fired tear gas at demonstrating lawyers demanding that President Pervez Musharraf reinstate the deposed supreme court chief justice.
Police in riot gear fired several canisters of tear gas at about 200 lawyers and others who were shouting slogans outside the residence of the ousted judge Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudry.
Many of the protesters picked up the canisters and threw them back at policemen, who retreated before regrouping.
The lawyers had gathered outside the house of the deposed judicial figure after hearing unconfirmed television reports that the government had lifted house-arrest restrictions on his wife and three children.
Chaudry, the country's most senior judge, has been under house arrest along with his family since Musharraf briefly declared emergency rule on November 3. [read more]

BLACK FLAG WEEK Grassroots Work Continues

2008-03-07T10:01:00.010-06:00

Here is the draft Press Release/Talking Points that we've been working on:

PosseComment@US
For Immediate Release March 6, 2008

Who? We are a group of active blog participants whose primary connection is based in Glenn Greenwald’s blog on Salon.com. We came together as a group to work on raising awareness on issues facing our country and the world. We named ourselves PosseComment@US.

What? We are asking people to honor Black Flag Week, March 9-15, by wearing black armbands or black clothing, to support the Pakistani lawyers’ movement. These barristers are protesting, taking legal action, and being physically assaulted and jailed by their government, attempting to restore the rule of law in their country. They began one year ago, when President Pervez Musharraf illegally sacked the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Our goal is to support these lawyers in their efforts to restore democracy, the judiciary and the Constitution in Pakistan.

Why? Rule of law and democracy are fundamental to free societies everywhere. The lawyers’ movement in Pakistan recognizes this as a crucial nexus in the evolution of their society from the tyranny of a military dictatorship to a functioning democracy. ~~And t~~Restoration of justice and the voice of the people in Pakistan could very well be critical to the future safety of not only America, but also to the rest of the world as well. We in the United States have the freedom and the ability to act, to raise awareness and to show support for just causes. It is our responsibility to our own democracy to do so. It is the morally correct action to take.

How? We have been working for the past week, sending emails and flyers, making calls, contacting groups we think might wish to help and posting informational pieces on the internet. Preparations in Pakistan have been building and they are expecting a massive turnout of supporters. It is absolutely crucial that displays of support for this movement be seen not only in Pakistan, but also here and elsewhere in the world, to convince the Pakistani senate and the incoming government to act, and to restore the institutions so crucial to a just government.

Where? Our effort is based at http://AchievingOurCountry.blogspot.com. We have established contacts with law schools, lawyers, civil rights groups and bloggers in order to disseminate this critical message. As the movement in Pakistan is primarily based among lawyers and law schools, it seemed appropriate to call on their counterparts here, in the United States, and elsewhere, for support.

When? Aitzaz Ahsan, President of the Supreme Court Bar Association in Pakistan, has established the week of March 9-15 as Black Flag Week. Rallies, events and marches are being scheduled in Pakistan and we are encouraging supporting events.

For more information, please visit http://revolutionredu x.wordpress.com/20 08/03/02/pakistan-constitutions-and-the-rule-of-law/.

Events and Posts in the American Legal Community

2008-03-05T14:15:00.004-06:00

Events:

Friday, March 7, 2008, 1:30pm
Rutgers School of Law-Camden
Sahibzada Anwar Hamid, a senior advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan will speak
http://tinyurl.com/33czns

Thursday, March 6, 2008, 12:00pm
Philadelphia Bar Association
Civil Rights Committee Hosts Panel on Rule of Law in Pakistan March 6
http://tinyurl.com/yvlkpl

Wednesday, March 5, 2008, 5:45 p.m.
University of San Francisco
Pakistan's Democracy Derailed
A Conversation with Ahmad Faruqui, Ph.D., Defense Analyst and Energy Economist
http://www.pacificrim.usfca.edu/events/

Articles:

Michael B. Terry
http://alaiwah.wordpress.com/2008/03/03/american-lawyers-should-support-pakistani-supporters/

Caroline Wadhams
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/03/pakistani_priorities.html

(h/t Retired Military Patriot)

News Flash: Aitzaz Ahsan Released, Riot Police Fire Tear Gas on Protesting Lawyers

2008-03-03T14:12:00.006-06:00

From AP:

Pakistani police fired tear gas Monday at scores of demonstrating lawyers who were demanding that President Pervez Musharraf reinstate the deposed supreme court chief justice.

Helmeted police in riot gear fired several tear gas canisters at about 200 lawyers and other demonstrators, who were shouting slogans outside the residence of ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. He has been under house arrest along with his family since Musharraf declared a state of emergency on Nov. 3.

/snip/

The lawyers had gathered outside Chaudhry's house after hearing unconfirmed television reports that the government had lifted the house-arrest restrictions on his wife and three children. The lawyers became agitated when it became apparent that the reports were apparently incorrect.

"Free the children, Go Musharraf Go!" shouted the lawyers, who also demanded that police allow them to go inside the house, which is surrounded by barbed wire.

Earlier Monday, the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Aitzaz Ahsan, announced that lawyers will observe a "black flag week" beginning March 9 to mark the first anniversary of an attempt by Musharraf to fire Chaudhry. He said lawyers will pass out black flags to people and stage demonstrations.

Musharraf's initial attempt to fire Chaudhry failed, but he successfully dismissed him and dozens of other senior judges after declaring emergency on Nov. 3. The crackdown came just before the Supreme Court was to rule on the legitimacy of Musharraf's re-election in October by a parliament dominated by his supporters.

Several other Supreme Court judges and prominent anti-Musharraf lawyers, including Ahsan, were also put under house arrest. Ahsan was released on Sunday.

Images via AP. Above, lawyers are seen outside the home of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry. Left, Aitzaz Ahsan is seen in the center of a large group of supporters after being released.

Through 15 March AOC is dedicating itself to "Black Flag Week" in Pakistan. Site format is temporarily modified in honor of Pakistan's struggle.

2008-03-02T20:07:00.028-06:00

from PosseComment@US:

Aitzaz Ahsan, head of the lawyers movement, president of the Pakistani Supreme Court Bar Association, and under house arrest since the Emergency began on 3 November, is calling for the week of March 9th to 15th to be "Black Flag Week". During the entire week, at all events which are in solidarity with the lawyers and their cause, black flags, as opposed to the usual flag (Pakistani, party flags, etc.), will be displayed and people will wear black arm and/or head bands.

Their cause is restoration of the Pakistani Constitution, the rule of law, reinstatement of the Judiciary and impeachment or, at least, deposition of President Pervez Musharraf. They are asking that, at minimum, lawyers and law students show their support.

The Bush administration, in defiance of the clear referendum of recent Pakistani election results and to the dismay of the Pakistani public, the entire region (South Asia), as well as many in our own government (intelligence agencies) and public, continues to support Musharraf and urge continuation of his power. The Bush administration acts as though Musharraf continues to exercise control of the Pakistani military, in defiance of General Kayani's clear break with him and orders for the military to remove themselves from the politics of government (considered a fundamental pro-democratic step in South Asia).

Want to get further involved? Time for action is short. Please wear a black armband or black clothing next week. If you want to really help us, we need your feedback. If you are spreading the word, write a comment (link below) and let us know.

When next week comes:

send us your pictures,
write about your events,
tell us what you have done, and
if the media cover you, send us links.

And we will share it. With everyone that helps. And with the people of Pakistan who want - and need - to hear about your support. May justice prevail.

If you want to help, you can contact PosseComment@US using the comments link below.

(Anyone who prefers to respond confidentially can send email to: ondelette at earthlink dot net)

Vaudeville Comedy in the White House Press Briefing Room

2008-02-28T06:24:00.006-06:00

In his column yesterday, Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post provided a link to the transcript of a press briefing at the White House that can only be described as surreal. The briefing is purported to be presented by two "Senior Administration Officials".

My guess is that this briefing was brought about because of the the difficulty announced by CNN's John King that, because he has been busy following the Presidential campaign, when it comes to FISA, "this is highly detailed stuff that's pretty hard to follow". The briefing begins:

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I appreciate you taking the time to discuss this issue with you. I just want to give a very brief overview. I know this is a very complex subject and a lot of discussion out there, and it's hard sometimes to follow it.

The "officials", at the prompting of the "press" who pose the questions, then proceed to parrot the Administration talking points that have been thoroughly debunked elsewhere.

Once the spewing is complete, the "press", who have been asking such difficult questions, then get into the spirit of the true purpose of the meeting:

Q How did you get to full compliance, by telling them they were home-free?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It was a back-and-forth engagement with the general counsels' offices, so that they got to the point where, as the announcement says, they were willing to comply with our requests, but there's no guarantee they'd continue to do so.

Q We'll cover your ass. (Laughter.)

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Help us protect our security.

END 3:35 P.M. EST

Cue the Vaudeville music. I realize this was meant as a joke, but it really highlights just what has gone on in the entire "discussion" that has taken place with FISA. The administration has broken the law, the press found out about it, sat on the story through the 2004 election and then has "covered their ass" for them because the administration has convinced the press that this will "protect our security".

Absolutely disgusting.

Stop the Spying!

2008-02-23T12:40:00.007-06:00

Superbly executed You Tube video from People for the American Way (PFAW) - (with added bonus of a very cool background music track by Brad Sucks!)
*h/t 'bystander' and Jim White in a comment at Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory*

Is the sky falling yet?

2008-02-23T09:05:00.003-06:00

We now approach the one week mark since the expiration of the Protect America Act. Yesterday, the "nonpolitical" Attorney General Michael Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, wrote a letter to Silvestre Reyes, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, in which they said:

Our experience in the past few days since the expiration of the act demonstrates that these concerns are neither speculative nor theoretical. Allowing the act to expire without passing the bipartisan Senate bill had real and negative consequences for our national security. Indeed, this has led directly to a degraded intelligence capability.

Yet, despite this situation with "negative consequences for our national security", Republicans have refused to meet with Democratic leaders of the House and Senate who have been trying to reconcile the differences between the bills passed in the two bodies. The chief difference is that the Senate has passed retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that have broken the law in providing warrantless wiretaps while the House bill does not contain immunity. A joint statement by Reyes, John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Jay Rockefeller, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and Patrick Leahy, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee reads:

Today, our staffs met again in what should have been a bipartisan, bicameral meeting with our Republican colleagues’ staffs and Administration officials to continue working through the recess period on important reforms to FISA. Again, the Republicans refused to join the dialogue. And today, neither the Justice Department nor the director of National Intelligence sent representatives. Today was another missed opportunity.

Further politicizing the debate, the administration today announced that they believe there have been gaps in security since the Protect America Act expired. They cannot have it both ways; if it is true that the expiration of the PAA has caused gaps in intelligence, then it was irresponsible for the President and congressional Republicans to block an extension of the law. Accordingly, they should join Democrats in extending it until we can resolve our differences.

We continue to be disappointed in the failure of the administration and Republican members of Congress to participate in these very important discussions, but we remain extremely committed to this process. Americans deserve a carefully thought out bill, and we will continue to work to put America's security first.

The real reason for the failure to negotiate is that President Bush has made it clear that the only bill he will sign is one with retroactive immunity. On Thursday, while flying back from Africa on Air Force One, he had this to say: "I would just tell you there's no compromise on whether these phone companies get liability protection".

Finally calling out Bush and the Republicans on the cynicism of their claiming that we are at risk because the Protect America Act has expired, but refusing to consider any version of a FISA revision that does not contain retroactive immunity is a welcome development for the Democrats. The heart of the Republican argument is aimed at covering up massive lawbreaking on the part of the government and the telecommunications companies that were coereced into going along. Surveillance of terrorists continues without significant interruption, but exposure of wrongdoing by Bush and his cronies is lurking in the shadows.

If Telecom Amnesty Passes

2008-02-20T08:31:00.002-06:00

Here is a comment I made yesterday in response to Glenn Greenwald's post on the current situation surrounding lawsuits over the government's illegal surveillance programs:

Target: Jello

If Congress caves and retroactive immunity does indeed get passed, then I think we need to bombard Jello Jay relentlessly to force him to hold hearings on both the NSA program and on whatever program it was that led to the threats of resignation. If the full committee is involved, I'd even be fine with the bulk of the testimony being behind closed doors.

What I'm talking about is a completely focused and unrelenting campaign aimed at Rockefeller alone. Hundreds of calls to his office. Every day. Hundreds of faxes. Every day. Pickets everywhere he goes. Every day. Ads in his local paper. Ads on his local TV. Letters to newspapers all over the nation, holding Rockefeller personally responsible for not getting to the bottom of what the country has done. Maybe even a "countdown clock" until the next election when he can be turned out into the streets.

He has the power to convene these hearings. If immunity passes,
we need to make his life a living hell until he does just that.

Here is a portion of the opening statement made by Senator Rockefeller on May 1, 2007 as he began a hearing on the revisions to FISA:

The purpose of today's hearing is to enable the administration to explain to the Senate and to the American people as openly as possible the reasons why public law on these vital matters should be changed.
I would like to make a few observations about the administration's legislative proposal before us.
One part of the administration's bill proposes to terminate controversies now in litigation in various courts arising from the warrantless surveillance program that the president has labeled "the Terrorist Surveillance Program." It would bar any lawsuit against any person for the alleged provision to any element of the intelligence community's information or assistance for any alleged communications intelligence activity.
Under the administration's proposal, this immunity provision would be limited to alleged assistance from September 11th, 2001, to 90 days after enactment of any change in the law, were there to be one. We will carefully examine this immunity process and proposal and possible alternatives to it --it is not without controversy -- as we will all sections of the administration bill. But I do believe that the administration is going to have to do its part, too.
The vice chairman and I have stressed to the administration repeatedly that the committee must receive complete information about the president's surveillance program in order to consider legislation in this area. This is a matter of common sense -- cannot legislate in the blind. We have made some progress towards that end, but there are key pieces of requested information that the committee needs and has not yet received.
These include the president's authorizations for the program, and the Department of Justice's opinion on the legality of the program. My request for these documents is over a year in length, and Vice Chairman Bond and I restated the importance of receiving these documents in our March letter, that in fact called this hearing. The administration's delay in providing these basic documents is incomprehensible, I think, inexcusable, and serves only to hamper the committee's ability to consider the liability of the Defense proposal before it -- inadequate information.
Congress is being asked to enact legislation that brings to end lawsuits that allege violations of the rights of Americans. In considering that request, it is essential that the committee know whether all involved, government officials and anyone else, relied on sound, legal conclusions of the government's highest law officer. The opinions of the attorney general are not just private advice. They are an authoritative statement of law within the executive branch.

Rockefeller makes a few relevant points in his statement, but he has fallen woefully short in his followup to it. He was taking the administration to task for not sharing information with his committee in a timely way. Information eventually was shared, but only at the last minute and under very bad conditions.

More importantly, Rockefeller has stopped all oversight at the point of simply receiving a set of documents. There is no evidence that he has made any effort to determine whether the justifications provided for the wiretapping program were indeed legal. Because of his prominent role in achieving the retroactive immunity provision in the bill passed by the Senate, I think it is Rockefeller's personal responsibility, if immunity is signed into law, to call new hearings and to completely pursue the issue of legality of the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" and to turn over to law enforcement all evidence he obtains of lawbreaking. It is the least he can do, because his actions in assuring retroactive immunity have blocked the best pathways for exposure of lawbreaking.

Hearings of this sort are certainly not something that Rockefeller will do on his own. It will be up to citizens to force him to exercise his role as Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to assure the citizens that the actions taken by our intelligence agencies are subject to the rule of law and that lawbreakers are punished.

The Case for a Do-over in Florida

2008-02-19T07:00:00.002-06:00

There has been much discussion over the past few weeks of the possibility that Democrats will enter the convention in August without a clear nominee. Concerns abound over superdelegates determining the outcome. Because Republican-dominated legislatures voted to move the Michigan and Florida primaries ahead of the dates specified by party rules, the Democratic National Committee has ruled that their delegates will not be seated at the convention.

In the case of Florida, it appears that the knowledge that the delegates would not be seated, coupled with the lack of campaign appearances in the state by the candidates, depressed turnout in the January 29 primary. According to floridavoterfile.com, Democrats currently outnumber Republicans, with 39.3% of voters registered as Democrats compared to 36.0% registered as Republicans. In the primary, 1,949,498 Republicans cast presidential ballots, compared to 1,749,920 Democrats. This turnout by party should be compared to the Super Tuesday results, where I did an analysis on the next morning and found Democratic turnout vastly outnumbered Republicans by 62% to 38%. Even other Southern states that have gone Republican in recent presidential elections, such as Georgia, Tennessee and Arkansas saw higher Democratic than Republican turnout on Super Tuesday.

I would argue that these numbers indicate that Florida Democratic turnout on January 29 was depressed by the foreknowledge that the delegates would not be seated. After the debacle in 2000, disenfranchisement of Florida votes by Republicans is not a situation that should be allowed to be repeated. Those who voted in the January 29 primary would not be harmed by a do-over, since they would be free to vote again.

A second primary would be very expensive, but the two remaining candidates are setting fundraising records, and I think they could be called upon to provide the bulk of the funding for a new primary. If the candidates would come together now and decide to jointly fund a primary in mid-July, that would provide a window for campaigning in Florida once the other primaries are over. The agreement also could allow for the primary to be waived if one candidate has amassed a large enough lead that addition of the superdelegates along with the Florida and Michigan delegates would have no impact on the outcome.

Stop! No, Come Along! No, Stop!

2008-02-17T18:48:00.002-06:00

This is not the sort of post one usually finds here, but I thought it would be representative of the sort of forces that we are up against... those who have ensured not just that our government would wage an immoral and illegal war in our names, but that they would also do so incompetently, while misjudging those whom we were supposedly liberating. From an email I sent to some friends yesterday...

I was at a memorial service earlier today... for a woman from the local Quaker meeting who had a lot of first-hand and encyclopedic knowledge of the Middle East. She died at the end of November, shortly after giving three talks during the weekly "Meeting for Learning" ... the first on religion, the second on oil, and the third on water. I really wish I had been there to hear her. I know I would have learned something valuable from her, and now it's too late. We always think we have more time.

I learned some things, though, just by attending the service. Another woman who had just met her at a luncheon in the fall recounted something she told the rest of the women at that meal. She held up her hand with the palm out, and said that to an Iraqi, this gesture does NOT mean stop. It means come along ahead, or something like that. She made another gesture, with a closed hand drawing toward the chest, and said that means stop.

All those news reports about the Iraqis not understanding our troops, and it appears that our troops didn't understand what they were themselves communicating. Not their fault, either... but the Fearless Leaders who were in charge. Ai yai yaiiiiiiiiiii....

One man who spoke up near the end of the service (Quaker memorial services allow/permit/expect that people will stand up and say something if so moved)... was so stricken. His "sharing" was like a wail. He may have been Iraqi or Palestinian or something... I don't know. He questioned God, asking why he had taken this woman, and who would do the things she had done or would come when she had. It was loud and mournful and he was sitting right next to me. He really expressed what so many others were feeling, but who were unable to be that expressive, and instead told touching stories and anecdotes of their own about how they knew Ruth.

Ruth is already sorely missed by the members of the Friends Meeting, as well as the Yearly Meeting, by her colleagues at the university where she was employed, at the American Friends Service Committee, by her family and friends, and by her many friends from the Middle East. There is no one who could fulfill the many roles that she did. And even if there were, it is even less likely that they could do so with such unfailing helpfulness, good cheer, or so much thoughtful insight.

I only wish that we could have a similar reaction to the loss of any one member of GWB's maladministration.

A Tale of Two Protests

2008-02-15T07:52:00.005-06:00

Yesterday, House Republicans, at the behest of Representative John Boehner, walked out of the House in protest of Democratic maneuvers that were about to lead to the issuing contempt of Congress citations against former White House counsel Harriet Miers and the President's Chief of Staff, Josh Bolten. When the Republicans marched out of the chamber, they went to the steps of the Capitol, where they encountered a bank of microphones. They promptly the microphones to use in holding a press conference to point out their unfair treatment at the hands of the Democrats. Here is the AP photo of the Republicans showing their outrage:

What a difference a few months makes. I was in Washington on September 15 of last year for the antiwar rally and march. The march ended at the steps of the Capitol, and there was a very different reception awaiting us. The steps were lined with riot police, ready and willing to arrest any protester with the gall to stand on those steps leading up to the chambers in which the peoples' laws are crafted. Many of those arrested had previously served in the armed forces in Iraq and had joined the march to show their frustration with the pointlessness of the US efforts in Iraq. Here is my photo of the reception these veterans received on the steps of the Capitol:

When the people approach the steps of the Capitol in protest, they are met with riot police and arrest. When Republicans stand on the steps of the Capitol in protest, they get microphones and television cameras. That sums up the state of our country pretty well.

Will Bush Veto the Torture Ban?

2008-02-14T07:10:00.002-06:00

Yesterday, the Senate approved, by a vote of 51 to 45, Conference Report HR 2082. This conference report, already passed by the House, is an authorization of intelligence activities. The bill restricts interrogations by all intelligence agencies (including the CIA) to the interrogation techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual. The effect of this restriction is to ban waterboarding and other extreme interrogation techniques.

Only one Democrat, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, voted against this restriction. Five Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Richard Lugar of Indiana, Gordon Smith of Oregon and Olympia Snowe of Maine, all voted in favor of the ban.

As recently as last October, Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, said this to the New York Times about waterboarding:

All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today...It is torture.

Yesterday, McCain took time out from his campaign for president to vote against the ban on waterboarding. This vote certainly appears to be a craven abandonment of the Senator's principles in order to curry support from the most conservative wing of his party. He desparately needs this support in order to stave off a late charge by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama did not return to Washington to vote on this important issue.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island delivered a very moving speech during the debate for this bill. Here is video of a portion of his remarks:

The bill now moves to the desk of President Bush. Will he veto it and shine a spotlight on his determination to torture prisoners, therby further eroding the previous high moral ground which our country used to occupy?

Wexler Confronts Rice Over Lies

2008-02-13T16:21:00.003-06:00

In a House hearing today, Congressman Robert Wexler confronted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over the false statements attributed to her by the Center for Public Integrity (they found 56 instances of false statements from her). He asked her about any intelligence to which she might have had access that would have suggested that Iraq did not in fact have weapons of mass destruction. She denied that she saw any such information.

In an email sent out today to those who have signed up at http://www.wexlerwantshearings.com/, Congressman Wexler states:

During my questioning, Secretary Rice falsely stated that she never saw intelligence casting doubt on the Bush Administration claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. This unbelievable statement is flatly contradicted by numerous government reports and CIA testimonials.

Here is video of the exchange:

No amnesty for the Bush Administration

2008-02-12T07:13:00.000-06:00

Today marks an important and historic point in the erosion of personal privacy as the Bush Administration appears poised to achieve Senate approval of retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that aided in spying on Americans illegally without warrants. First exposed in the New York Times on December 16, 2005 by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, the program consists of optical "splitters" attached to primary trunk communications lines that allow the government to "vacuum" up literally every bit of information being transmitted through the line, whether it is voice or data.

As Senator Chris Dodd pointed out in his impassioned, two and a half hour speech on the Senate floor last night, this battle for amnesty for the telecommunications companies that worked with the government on this program is in large part being carried out to protect those in the Bush Administration who conceived and authorized this blatantly illegal and unconstitutional program. In fact, the original version of the amnesty language was so wide as to include amnesty for those in government who committed crimes in establishing the program. Some solace can be taken from the fact that the current version of the amnesty language pertains only to the telecommunications companies and is silent on immunity for government officials.

It will be important, even if the battle over prosecution of the telecommunications companies is lost, to continue to push for a full investigation leading to prosecution of those responsible for the planning and implementation of what can only be described as the most egregious invasion of privacy in the history of our country. Given the example of George W. Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence, it is necessary to maintain vigilance against outright pardons on this matter.

It also is essential to begin the framing of the issue. Because he is almost certain to be a suspect in any investigation of these crimes, it is important to point out that it would be inappropriate for Bush to issue any pardons for them. Such a pardon could be grounds for further charges of obstruction of justice on his part, in my opinion.

This Is My Congresman!

2008-02-09T11:26:00.001-06:00

This is how it's done.

The following link is to Representative Steve Cohen's (D-TN 9th) blog site. Scroll down to My Cross-Examination of the New Attorney General for video of his careful questioning of AG Mukasey.

Today [7 Feb], I had the opportunity to question Alberto Gonzales' replacement, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, in a Judiciary Committee hearing. I asked him whether he would enforce contempt citations against senior White House officials should the House of Representatives vote for them, and about the current state of the so-called "War on Drugs."

A Telephone Message for You

2008-02-07T21:02:00.000-06:00

In votes Thursday in the Senate, two proposed amendments to S.2248, which amends the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, were easily defeated. The next steps, as announced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, will be debate on a number of additional pending amendments on Friday and Monday, with votes on these amendments to occur on Tuesday. For many of us who have been following the issue closely, the most important amendment is 3907, which removes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that broke the law in providing information to the government.

Preventing retroactive immunity has served as a rallying cry for much of the progressive netroots, and Senator Chris Dodd served as a focal point for efforts in this area. The initial effort paid off, and in December, Senator Dodd's threatened filibuster forced Senator Reid to pull the FISA revision bill from the Senate floor. However, the plan announced earlier today by Senator Reid includes only four hours of debate by Senator Dodd rather than a drawn-out filibuster when the immunity amendment is brought to the floor. Given the dedication Senator Dodd has had to this issue, I can only surmise that he was informed that 60 votes would be present to break his filibuster, so there would be no reason to object to the unanimous consent agreement under which the fours for debate were allowed.

I don't think it is time to give up on fighting retroactive immunity. Under the UC agreement, the stripping of retroactive immunity will take only a simple majority of those Senators voting. We know that Senator Rockefeller will vote against the amendment, but if the remaining Democrats can be held together, and especially if Senators Clinton and Obama can be convinced to be in Washington for the vote, the amendment stripping immunity could be passed.

Now is the time to continue the fight and to call as many Senators as possible to ask them to vote for amendment 3907. A handy tool is still functional on Senator Dodd's campaign website, allowing you to call any Senator for free.

Here's a little message pad, courtesy of Posse Comment@US to keep track of your calls.

The American Police State

2008-01-19T03:41:00.000-06:00

Everything old is new again. I just went to Alibris and found many copies of this book, some for about two bucks, and would recommend it to y'all. It's as frightening as it is pathetic that we keep having to fight off totalitarianism in this country every other decade, but it's worse now that we essentially have no media opposition. When Wise wrote this book, the Church commitee had just finished its work, out of which grew the FISA law. Those were the days.

National Media Impact Training

2008-01-18T10:33:00.001-06:00

[revised a coupla times since initial posting]

Last night in private homes in cities and towns all across the U.S., groups of Patriotic Citizens participated in a concise effective training session, sponsored by various activist organizations (the usual suspects <wink,*wink, wink,wink & wink>). The objective was to learn how to build a network of media contacts for getting out the "Reality-based" message (h/t Steven Colbert) and for cutting through the clutter & noise (thoughtfully provided by the VRWNM) that impede communication. We can achieve this by forging good partnerships with people in news media at the local level and then allow local events (typically demonstrations), covered by local media, to eventually trickle up to become part of the national coverage arena. The key to getting local citizen participation in a community is: make the message relevant to our specific respective communities by avoiding abstract ideological rhetoric; instead, frame issues in terms of real effects on peoples' lives. An example might be: framing an Anti-Iraq War demonstration in terms of the failure of DOD and the VA to deliver services to local combat vets. Other frames could highlight the budgetary limitations imposed by Iraq War spending, waste, and fraud on municipal, state, and federal governments' abilities to help provide health-care access for under-privileged children or educational benefits for low and middle-class students.

Once we establish a local point of relevance, we can connect the local action to national activities and national organizations, and then pretty much wait for the national media to show up (that's glib, of course, but you get the idea!).

All of this is based on personal relationships we establish with local reporters and news directors. We do this by identifying a few key effective spokespeople within local activist groups to serve as accurate, reliable sources who help reporters and producers do their jobs (which as we all know in these times is not as much informing the public as much as it is to provide compelling narratives, pictures, and sounds for their advertisers.)

Serving as an accurate and reliable source entails giving generous advance notice of citizen actions, making access easy for media, knowing what we want to say and saying it clearly and unashamedly, and anticipating the types of stories, pictures, and sounds that will make good product.

Later, I will discuss more specific ideas for building the kind of personal, professional relationships with media people that will make them want to work with us, encourage them to return our calls, and ultimately enable them to serve as a willing conduit of the "Reality-based" message.

"Anyone working in media today has to think of themselves as a mini-producer and has to think of any event as producing a mini-movie. You have to think in terms of what is your backdrop, what is the key line and what are the key props."

- Dan Manatt, PoliticsTV
* The Center for Progressive Leadership Action Network is the sister organization of the Center for Progressive Leadership. The Action Network connects emerging and established leaders to create a community of progressive political leaders to work on key progressive issues, advocate for progressive causes, lead and support progressive campaigns, and build the America of our dreams.
The Center for Progressive Leadership Action Network runs training programs for activists in every state and help link organizers, volunteers, campaign staff, and community leaders to direct action.

You can learn more, access online resources, and sign up for upcoming programs at our website -- www.cplaction.org.

Illusory Games in the Political Theater

2007-10-12T08:38:00.000-05:00

Political disourse today is incorrectly perceived as an absolutist zero-sum game in which the various actors tend to sustain a belief that it's possible for one political philosophy to contain all the answers to the challenges that face a wide-ranging, constantly changing, heterogeneous polity. The truth is that the very nature of politics in a free society requires constant conflict, disagreement, and experimentation to derive results. That is the design of our system, yet we have in our midst always a contingent of authoritarian/totalitarian brothers and sisters for whom there is no room for any political instruments that violate the spirit of the Market's invisible hand, that dignify the sensitivities of any other than Judeo-Christian practices, that respect the concerns of poor Americans domestically or of developing nations abroad, or violate any other sacred principle of governance - according to the Correct System .
It's wrong to think that one party, faction, or person is going to have all the solutions to political problems or social concerns. Our adversarial process of selecting members of government is a form of theater in which each side's Unified Theory of Everything Political is only a script. It is useful fiction presented to voters for the purpose of signaling what kind of person the candidate is. The picture that is revealed can provide needed clues about leadership style, decision-making processes, the kinds of people that will work in the staff, moral compasses, etc.
But in reality - offstage, after the show - the office-holder should look at any available option and be ready to junk the script and improvise.

1 comments:

M Roehr said...: Good to see you back Gordon!

All politicians play a sophisticated game of winking to their audience/constituents in which everyone is encouraged to believe the wink was meant for them. We all interpret the winking (it is of the essence of a wink that it be open to interpretation, and worthless without it...) and project upon it the things we hope or expect to see. So while our candidates wink is meant for "us", our adversary's wink is meant for "them" (fill in the blank). We all see what we want to see, and are reinforced in out preconceptions. The wink represents a slight break in the fourth wall, to the effect that it acknowledges the theater of it all, and asks indulgence of it's excesses and simplifications. While we blow a lot of hot air about wanting politicians to be honest and authentic, we are really most reassured when our guy acknowledges the artifice of it all. The scary guys are the honest, authentic ones who seem to believe it all and can't ever break character. That's what always frightened me about Reagan, and now unbelievably more so about Bush. I'm afraid they're not just posturing, but they really do believe the simplistic world-view they profess to -- that Bush really does go to bed each night at 9:30 satisfied that with the guidance of his faith in God he's doing all the right things, has no nagging doubts, and really does sleep soundly -- that truly frightens me.; 14 October, 2007 04:18

The Greedy Soul

2007-10-11T14:57:00.000-05:00

The Iraq occupation/counter-insurgency stands as one manifestation of our nation's Greedy Soul.

The poet Robert Bly talked about "The Greedy Soul" a few weeks ago on Bill Moyers' Journal (PBS). The Greedy Soul is that dark insistent thing inside each of us that makes us dissatisfied with what we already have, that makes us envious of others, that whispers in our ear "you're not good enough," that makes us fly too close to the sun, that makes us play God. The Greedy Soul can drive us to destroy ourselves and others while we blindly pursue ephemeral treasures like "security" or "sustained economic growth."
The Greedy Soul is the self's attempt to salve personal insecurity with the accumulation of more power, more wealth, more distance from the inevitable pain of being mortal, fallible, and vulnerable.

1 comments:

M Roehr said...: And what could be greedier than the desire for eternal life? The Greedy Soul becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as one becomes ever more the shell of one's inadequacies. Such a condition tends to generate a great deal of resentment, which will ultimately seek an outlet -- no doubt in some inapproriate, irrational, disproportionate, indiscriminate outburst of violence and revenge. Post 9-11 anybody?; 14 October, 2007 03:47

August 28: Citizens in Action - Gainesville, FL

2007-08-30T16:15:00.000-05:00

Jim White sends this youtube link to video of the MoveOn vigil protesting the Iraq occupation. It's a moving example of ordinary citizens speaking out and is accompanied by a haunting musical selection.
Thanks to Jim and
Well Done, Gainseville!

Reader Responds

2007-08-28T12:24:00.000-05:00

[This is overdue. I'm sorry for taking this long to relay the following comments to the site...]

jim white said:

Gordon,
It looks like a major demonstration is planned for September 15 (I know, another Saturday!). Do you have any links for people to get in touch with groups that may be helping various cities to organize group transportation and the like? If not, I'll see what I can find tomorrow.

20 August, 2007 22:04

jim white said:

The September 15 demonstration is sponsored by both ImpeachBush.org and ANSWER. There is a listing of charter buses on the ANSWER site: http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=S15_transportation.
MoveOn.org is also organizing vigils on August 28 to prepare people for the Petraeus-Crocker report. To find an event in your area check out http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/index.html?action_id=92.

21 August, 2007 18:48

At Glenn Greenwald's blog today...

2007-08-20T14:20:00.000-05:00

in Salon.com, comment section writers have a mini sub-thread going about mass demonstrations. (The actual topic concerns the pro-war bias of foreign policy think-tank analysts.)

Here is my hastily-written contribution (edited - a little - for clarity):

OT: on being in the streets

Diverse Anti-war Protests Largest in DC Since Vietnam
by Benjamin Dangl and Brendan Coyne

Demonstrators from a variety of backgrounds and representing numerous causes came together Saturday by the tens of thousands with a unified message demanding an end to US military involvement in Iraq.

Washington, DC; Sept. 25, 2005 – [...] Estimates of the demonstration’s size ranged from 100,000 to 300,000 protesters. [...]

It's not enough to mass somewhere; something has to happen, a specific, achievable, and measurable goal; otherwise, the resource of a massive presence of souls is squandered. The problem in the example above is that it took place on Saturday, not much different than a picnic family reunion or Independence Day celebration. To be effective today, a disruptive presence mid-week is better. For one hypothetical example, thousands of people assembled peaceably in a way that ties up traffic in a window of time before a major vote in Congress could make the media take notice. The media are much more an integral part of the self-referencing noise machine of political power, industrial, and military interests than they were 40 years ago. That's why it is not enough to just show up en masse. The action has to be planned, timed, and coordinated with the understanding that the target audience is not so much "the American People" as it is the Media and elected/appointed government officials. (Unless I am misreading the poll reporting, "the American People" already want the erosion of Constitutional liberties to abate and already want us out of Iraq.)

I would argue that sustained large scale protests, or even sustained mid-scale protests, especially in DC, would have an effect whether or not they are accurately or extensively covered in the mass media. The simple fact of people assembling again and again -- or staying assembled until their just cause is recognized and public policy action undertaken -- can have a profound effect on those who make public policy.

One off protests almost never work.

But cynical dismissal of Public Protest is even less likely to lead to positive change.

-- Ché Pasa

This rings true.

Repeated actions are another specific tactic that could pierce the wall of obstruction willfully erected by the news media and Congress.

Any successful Direct Actions are components of an organic process which is part of a larger system. The questions we face should not devolve to debates over which tactic is better: blogging or demonstrating. Instead, we ought to deploy all useful tactics simultaneously.

It will probably be most useful to consider a systems approach to asserting the will of We the People as a long-term strategic value (several years), as opposed to thinking in terms of the end of the current Bush Regime as the over-arching time-frame.

If something additional is to happen (other than in the blogosphere, on AirAmerica, in LTEs, via PACs, and in letters to Congress), we really have to start now. A few weeks ago, in response to a similar OT sub-thread about "taking it to the streets" I established a blog site intended to serve as a central communication node (at least as a temporary initial staging area) for brainstorming, planning, and implementing a variety of some additional activist-oriented projects (demonstrations, workshops, boycotts, etc). It's still hovering over there at http://www.AchievingOurCountry.blogspot.com.

I invite anyone inclined to start now. You can't wait for someone else to do it. You have to do it. That is how people power generates.

Respectfully,
Gordon Ginsberg

Where Things Stand Today - Part One!

2007-08-12T18:23:00.000-05:00

I'm laughing at myself as I re-read today's post just below.

It's definitely not the post I intended to write (although I do mean every word of it).

I meant to touch on the offenses of the Bush Authoritarian Regime (The White House, Congress, the Courts, the Media, enabling military commanders, wealthy corporations, religious fundamentalists). I meant to note the buzzing through the blogosphere, at AirAmerica talk radio, in editorial pages and over NPR and PBS concerning things like the recent FISA legislation, lies about the Iraq occupation, etc.

And then I meant to show those who are waiting for a massive push-back why it is I believe we are already now actively engaged in the counter-revolution to return the USA to its traditional identity as an open society and a Free Nation. I meant to share my hope, my optimism, my happiness in seeing all around me a continuing surge of resistance to the Regime's shameless and cynical manipulations.

Instead, somehow I "surged" forth the rant below.... which I will let stand.

[I hope the militant tone is not cause for worry. Our country was born in violent revolution, a bloody resistance to tyranny because sometimes there is no other way. That's still true today.]

Here is the main thing I wanted to say: our species is not exempt from the power of a chaotic world, simply by virtue of being human. Life is messy. Our so-called civilization is an organizational social structure of animals - animals with complex brains, but still animals. The injustices we see, and the pain and the loss, the waste and the evil, are all forces that will always be with us.

In the face of that, it's heartening to know that so very many of us are indeed calling and writing, sending checks, standing around with signs, standing up. This too is part of the natural order of things, a restorative force for good, for compassion, for peace, and for justice.

Something is happening, even if it doesn't always seem like it. And it is building.

That's what I wanted to say.

Where Things Stand Today

2007-08-12T12:49:00.000-05:00

"Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer. You have only to persevere to save yourselves."

--Winston Churchill

This is what our government has promised:

The United States will occupy Iraq for years to come.

The United States will strike Iran militarily (my guess: early December 2008).

The US Government will continue its assault on Civil Liberties via Executive Orders, legislative bills, and court rulings overly deferential to the State.

Taxes on the middle and lower classes will rise to fund the expanding police state, imperialistic military actions, and maintenance of our failing infrastructure; taxes on the wealthiest will fall still more.

Middle-class Americans will work longer hours to sustain a gradually declining standard of living.

Things can - and probably will - get worse before they get better, only to worsen again.

And yet, ultimately...

As long as we keep on paying attention, as long as we keep on writing to ourselves and each other, as long as we keep on making campaign donations - large or small - to good candidates, as long as we keep on calling and writing to our elected officials (can't really bring myself to say they are "Representatives" as of now), as long as we keep on doing these things and whatever else we individually believe will further the cause of protecting the United States of America from the unpatriotic, fear-mongering, greedy, power-obsessed authoritarian movement currently ~~running~~ ruining our government and our country, there is cause for optimism.

The long-term nature of the fight can't depress our energies; it's not realistic to expect we will fully reverse our country's totalitarian slide within the next election cycle, or two, or three. Please keep in mind: our right-wing enemies and their Tory followers have been gradually laying the foundation of their movement for fifty years. They have established think tanks, consolidated resources from sympathetic corporate benefactors, and insinuated themselves firmly into local, state, and federal legislatures (beginning with school boards and then working on up). They have used shrill hectoring tactics within those legislative bodies to ensconce a judiciary that upholds their agenda. They have bought a shallow insipid news-media culture and then bullied it into relaying authoritarian conservative propaganda, without question and without investigation. It is reasonable then for us to expect to need at least as many decades for the struggle to undo the damage.

We ought to expect setbacks and take them in stride.

We ought to continuously reassess our tactics. For example, I have hewed to an ideal of non-violent civil protest as one way to project our collective voice beyond the barrier of noise, obfuscation, distortion, and outright lies that impede informed good-faith civic debate. Anything other than a dignified, legal, and non-violent action would alienate the people we are trying to reach (that would be Congress, the Courts, and the Media outlets) as well as the majority of U.S. stakeholders who, according the polls, already agree with the Opposition (that would be We the People!). That ideal, however, does not rule out the possibility of employing other means if needed, as conditions change. Here's another altogether different example: the rulers of our country should not expect to start "disappearing" those of us who oppose them without fierce resistance! Here's yet another: they ought not think they can maintain dossiers on freedom-loving patriotic dissenters without attempts to sabotage the warehouses in which those files are stored.

The struggle will never end. It is our right and our duty and our privilege to make the Achieving of Our Country an ongoing adventure. The forces that lead to totalitarian impulses (aka Human Nature) never go away; at best they can be kept temporarily at bay.

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."
--Winston Churchill

A Voters' Platform... revised

2007-08-09T15:39:00.000-05:00

Karen M proposes a collaborative effort that would culminate in a "Voters Platform" composed of planks crafted by We the People directly, instead of party apparatchiks. I'll let Karen explain (edited from comment posted today):

In the past, the "party" would always come up with the "platform." However, things have already changed by a few degrees, and there is more back-and-forth between candidates (Democrats anyway) and voters. Why not in this, too?

... [We'll] brainstorm first-- online, perhaps with a list of suggestions, but also asking for free-text suggestions, just to indicate any interest in a topic/issue. Once there is a critical mass, have someone or ones refine the list, and then invite people to vote on them in some way...

... maybe by then, some other group who knows how to administer such surveys would step into help.

What do you think?

[Tops on my list is restoring the Constitution.]

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From the Comments Area

jim white said:

I'd love to see a return to all political appointments being made on the basis of genuine qualifications rather than ideology. Of course, this must be accompanied with a purge of both political and ostensibly nonpolitical hires during the Bush administration that brought in the current slate of political hacks that currently permeate the government.

14 August, 2007 21:59

karen m said:

Okay, I'll go again.

In the latest thread at GG's blog, I came up with a couple of things new to me.

Along with public financing of presidential elections (maybe others, too?)...

I think it's worth discussing the benefits of replacing the military industrial complex with a non-profit scenario. Surely, it would be more patriotic to produce weaponry and equipment on a cost only basis, thus sharing the sacrifices demanded by war.
[Amended 14 August 2007: During wartime, production ... should be done for the costs of materials and labor only. No profit. There is something obscene about war profiteers benefiting so greatly from the deaths of our soldiers, the grief of their families, not to mention the deaths and casualties of the many, many civilians who are victims, even to our "strategic" air strikes. ]
And... I read a very interesting post at TPMCafe by Mark Schmitt about "transitional justice" as an alternative to impeachment. Go read it for yourself; I think it would make a compelling plank in any candidate's or party's platform, and thus definitely belongs in a voters' platform.

09 August, 2007 21:16

karen m said:

And while I'm thinking about it... I really, really want a candidate who will, if necessary, fight-- for all of us-- to have all of the votes counted correctly. No waffling or caving, etc.

Otherwise, what does any of the rest of it really mean?

09 August, 2007 21:19

gordon said:

Close Guantanamo.

Clearly annunciate a new legal framework for the arrest, detention/bail, discovery, and trial of suspects - consistent with all pertinent treaties and with all current U. S. statutes.

09 August, 2007 09:56

gordon said:

Clearly renounce torture.

09 August, 2007 10:00

gordon said:

I would like to see some new entitlements:

affordable comprehensive health care for all

safe, effective public schools with a commitment to comprehensive meaningful vocational, professional, or liberal arts tracks according to individual talents and desires.
affordable (FREE!?!) post-secondary education (college or job training) for all qualified HS graduates.

12 August, 2007 18:12

Musings on Marching

2007-08-07T19:48:00.000-05:00

No expression of the will of We the People is as moving or as impressive as hundreds of thousands of citizens gathered peaceably to demonstrate commitment to a cause. Think about the Civil Rights and Anti-war demonstrations led by Dr. Martin Luther King. Recall the Tiananmen Square uprising, the strikes of the Solidarity union in Poland. There is something inherently strong, dramatic , noble and awe-inspiring about a citizenry silently standing together in dignified opposition to the State.

There is a March on Washington scheduled for 15 September2007.

It is an anti-war demonstration that will have associated actions for a 7-day period beginning on the 14th. Here is some text from the organizers' site:

A broad spectrum of national groups have united to mobilize for a massive fall anti-war mobilization called the Days of Action. September 15-21 will be a major showdown in Washington, DC at the very moment that the Petraeus Report is released and Congress takes up spending over $100 billion to prolong the war. Launched with a huge March on Washington on September 15, led by veterans who have returned from Iraq, there will be seven days of actions to send a shockwave through Washington and the nation with the reverberating demand: End the War Now!

AirAmerica's Thom Hartmann exemplifies the belief of many: that massive grassroots civil action will take place in the blogosphere, in phone-calls, by email, and talk radio, and that in this new era, demonstrations are not where change will happen. Hartmann has been a part of Leftist activism for a long time, has been a steady, reasonable, compassionate, impassioned presence at AirAmerica, and seems to know his stuff. I find him credible.

Something like the planned September 15th March could work, though, if it is executed in a way that cuts through the shallow biases of most major news media outlets and thereby makes an impression on members of Congress and on the White House. To be effective it will have to look something like the vision posted here. The target audience must be properly understood to be the groups just mentioned , not the American populace at large who are already convinced. This march could get a fair hearing for that American majority message, thus far mostly ignored by the DC chattering classes, the Congress, and the White House.

If the actions devolve into a lawless messy spectacle, the target audience will be alienated and the energy going into the event will be wasted.

I don't have plans to attend, but I will be observing with interest.

Update (20:38): I just saw fine print at the bottom of the march site referencing ANSWER Coalition.

Activism

2007-08-05T11:12:00.000-05:00

It's hard to gauge the extent of anger among freedom l0ving Americans over the passage, in both the House and Senate, of bills amending FISA that expand the ability of Our government to perform surveillance on U.S. citizens without obtaining a warrant. One can observe the usual gnashing of teeth, name-calling, and other expressions of disgust on all the usual anti-authoritarian blog sites. Makes me wonder if I'm seeing a pattern here:

We get the bad news.
We wail and clench our fists.
We write brilliant exposes and prescriptions.

And then we settle back down to wait for the next offense by the Bush White House (backed up by a statist/corporatist-stacked Judiciary) and our feckless Congress.

Now, this patter-n of ours is not necessarily as useless as it may appear, and we can look upon this behavior with affection and hope. If each episode raises the temperature of the burn, eventually a critical mass of energy will combust, possibly resulting in - oh, I don't know - action, maybe?

What we are witnessing then, is the continuing gestation of We the People's organic and intrinsic resistance to the gradual imposition of State oppression.

Backlash to S.1927

2007-08-04T17:14:00.000-05:00

In the last (27 July) entry, I acknowledged a process-driven mechanism for political change (as opposed to a street-level people-powered activist uprising) that might be at work within our constitutional system of checks & balances, despite the egregious insults to that Constitution that our own government has perpetrated. It is, therefore, with some amusement (and more than a little chagrin) I note the passing of the FISA amendment bill by the Senate - with the complicity of 16 Democratic members - and the ire it has inflamed among liberals in the blogosphere . As of this writing, no one seemed clear on what the bill does or does not mean. Some serious students of law are trying to parse the thing (see DClaw1 and Mona at Glenn Greenwald's blog and Balkinization for some current comment). It appears that the bill enables more latitude to spy on citizens in the US by way of loopholes in the legislation resulting from ambiguous language. Balkinization provides this link to a draft of the bill, S1927. Among those uncertain about the intent and effects of the amendment are the Senate members themselves!

Prominent blogger Glenn Greenwald, a former Constitutional Law litigator (see link above), has reacted with uncharacteristic emotion (he's been hanging out at YearlyKos in Chicago - could that have influenced his tone?) and his comment section is also afire with condemnation toward Democrats. There is much talk about third-party candidates and about eschewing voting altogether.

These are not useful ideas.

What we patriots must all remember is that any effort to take back our government from the Republican Authoritarians will take time, patience, and the ability to endure many setbacks. We must devise and deploy a multi-pronged approach to the problem, always keeping in mind (and in our collective back pocket) the possibility of mobilizing masses of concerned citizens asserting our rights. Our Tory enemies have worked hard and long (biding their time, being patient, and enduring setbacks) to achieve their power and they will not give it up without a no-holds-barred fight.

We will ultimately succeed; but to do that, we shall have to persevere.

On the Other Hand...

2007-07-27T17:11:00.000-05:00

Today I have been pondering other ways of asserting the will of We the People.

It is possible - and this is not news to me - that the AOC project is unnecessary. In the short discussions a few weeks ago that led me to create this blog many argued just that, saying that the system as is (i.e., Congressional oversight and investigations, investigative journalism, growing awareness on the part of the U.S. citizenry, etc.) would eventually work toward some justice regarding the President and his corrupt anti-American regime. Others thought there was no hope, that the undoing of the Constitution of the United States is fait accompli. A significant number of insightful experienced minds are either unimpressed by the expressed need for, or skeptical about the tenability of, a street-level action-oriented activist movement.

New developments over the past month make it easy to argue that the steady drip of revelations and allegations of wrong-doing by the administration, coupled with the growing restlessness of the populace and an unimpressive crop of Republican presidential candidates, will assure additional Democratic advances in the House and Senate along with a Democratic Party victory in the 2008 race for the White House. The extension of this argument is that the new Democratic government will restore recognition of our Constitutional rights.

I believe this. I think the system as designed by P atrick Henry, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, John Hancock and all the rest will work as intended, that our beloved institution of self-government will survive intact.

I also think that it is wise to have an insurance policy in place. If, in the course of Human Events, things do not transpire as we hope, well... what then? If our nation's elected men and women, in whom we place our trust to hew to the founders' ideals, are unwilling or unable to perform their sworn duty to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, are We the People not obligated to intervene?

Assuredly, there is the possibility that mass expressions of grievance will arise spontaneously across the country, inspiring the Legislative Branch into growing a backbone and the Judiciary into interpreting law in deference to the individual, rather than to the state or to corporations. It could happen. But maybe the mainstream news media outlets will continue to downplay the insults of the Bush regime. Maybe the citizenry will remain subdued by the "struggle for the legal tender" (in Jackson Browne's memorable words) and by the onslaught of deliberate high-decibel misinformation and distracting, content-less entertainment media trifles.

More ominously, the administration - and its co-conspirators in the Congress and the Courts and the Press - could, in the name of national security, solidify the authoritarian dictatorial suppression of liberties they have been working steadily to impose for the past five years, culminating in a decisive comprehensive curtailment of the right to free expression and of peaceable assembly.

If the time comes, and if the new Minutemen/women of the Twenty-first Century American Crisis are to be able to respond in a timely fashion to the rallying cry of modern Paul Reveres, the groundwork must be in place in advance. Lead time must be kept to a minimum, in order to overcome the obstacles the Republican regime will surely have in place.

Thus, AOC proceeds in a measured, prudent pace... in the fervent hope that it is never needed.

New Link (Old Site) added to Resource Library: Rapid Response Resources

2007-07-27T13:31:00.000-05:00

h ttp://www.MediaMatters.org

In their own words:

Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.

Launched in May 2004, Media Matters for America put in place, for the first time, the means to systematically monitor a cross section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation — news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda — every day, in real time.

Using the website www.mediamatters.org as the principal vehicle for disseminating research and information, Media Matters posts rapid-response items as well as longer research and analytic reports documenting conservative misinformation throughout the media. Additionally, Media Matters works daily to notify activists, journalists, pundits, and the general public about instances of misinformation, providing them with the resources to rebut false claims and to take direct action against offending media institutions.

More Brainstorming About AOC's Work In Progress: Tactics & Issues

2007-07-25T23:38:00.001-05:00

If you've been following these AOC posts since its beginning - or backtracked through the archive - you probably know the aim of AOC and how the site came to be. Here's the "Readers' Digest" version: one day not too long ago a lot of savvy Netizens were bemoaning the lack of aggressive activism against an increasingly authoritarian neo-conservative regime. The commutation of Scooter Libby in the Plame case just before Independence Day was particularly galling and stimulated a lot of wailing. My response was to offer this site as a facilitation node for coordinating dynamic activism. Now, it's not really my nature to do this kind of thing. I like to work on solo projects. You give me an assignment and I'll execute it the best way I know how, teaching myself new skills as I go if I have to in order to get it done.

[A digression: Maybe you've heard or read about Keirsey's Temperament Sorter, or the Jungian Archetypes on which they're based, or Meyers-Briggs. Keirsey would type me as an INTP. Google it. Or click over to here or here and navigate around for some general info. I always find typing people interesting and useful. If I know some one's temperament, I can adjust my expectations accordingly.]

Anyway, back to this activism thing. I'm not saying there's a need to reinvent the wheel here. There are already many sites providing information for letter writers; many organizations creating, disseminating, and submitting petitions; many places to send money for good causes. Some of them are linked at this site. And, yes, MoveOn does organize some occasional demonstrations, though it doesn't seem to be a priority and I'm not sure they have honed an effective way to deliver that kind of statement yet.

That's why I'm here.

I envisioned a place where ultimately a pretty large group would divide labor to push effective campaigns. Absent further input, I identified some problems to discuss at AOC. We need snail-mail letter-writers, for example, lots of 'em. Because e-mail, while somewhat useful, doesn't have the impact it used to. It's too easy to simply click in response to a solicitation and our Senators and Representatives know this. But well-written, reasoned letters on paper mean a little more. We need phone callers. Lots of 'em. Angry persistent ones demanding to talk to the Congressperson instead of settling for a staffer. Not that we'd get through, but we must get irate and raise hell! We anti-authoritarians have been too damn reasonable. And we need to bully the opposition, including news media outlets and the judiciary. Just like they (the opposition) do us. We also need to call and write business owners - or their lackeys anyway - to inform them, loudly and passionately, that their support of this regime is going to cost them.

Which leads to another area: boycotts. Targets could be companies that subsidize neocon think tanks, and organizations like The Federalist Society. Established news media outlets would be good.

And we need to organize bodies. We need to put lots and lots and lots of bodies in places they'll be noticed. We need to disrupt traffic and business for a day or two, non-violently and within the law. We need to let the news media know we are serious. We need to let the politicians know we are serious and that we are watching. We need to let the politicians know that it is safe for them to act against the Bush regime, that we have their backs.

We need researchers to weed through all the resource sites and make the talking points accessible to the callers & writers. This information has to be available on the fly. It has to be accurate - most of the time. And when it isn't completely accurate (propaganda & talking points?), we need to know so that we can spin accordingly. Just like the opposition does.

Okay, thus far we've identified the following functions: Information/Persuasion, Boycotts, and Demonstrations/Civil Disobedience. Each function falls into a tactical section. For example, organizers, educators/trainers, and researchers are in the Planning section. The foot soldiers and their leaders - those doing the calling, the writing, and the marching - are in the Operations section. Fund-raisers and disbursers (is that a word?) are in the Finance section. And the good folks making the behind-the-scenes things happen like transportation, food, hygiene, etc... they fall into the Logistics section.

Now, there are a variety of issues that need attention. Some people are hot about the war in Iraq and little else. Others are more into environmental issues. There's a big desire for Impeachment out there. And so on. And of course, most folks are interested in more than one thing. But the issues have to be researched and targets identified for each issue.

So, what's going on in this little reverie of mine is: we are trying to build a Command and Control apparatus. Except there is no we. It's just me. And I can't do it all. I can't do very much.

That's why my focus in these AOC pages is on restoring the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment. In my world-view, nothing happens meaningfully without those things in place first. So that is what I'll be working on. As other people come on board, they can focus on the issues and functional tactical sections that move them. We will operate under a Unified Command, meaning we'll have to cooperate for the greater good, keeping ego impulses and turf wars to a minimum, and always be willing to compromise with each other (NOT with the opposition!).

My project: find a way to have a massive demonstration, an impressive presence of law-abiding dignified patriotic Americans, supporting our Constitution and the Rule of Law, with a time targeted for Spring of '08.

It might not happen, but we should try.

If You Haven't Read David Halberstam's Article In Vanity Fair

2007-07-25T10:57:00.000-05:00

this month and would like to, you can check it out here.

Mr. Halberstam had a remarkable talent for conveying complex historical events with concision and flair. In this article, the last before his fatal car crash, he examines George Bush's claim that history will validate his decisions regarding war in the Middle East. Mr. Halberstam deftly punctures any illusions one might have in comparing Bush favorably with President Truman.

"...when I hear the president cite history so casually, an alarm goes off. Those who know history best tend to be tempered by it. They rarely refer to it so sweepingly and with such complete confidence. They know that it is the most mischievous of mistresses and that it touts sure things about as regularly as the tip sheets at the local track. Its most important lessons sometimes come cloaked in bitter irony. By no means does it march in a straight line toward the desired result, and the good guys do not always win." -- from the article

What would a hypothetical people-powered rebellion look like?

2007-07-24T11:49:00.000-05:00

[If the momentum fueled by anger and the rising demand for action we are seeing today do not inspire Congress to initiate some form of meaningful response, and if our citizenry doesn't become aroused enough to push harder (in the streets, if need be), then it would be wise for concerned patriots to start making plans.]

We are in an atmosphere of paranoia not seen since the days of McCarthy and the HUAC.

"Interesting" times.

Therefore, one hypothetical People-Powered exercise would:

be well-planned, anticipating obstacles, hazards, and consequences... and contingencies for same.

comprise a critical mass of people in order to break through the news media myopia.

would have a structured support apparatus of planning, logistical, legal, and financial functions.

be bold, yet measured and prudent.

be within the law.

be non-violent.

be attended by participants prepared through workshop training.

emerge in Spring like the cherry blossoms. On a Wednesday?

Think: What would Martin Luther King do? What would Mahatma Ghandi do?

What else would help complete this hypothetical picture?

Revised Letter to Bush

2007-07-24T11:03:00.000-05:00

I received help from my son, from an English teacher friend, and from a kind and talented reader named Jim White of Gainesville, FL. This will go out in today's snail mail with copies to my senators and representative (who sits on the Judiciary committee). There is still time ( a couple of hours) to make further suggestions. -- GG

Dear Mr. President:

I am troubled by your actions over the past four years that undermine the basic premise of our country. This premise is to be found in the freedoms and protections listed in our Constitution’s First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. It seems you have decided that the 9/11 attacks on our country justified extraordinary curtailment of civil liberties and due process. Many Americans feel that the level of offense against us on that terrible day does not justify the continuation of the extreme measures you imposed. Further, the unilateral nature of these actions and your absolute secrecy in developing and enforcing these measures are in direct contradiction of the Constitution and the American tradition of open government by consent of the governed.

I understand that you are doing what you think is right, yet I disagree with the assertion that"9/11 changed everything." It is fair to say that it changed some things. For example, as a nation, we are now more aware of the infrastructure we need for response to domestic crises, whether they are natural disasters, terrorist attacks, or industrial accidents. This is a correct thing.

Eroding civil liberties codified in the Constitution is not a correct thing. Further, as a beacon of liberty for the world, we should not be reserving those rights for our own citizens only, on our own soil. Our traditional practices as a free nation ought to be extended to all, without regard to nationality and without regard to presence inside or outside our borders. America's moral standing in the world was at its highest as World War II drew to a close and the humane treatment we provided to our prisoners of war was made public by those very prisoners as they returned to their homes.

Further it is important to note that the individual liberties of the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment are not luxury items reserved for times of peace. Instead, they are necessities for our national identity at all times. The fact that our United States has in the past sometimes fallen short on issues like habeas corpus, unreasonable searches and seizures, due process, and unlawful imprisonment does not make it right for us to do those things today. We always must strive to be better, to improve on our nation’s founders’ ideas about how a country of truly free citizens should govern itself.

It’s my understanding that Civics classes get less emphasis these days than when I attended grammar school a few decades ago. I loved those classes and their lessons stuck with me. They left me with a notion of service that guided me to my current career as a municipal firefighter.

I was at working at the firehouse the day those infamous Al Qaeda members from Saudi Arabia, U.A.R., and Egypt executed their attack. I was an active member of the Federal Urban Search and Rescue Response team that responded first to the Pentagon site that day and the wounds of 9/11 remain. I love my country and have faith in the strength of our ideals.

The damage you have inflicted on our Constitution far exceeds that inflicted on the country by the terrorists. It is not necessary to subvert the Constitution of the United States of America to prevent more attacks against us. I don't believe you properly honor the memory of my fallen brothers and sisters in Public Safety by dismantling the very foundations of freedom and liberty that they lived to serve and protect.

Bush's Executive Order Amending Title 50 U.S.C. Ch. 35 - International Emergency Economic Powers

2007-07-23T18:59:00.000-05:00

Bush's recent Executive Order (EO) of 17 July authorizes freezing or seizing the assets of...

anyone "determined to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of... undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people."

I think any reasonably intelligent debater could argue that Bush and Cheney have undermined their own efforts in Iraq.

I'm just sayin.'

Draft: Letter to the President... comments/corrections welcome

2007-07-22T11:42:00.000-05:00

This is a revision since this morning...

Dear Mr. President:

I am troubled by your actions over the past four years that undermine the basic premise of our country, the freedoms and protections listed in our Constitution’s First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments. It seems you have decided that the 9/11 attacks on our country justified extraordinary curtailment of civil liberties and due process. But the level of offense against us on that terrible day does not justify the continuation of these extreme measures.

I understand that you are doing what you believe is right. Yet I disagree with the assertion that “9/11 changed everything.” It is fair to say that it changed some things. For example, as a nation, we are now more aware of the infrastructure we need for response to domestic crises, whether they are natural disasters, terrorist attacks, or industrial accidents. This is a correct thing.

Eroding civil liberties codified in the Constitution is not a correct thing. Further, as a beacon of liberty for the world, we ought not be reserving those rights for own citizens only, on our own soil. Our traditional practices as a free nation ought to be extended to all, without regard to nationality and without regard to presence inside or outside our borders. And it’s important to note: the individual liberties of the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment are not luxury items reserved for times of peace; they are necessities for our national identity at all times. The fact that our United States has in the past sometimes dropped the ball on issues like habeas corpus, unreasonable searches and seizures, due process, and unlawful imprisonment does not make it right for us to do those things now. We must always strive to be better, to improve on our nation’s founders’ ideas about how a country of truly free citizens should govern itself.

I am told that Civics classes today get less emphasis than when I was in grammar school a few decades ago. Those lessons stuck with me. They left me with a notion of service that guided me to my career as a municipal firefighter.

I was at the firehouse the day those infamous Al Qaida members from Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., and Egypt executed their attack. Memories of watching the planes strike the Twin Towers and of witnessing their fall still sear. As an active member of the Federal Urban Search and Rescue Response team that responded first to the Pentagon site that day, the wounds of 9/11 remain. I love my country and have faith in the strength of our ideals.

That strength supports this knowledge: it is not necessary to subvert the Constitution of the United States of America to prevent more attacks against us. I don’t believe you properly honor the memory of my fallen brothers and sisters in Public Safety, nor of the fighting men and women of the Armed Services throughout our history, by dismantling the very foundation of freedom and liberty that they lived to serve and protect.

Sincerely,

Gordon Ginsberg

Note to AOC readers: I'd like to leave this up for a couple of days... might 'tinker' on it a little, and I'd love some input before sending to the White House (with copies to various others in other branches). Your help is needed and appreciated. -- GG

Sunday Morning Musing

2007-07-22T10:00:00.000-05:00

It's been a matter of faith the past five years that the passing of time would let us, the People of the United States of America, get some distance from the 9/11 events. We thought that the fear and anger that drove our excessive rejection of basic civil liberties law would ebb enough that We the People could return to sober common-sense and again embrace our constitutionally embedded individual rights. Now it seems that the loud, relentless, lying Right Wing Authoritarian propaganda machine has permanently neutered our political leaders. It seems that we, as a nation, are going along - some willingly, others absent awareness - with ceding our First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendment protections to an Executive Branch totalitarian power-grab in the guise of "National Security."

I wonder how we will feel looking back five years from now, asking ourselves - maybe our children or grandchildren asking - what we were doing while Bush took away our freedom and destroyed the very nature of our national being.

The Big Truths

2007-07-20T17:28:00.000-05:00

An effective Opposition in today’s media-saturated, media-inflected world, must learn to execute rhetoric the way that the established entrenched Regime does: to rehearse it and to have fun(!) with it. We should do the homework, anticipate arguments and tactics... and be ready with counter-responses.

Let's establish a few Big Truths to counter their Big Lies.:

"9/11 did not change everything; it only changed some things."

"It's not a war; it's an occupation."

"They are not 'terrorists'; they are insurgents."

Etc.

Time To Make Our Will Known

2007-07-20T15:23:00.000-05:00

I have a dream:

I dream of a massive gathering of determined citizens, silently and strongly taking their rightful ground and demonstrating to Congress, to the President, and to the Judiciary that we are paying attention, that we want the constitutional abuses to cease, that we want accountability from our governing entities.

I dream of hundreds of thousands of us converging outside the Supreme Court of the United States of America to demand that the Executive Branch respect our constitution, that the Legislative Branch assert the will of We the People, and that the Judiciary uphold the laws our Constitution.

I dream of sober concerned Americans solidly standing watch in dignity, eschewing the clichéd chanting from protests of a bygone era. I see the crowd poised shoulder-to-shoulder, challenging the anti-American unpatriotic limits of "Free Speech Zones." I see a vanguard of courageous prepared dissenters stoically receiving the sacrament of State-sanctioned abuse (the police officer's baton) and being taken without resistance to jail.

I dream of a mass movement powered by the people, evoking not the WTO protesters in Seattle or those against the G-8 in Davos, but instead emulating Ghandi and King and their followers.
I believe that this is the only way for We the People to breach the insulating wall of noise and obfuscation erected by an out-of-control authoritarian government.

It is time.

The Central Issue

2007-07-19T11:48:00.000-05:00

to me pertains to preserving the US Constitution, which has been the primary instrument for 1) assuring that we are a nation "of laws, not men" and 2) protecting our liberty from states' congenital tendency to encroach on individuals' rights. It is the heart of who we are. We can have varying opinions concerning the Iraq Occupation, on Impeachment, or about Universal Health Care Coverage. What we cannot abide, however, is perversion of the critical built-in Checks & Balances of our tripartite representative democracy.