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“On Democracy”… (H.L. Mencken Poster)
Posted on 06/14/2012 by Juan
You Always Knew it, but Now . . .
Posted on 06/13/2012 by Juan
There are so many open secrets in our corporatocracy. But precisely because they are the open secrets of powerful multi-billion-dollar concerns with phalanxes of attorneys, which after all themselves own most “news” media, they are the secrets that dare not say their name.
But every once in a while, some evidence for these secrets is proffered to the public, perhaps because the corporation involved has been embroiled in a major (known) scandal and so is too weak to prevent it any more. So here are today’s “You always knew it, but…” revelations:
10. You always knew it, but yesterday former British prime minister John Major admitted that billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch came to his office and threatened him that if he did not change his foreign policy, Murdoch’s corporations “would not be able to support” him. Major confesses to having been overly frightened by the prospect of bad publicity. Murdoch’s Fox Cable News likewise works by intimidation and fear tactics.
9. Even though corporation profits as a percentage of our gross domestic product are at a high for the post-War II period, workers have seen little benefit, since CEO compensation is is now 350 times that of the the average worker, up from 50 times in the period from 1960-1985.
8. You always knew it, but now WHO has officially announced that diesel fumes cause lung cancer.
7. Romney wants to remake Obamacare so that millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions will be excluded from it.
6. The UN peace-keeping head has now pronounced whatever is going on in Syria to be ‘a civil war.’
5. Criminalizing ever more drugs is getting in the way of bio-medical research.
4. Stealth Republican-enacted state laws supposedly intended to prevent voter fraud don’t actually work.
3. Too much dependence on natural gas will cause carbon emissions to sky-rocket, according to the International Energy Agency
2. Even congressmen are having to use strong-arm tactics to find out how many Americans are being spied on by the government.
1. Economic inequality is leading the US to the brink, according to a Nobelist in economics.
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Media Companies Make Yet Another Push to Defang Transparency Rule (Elliott)
Posted on 06/13/2012 by Juan
Justin Elliott writes at ProPublica:
A group of broadcasters are formally asking the Federal Communications Commission to soften a new rule requiring TV stations to put political ad data on the Internet.
Washington attorneys for a group of twelve companies filed a petition for reconsideration of the rule, which was approved by the FCC in April and requires online disclosure about political ad purchases by campaigns and outside groups like super PACs. The information, which includes who buys ads, for how much, and when they run, is currently open to the public but is available only on paper at individual stations.
With the broadcasters’ petition yesterday, the FCC will now have to consider whether to modify the transparency measure. The rule isn’t expected to go into effect until this summer at the earliest and the petition shouldn’t change that timeframe.
The disclosure rule is also the subject of a lawsuit by the National Association of Broadcasters and a defunding effort by Republicans in Congress.
The companies making yesterday’s request to water down the rule own TV stations and newspapers around the country. They are: Barrington Broadcasting Co., Belo Corp., Cox Media Group, Dispatch Broadcast Group, the E.W. Scripps Company, Gannett Broadcasting, Hearst Television, LIN Television Corporation, Meredith Broadcasting Group, Post-Newsweek Stations, Raycom Media, and Schurz Communications.
The argument advanced in the petition is one we heard earlier this year from broadcasters lobbying against the FCC disclosure rule: that making ad price information available online — even though it is already public on paper at stations — would hurt their business. The petition argues:
It is axiomatic that disclosure of price information is anti-competitive and disrupts markets — in this case, not only the local political advertising marketplace but also the local commercial advertising marketplace more generally, because stations’ political ad rates, by law, must be based on commercial advertising rates (and based on their most favorable rates during the political “windows”).
The FCC rejected this argument in its published April decision to put the political ad data online. The commission found that since the ad rate information has been available on paper for years, advertisers and station competitors already have access to it. The commission also concluded that the publication of rates on political ads would “not necessarily lead to marketplace distortions.”
The group of stations petitioning the FCC Monday also proposed an alternative to the new rule, one that is similar to a broadcaster proposal earlier this year. Under this scheme, stations would post online only aggregate information about money spent on ads, rather than the granular ad-by-ad information that the stations must maintain by law. The filing claims: “Our discussions with journalists confirm” that “journalists and scholars do not generally need or want spot-by-spot rate information.”
No such journalists or scholars are named.
______
Mirrored from ProPublica
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The Kierkegaardian Presidency: or the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical (van Buren)
Posted on 06/13/2012 by Juan
Peter van Buren writes at Tomdispatch.com:
Leaking War
How Obama’s Targeted Killings, Leaks, and the Everything-Is-Classified State Have Fused
By Peter Van Buren
White is black and down is up. Leaks that favor the president are shoveled out regardless of national security, while national security is twisted to pummel leaks that do not favor him. Watching their boss, bureaucrats act on their own, freelancing the punishment of whistleblowers, knowing their retaliatory actions will be condoned. The United States rains Hellfire missiles down on its enemies, with the president alone sitting in judgment of who will live and who will die by his hand.
The issue of whether the White House leaked information to support the president’s reelection while crushing whistleblower leaks it disfavors shouldn’t be seen as just another O’Reilly v. Maddow sporting event. What lies at the nexus of Obama’s targeted drone killings, his self-serving leaks, and his aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers is a president who believes himself above the law, and seems convinced that he alone has a preternatural ability to determine right from wrong.
If the President Does It, It’s Legal?
In May 2011 the Pentagon declared that another country’s cyber-attacks — computer sabotage, against the U.S. — could be considered an “act of war.” Then, one morning in 2012 readers of the New York Times woke up to headlines announcing that the Stuxnet worm had been dispatched into Iran’s nuclear facilities to shut down its computer-controlled centrifuges (essential to nuclear fuel processing) by order of President Obama and executed by the US and Israel. The info had been leaked to the paper by anonymous “high ranking officials.” In other words, the speculation about Stuxnet was at an end. It was an act of war ordered by the president alone.
Similarly, after years of now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t stories about drone attacks across the Greater Middle East launched “presumably” by the U.S., the Times (again) carried a remarkable story not only confirming the drone killings — a technology that had morphed into a policy — but noting that Obama himself was the Great Bombardier. He had, the newspaper reported, designated himself the final decision-maker on an eyes-only “kill list” of human beings the United States wanted to destroy. It was, in short, the ultimate no-fly list. Clearly, this, too, had previously been classified top-secret material, and yet its disclosure was attributed directly to White House sources.
Now, everyone is upset about the leaks. It’s already a real Red v. Blue donnybrook in an election year. Senate Democrats blasted the cyberattack-on-Iran leaks and warned that the disclosure of Obama’s order could put the country at risk of a retaliatory strike. Republican Old Man and former presidential candidate Senator John McCain charged Obama with violating national security, saying the leaks are “an attempt to further the president’s political ambitions for the sake of his re-election at the expense of our national security.” He called for an investigation. The FBI, no doubt thrilled to be caught in the middle of all this, dutifully opened a leak investigation, and senators on both sides of the aisle are planning an inquiry of their own.
The high-level leaks on Stuxnet and the kill list, which have finally created such a fuss, actually follow no less self-serving leaked details from last year’s bin Laden raid in Pakistan. A flurry of White House officials vied with each other then to expose ever more examples of Obama’s commander-in-chief role in the operation, to the point where Seal Team 6 seemed almost irrelevant in the face of the president’s personal actions. There were also “high five” congratulatory leaks over the latest failed underwear bomber from Yemen.
On the Other Side of the Mirror
The Obama administration has been cruelly and unusually punishing in its use of the 1917 Espionage Act to stomp on governmental leakers, truth-tellers, and whistleblowers whose disclosures do not support the president’s political ambitions.
Keep reading The Kierkegaardian Presidency: or the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical (van Buren)
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Libya’s Problems will be Solved by more Democracy, not Less (Hilsum)
Posted on 06/12/2012 by Juan
Lindsey Hilsum writes in a guest column for Informed Comment:
Attacks on both the US and UK delegations in Benghazi, fighting in Kufra, the detention of four officials from the International Criminal Court – more evidence that Libya’s weak transitional authorities are unable to impose law and order. The young men who took up arms against Gaddafi refuse to submit to the old men who now make up the National Transitional Council and the interim government.
It is tempting to blame the revolution, or at least the revolutionaries, echoing the young woman who worked for The Guide (as she always called him) who told me: “I have to tell you democracy will not work here. It’s not possible with Arabs.”
In fact, the problem is lack of democracy. Until there is an elected government, these problems are likely to multiply. The elections for an assembly to replace the National Transitional Council have been delayed from June 19th to July 7th, but they still provide the best hope that a new government, appointed by the assembly, will be able to assert itself. “If we can get the elections done well then we’ll have a government with a better basis of legitimacy which can act on these issues,” said Ian Martin, the UN Special Envoy to Tripoli.
Libya’s was the only true revolution of the “Arab Spring”, in which the entire apparatus of state was overturned. Not that there was much in the way of a state – Gaddafi invented parallel institutions so that he could use one to counter decisions made by another, to the point where no-one but him made decisions at all. Unlike in Egypt, where they are struggling to chip away at the seemingly immoveable pillars of the old regime, in Libya the whole edifice crumbled. It’s Year Zero in Tripoli.
The incidents of the last two weeks are a symptom of the resulting power-vacuum, but not necessarily connected. The problem is that everyone with a grievance is turning to violence or protest, not that Libyans share the same grievance against the new authorities.
The Zintan Brigade detained Seif al-Gaddafi’s lawyers because one allegedly had undeclared documents and a secret recording device. The issue is not the facts of the matter, but the Zintanis’ failure to understand that by holding the foreigners they are damaging the country’s chances of putting Seif on trial in Libya. Only after the ICC officials are released can the facts be established.
Similarly, the brigade from Tarhouna which briefly occupied the airport last week do not understand – or do not care – that their actions jeopardise the whole country. The interim President Abdel Jalil has failed to convince Libyans that the interests of the nation must trump the perceived interest of any individual militia or region. Initially, his weakness was his strength – with his small stature and diffident manner, he was as great a contrast to Gaddafi as you could imagine. Now, however, the situation demands stronger leadership, which all Libyans regard as legitimate.
The attacks in the east are of a different nature. Jihadi groups, probably angered by the drone killing in Pakistan of Abu Yahyia al-Libi, Al Qaeda’s Number 2, are flexing their muscles. This is a much more serious problem, not least because it’s reported that US drones are surveying suspected jihadi camps near Derna.
Any attack on Libyan territory would most likely unite Libyans against the US, which would switch from ally into enemy in a single day. The current divisions are healthy. When 300 armed men flying black banners drove their armoured vehicles into the main square in Benghazi last Thursday, counter-demonstrators, including women, carrying the tri-colour Libyan flag pushed them out without incident.
Anyone who thought that Libya would go from dictatorship to democracy overnight was dreaming. Elections in July will not solve all the problems nor quell all the violence. But after successful local elections in Misrata and Benghazi, and enthusiastic voter registration even in the fractious south, there is still a reasonable chance that Libyans can start to build a new state in the place of the ruins Muammar Gaddafi left behind.
________
Lindsey Hilsum is the author of Sandstorm; Libya in the Time of Revolution
, published by The Penguin Press. She is International Editor for Britain’s Channel 4 News.
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Planned Israeli Detention Camps for Africans Draw Human Rights Protests
Posted on 06/11/2012 by Juan
An Israeli law allowing the arrest and detention of illegal immigrants for up to 3 years without trial has been denounced as contrary to basic human rights by Human Rights Watch.
Israel has about 60,000 illegal immigrants from Africa, nearly 1% of the population. Some are from Darfur and South Sudan, and came because they heard that Israel is supporting their cause on human rights grounds. Others are simply looking for a job in one of the region’s most dynamic economies.
Israeli government strategy is to round up Africans in Israel and to hold them in detention centers before expelling them.
Aljazeera English reports on US State Department criticisms that Israel provides no services to asylum-seekers.
While in a recent poll a majority of Jewish Israelis were comfortable with Thai, Filipino or non-Jewish Eastern European immigrants in Israel, some 51% called African illegal immigrants a cancer on society; virtually none of the respondents said they lived near Africans. And, only 19% of Arab Israelis polled had such negative feelings toward the African immigrants.
It is hard to escape some unsavory conclusions here. One is that Israeli championing of human rights in East Africa is somewhat instrumental and that practical help to Fur people from Darfur, such as giving them asylum and jobs, is not on offer even while pro-Israel groups lead campaigns to criticize the Sudanese government. That is, all states have the right to control their borders and to deport illegal immigrants, but vocal championing of oppressed ethnic groups implies a willingness to establish basic procedures for acceptance of asylum-seekers from among them.
Another is that a lot of Israelis have more problems with African immigrants than with European or Asian ones.
The issue has come to a head recently, with a riot against illegal immigrants from Africa by Jews in Tel Aviv, and a demonstration on Saturday in the same city by Africans demanding rights.
Israel’s government is determined to round up and deport the estimated 1500 Africans from South Sudan, on the grounds that that country is now safe for them, since it seceded from Sudan. In fact, South Sudan is a mess.
But beyond the humanitarian and race issues raised by the Likud Party’s policy toward African immigrants, the problem is larger. The whole idea of an ethnically-based country in an age of globalization is under severe pressure.
The Israeli Right Wing constantly demands that the country be recognized as a ‘Jewish state.’ But 20% of its citizens are Palestinian-Israelis. In addition, some 300,000 citizens are acknowledged in the census as not Jewish (many of them Eastern European immigrants of Eastern Orthodox Christian heritage), and many demographers think that the number of non-Jews is actually much greater. The Grand Rabbinate has repeatedly refused to recognize these persons, whose mothers were not Jewish, as Jews. Guest workers from Thailand and the Philippines have been brought in to work on Israeli farms or serve as nannies. (Such immigrants have come in large numbers to Lebanon and the Gulf oil countries, as well).
In short, Israel is a multicultural society that refuses to admit to itself that it is multicultural, because such an admission flies in the face of Zionist aspirations for a monochrome Jewish state. Demography and globalization, however, tell against this nineteenth-century romantic-nationalist vision, which confuses nation-hood with an ethnic state. In fact, there are no nations of the sort early Zionist thinkers imagined. The French include Bretons, Alsatians, people of Provencale, Basques, and now substantial numbers of Arabs and Africans, not to mention descendants of a million Italian workers who came in the late nineteenth century. Israelis are similarly diverse, and even more diverse if the de facto annexation of the Palestinian West Bank were recognized, in which case Israel has a population of 10 million, not 7.5 million, and the Palestinian-Israelis are 3.5 million or 35%, not merely a fifth. That is, the actually-existing Israel is more like Malaysia than it is like Armenia. In a self-avowedly multicultural Israel, the Sudanese and other immigrants would not be a conceptual problem.
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83 Dead in Syrian Military Repression
Posted on 06/10/2012 by Juan
Some 83 Syrians, most of them non-combatants, were killed on Saturday by the Syrian military.
In Deraa, the small town in the south of the country where the revolution began, the Syrian military subjected inhabitants to an artillery barrage. About 17 activists were killed in Deraa with dozens more injured.
Likewise, a similar action in Homs left 29 dead, including women and children.
The regime is attacking rebel strongholds because it fears that it is losing more and more territory to their control.
Aljazeera English reports on the increased training of the opposition Syrian Free Army.
The Syrian National Council has a new leader, a Kurd, and it is hoped that he will be more decisive than his predecessor.
Meanwhile, international observers who finally reached Qubair in Hama Province report the smell of burning human flesh, and outsiders believe the scene at Qubair points to an attempted cover-up by the regime of a massacre.
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Juan Cole
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