This blog will discuss many issues pertaining to current events and encourages others to discuss and do the same. The goal is to raise the level of discourse and hopefully have a good time sharing thoughts and ideas.
Showing posts with label Glenn Greenwald. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Glenn Greenwald. Show all posts
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has been adamant in his support for the inclusion of a strong public option in the health care legislation. From October, 2009:
He's also a longtime advocate of health care for children and the poor – and, as Congress moves toward its moment of truth on health care, perhaps the most earnest, dogged Senate champion of a nationwide public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies.
"I will not relent on that. That's the only way to go," Rockefeller told me in an interview. "There's got to be a safe harbor."
Now that the Public Option has made a comeback and actually has a chance to pass the Senate via reconciliation, Rockefeller has made a surprising reversal:
"I'm probably not going to vote for that," Rockefeller said. "I don't think the timing of it is very good."
Earlier in the evening, in a brief interview with TPMDC, Rockefeller expressed concern that playing hardball with the public option at this time could imperil reform, but he didn't say he'd oppose it.
"I don't know, I think the timing of the public option piece of legislation, which is not in what the President's going to suggest at the summit I think, doing that could create a lot of turbulence when we don't need it," Rockefeller told me.
To recap, when it looked like the Public Option was on life-support and had a slim chance of passage, Rockefeller supported it to the fullest. Now that the Public Option has a legitimate chance of passing, Rockefeller doesn't think he will vote for it and may even vote against it. Per usual, Glenn Greenwald sums it up nicely:
This is what the Democratic Party does; it's who they are. They're willing to feign support for anything their voters want just as long as there's no chance that they can pass it. They won control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections by pretending they wanted to compel an end to the Iraq War and Bush surveillance and interrogation abuses because they knew they would not actually do so; and indeed, once they were given the majority, the Democratic-controlled Congress continued to fund the war without conditions, to legalize Bush's eavesdropping program, and to do nothing to stop Bush's habeas and interrogation abuses ("Gosh, what can we do? We just don't have 60 votes).
[...]
Basically, this is how things have progressed:
Progressives: We want a public option!
Democrats/WH: We agree with you totally! Unfortunately, while we have 50 votes for it, we just don't have 60, so we can't have it. Gosh darn that filibuster rule.
Progressives: But you can use reconciliation like Bush did so often, and then you only need 50 votes.
Filbuster reform advocates/Obama loyalists: Hey progressives, don't be stupid! Be pragmatic. It's not realistic or Serious to use reconciliation to pass health care reform. None of this their fault. It's the fault of the filibuster. The White House wishes so badly that it could pass all these great progressive bills, but they're powerless, and they just can't get 60 votes to do it.
[Month later]
Progressives: Hey, great! Now that you're going to pass the bill through reconciliation after all, you can include the public option that both you and we love, because you only need 50 votes, and you've said all year you have that!
Democrats/WH: No. We don't have 50 votes for that (look at Jay Rockefeller). Besides, it's not the right time for the public option. The public option only polls at 65%, so it might make our health care bill -- which polls at 35% -- unpopular. Also, the public option and reconciliation are too partisan, so we're going to go ahead and pass our industry-approved bill instead . . . on a strict party line vote.
This absurd dance does little for the millions of people without affordable health care coverage and will end up doing very little to fundamentally reform the system. Partly to blame for this mess is the filibuster which has proved to not only be a shield for the Democrats to hide behind, but also as a weapon for the Republicans to enact "minority rule". The Democrats talk tough and adopt populist views when they know they can not pass legislation due to the Republican threat of a filibuster. Then, when it becomes clear that the legislation can be passed through other means, those same Democrats amend their populist positions to appeal to the corporatist interests and avoid backlash.
All of this leads to partisan bickering and nothing productive getting accomplished. The best part is that no one wants to be accountable for standing behind policies that may not mesh well with the status quo.
While the Democrats continue to decide that they really don't want the public option (now that it has a chance of passing), Republicans continue to show even more evidence that their vision for America is to oppose anything that comes out of the Obama Administration.
The most recent example of this strategy is displayed through more hypocrisy by Rep. John Boehner (R-OH). Let's flash back to October, 2009 when Boehner criticized the Health Care legislation for being too long:
Fast forward to yesterday when President Obama released his own legislation which was presented in this eleven-page format. Boehner's response through his spokesman:
"The White House's 'plan' consists of an 11-page outline, which has not been scored by the Congressional Budget Office or posted online as legislative text. So they want to reorganize one-sixth of the United States' economy with a document shorter than a comic book, and they're complaining that they can't find our plan on their own website? C'mon."
First the bill is too long and now, too short. Seems like the Obama Administration just can't win doesn't it? Well, that is precisely the point. Remember back in September of 2008 when former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced his three-page TARP plan? Boehner didn't seem to have much to say about the length of that plan and even rejected items that Democrats wanted to include saying:
“We need to keep it clean, simple, move it through the House and Senate, get it on the president’s desk so [Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson] can in fact intervene as quickly as possible.”
With Democrats being disingenuous and Republicans determined to oppose everything, it does not look hopeful for robust health care reform to come out of such a troubled process.
There are moments that come along where it is important to highlight the framing of an issue that is prevalent in the corporate media. These discussions can help us understand the limits that are placed on such conversations and perhaps more importantly, these discussions can illuminate important viewpoints and data that are often left out of the prevailing narrative.
I had one of these moments in reading Glenn Greenwald's recent entry on how the corporate media often pits a debate between "keeping Americans safe" and "protecting our privacy/civil liberties". His whole piece is very illuminating and I encourage you to read the entire entry in full. I will provide a few snippets that demonstrate the foundation of his argument:
Every debate over expanded government surveillance power is invariably framed as one of "security v. privacy and civil liberties" -- as though it's a given that increasing the Government's surveillance authorities will "make us safer." But it has long been clear that the opposite is true. As numerous experts (such as Rep. Rush Holt) have attempted, with futility, to explain, expanding the scope of raw intelligence data collected by our national security agencies invariably impedes rather than bolsters efforts to detect terrorist plots. This is true for two reasons: (1) eliminating strict content limits on what can be surveilled (along with enforcement safeguards, such as judicial warrants) means that government agents spend substantial time scrutinizing and sorting through communications and other information that have nothing to do with terrorism; and (2) increasing the quantity of what is collected makes it more difficult to find information relevant to actual terrorism plots.
[...]
The failure of the U.S. Government to detect the fairly glaring Northwest Airlines Christmas plot -- despite years and years of constant expansions of Surveillance State powers -- illustrates this dynamic perfectly. As President Obama said yesterday, the Government -- just as was true for 9/11 -- had gathered more than enough information to have detected this plot, or at least to have kept Abdulmutallab off airplanes and out of the country. Yet our intelligence agencies -- just as was true for 9/11 -- failed to understand what they had in their possession. Why is that? Because they had too much to process, including too much data wholly unrelated to Terrorism. In other words, our panic-driven need to vest the Government with more and more surveillance power every time we get scared again by Terrorists -- in the name of keeping us safe -- has exactly the opposite effect.
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The problem is never that the U.S. Government lacks sufficient power to engage in surveillance, interceptions, intelligence-gathering and the like. Long before 9/11 -- from the Cold War -- we have vested extraordinarily broad surveillance powers in the U.S. Government to the point that we have turned ourselves into a National Security and Surveillance State. Terrorist attacks do not happen because there are too many restrictions on the government's ability to eavesdrop and intercept communications, or because there are too many safeguards and checks. If anything, the opposite is true: the excesses of the Surveillance State -- and the steady abolition of oversights and limits -- have made detection of plots far less likely. Despite that, we have an insatiable appetite -- especially when we're frightened anew -- to vest more and more unrestricted spying and other powers in our Government, which -- like all governments -- is more than happy to accept it.
When a new terrorism related incident unfolds (like the failed Christmas Day bombing) we also tend to see plenty of comments advocating policies that are based in reactionary fear. Not only are policies floated to expand the security state like Glenn mentions above, but we see figures come forward to advocate profiling and expanding military action against other countries. Another element that emerges and is also stomach-turning, is when politicians use these incidents to not only be reactionary but to use it as a political opportunity. Take Rep. Peter King (R-NY) on ABC when he is asked what President Obama could specifically do to improve counter-terrorism efforts. King responds that Obama should use the word "terrorism" more often:
Perhaps an appropriate follow-up would have been to ask King how using that word would specifically save lives.
Earlier today I posted an exchange between Spencer Ackerman and Pat Buchanan on MSNBC's "Morning Joe". The point that I wanted to make was that after incidents like the failed terrorist bombing of the Northwest flight on Christmas, we often see the reactionaries come out of the woodwork.
Like Buchanan they argue for torture as well as for racial profiling and preemptive military strikes against whichever country the suspect(s) is/are from. It is a disconcerting pattern that always takes us two steps backward in meaningful discussions on how to handle these threats to the country.
One important point that receives little to no discussion within the corporate media is the cause and effect cycle that has been repeated time and time again in these incidents. Glenn Greenwald highlights this point in this post today. Here is an excerpt:
In the wake of the latest failed terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines, one can smell the excitement in the air -- that all-too-familiar, giddy, bipartisan climate that emerges in American media discourse whenever there's a new country we get to learn about so that we can explain why we're morally and strategically justified in bombing it some more. "Yemen" is suddenly on every Serious Person's lips. We spent the last month centrally involved to some secret degree in waging air attacks on that country -- including some that resulted in numerous civilian deaths -- but everyone now knows that this isn't enough and it's time to Get Really Serious and Do More.
For all the endless, exciting talk about the latest Terrorist attack, one issue is, as usual, conspicuously absent: motive. Why would a young Nigerian from a wealthy, well-connected family want to blow himself up on one of our airplanes along with 300 innocent people, and why would Saudi and Yemeni extremists want to enable him to do so?
[...]
Despite that taboo, evidence always ends up emerging on this question. As numerous reports have indicated, the Al Qaeda group in the Arabian Peninsula has said that this attempted attack is in "retaliation" for the multiple, recent missile attacks on Yemen in which numerous innocent Muslim civilians were killed, as well as for the U.S.'s multi-faceted support for the not-exactly-democratic Yemeni government. That is similar to reports that Nidal Hasan was motivated to attack Fort Hood because "he was upset at the killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan."
[...]
As always, the most confounding aspect of the reaction to the latest attempted terrorist episode is the professed confusion and self-righteous innocence that is universally expressed. Whether justified or not, we are constantly delivering death to the Muslim world. We do not see it very much, but they certainly do. Again, independent of justification, what do we think is going to happen if we continuously invade, occupy and bomb Muslim countries and arm and enable others to do so? Isn't it obvious that our five-front actions are going to cause at least some Muslims -- subjected to constant images of American troops in their world and dead Muslim civilians at our hands, even if unintended -- to want to return the violence? Just look at the bloodthirsty sentiments unleashed among Americans even from a failed Terrorist attempt. What sentiments do we think we're unleashing from a decade-long (and continuing and increasing) multi-front "war" in the Muslim war?
In a media world full of pundits who immediately label terror suspects as the epitome of evil, a deeper discussion of causation is often missed. This is the same thing that happened after 9/11 and after countless other attempts at acts of terrorism. Isn't it slightly obvious that the bombing and occupation of Muslim countries could spawn the kind of backlash that would motivate someone to retaliate against the country that is doing the bombing? It would be nice to see these points inserted into the mainstream discussions after incidents like these.
Not surprisingly, Glenn Greenwald has a good take on the latest rift that is dividing progressives over the Senate health care reform legislation:
There are many reasons for the progressive division on the health care bill. There are differences over the narrow question of health care policy, with some believing the bill does more harm than good just on that ground alone. Some of it has to do with broader questions of political power: if progressives always announce that they are willing to accept whatever miniscule benefits are tossed at them (on the ground that it's better than nothing) and unfailingly support Democratic initiatives (on the ground that the GOP is worse), then they will (and should) always be ignored when it comes time to negotiate; nobody takes seriously the demands of those who announce they'll go along with whatever the final outcome is. But the most significant underlying division identified by Kilgore is the divergent views over the rapidly growing corporatism that defines our political system.
[...]
The health care bill is one of the most flagrant advancements of this corporatism yet, as it bizarrely forces millions of people to buy extremely inadequate products from the private health insurance industry -- regardless of whether they want it or, worse, whether they can afford it (even with some subsidies). In other words, it uses the power of government, the force of law, to give the greatest gift imaginable to this industry -- tens of millions of coerced customers, many of whom will be truly burdened by having to turn their money over to these corporations -- and is thus a truly extreme advancement of this corporatist model. It's undeniably true that the bill will also do some genuine good, as it will help many people who can't get coverage now to get it (though it will also severely burden many people with compelled, uncontrolled premiums and will potentially weaken coverage for millions as well). If one judges the bill purely from the narrow perspective of coverage, a rational and reasonable (though by no means conclusive) case can be made in its favor. But if one finds this creeping corporatism to be a truly disturbing and nefarious trend, then the bill will seem far less benign.
[...]
Even if one grants the arguments made by proponents of the health care bill about increased coverage, what the bill does is reinforces and bolsters a radically corrupt and flawed insurance model and and an even more corrupt and destructive model of "governing." It is a major step forward for the corporatist model, even a new innovation in propping it up. How one weighs those benefits and costs -- both in the health care debate and with regard to many of Obama's other policies -- depends largely upon how devoted one is to undermining and weakening this corporatist framework (as opposed to exploiting it for political gain and some policy aims).
It is important to remember that the public option was the compromise down from a single-payer system. Despite this, there are many good-hearted progressives who continue to accept compromise after compromise on this legislation. Even after Sen. Lieberman's episode this week successfully removed the public option and the Medicare buy-in, there are some who continue to defend the Obama Administration and call for passage of this bill. White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs even called Howard Dean "irrational" the other day for opposing the Senate's bill.
These continued "compromises" have led to the weakening of health care legislation. Who will these co-called "compromises" benefit? Just like always, the answer is the corporate interests. Greenwald is right to comment on how corporatist the government has shown itself to be, but one must wonder where the line be drawn with some of these progressives?
David Rohde is a New York Times reporter that was captured by the Taliban and held for seven months before he was released. He is currently writing about his time as a hostage in a series at the New York Times and in his second installment of the series today, he wrote:
For the next several nights, a stream of Haqqani commanders overflowing with hatred for the United States and Israel visited us, unleashing blistering critiques that would continue throughout our captivity.
Some of their comments were factual. They said large numbers of civilians had been killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories in aerial bombings. Muslim prisoners had been physically abused and sexually humiliated in Iraq. Scores of men had been detained in Cuba and Afghanistan for up to seven years without charges.
To Americans, these episodes were aberrations. To my captors, they were proof that the United States was a hypocritical and duplicitous power that flouted international law.
When I told them I was an innocent civilian who should be released, they responded that the United States had held and tortured Muslims in secret detention centers for years. Commanders said they themselves had been imprisoned, their families ignorant of their fate. Why, they asked, should they treat me differently?
Glenn Greenwald has been writing about this and reacts to this passage by Rohde by saying:
So much of this disparity is explained by a basic lack of empathy: imagine if every American spent just a day contemplating how they'd react if some foreign army from a Muslim nation invaded and bombed the U.S., occupied the country for the next several years with 60,000 soldiers, killed tens of thousands of citizens here, set up secret prisons where they disappeared Americans for years without charges or even contact with the outside world, imposed sanctions that blockaded food and medicine and killed countless children, invaded and ransacked our homes at will, abducted Americans and shipped them halfway around the world to island-prisons, instituted a worldwide torture regime, armed their allies for attacks on other Western nations, and threatened still other invasions.
Do you think Americans might be seething with rage about that, wanting to kill as many of the people from that country as possible? Wouldn't it be rather obvious that the more that was done to Americans, the more filled with hatred and a desire for violence they would be? Just consider the rage and fury and burning desire for vengeance that was unleashed by a one-day attack on U.S. soil, eight years ago, by a stateless band of extremists, that killed 3,000 people.
I came across a pretty amazing story today, the roots of which stem from the publishing of a new book that is described like this by acorcoran on the blog "Refugee Resettlement Watch":
In the mold of ACORN undercover investigators James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, another young brave man has infiltrated CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations), in this case as an intern, and has come out with mountains of documentation that the supposed Muslim civil rights group is really just a front for the radical Muslim Brotherhood in the US.
See New English Review or World Net Daily for the details on this amazing breakthrough that confirms what many of us have been assuming all along. I’ve just ordered my copy of “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America.”
and on top of the release of this book, some GOP members of the House have done this (from TPM):
Rep. Sue Myrick (R-NC)...Myrick and three other members of the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus came to a news conference today armed with Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America (WND Books, $22.95). They called on the sergeant at arms to investigate whether, as Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) put it, a group that "is connected to or supports terrorists [and] is running influence operations or planting spies in key national security-related offices."
WorldNetDaily describes the premise of the new book, i.e. the co-author's son getting into the Muslim advocacy group the only way he knew how, as a "bearded Muslim convert"
Uh-oh! Are scary Muslims really infiltrating our government to try and legitimize terrorism and convert us all to Sharia Law?
Oooh. Ahhh. Even Politico admits that a much-ballyhooed CAIR strategy document "basically lays out a fairly straight forward public relations and lobbying strategy." And yet these GOP McCarthyites are still targeting this group, sullying its reputation and making some pretty damning accusations. It would be one thing if they actually had evidence. Without it, this just looks like profiling, an assault on a legitimate organization. And why? Because it's Muslim. And we all know what these bigots think of Muslims.
CAIR is a non-profit organization of American citizens who are Muslim and their "mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding." They stand accused of plotting to influence members of Congress and trying to help interns obtain positions in Congress in order to advance their political agenda. That's consistent with what virtually every political advocacy group in the nation does; it's normally called activism and democracy. But because, in this case, it's a group of Muslims who are doing this, these House Republicans are depicting it as some sort of nefarious espionage plot against the U.S. that demands a criminal investigation.
[...]
Just to underscore how extremist the House GOP caucus is, this hysteria is all based on a new book entitled "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America." That's the source which these House members are using. In fact, one of the GOP House members, Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina, wrote the foreword to the book. One of the two authors of that book, Dave Gaubatz, maintains this website, where he's hawking the book through Paypal. Here's his mission statement at the top of the page:
"The donations will assist in exposing Islamic terrorist operations in America. The goal of the organizations: An Islamic Ummah (Nation) Worldwide, Under Islamic Sharia Law. These goals are widely distributed across America, yet ignored by most of our politicians and the Department of Homeland Security."
The entire site is filled with the most extreme and repugnant anti-Muslim paranoia imaginable, claiming that "CAIR represents the ideology of terrorist groups"; warning that "CAIR places 'insiders' into Congressional offices in order to push the CAIR and Islamic terrorist agendas"; displaying a photograph of Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim-American elected to Congress, with this caption: "One of your leading elected officials (supporter of CAIR) with researcher Chris Gaubatz. How much information do we have on Carson and Congressman Keith Ellison?; and warning that "Young Muslim children are being taught across America to engage in violence against non Muslims and Muslims who do not uphold Sharia law."
[...]
This is the ranting, insane hatemonger who House Republicans are now using as their expert source to demand an investigation into CAIR's villainous plot to place interns on Congressional committees. It would be darkly humorous if it weren't so ugly and dangerous.
This kind of fear-mongering that is being advanced by these four GOP representatives is ridiculous considering that all that CAIR is being accused of, is lobbying Congress and trying to establish members in positions of power. As Greenwald points out, this is precisely what every advocacy group tries to do, the only difference is that CAIR is a Muslim organization. What the scary aspect of this story is, is that members of the House GOP are taking this kind of nonsense seriously.
I am back from vacation and as I sift through some events and developments that I have missed, I came across a great discussion that took place last week on GRITtv. The conversation took place between independent journalist Jeremy Scahill, author and blogger Glenn Greenwald, and host of GRITtv Laura Flanders. They talked about the current state of the so-called mainstream media and what the role of the media should be. Here is the conversation:
With all of the recent discussion on Iran and their nuclear program, including President Obama's statements at the UN, it is only natural to begin to ask what lessons we learned from Iraq and how they are being applied to the current situation with Iran.
The reason such accusations deserve so much scrutiny is obvious: there is a substantial faction in our political culture which craves a military attack on Iran -- the same faction, more or less, that caused us to attack Iraq -- and will seize on anything to justify that. Anyone who doubts that should look at this creepily excited and chest-beating statement yesterday from Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, GOP Sen. John Kyl, and Sen. Joe Lieberman: Iraq War supporters all. Contradicting the 2007 NIE, they declare as an "inescapable conclusion" that "Iran is determined to acquire nuclear weapons." Their joint statement threatens "catastrophic consequences" against Iran and vows that "we are prepared to do whatever it takes to stop Iran's nuclear breakout." Just in case anyone is still confused by what they are threatening, they favorably cite a "bipartisan" report from former Senators Chuck Robb (D) and Dan Coats (R) which urges the President to begin preparing for military action against Iran, and lays out a detailed plan for what it would entail, beginning with a naval blockade and extending to "devastating strikes" against "assets" inside Iran that "would probably last up to several weeks and would require vigilance for years to come." That's what three key U.S. Senators are explicitly threatening.
In the absence of what they call "immediate" compliance, the Senators call for "crippling new sanctions against Iran." In The Washington Post today, AIPAC's most trusted House member -- Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D) -- similarly recommends sanctions that would "cause the Iranian banking system to collapse" and impose other severe economic hardships. So much for all of that oh-so-moving, profound, green-wearing concern for the welfare of The Iranian People. Time to bomb them or, at best, starve them until their government complies with our dictates. The Post Editorial Page repeats the same claim made for two decades about Iran ("officials say that when it is operational, it could deliver the material for a bomb in a year") and warns: "If it had not been discovered, the Qom plant could have given Iran the means for a bomb by 2011 without the world knowing about it. And if there is one clandestine facility, most likely there are others."
So we can all see where this is headed. Obama, to his credit, is one of the least inflammatory and fear-mongering establishment voices in all of this. And whatever else one might think of the whole Iran question, Obama officials -- just on a strategic level, in terms of negotiating tactics -- are infinitely smarter and more calculating than the ones who preceded them. They seem intent on formulating a negotiation strategy that will be most likely to resolve the matter through mutual agreement.
As ACORN is once again making news, it seems as though many Conservative voices in the media and in the blogosphere are poised to claim victory in demonstrating the vast network of corruption. NiceDeb is one voice of many that has posts like this up today:
Yes, ACORN is a thoroughly corrupt organization, and even stalwart libs can no longer deny it.
In recent days we’ve seen Congress finally take action in defunding ACORN. Now, private organizations, which have donated to ACORN “to make them go away” are being asked to stop funding the criminal organization (which Obama has been closely associated with). So that’s another revenue stream going going….hopefully gone, thanks to our young heroes, (who aren’t even through, yet. Next video to be dropped 9:00pm Eastern).
While conclusions are easy to jump to when you have been salivating at the possibility of putting this organization out of business for years, Anonymous Liberal encourages us to take a step back:
But even if you take these film-makers at face value and assume the worst, the reality is that ACORN has thousands of employees and the vast majority of them spend their days trying to help poor people through perfectly legal means (and receive very little compensation for doing so). Even before yesterday's Senate vote, the amount of federal money that went to ACORN was very small. This is a relatively insignificant organization in the grand scheme of things, but it's an organization that has unquestionably fought over the years to improve the lives of the less fortunate in this country.
That the GOP and its conservative supporters would single out this particular organization for such intense demonization is telling. In September of last year, the entire world came perilously close to complete financial catastrophe. We're still not out of the woods and we're deep within one of the worst recessions in U.S. history. This situation was brought about by the recklessness and greed of our banks and financial institutions, most of which had to be bailed out at enormous cost to the American taxpayer (exponentially more than all of the tax dollars given to ACORN over the years). The people who brought about this near catastrophe, for the most, profited immensely from it. These very same institutions, propped up by the American taxpayer, are once again raking in large profits.
But rather than focus their anger on these folks, conservatives choose to go after an organization composed almost entirely of low-paid community organizers, an organization that could never hope to have even a small fraction of the clout or the ability to affect the overall direction of the country that Wall Street bankers have. ACORN's relative lack of political influence was on full display yesterday, when the U.S. Senate (in which Democrats have a supermajority) not only entertained a vote to defund ACORN, but approved it by a huge margin (with only seven Democrats opposing).
Glenn Greenwald also speaks to how this acts mainly as a distraction:
If one were to watch Fox News or listen to Rush Limbaugh -- as millions do -- one would believe that the burden of the ordinary American taxpayer, and the unfair plight of America's rich, is that their money is being stolen by the poorest and most powerless sectors of the society. An organization whose constituencies are often-unregistered inner-city minorities, the homeless and the dispossesed is depicted as though it's Goldman Sachs, Blackwater, Haillburton and combined, as though Washington officials are in thrall to those living in poverty rather than those who fund their campaigns. It's not the nice men in the suits doing the stealing but the very people, often minorities or illegal immigrants, with no political or financial power who nonetheless somehow dominate the government and get everything for themselves. The poorer and weaker one is, the more one is demonized in right-wing mythology as all-powerful receipients of ill-gotten gains; conversely, the stronger and more powerful one is, the more one is depicted as an oppressed and put-upon victim (that same dynamic applies to foreign affairs as well).
It's such an obvious falsehood -- so counter-intuitive and irrational -- yet it resonates due to powerful cultural manipulations. Most of all, what's so pernicious about all of this is that the same interests who are stealing, pillaging and wallowing in corruption are scapegoating the poorest and most vulnerable in order to ensure that the victims of their behavior are furious with everyone except for them.
I think this is right on point. While I am in no way defending the actions of the ACORN employees that are depicted in the video tapes, context and perspective are too often overlooked in situations like these. The CEO of ACORN, Bertha Lewis, was on Democracy Now! this morning and stated that these two Conservative undercover operatives went to almost two dozen ACORN offices. She stated that they were told to leave, had the police called on them, or were turned away in two-third of their visits. She also stated that the applications for these two were never processed in any of the offices, which is proof that their vetting process works. I think that these two points are important to look into further in order to paint a more clear picture of the organization as a whole. It will help to show whether ACORN has some rouge employees or if this problem is more systematic than they are leading on.
It is also important to take the points of Anonymous Liberal and Glenn Greenwald into account as well. ACORN has received $53 million dollars since 1994 which is considerably less than other corrupt Wall Street institutions who have a much closer connection to the government and who have not had any funding cut off. Couple this with the recent treatment that conservatives have reaped upon Van Jones and other Administration officials and the full context of what is happening becomes a little clearer.
This is a more complicated situation than it initially appears and it is important to open up the discussion to put all elements of this ACORN issue on the table.
There have been a couple of good posts that I have read recently on the topic of the opposition to President Obama and all of the protests that have popped up since his election to the Presidency. It can be difficult to make sense of some of the mixed messages that we have seen out of these protests and when you take into consideration the support of national figures like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc. it really is a pretty weird scenario.
While there are some who are claiming that this rage and adamant opposition to Obama is unprecedented, Glenn Greenwald points out that this is merely standard operation procedure:
To see that, just look at what that movement's leading figures said and did during the Clinton years. In 1994, Jesse Helms, then-Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, claimed that "just about every military man" believes Clinton is unqualified to be Commander-in-Chief and then warned/threatened him not to venture onto military bases in the South: "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He better have a bodyguard."
The Wall St. Journal called for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the possible "murder" of Vince Foster. Clinton was relentlessly accused by leading right-wing voices of being a murderer, a serial rapist, and a drug trafficker. Tens of millions of dollars and barrels of media ink were expended investigating "Whitewater," a "scandal" which, to this day, virtually nobody can even define. When Clinton tried to kill Osama bin Laden, they accused him of "wagging the dog" -- trying to distract the country from the truly important matters at hand (his sex scandal).
And, of course, the GOP ultimately impeached him over that sex scandal -- in the process issuing a lengthy legal brief with footnotes detailing his sex acts (cigars and sex talk), publicly speculating about (and demanding examinations of) the unique "distinguishing" spots on his penis, and using leading right-wing organs to disseminate innuendo that he had an abandoned, out-of-wedlock child. More intense and constant attacks on a President's "legitimacy" are difficult to imagine.
[...]
Nothing that the GOP is doing to Obama should be the slightest bit surprising because this is the true face of the American Right -- and that's been true for a very long time now. It didn't just become true in the last few months or in the last two years. Recent months is just the time period when the media began noticing and acknowledging what they are: a pack of crazed, primitive radicals who don't really believe in the country's core founding values and don't merely disagree with, but contest the legitimacy of, any elected political officials who aren't part of their movement. Before the last year or so, the media pretended that this was a serious, adult, substantive political movement, but it wasn't any truer then than it is now.
Frankly, it is hard to argue with these points. I think one of the main differences that we are seeing today is how much this strategy is being amplified by certain figures within the media. I am talking about the Glenn Becks and Rush Limbaughs of the world who have embraced the opposition to Obama and to government in general. What was once political opposition driven by political figures of the 90's, has now morphed into that same opposition being embraced by national media figures as well as their viewers/listeners thus these views are presented as a genuine populist uprising. What happened between the terms of President Clinton and Obama that allowed for the evolution of these tactics? 9/11 happened and the Bush Administration's strategy to politicize 9/11 happened. driftglass over at Crooks and Liars tries to offer some insight:
By selling 9/11 for a mess of wingnut pottage, the Right bought itself an anti-Liberal free-fire zone and two Presidential terms-worth of blank checks. Two terms of an alternately supportive and supine media. Two terms of catastrophe, corruption and treason protected from scrutiny by an ablative shield made out of solid "Why do you hate America?", and a promise that they could go on barebacking diseased monsters in the alley all night long, every night, forever and wake up each morning miraculously clean, virginal and still beloved in the eyes of God.
But they forgot that tempus just keeps fugiting along. And as time passed, the Right got so accustomed to butt-scooting their depravity all over the public square and never being called on it they simply stopped noticing that they were amassing a whole new post-9/11 public record so despicable and overflowing with Conservative atrocities that it positively dwarfed their antics during the Clinton Years.
[...]
In the few, short months since they lost, they have emptied out their entire store of raving invective and delusion.
Losing has left them insisting that that the legally elected President of the United States somehow isn't really the President. That he is a secret enemy. A Communist. A Hitler. A Muslim sleeper cell. A Chicago gangster.
Has left them swearing that "their country" has been stolen and that somewhere hidden in secret code in a 1,000 health care bill is a plan to murder senior citizens.
To understand how deep and relentless their addiction goes, you need only consider the recent example of Mrs. Katy Abram, who leaped into microcelebrity and the wingnut pantheon a month ago with her Clown Hall rant of “I don’t want my county to become Russia!” speech.
Mrs. Katy Abram wants the world to believe that, like a wingnut Sleeping Beauty, she somehow slept through 9/11.
Slept through two wars and the two trillion dollar bill they racked up.
Slept through tax cuts for the wealthy that added another few trillion to our debt.
Slept through Katrina.
Slept through Terri Schiavo.
Slept through the screams of the Constitution as Bush Administration fed it an inch at a time through the wood chipper (the same Constitution she is now so deeply concerned about that she has somehow become, virtually overnight, an “original intent” quote-spewing expert) only to be awakened in a sudden, patriotic fury by the sound of a Black Democrat taking the oath of office.
One of the points that driftglass is getting at is a question that I have often found myself muttering allowed as I watch these town hall meetings and protests. Where were all of these people during the last eight years? This is precisely what makes this situation so odd and so puzzling when you look at this issue from the surface. We now have a group within the population who are suddenly concerned about the expansion of federal power, concerned about the Constitution, and concerned about spending. There were not any tea-parties over the last eight years and those who did raise questions about the actions of the Bush Administration were laughed at and viewed as traitors. 9/11 was used as a rationale for supporting the government then, just as Glenn Beck is using 9/11 as a rationale for opposing the government now.
Glenn Greenwald breaks down this seemingly odd behavior (emphasis mine):
Just as was true for the 1994 crime bill, the right-wing fury over health care reform is motivated by the fear that middle-class Americans will have their money taken away by Obama while -- all together now, euphemistically -- "having someone else benefit." And this "someone else" are, as always, the poor minorities and other undeserving deadbeats who, in right-wing lore, somehow (despite their sorry state) exert immensely powerful influence over the U.S. Government and are thus the beneficiaries of endless, undeserved largesse: people too lazy to work, illegal immigrants, those living below the poverty line. That's why Joe Wilson's outburst resonated so forcefully among the Right and why he became an immediate folk hero: he was voicing the core right-wing fear that their money was being stolen from them by Obama in order to lavish the Undeserving and the Others -- in this case illegal immigrants -- with ill-gotten gains.
This is the paradox of the tea-party movement and other right-wing protests fueled by genuine citizen anger and fear. It is true that the federal government embraces redistributive policies and that middle-class income is seized in order that "someone else benefits." But so obviously, that "someone else" who is benefiting is not the poor and lower classes -- who continue to get poorer as the numbers living below the poverty line expand and the rich-poor gap grows in the U.S. to unprecedented proportions. The "someone else" that is benefiting from Washington policies are -- as usual -- the super-rich, the tiny number of huge corporations which literally own and control the Government. The premise of these citizen protests is not wrong: Washington politicians are in thrall to special interests and are, in essence, corruptly stealing the country's economic security in order to provide increasing benefits to a small and undeserving minority. But the "minority" here isn't what Fox News means by that term, but is the tiny sliver of corporate power which literally writes our laws and, in every case, ends up benefiting.
[...]
This is what is so strange and remarkable about these tea-party protests. The people who win when government acts aren't the poor, minorities or illegal immigrants -- the prime targets of these protesters' resentment. Their plight only worsens by the day. In Washington, members of those groups are even more powerless than "middle-income Americans." That's so obvious. The people who win whenever the federal government expands its power are the ones who, through their massive resources and lobbyists armies, control what the government does: the richest and most powerful corporations. And yet -- in an extreme paradox -- those are the people who are venerated by the Right: they simultaneously spew rage at what's happening in Washington while revering and defending the interests of the oligarchs who are most responsible.
What's really happening with these protests is that the genuine rage and not unreasonable economic insecurity of these citizens is being stoked, exploited, distorted and manipulated by movement leaders for entirely different ends. The people who are leading them -- Rush Limbaugh, the Murdoch-owned Fox News, Glenn Beck, business-dominated organizations of the type led by Dick Armey -- are cultural warriors above everything else. They're all in a far different socioeconomic position than the "middle-income Americans" whose anger they're ostensibly representing. Their principal preoccupation is their cultural contempt for various groups (illegal immigrants, the "undeserving" poor, liberals) and their desire to preserve the status quo whereby the prime beneficiaries of government policies remain themselves: the super rich and the interests that control Washington. It's certainly true that many of these protesters are driven by the standard right-wing cultural issues which have long shaped that movement -- social issues, religious fears, cultural and racial divisions, and hatred for "liberals" as Communist-Muslim-Terrorist-lovers. For many, all of that is intensified by the humiliation of being completely thrown out of power, at the hands of the first black President. But much of it is fueled by the pillaging of the corporations and Wall St. interests which own their government.
That's what accounts for the gaping paradox of these protests movements: genuine anger (over the core corruption of Washington and the eroding economic security for virtually everyone other than a tiny minority) is being bizarrely directed at those who never benefit (the poorest and most downtrodden), while those who are most responsible (the wealthiest and largest corporations) are depicted as the victims who need defending (they want to seize Wall St. bonuses and soak the rich!!).
The paradox that we are seeing is exactly as Greenwald describes and it helps to explain why everything seems like it is flipped on its head.
Health care dominated the morning briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who denied reports that the White House and Democrats are giving up on a bipartisan reform bill.
“Absolutely not,” Gibbs said. “We continue to be hopeful that we can get bipartisan support and will continue to work with those that are interested in doing that.”
“Our goal is to get this done in a bipartisan way,” he said. “There are several more weeks to go in potential negotiations between Republicans and Democrats. I don’t know why we would short circuit any of that now.”
Is it insane to think that there will be any productive negotiations that will lead to getting health care done in a "bipartisan way"? I tend to think that when you have the Republicans on one side, obviously opposed to any type of health care reform, it is crazy to think that any type of negotiation will result in a health care bill that is the best piece of legislation that can be crafted for the good of the American people.
Glenn Greenwald has some thoughts on those who think it is insane:
That's obviously true. In fact, it's so obviously true that no matter how dumb one might think Democrats are, they're certainly not so dumb that they failed to realize that the GOP was highly unlikely to help Obama pass health care reform no matter what the bill contained. From the start, it's been obvious to everyone -- the Obama White House and Senate Democrats included -- that the GOP would not help Obama pass health care reform. Why would the GOP want to help Obama achieve one of his most important and politically profitable goals? Of course they were going to try to sabotage the entire project and would oppose health care reform no matter what form it took.
So the question practically begs itself. If President Obama and the White House are looking for robust reform and the Republicans have indicated that they are going to vote against any reform that is proposed, then why doesn't the White House exclude the Republicans and put pressure on the Blue Dogs in order to get the legislation passed?
Again, Glenn Greenwald:
The attempt to attract GOP support was the pretext which Democrats used to compromise continuously and water down the bill. But -- given the impossibility of achieving that goal -- isn't it fairly obvious that a desire for GOP support wasn't really the reason the Democrats were constantly watering down their own bill? Given the White House's central role in negotiating a secret deal with the pharmaceutical industry, its betrayal of Obama's clear promise to conduct negotiations out in the open (on C-SPAN no less), Rahm's protection of Blue Dogs and accompanying attacks on progressives, and the complete lack of any pressure exerted on allegedly obstructionists "centrists," it seems rather clear that the bill has been watered down, and the "public option" jettisoned, because that's the bill they want -- this was the plan all along.
This is precisely why the Progressives drawing the proverbial "line in the sand" is so important. They have the numbers to defeat the Blue Dog Coalition's influence on watering-down and "compromising" on this legislation. The key is that the Progressive Coalition needs to continue hold their ground on the public option and force the Democratic Party to stand up to the interests that are hell-bent on protecting the status quo.
Alicia Shepard, Ombudsman for National Public Radio, has continually been appearing on NPR programming to defend NPR's policy of not referring to so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" as torture. There has been an interesting development since I wrote about this issue last week that takes Shepard's defense from sad, to ridiculous.
Finally, I was on an NPR station yesterday in Seattle to discuss NPR's ban on the use of the word "torture" to describe Bush administration interrogation tactics. I originally understood that I would be on with NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard, but alas, it turns out that she agreed only to be on the show before me, so as not to engage or otherwise interact with me, so I was forced to listen to her for 15 minutes and wait until she hung up before being able to speak. The segment can be heard here, beginning at the 14:00 mark (though the quality of the recording is poor in places).
The most noteworthy point was her explicit statement (at 17:50) that "the role of a news organization is to lay out the debate"; rarely is the stenographic model of "journalism" -- "we just repeat what each side says and leave it at that" -- so expressly advocated (and see Jon Stewart's perfect mockery of that view). She also said -- when the host asked about the recent example I cited of NPR's calling what was done to a reporter in Gambia "torture" (at the 20:20 mark) -- that NPR will use the word "torture" to describe what other governments do because they do it merely to sadistically inflict pain on people while the U.S. did it for a noble reason: to obtain information about Terrorist attacks. That's really what she said: that when the U.S. did it (as opposed to Evil countries), it was for a good reason. Leaving aside the factual falsity of her claim about American motives, Shepard actually thinks that "torture" is determined by the motive with which the suffering is inflicted. The connection between the Government's ability to get away with these things and the media's warped view of its role really cannot be overstated.
[...]
I've been going back and forth on whether Shepard's deficiency is primarily one of intellect or whether she's just a hard-core Cheneyite. I'm now convinced -- after her statements yesterday on that show I did with after her -- that it's both.
Anyone who can say that what we do is not "torture" because we do it for the right reasons -- whereas it's "torture" when those other countries do it because they're sadistic and bad -- is someone who is devoid of both basic reasoning skills and good motives.
For the record, here's what she actually said about NPR's piece on Gambia:
In that case, these were strictly tactics to torture him, to punish him, versus in the United States, and the way that it's used, these are tactics used to get information. The Gambian journalist was in jail for his beliefs.
Wow. She really did say that, didn't she? When other people do it for other reasons, it's torture. When we do it for our reasons, it's not.
You don't usually find people willing to say this quite so baldly. Congratulations, Alicia Shepard.
Astounding isn't it? Shepard's defense of NPR's decision to not use the word "torture" (in describing the tactics approved by the Bush Administration) has descended into the realm of pathetic. To (wrongly) advance the argument or moral superiority when discussing the reasoning behind torture and then using that as justification for why NPR shouldn't call it torture, is absurd on every possible level. Shepard's defense boils down to "we torture for good reasons" and "others torture for bad reasons", therefore, we shouldn't describe our techniques as "torture" when reporting on them. Can it be any clearer why critical journalism is suffering? And this is from National Public Radio.
I have been keeping an eye on an interesting back and forth that has been going on over the last week between the Ombudsman for National Public Radio, Alicia Shepard and journalist Glenn Greenwald.
Shepard has been receiving emails from listeners of NPR about their policy of not using the word "torture" in describing waterboarding and other techniques that were used during the interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody. (Instead, NPR opts to use the terms "harsh interrogation tactics" and "enhanced interrogation techniques".)
In response to these letters from viewers, Shepard wrote a piece in order to address these concerns. From her article:
How should NPR describe the tactics used to coerce information out of terrorism suspects?
Ted Koppel, the former ABC Nightline host and commentator on Talk of the Nation, said in May that the U.S. should "define it [torture] as being any technique or practice which, when applied to an American prisoner in some other country or captured by some other entity, that we would object to. If we object to it being done to an American, then I think it's thttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=114432749054567487orture."
That seems clear enough, but the problem is that the word torture is loaded with political and social implications for several reasons, including the fact that torture is illegal under U.S. law and international treaties the United States has signed.
Both Presidents Bush and Obama have insisted that the United States does not use torture. Officials during the Bush administration acknowledged the use of what they called "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Also, not all interrogation could be classified as torture. Sleep deprivation, nudity and facial slaps are different from, say, pouring water on a cloth over someone's face for 20 to 40 seconds to create the sensation of drowning -- a practice known as waterboarding.
[...]
It's a no-win case for journalists. If journalists use the words "harsh interrogation techniques," they can be seen as siding with the White House and the language that some U.S. officials, particularly in the Bush administration, prefer. If journalists use the word "torture," then they can be accused of siding with those who are particularly and visibly still angry at the previous administration.
There has been no clear consensus on what constitutes torture, noted Brian Duffy, NPR's former managing editor in late April.
[...]
To me, it makes more sense to describe the techniques and skip the characterization. For example, reporters could say that the U.S. military poured water down a detainee's mouth and nostrils for 40 seconds. Or they could detail such self-explanatory techniques as forcing detainees into cramped confines crawling with insects, or forced to stand for hours along side a wall.
A basic rule of vivid writing is: "Show, Don't Tell." An excellent example of using facts rather than coded language was a 2005 piece by former NPR reporter John McChesney. It gave meticulous details of tactics used against an Iraqi detainee at Abu Graib who later died.
Glenn Greenwald, who has written extensively about the issue of torture and the media coverage that surrounds the debate, responded to Shepard's piece with an entry of his own. Greenwald writes:
She describes Koppel’s standard as "clear enough" -- and it is. So why doesn’t NPR use that standard? Because -- she argues -- "the word torture is loaded with political and social implications for several reasons, including the fact that torture is illegal under U.S. law and international treaties the United States has signed."
So what? How does the fact that torture is illegal mean that NPR shouldn’t describe as "torture" tactics which -- when used against Americans -- the U.S. government has long condemned as "torture"? Her objection to Koppel’s very sensible standard is a total non-sequitur. How does the criminality of torture serve as an argument against what Koppel advocated? It doesn't. She’s just in defend-NPR-at-any-cost mode and wants to justify its refusal to use the word "torture," and Koppel’s standard would compel the opposite conclusion, because so many of the tactics that were authorized by Bush were ones the U.S. -- and the rest of the civilized world -- have always called "torture."
[...]
The U.S. has prosecuted those acts as torture in the past. Multiple media outlets and even the U.S. Government have routinely described those acts as “torture” when used against Americans, rather than by Americans. The tactics are ones we copied from manuals designed to inure our own troops to the torture techniques used by some of the world’s worst tyrants. They resulted in numerous deaths. Until the Bush administration decided to call it something other than "torture" so that they could do it, nobody had any questions about whether this was "torture."
If there are tactics about which there is a reasonable dispute, then those need not be called torture by NPR. But many of the tactics that were authorized are "torture" in every sense of the word.
[...]
Here’s the nub of the matter – the crux of journalistic decay in America. Who cares if NPR is "seen" as siding with the White House or its critics? How it is perceived -- and who it angers -- should have nothing to do with how it reports. Its reporting should be guided by the truth, by verifiable facts, and by the objective meaning of words [notably, NPR's excuse -- "the Right will get angry at us if we call it 'torture'" -- is identical to The Washington Post's excuse for why they stopped calling Dan Froomkin a reporter (it angers the Right); it's amazing how much The Liberal Media makes editorial decisions based on a desire to please the Right].
Also, note that Shepard explicitly admits that, with its language choice, NPR has opted to be "seen siding with the White House and the language that some U.S. officials, particularly in the Bush administration, prefer." That, too, is an odd choice for a supposedly Liberal Media outlet. And note her snide and revealing assumption -- conventional wisdom among the establishment media -- that the only people who want these tactics to be called "torture" are those "who are particularly and visibly still angry at the previous administration" (or, as David Ignatius put it, "liberal score-settlers").
Greenwald then extended an interview request to Shepard so that the two could discuss the issue on Salon Radio. Shepard declined the request saying that she didn't want to get into a "shouting match". Instead, Shepard has gone on a couple of NPR shows to discuss and defend her article. Here is an audio clip of her on "On The Media" offering some of the same justification:
In response Greenwald wrote another piece highlighting the fact that Shepard had declined the interview request, pointing out that none of his interviews could be categorized as a "shouting match", and further criticizing her position. That entry resulted in this wacky email exchange between NPR's Senior Manager of Media Relations, Anna Christopher, and Glenn:
E-mail from Anna Christopher to GG:
Glenn,
I just saw your most recent column, criticizing Lisa [sic] Shepard for declining your interview request. Could you please give me a call when you have a chance?
If you or your interns want to make a request to interview NPR staff, that goes through me. I would have been able to tell your intern – who so tenaciously pursued her last week – that Lisa was on vacation and unreachable until Thursday. She didn’t ignore your request. And the last time I checked, requests are just that – requests. Not demands. Able to be accepted or declined.
Thank you,
Anna
Anna Christopher | Senior Manager, Media Relations
* * * * *
Reply from GG to Anna Christopher:
Anna - You apparently didn't read the column very carefully. We were told by someone from NPR -- Anna Tauzin -- that Alicia Shepard was [out of the office] last week and would therefore respond to the interview request by Monday. That's exactly what I wrote today. Tauzin did authorize us to say: "We were told by NPR that the Ombudsman is out of the office this week and her office will get back to us by Monday with a response." That's exactly what I wrote.
I didn't say she ignored my request, so why would you deny that she did? In fact, I said the opposite: that she responded to the request by refusing to be interviewed.
If there are internal NPR structures about who has what responsibilities, that's up to NPR to make clear. Tauzin never once said it was you who had to be contacted for the interview request. She was more than willing to convey the request to Shepard, and the Salon intern then spoke with Shepard herself yesterday.
I didn't suggest that Shepard broke the law by refusing to be interviewed by me -- only that people like her who opine pedantically on controversial matters have an ethical obligation to engage critics of their views.
If you'd still like to talk, let me know and I'll give you a call -
Glenn Greenwald
* * * * *
No further reply received from NPR.
In listening to Shepard's responses and her other appearance on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" yesterday, she continues to assert that this is a political debate and that NPR should not be taking sides in this debate by labeling tactics such as waterboarding, as torture. This is an important point in her defense and in journalism today as a whole. Shepard appears to view objectivity as presenting both sides of a debate and letting the viewers/listeners decide for themselves what is true. This should not be the role of journalists whose job it is to collect facts on a story and then present these facts regardless of who it offends or how they will be "perceived" by one side of the debate.
Objectivity is not saying "while one side of the debate claims that 2 plus 2 equals four, others are arguing that 2 plus 2 actually equals five." The role of journalism is to assert that it is an undeniable fact that 2 plus 2 equals four and that the people who disputing this fact have no basis for doing so. In this example above, if one presents both "sides" of this story, it gives equal validation to both arguments regardless of the indisputable fact that 2 plus 2 really does equal four. There can be no debate over this so why should it be the role of a journalist to pretend like there is one?
Similarly, just because the Bush Administration claims that waterboarding, a tactic which they approved and used on detainees, does not constitute torture does not automatically make it so. I am glad that Greenwald pointed out an exchange that happened on the Daily Show back in 2004 which illustrates this quite well:
Stewart: Here's what puzzles me most, Rob. John Kerry's record in Vietnam is pretty much right there in the official records of the U.S. military, and hasn't been disputed for 35 years. Corddry: That's right, Jon, and that's certainly the spin you'll be hearing coming from the Kerry campaign over the next few days. Stewart: That's not a spin thing, that's a fact. That's established. Corddry: Exactly, Jon, and that established, incontrovertible fact is one side of the story. Stewart: But isn't that the end of the story? I mean, you've seen the records, haven't you? What's your opinion? Corddry: I'm sorry, "my opinion"? I don't have opinions. I'm a reporter, Jon, and my job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other. Little thing called "objectivity"—might want to look it up some day. Stewart: Doesn't objectivity mean objectively weighing the evidence, and calling out what's credible and what isn't? Corddry: Whoa-ho! Sounds like someone wants the media to act as a filter! Listen, buddy: Not my job to stand between the people talking to me and the people listening to me.
Without objective analysis of facts and evidence by journalists, they merely become stenographers who repeat what they hear no matter the validity of the claims. Under this policy, all one side would need to do would be to lie, assert the lies as fact, and get them out into the media to make their claims look like they have credibility. As Judith Miller knows all too well, this is probably not the best strategy.
Alicia Shepard's defense of the official NPR policy is a prime example of what is wrong with the so-called "mainstream media" in today's country and it shows just have far journalistic integrity has slipped over the years. In the "Talk of the Nation" segment she specifically states that in the discussion surrounding torture the Bush Administration does "have a different side. Whether it is to dupe people or not, again, the role of a journalist is to put that information out there..." So according to Shepard, even if government officials are lying or trying to "dupe" people, it is the "role of journalists" to put that false message out to the public without any investigation into the validity of the claims so the public can draw their own conclusions.
If anyone is still wondering how the media could have provided us with coverage that helped lead us into the Iraq War, this is a prime exhibit of the mindset that allows for the media to uncritically report facetious claims.
Doctors and nurses have started to protest in Tehran over the recent murders:
Glenn Greenwald wonders what would have happened if those who had wanted to bomb Iran had had their way:
Much of the same faction now claiming such concern for the welfare of The Iranian People are the same people who have long been advocating a military attack on Iran and the dropping of large numbers of bombs on their country -- actions which would result in the slaughter of many of those very same Iranian People. During the presidential campaign, John McCain infamously sang about Bomb, Bomb, Bomb-ing Iran. The Wall St. Journal published a war screed from Commentary's Norman Podhoretz entitled "The Case for Bombing Iran," and following that, Podhoretz said in an interview that he "hopes and prays" that the U.S. "bombs the Iranians." John Bolton and Joe Lieberman advocated the same bombing campaign, while Bill Kristol -- with typical prescience -- hopefully suggested that Bush might bomb Iran if Obama were elected. Rudy Giuliani actually said he would be open to a first-strike nuclear attack on Iran in order to stop their nuclear program.
Imagine how many of the people protesting this week would be dead if any of these bombing advocates had their way -- just as those who paraded around (and still parade around) under the banner of Liberating the Iraqi People caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of them, at least. Hopefully, one of the principal benefits of the turmoil in Iran is that it humanizes whoever the latest Enemy is.
Meanwhile, the crackdown on foreign media is beginning to intensify. From CBS:
Iran's hard-line regime, starting to show stress under the mounting pressure of massive opposition rallies, has told foreign media that if they're seen on the streets of Tehran today with a camera, they will be arrested.
President Obama has some interesting supporters who agree with his decision to block the release additional photos of detainee abuse by U.S. forces.
Last night on The O'Reilly Factor , host Bill O'Reilly and Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) praised Obama for his commitment to keep these photos under lock and key. Graham and Lieberman are trying to push through the Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 that would ban the release of any photo between 9/11/01 and 1/22/09 that would "endanger the troops". The Senators and O'Reilly also took the time to chide those on the "far-left" for not caring about the lives of U.S. troops because of their advocacy for the release of these photos. Watch:
The New York Times has obtained three 2004 emails from then Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey, that lend some new insight into the internal discussions that surrounded the issue of interrogation techniques and the publication of the "torture memos" in 2004 and 2005.
I first read the emails and then the New York Times article and wondered if the New York Times had analyzed the same memos that I had read. From the NYT piece:
When Justice Department lawyers engaged in a sharp internal debate in 2005 over brutal interrogation techniques, even some who believed that using tough tactics was a serious mistake agreed on a basic point: the methods themselves were legal.
Previously undisclosed Justice Department e-mail messages, interviews and newly declassified documents show that some of the lawyers, including James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general who argued repeatedly that the United States would regret using harsh methods, went along with a 2005 legal opinion asserting that the techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency were lawful.
There is nothing in the emails that indicate Comey had agreed that the interrogations techniques outlined in the DOJ "torture memos", were legal. To the contrary, he raised fierce objections to the program and warned that the opinions would come back to haunt the administration. emptywheel has more analysis of the problems with the New York Times article here.
So, what do these newly leaked emails tell us? Glenn Greenwald has a great post that breaks down the emails:
The DOJ torture-authorizing memos are perfectly analogous to the CIA's pre-war intelligence reports about Iraq's WMDs. Bush officials justify their pre-war statements about WMDs by pointing to the CIA's reports -- as though those reports just magically appeared on their desks from the CIA -- when, as is well documented, Dick Cheney and friends were continuously pressuring and cajoling the CIA to give them those threat reports in order to supply bureaucratic justification for the attack on Iraq. That is exactly how the DOJ torture-authorizing memos came to be: Dick Cheney, David Addington and George Bush himself continuously exerted extreme pressure on DOJ lawyers to produce memos authorizing them to do what they wanted to do -- not because they were interested in knowing in good faith what the law did and did not allow, but because they wanted DOJ memos as cover -- legal immunity -- for the torture they had already ordered and were continuing to order. Though one won't find this in the NYT article, that is, far and away, the most important revelation from the Comey emails.
[...]
But the real story here is obvious -- these DOJ memos authorizing torture were anything but the by-product of independent, good faith legal analysis. Instead, those memos -- just like the pre-war CIA reports about The Threat of Saddam -- were coerced by White House officials eager for bureaucratic cover for what they had already ordered. This was done precisely so that once this all became public, they could point to those memos and have the political and media establishment excuse what they did ("Oh, they only did what they DOJ told them was legal"'/"Oh, they were only reacting to CIA warnings about Saddam's weapons"). These DOJ memos, like the CIA reports, were all engineered by the White House to give cover to what they wanted to do; they were not the precipitating events that led to and justified those decisions. That is the critical point proven by the Comey emails, and it is completely obscured by the NYT article, which instead trumpets the opposite point ("Unanimity at DOJ that these tactics were legal") because that's the story their leaking sources wanted them to promote.
These emails give interesting insight into the pressure that was put on the DOJ by former Vice President Cheney, Harriet Miers, David Addington, and President Bush to publish the opinions expressed in the "torture memos", that the use of these various techniques (that were already being used) were legal. Comey even mentioned that he believed that this program would eventually become public and that the Administration would justify their actions by pointing to these very DOJ opinions. Greenwald points out the important point that the pressure being put on the DOJ to release these opinions, are a very good indication that the opinions were released not in good faith, but because of the intense pressure that the Bush Administration put on DOJ so that they would release opinions that were concurrent with what they wanted to do.
With much of the country's focus on Obama's trip to Egypt, his Supreme Court nominee, and the murder of George Tiller, there is one important item that seems to be flying under the radar.
Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) have jointly sponsored a bill entitled "The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009". This bill is aimed at suppressing any photograph between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 that relates to the treatment and/or capture of detainees by U.S. Armed Forces should the Secretary of Defense certify that they would endanger U.S. troops or American citizens. The decision by the Secretary of Defense would last for three years, is renewable for an indefinite period of time, and trumps any decision under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Just imagine if any other country did this. Imagine if a foreign government were accused of systematically torturing and otherwise brutally abusing detainees in its custody for years, and there was ample photographic evidence proving the extent and brutality of the abuse. Further imagine that the country's judiciary -- applying decades-old transparency laws -- ruled that the government was legally required to make that evidence public. But in response, that country's President demanded that those transparency laws be retroactively changed for no reason other than to explicitly empower him to keep the photographic evidence suppressed, and a compliant Congress then immediately passed a new law empowering the President to suppress that evidence. What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people? Read the language of the bill; it doesn't even hide the fact that its only objective is to empower the President to conceal evidence of war crimes.
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The debate over whether there is value in disclosing these specific photographs is entirely misplaced. That isn't how open government works. The burden isn't on citizens to prove that there is value in disclosure. Everything that government does is supposed to be transparent to the public unless there is a compelling reason for secrecy -- and the whole point of FOIA always has been that mere embarrassment, the mere fact that information reflects poorly on our government, isn't a legitimate ground for concealment. That's a critical principle for open government. This new law explicitly guts that principle. It institutionalizes the pernicious notion that secrecy is justified where disclosure would reflect badly on the Government and thus "endanger" American citizens and/or our troops.
Barack Obama ran a campaign that was highly critical of the secrecy of the last eight years under the Bush Administration and promised greater transparency. This bill, which Obama supports, seeks to implement a greater level of secrecy and executive power that goes a level beyond even that of President Bush. The Senate has unanimously passed this bill but it appears that it may have trouble getting through the House.
But passage of Graham-Lieberman now appears much less certain because of what appears to be the refusal of some key liberal House Democrats -- including Barney Frank -- to support it. The votes of liberal House Democrats actually matter (for once) because most House Republicans are refusing to support the overall supplemental bill due to their objections to a provision for $5 billion in funding to increase the IMF's lending capacity. To pass the supplemental spending bill, House leaders need the votes of numerous House Democrats who are currently refusing to vote for anything that contains the photo suppression amendment. If Congressional Democrats succeed in blocking enactment of this amendment, that would be a critical assertion for the first time of Congressional checks on Obama's desired powers and would, independently, prevent a truly odious new secrecy power from being enacted.
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If, as Obama claims, there are legitimate reasons to suppress these photos under FOIA's exemptions (including its very broad national security exemptions), then the Supreme Court can reverse the two lower court rulings ordering disclosure -- as Obama is asking it to do. But there is no good reason to vest the Obama administration with the unilateral power to simply waive FOIA requirements simply because it loses in court and decides it doesn't want to comply with court rulings and with current transparency laws.
FOIA was enacted by Congress in 1966 -- more than 40 years ago -- and, in 1974, Congress overrode a presidential veto of amendments that expanded its disclosure requirements in the wake of Nixonian secrecy abuses. Congress should defend and insist on presidential compliance with the important transparency law it passed and repeatedly strengthened -- not allow the White House and Republicans to jointly render it illusory by retroactively narrowing its provisions, all because the Obama White House wants to suppress evidence of Bush's war crimes in the face of clear FOIA requirements compelling disclosure.
Yesterday I posted an entry prior to, what the media was dubbing as, the "dueling speeches" between President Obama and Vice President Cheney on anti-terrorism policy.
President Obama went first and gave a speech that was highly critical of the Bush Administration's policies over the last eight years:
Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. I believe that many of these decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that all too often our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight; that all too often our government trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions.
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the decisions that were made over the last eight years established an ad hoc legal approach for fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable -- a framework that failed to rely on our legal traditions and time-tested institutions, and that failed to use our values as a compass. And that's why I took several steps upon taking office to better protect the American people.
Obama went on to condemn waterboarding and torture, defend his decision to close the military base at Guantanamo Bay, and assure the people of the United States that we are a country that adheres to the rule of law and to the Constitution. It was a good speech that was well delivered and spoke very eloquently about the United States as a country that is obligated to respect and adhere to the principles upon which it was founded.
As expected, Dick Cheney's speech was sharply critical of President Obama for the decisions that he has made since being elected to the Presidency. Cheney also defending the decision made by the Bush Administration as well as the legacy that their policies have left behind:
What is equally certain is this: The broad-based strategy set in motion by President Bush obviously had nothing to do with causing the events of 9/11. But the serious way we dealt with terrorists from then on, and all the intelligence we gathered in that time, had everything to do with preventing another 9/11 on our watch. The enhanced interrogations of high-value detainees and the terrorist surveillance program have without question made our country safer. Every senior official who has been briefed on these classified matters knows of specific attacks that were in the planning stages and were stopped by the programs we put in place.
There have been some good reactions and observations on both speeches and I would like to share a few of them with you. First is the assessment that McClatchy Newspapers gave of Dick Cheney's speech in which they say that Cheney "ignored some inconvenient truths" in his speech. Here are a few examples from the McClatchy piece:
_ Cheney denied that there was any connection between the Bush administration's interrogation policies and the abuse of detainee at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, which he blamed on "a few sadistic guards . . . in violation of American law, military regulations and simple decency."
However, a bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report in December traced the abuses at Abu Ghraib to the approval of the techniques by senior Bush administration officials, including former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," said the report issued by Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and John McCain, R-Ariz. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality and authorized their use against detainees."
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_ Cheney said that only "ruthless enemies of this country" were detained by U.S. operatives overseas and taken to secret U.S. prisons.
A 2008 McClatchy investigation, however, found that the vast majority of Guantanamo detainees captured in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent citizens or low-level fighters of little intelligence value who were turned over to American officials for money or because of personal or political rivalries.
In addition, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Oct. 5, 2005, that the Bush administration had admitted to her that it had mistakenly abducted a German citizen, Khaled Masri, from Macedonia in January 2004.
Masri reportedly was flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan, where he allegedly was abused while being interrogated. He was released in May 2004 and dumped on a remote road in Albania.
In January 2007, the German government issued arrest warrants for 13 alleged CIA operatives on charges of kidnapping Masri.
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_ Cheney said that, in assessing the security environment after 9-11, the Bush team had to take into account "dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists."
Cheney didn't explicitly repeat the contention he made repeatedly in office: that Saddam cooperated with al Qaida, a linkage that U.S. intelligence officials and numerous official inquiries have rebutted repeatedly.
The late Iraqi dictator's association with terrorists vacillated and was mostly aimed at quashing opponents and critics at home and abroad.
The last State Department report on international terrorism to be released before 9-11 said that Saddam's regime "has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since its failed plot to assassinate former President (George H.W.) Bush in 1993 in Kuwait."
A Pentagon study released last year, based on a review of 600,000 Iraqi documents captured after the U.S.-led invasion, concluded that while Saddam supported militant Palestinian groups — the late terrorist Abu Nidal found refuge in Baghdad, at least until Saddam had him killed — the Iraqi security services had no "direct operational link" with al Qaida.
Cheney's speech was quite typical of speeches that were given by various Bush Administration officials during their time in office. They mischaracterized facts, omitted contrary information, and flat-out lied in order to defend their lawless and reckless behavior. Instead of once again tearing down the neo-conservative agenda for the remainder of this post, let's return to the President.
There has also been some worthy criticism of Barack Obama's speech as being well delivered, but meaningless considering the actions that he has taken since he has taken office. Glenn Greenwald provides his insight:
The speech was fairly representative of what Obama typically does: effectively defend some important ideals in a uniquely persuasive way and advocating some policies that promote those ideals (closing Guantanamo, banning torture tactics, limiting the state secrets privilege) while committing to many which plainly violate them (indefinite preventive detention schemes, military commissions, denial of habeas rights to Bagram abductees, concealing torture evidence, blocking judicial review on secrecy grounds). Like all political officials, Obama should be judged based on his actions and decisions, not his words and alleged intentions and motives. Those actions in the civil liberties realm, with some exceptions, have been profoundly at odds with his claimed principles, and this speech hasn't changed that. Only actions will.
I agree with Greenwald's mixed reaction. Obama does a good job at making some very important points and arguments surrounding the need to refocus the country on the values and principles that we have strayed from in the last eight years. Within the same speech however, Obama openly argues for extending old policies and implementing new ones that violate the very areas to which he seeks recommittal.
So in public, the President gave a pretty speech about upholding the rule of law, but inside the White House, he vows not to uphold it, to do precisely the opposite of what he claims to believe makes us "who we are as a people." In fact, it does violence to the rule of law for the President to even decide who does and does not get prosecuted, as that is nowhere near within his jurisdiction. And as each new revelation about criminal activity committed at the highest levels comes out, the hollowness of Obama's rhetoric becomes more and more clear
Rachel Maddow also did a fantastic job at observing the same on her program last night:
Will Obama supporters now be in favor of so-called "prolonged detention"? It seems as though those who opposed "indefinite detention" under President Bush should oppose "prolonged detention" if they are being intellectually honest.
