Michael Moore Barn-burner: "America is NOT Broke"

I know this has gotten plenty of play on the Internets, but it's so good, it's worth another reposting.

America is not broke.

Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you’ll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It’s just that it’s not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.

Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.

Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer “bailout” of 2008, now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can’t bring yourself to call that a financial coup d’état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.

Read the whole speech.

ACLU & Large Coalition Send Letter to Rep. King re Offensive Muslim "Radicalization" Hearing

The following is a press release from the ACLU regarding the deeply racist and divisive House of Representative Homeland Security Committee hearings scheduled for this coming Thursday. Purportedly called by Rep. Peter King to examine supposed Muslim "extremism," the hearings are a thinly veiled call for discrimination and political demagogy, whipping up fear of a domestic menace, which doesn't really exist. It's racist and offensive, but also dangerous, and a sign of the insanity of our times.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration feeds this kind of fear-mongering with its own recent policies, via Executive Order, calling for indefinite detention of "terrorists" at Guantanamo. Rep. King was thrilled by this latest travesty by the Obama administration, and certainly, it fits right in with his campaign of fear.

For more on this issue, see the release by the Leadership Conference of their report, "Restoring a National Consensus: The Need to End Racial Profiling in America." The website Faith in Public Life also has a interesting round-up of commentary by religious leaders speaking out against the King hearings.

On the issue of Obama's lifting of the stay on military commissions trials, and the setting up of an apparatus for indefinite detention of uncharged and/or unconvicted "terrorists" at Guantanamo, see the analysis by Center for Constitutional Rights, and article out today by Marcy Wheeler and Glenn Greenwald.

The ACLU press release and letter to Rep. King:

ACLU And Broad Coalition Tell Rep. King Of Concerns About Muslim “Radicalization” Hearing

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 8, 2011

CONTACT:(202) 675-2312 or media@dcaclu.org

WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union, along with several other human rights and civil liberties organizations, sent a letter today to House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Peter King (R-NY) expressing deep concern about his committee’s upcoming hearing on the so-called “radicalization of the American Muslim community.” The hearing is scheduled for Thursday, March 10.

The letter, sent by over 40 groups, urges Rep. King and his committee not to conflate First Amendment-protected practices with involvement in terrorism. The letter also criticizes the hearing’s false premise that the Muslim community and its leaders are uncooperative with law enforcement.

The letter states, “Treating an entire community as suspect because of the bad acts or intolerant statements of a few is imprudent and unfair, and in the past has only led to greater misunderstanding, injustice and discrimination. Erroneous theories of eugenics supported racist immigration policies and Jim Crow anti-miscegenation laws for decades. Misguided ‘red’ scares and racism drove abominable policies like blacklists, McCarthyism and Japanese internment, betrayed American values and did not improve security. To avoid the same mistakes, the Committee should rely on facts and scientifically rigorous analysis, not biased opinions or unsupported theories positing a discernable ‘radicalization’ process that are belied by available evidence.”

According to the letter, “A fact-based approach enhanced with scientifically rigorous analysis will likely be more successful at providing a clear picture of the threats we face and the appropriate methods we need to employ to address them without violating the constitutional rights of innocent persons. Fear and misunderstanding should not drive our government policies.”

The full text of the letter can be found below:

March 8, 2011
Representative Peter King
U.S.House Committee on Homeland Security
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Chairman King:

As organizations dedicated to protecting rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution, we write to express our concern that your Committee’s planned hearings on the “radicalization of the American Muslim community” risk chilling fundamental First Amendment freedoms of religion, speech, and association.  These freedoms occupy a special place in our history and in the Constitution.  They define who we are as a country, and may not be set aside.

Our concerns are driven by your public statements justifying the basis for, and goals of, the Committee’s proposed hearings, which raise significant and troubling issues.[i]  Holding hearings based on a deeply flawed theory of “radicalization” that falsely conflates religious practices with preparation for terrorism and focuses exclusively on Muslim-Americans will burden the free exercise of religion, give the appearance of official endorsement of one set of religious beliefs over another and chill free association and free speech.  We are also deeply troubled by your plan to use the hearing to air the unsubstantiated allegation that Muslim-American leaders are uncooperative with U.S. counterterrorism efforts, both because the allegation is demonstrably incorrect and because it will only sow discord when national unity is most needed.

At the outset, and as organizations devoted to the protection of free speech, we want to emphasize that it is entirely appropriate for a member of Congress to express his or her views regarding issues of national interest, as you have done, including when such views are controversial.  While we, in turn, challenge the factual basis supporting some of your arguments, your views and your speech are protected by the First Amendment.[ii]  Indeed, as free speech organizations, we have and would defend the First Amendment rights of all individuals to express any, even hateful, views on matters of public debate, including whether particular religious or political beliefs are used to justify violence.

But when conducting official inquiries under the auspices of a standing committee of Congress, members have a higher duty to ensure that constitutional rights are not diminished under the weight of government scrutiny.  While Congress has broad and necessary powers of oversight and inquiry, they are not unlimited.  As the Supreme Court held in 1957 in one of the cases arising out of the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings, congressional inquiries, like legislation, may not entrench on First Amendment freedoms of religion, speech and association.[iii]

In order to accomplish its goals in accordance with the Constitution, therefore, the Committee, like law enforcement, must distinguish between First Amendment-protected ideological beliefs – whether radical or not – and criminal terrorist activity or plots.  Only the latter may properly be the subject of official inquiry.  Congress simply has no business examining Americans’ religious or political beliefs in official hearings – even if these beliefs are considered “radical” by some.  Congress must also avoid giving the appearance of an official endorsement of one set of religious beliefs over another.  It would be inappropriate and unwise for Congress to conduct an inquiry into the nature of Islam, the different interpretations of the faith among Muslims, whether there exists an “ideology” of “political Islam,” or whether some Muslims are more loyal Americans than others, just as it would be inappropriate for Congress to examine different interpretations of Christianity or debate whether Baptists or Catholics are more trustworthy.

Treating an entire community as suspect because of the bad acts or intolerant statements of a few is imprudent and unfair, and in the past has only led to greater misunderstanding, injustice and discrimination.  Erroneous theories of eugenics supported racist immigration policies and Jim Crow anti-miscegenation laws for decades.  Misguided “red” scares and racism drove abominable policies like blacklists, McCarthyism and Japanese internment, betrayed American values and did not improve security.  To avoid the same mistakes, the Committee should rely on facts and scientifically rigorous analysis, not biased opinions or unsupported theories positing a discernable “radicalization” process that are belied by available evidence.[iv]  “Radicalization” is simply a euphemism for religious and ideological profiling, which can only lead to further discrimination.

Targeting a minority religious community for official scrutiny also poses a great risk of promoting divisiveness, rather than national unity, which can only impair the government’s national security efforts on behalf of us all.  Avoiding religious divisiveness was a main objective of the Founders in drafting both the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment.[v]  Official congressional inquiry only adds to divisiveness by putting enormous pressure on private groups and individuals who are singled out for scrutiny.  Many American Muslim community and faith groups have objected that the Committee’s hearings will present a false or misleading picture both of Islam and of the various and diverse Muslim communities in our country.[vi]  Negative repercussions may be especially likely in the case of the American Muslim community, which has already been the target of both hate speech and actual violence.  Recent media reports about the Committee’s proposed hearings demonstrate that they already have contributed to an atmosphere of increased religious animosity.[vii]

Your Committee can carry out its important function in a wide variety of ways without trampling on the constitutional rights of American Muslims.  The Committee may quite properly examine the continuing serious threat of domestic terrorism, and pursue broad areas of inquiry related to efforts by al Qaeda and others to commit acts of violence in the United States.  Terrorist methodologies, including efforts to recruit individuals to carry out terrorist acts, are properly the subject of government scrutiny.  Indeed, Congress has addressed these issues many times over the past several years, and many of the undersigned groups have long advocated that the proper focus of congressional hearings is on better understanding the nature and scope of the threat, vigorously exercising Congress’s authorities to oversee the government’s response, holding our military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies accountable, and crafting sensible legislation to enhance security while protecting the rights of innocent persons.  We will continue to work with Congress to ensure our government’s counterterrorism efforts are productive, effective, and legal.  The Committee’s hearing this month on “Threats to the Homeland” with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter is an example of appropriate congressional inquiry, as are the hearings focusing on the domestic threat posed by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and the threat to air commerce.

Secondly, we are deeply concerned that a focus of your Committee’s hearing is based on the mischaracterization of leaders in the American Muslim community as uncooperative with U.S. counterterrorism efforts.  This allegation is demonstrably false.  Numerous law enforcement officials have gone on the record to dispute this allegation,[viii]academic studies have catalogued the assistance Muslims have provided to anti-terrorism efforts,[ix]and the undersigned organizations work closely with many Muslim civil rights and advocacy groups that are deeply involved in efforts to improve security policies.  Indeed, your Committee has heard testimony from several law enforcement witnesses regarding their engagement with Muslim-American communities on a host of issues.[x]
Our concern is heightened by your statements implying that American Muslims’ “cooperation” in national security efforts must be measured by their willingness to provide information voluntarily to counterterrorism enforcement agencies.  Although warning law enforcement officials of threats is indeed a shared civic and social responsibility, it would be illegal, unfair and impractical for Congress or law enforcement officials to require any religious or belief community to prove its loyalty to this country by “informing” on its members.  To the contrary, American Muslims, like the rest of this country’s citizens, have the right to protest illegal, over-zealous or abusive government security measures and to vigorously exercise, and encourage others to exercise rights guaranteed in the Constitution.  There are also legitimate concerns about whether individuals who volunteer information to law enforcement will find themselves threatened with legal jeopardy.  Advising individuals to speak to lawyers before talking to law enforcement or even to refrain from talking to law enforcement is both prudent and completely legal speech protected by the Bill of Rights.  We expect that many corporations, businesses and even congressional offices would advise their employees to consult a lawyer before speaking with law enforcement as well.

Recognizing and respecting the line between protected beliefs and illegal activity does not undermine our security, but rather strengthens it.  Basing security policy on factually flawed “radicalization” theories will only waste precious security resources.  Law enforcement has been successful in preventing terrorist plots many times over the past few years by focusing on facts and evidence.  Inquiring into how many Muslims hold “radical” beliefs, however those are defined, will not aid those efforts.  To the contrary, it will undermine the crucial bonds between communities and the government and law enforcement.  Most dangerously, it is likely to undermine our efforts to demonstrate to Muslims at home and abroad that the United States seeks to live up to its ideals in its treatment of all Americans, including Muslims, and is not engaged in a “war against Islam.”  

As civil liberties and free speech organizations, we have fought for many years against government proposals to investigate the religious or political beliefs of any group of Americans.  We subscribe to the views of the Attorney General that “law enforcement has an obligation to ensure that members of every religious community enjoy the ability to worship and to practice their faith in peace, free from intimidation, violence or suspicion. That is the right of all Americans. And it must be a reality for every citizen.  In this nation, our many faiths, origins, and appearances must bind us together, not break us apart.”  We hope that you will agree that this is also the obligation of the Congress. 

We respectfully urge that your Committee treat unsubstantiated theories about “radicalization” with skepticism and focus its efforts on actual terrorist acts and those who commit them rather than on the adoption of beliefs or the expression of dissent.  A fact-based approach enhanced with scientifically rigorous analysis will likely be more successful at providing a clear picture of the threats we face and the appropriate methods we need to employ to address them without violating the constitutional rights of innocent persons. Fear and misunderstanding should not drive our government policies.

We would be happy to supply any additional information and would welcome the opportunity to discuss this with you further. Thank you for considering our views.

Sincerely,

American Civil Liberties Union
American Association of University Professors
American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression
American Friends Service Committee
American Library Association
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Arab American Institute
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Casa Esperanza
Center for Media and Democracy
Council on American-Islamic Relations
Defending Dissent Foundation
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
DRUM- Desis Rising Up & Moving
Friends Committee on National Legislation
Friends of the Earth
Greater NYC for Change
Humanitarian Law Project
Kinder USA
Liberty Coalition
Muslim Advocates
Muslim Bar Association of New York
Muslim Bar Association of Southern California
Muslim Public Affairs Council
National Coalition Against Censorship
New Security Action
NYC Coalition to Stop Islamophobia
Pakistan American Public Affairs Committee
Peace Action
People For the American Way
Pipe Organs/Golden Ponds Farm
Queens Federation of Churches
Rutherford Institute
Secular Coalition for America
Sikh Council on Religion and Education
South Asian Americans Leading Together
South Asian Network
The Sikh Coalition
UNITED SIKHS
www.JusticeThroughMusic.org
www.StopDomesticTerror.com

Cc:  Ranking Member Bennie Thompson
        Members of the House Committee on Homeland Security
        Speaker John Boehner
        Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi

[i]Peter King, “What’s Radicalizing Muslim Americans?,” Newsday (Dec. 17, 2010) available at http://www.house.gov/apps/list/speech/ny03_king/radicalizingmuslimamericans.html(hereinafter “Newsday op-ed”); Frank Gaffney Interview with Peter King, Secure Freedom Radio with Frank Gaffney (Jan. 6, 2011) available at http://www.securefreedomradio.org/2011/01/06/january-6-2011-faith-mcdonnell-rep-pete-king-sara-carter/.
[ii]We are disturbed, for example, by your unsubstantiated and divisive assertion that 85 percent of American mosques are run by extremists, especially given that experts on the subject have found that American Muslims’ attendance at mosques helps to prevent violent extremism.  See David Schanzer, Charles Kurzman, and Ebrahim Mooza, Anti-terror Lessons of Muslim-Americans, National Institute of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice, p. 1, (Jan. 6, 2010) available at http://fds.duke.edu/db?attachment-34--4912-view-1255.
[iii]Watkins v. United States, 354 U.S. 178, 188 (1957). 
[iv]Recent “radicalization” theories are not supported by empirical evidence.  For example, the 2007 New York Police Department (“NYPD’) report, Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat, drew quick condemnation from the civil liberties and Muslim communities for its serious factual and methodological flaws.  New York City Muslim and Arab community leaders formed a coalition in response to the NYPD report and issued a detailed analysis criticizing NYPD for wrongfully “positing a direct causal relation between Islam and terrorism such that expressions of faith are equated with signs of danger,” potentially putting millions of Muslims at risk.  Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition, CountertERRORism Policy: MACLC’s Critique of the NYPD’s Report on Homegrown Terrorism (2008) available at http://maclcnypdcritique.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/counterterrorism-policy-final-paper3.pdf.  See also  Aziz Huq, Concerns with Mitchell D. Silber and Arvin Bhatt, N.Y. Police Dep’t, Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat, New York University School of Law, Brennan Center for Justice (Aug. 30, 2007) available at http://brennan.3cdn.net/436ea44aae969ab3c5_sbm6vtxgi.pdf; American Civil Liberties Union et al., Coalition Memo to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Regarding “Homegrown Terrorism”(May 7, 2008) available at http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/35209leg20080507.html.  NYPD added a “clarification” in 2009.  See http://maclc1.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/maclc-90809-letter-response-to-nypd-statement-of-clarification/.
[v]Annals of Congress (Sat., Aug. 15, 1789) pp. 730–31; McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Ky., 545 U.S. 844, 876 (2005) (“The Framers and the citizens of their time intended not only to protect the integrity of individual conscience in religious matters, but to guard against the civic divisiveness that follows when the government weighs in on one side of religious debate; nothing does a better job of roiling society, a point that needed no explanation to the descendants of English Puritans and Cavaliers (or Massachusetts Puritans and Baptists)”); Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 622 (1971) (“political division along religious lines was one of the principal evils against which the First Amendment was intended to protect”).
[vi]“51 Organizations Tell Congress that Hearings Targeting American Muslims are Divisive,” Muslim Advocates (Feb. 1, 2011) available at http://www.muslimadvocates.org/latest/51_organizations_tell_congress.html
[vii]Arun Venugopal, King’s Hearings on Radical Islam Draw Rival Protest Groups, WNYC Newsblog (Feb. 23, 2011) available at  http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/wnyc-news-blog/2011/feb/22/rival-protests-rep-kings-office-over-islam-hearings/
[viii]See Counterterrorism Experts Reject Peter King’s Targeting of Muslims, National Security Network (Jan. 28, 2011) available at http://www.nsnetwork.org/node/1847; “Baca: No Evidence Muslims Not Cooperating with Police,” CBS Los Angeles (Feb. 11, 2011) available at http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2011/02/07/baca-no-evidence-us-muslims-not-cooperating-with-police/
[ix]See Charles Kurzman, “Muslim-American Terrorism Since 9/11: An Accounting,” Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security (Feb. 2, 2011) available at http://sanford.duke.edu/centers/tcths/about/documents/Kurzman_Muslim-American_Terrorism_Since_911_An_Accounting.pdf
[x]See, e.g., Hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment, “Working with Communities  to Disrupt Terror Plots” (Mar. 17, 2010); Hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment, “Radicalization, Information Sharing and Community Outreach: Protecting the Homeland from Homegrown Terror” (Apr. 5, 2007).

Wikileaks' First Release of U.S. Embassy Cables Goes Live

They're up. Long awaited, and the subject of U.S. government condemnation, the Wikileaks publication of 251,257 U.S. embassy cables has begun. As explained in their statement reproduced below, Wikileaks will be publishing the full catalog of files over the next months. Those interested in reading and studying the cables can click here to be taken to the relevant Wikileaks site. UK Guardian is also posting their analysis of the data, which was released before hand also to four other news agencies, including the New York Times.

The following is a reposting of the introduction to the Secret U.S. Embassy Cables release at Wikileaks. In it, we can see the political reasoning behind this extraordinary leaking of materials -- a belief that with public knowledge and political transparency the lies governments tell cannot be maintained.

Wikileaks began on Sunday November 28th publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into US Government foreign activities.

The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret.

The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice.

The cables show the extent of US spying on its allies and the UN; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in "client states"; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for US corporations; and the measures US diplomats take to advance those who have access to them.

This document release reveals the contradictions between the US’s public persona and what it says behind closed doors – and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what’s going on behind the scenes.

Every American schoolchild is taught that George Washington – the country’s first President – could not tell a lie. If the administrations of his successors lived up to the same principle, today’s document flood would be a mere embarrassment. Instead, the US Government has been warning governments -- even the most corrupt -- around the world about the coming leaks and is bracing itself for the exposures.

The full set consists of 251,287 documents, comprising 261,276,536 words (seven times the size of "The Iraq War Logs", the world's previously largest classified information release).

The cables cover from 28th December 1966 to 28th February 2010 and originate from 274 embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions.

"The United States of America Has Gone Mad"

On September 20, Amy Goodman's Democracy Now presented a video of John Le Carré reading from his 2003 essay on 9/11 and its disastrous political aftermath, including the invasion of Iraq.

From the Le Carré text (H/T Barry Eisler):

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.

The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.

The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions.

But bin Laden conveniently swept all that under the carpet. The Bushies are riding high. Now 88 per cent of Americans want the war, we are told. The US defence budget has been raised by another $60 billion to around $360 billion. A splendid new generation of nuclear weapons is in the pipeline, so we can all breathe easy. Quite what war 88 per cent of Americans think they are supporting is a lot less clear. A war for how long, please? At what cost in American lives? At what cost to the American taxpayer’s pocket? At what cost—because most of those 88 per cent are thoroughly decent and humane people—in Iraqi lives?

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. But the American public is not merely being misled. It is being browbeaten and kept in a state of ignorance and fear. The carefully orchestrated neurosis should carry Bush and his fellow conspirators nicely into the next election.

Those who are not with Mr Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I’m dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam’s downfall—just not on Bush’s terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.

The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist. [...]

What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of US growth. What is at stake is America’s need to demonstrate its military power to all of us—to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad.

By the by, if you have not read Le Carré's last novel, A Most Wanted Man, you are missing one of the most amazing books of our time, akin to Eisler's Inside Out, two novels that expose the underlying realities of our time. Both books are thoroughly enjoyable, and yet also manage to condemn the use of torture for the modern barbarity that it is.

Who's More Insane, Christine O'Donnell or Barack Obama?

Chris Floyd makes yet again another excellent point:

The political-media-blogospherical establishment is currently working itself into a lather over the elevation of a "nutty" Tea Party woman to the Republican nomination for a Senate seat in Delaware. The selection of Christine O'Donnell by a tiny sliver of voters in a closed primary in a tiny state whose main claim to fame is its decades of whorish service as a protective front for rapacious corporations is, we are told, an event of world-shaking proportions fit for endless analysis and scary headlines all over the world.

It's true that O'Donnell has taken the politically risky step of denouncing America's national pastime -- masturbation -- and has, over the years, supported any number of positions that put her on the far side of common sense. But one struggles in vain to find that she has advanced anything remotely as radical -- or lunatic -- as the idea that the President of the United States is some kind of intergalactic emperor who holds the power of life and death over every living being on earth in his autocratic hands. Yet this is precisely the position proclaimed -- openly, before Congress, God and everybody -- by the highly educated, intellectually sophisticated, super-savvy Laureate of Peace currently residing in the White House.

This same president has also fought tooth and nail -- often in open court -- to shield torturers, escalate pointless wars of aggression, relentlessly expand a liberty-stripping Stasi-style security apparatus, give trillions of tax dollars to rapacious financiers, health-care corporations, insurance companies and bloodstained war profiteers, while launching cowardly drone missile attacks on the sovereign territory of close ally, killing hundreds of civilians in the process - and has just signed off on the biggest arms deal in history with one of the most viciously repressive tyrannies on earth....

But a hardy few out there are still trying to draw attention to the actual crimes and moral atrocities being committed by the actual holders of actual power. One of these is Andy Worthington, who is beginning an eight-part series on the remaining prisoners still being held in the still-unclosed American concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. As Worthington says, the series will

help explain how few of the remaining prisoners have any connection to terrorism, how some are civilians, and how others were foot soldiers for the Taliban, in an inter-Muslim civil war in Afghanistan that had nothing to do with 9/11, and very little to do with al-Qaeda. I also hope that it may contribute to the almost non-existent debate regarding the Authorization for Use of Military Force, and the administration's misplaced use of it to hold foot soldiers in Guantanamo, as well as highlighting other aspects of the habeas litigation, the military commissions, the moratorium on releasing Yemenis, and the decision to hold 48 of the prisoners indefinitely without charge or trial.

There's more at Chris's article. If you don't regularly read Empire Burlesque, you should make it one of your regular stops in a Net scene mostly full of gasbags and apologists, one way or another, for the current American political scene.

Thanks to Chris for plugging Andy Worthington's important new series documenting the biographies of the remaining prisoners at Guantanamo. That will be essential reading, and an antidote to the inane discussions out of Washington concerning Guantanamo, indefinite detention, and other Bush-era crimes carried over into the Obama years.

Disgust: on the Lonesome Rhodes Trail to Tortureville

Glenn Beck has kept his promise to bring 100,000 plus "teabaggers" and other assorted right-wing and racist reactionaries to Washington, D.C. in a supposed commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington, which culminated in Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I have a dream" speech. Grotesquely, King's niece, Alveda King, has joined Beck at the Lincoln Memorial rally to preach her own form of hate against gays (she recently equated gay marriage with "genocide") and abortion rights. King is director of African-American outreach for the pro-life group Priests for Life.

"Something that is beyond man is happening,' [Glenn] Beck told his supporters in DC. Quotes from participants: "Capitalism is what makes this country great." "I don't want this country to turn socialist." "We have to take our country back." "Whenever you hear the words 'social justice', you should leave your church immediately."

Glenn Beck is one dangerous demagogue. He should not be underestimated.



Well, the right-wing can mobilize tens of thousands and bring them to D.C., while the left is mired in electoralism, i.e., concentrate everything on elections, and leave the streets to the demagogues. Nor have the "progressives" anything very much progressive to offer anymore, having accepted the permanent state of immiseration that comes from buying into the "war on terror," having allowed torture and war crimes to have been codified in the Army Field Manual and the Military Commissions Act, respectively. And "liberals" long ago dropped any pretense of reining in the CIA, whose lawlessness is reproduced day by day even as I type these words.

Meanwhile, even as the New York Times puts out mealy-mouthed editorials at least somewhat critical of the current state of affairs (see today's editorial, Legacy of Torture), the Obama administration continues its crusade to institutionalize the notorious Military Commissions, even if that means (to their embarrassment) making their test case a former child soldier who was threatened with institutional rape to coerce a confession. The Gitmo judge said he couldn't see how such a threat would amount to torture or coercion, and there's fairness in America circa 2010 in a nutshell (pun intended).

If I could give homework, I'd assign a view of Elia Kazan's classic film, Face in the Crowd.



But I'm not a schoolteacher, only a part-time blogger (sitting right now in Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans, not pajamas). My disgust with this country won't buy me a meal or put a fiver in a homeless man's pocket. I can only share this feeling with what's left of a nation that has a shred of integrity left, if even living in a country that blithely ignores accountability for the crimes of its leaders -- torture, chemical warfare against civilian populations (Fallujah), running assassination teams, occupying other countries, letting millions get thrown out of their homes and jobs while protecting the fat-cats' bonuses and right to even further exploit the populace -- if even accepting citizenship in such a land doesn't forfeit me the right to anything more than moral exhaustion.

The Age of Disgust. The legacy of the end of communism, with a corpulent, weepy would-be savior as the national emoticon, spewing hate and lies, and stuffing a lot of money into his pockets along the gold-lined way, you betcha. Home of the "suckers" and land of the "stupid idiots." Don't ask me, ask Lonesome Rhodes.

Bill Quigly Deconstructs Right-Wing Myths About U.S. "Socialism"

Bill Quigley has written a very well-received op-ed at Truthout, Nine Myths About Socialism in the US. The entire article is worth reading. The right-wings huffing and puffing about the socialist actions of the U.S. government are laughable, if they weren't also seriously deranged. Here's the list of myths, but you'll have to go to the article itself to see how thoroughly Quigley debunks them.

Myth No. 1: The US Government Is Involved in Class Warfare, Attacking the Rich to Lift Up the Poor.

Myth No. 2: The US Already Has the Greatest Health Care System in the World.

Myth No. 3: There Is Less Poverty in the US Than Anywhere.

Myth No. 4: The US Is Generous in Its Treatment of Families With Children.

Myth No. 5: The US Is Very Supportive of Its Workers.

Myth No. 6: Poor People Have More Chance of Becoming Rich in the US Than Anywhere Else.

Myth No. 7: The US Spends Generously on Public Education.

Myth No. 8: The US Government Is Redistributing Income From the Rich to the Poor.

Myth No. 9: The US Generously Gives Foreign Aid to Countries Across the World.

What's amazing is that the truth is the diametric opposite of each of these statements. The right-wing and their media puppets have done a great job in selling a bill of goods to the American people. But it's difficult when every day one wakes up and looks around and sees that the accepted wisdom is so different from what one has been spoon-fed.

The American people will not remain indifferent to such deceit forever, and that is why I offer Myth No. 10: The United States is the freest country in the world.

Fact: According to the New York Times, the United States imprisons one out of 99 of its people. One in nine black men, ages 20 to 34, are incarcerated. Approximately 1.6 million people who live in America, live their lives in cages.

The United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the world. China is second, with 1.5 million people behind bars. The gap is even wider in percentage terms.

Germany imprisons 93 out of every 100,000 people, according to the International Center for Prison Studies at King’s College in London. The comparable number for the United States is roughly eight times that, or 750 out of 100,000.

Accepted wisdom promulgated by the mainstream media, and particularly (but not only) by its right-wing components, such as Fox News, is mostly a pack of lies. My thanks to Bill Quigley for writing such a concise and informative expose of the mythology of a self-deluded group of ideologues.

AlterNet: "Inside Story on Town Hall Riots"

Adele M. Stan has put together an organizational analysis of the right-wing campaigners who are whipping up reactionary, ostensible "grassroots" disruptions at Democratic Party town-meeings on the healthcare reform issue. AlterNet, who published the story, is touting the article as must-reading, and I agree.

See Inside Story on Town Hall Riots: Right-Wing Shock Troops Do Corporate America's Dirty Work (a portion of which is excerpted here):

All of the narratives today embraced by the ResistNet, FreedomWorks and the Glenn Beck crowd find their legs in the one-man clearinghouse that is Howard Phillips.

Through his Conservative Caucus, Phillips disseminated the "birther" theory that Obama is not an American citizen, gave right-wing operative Cliff Kincaid an award for researching Obama's alleged socialist roots, and for years has railed against "socialized medicine" -- even arguing that Medicare is unconstitutional and warning darkly of a time when the government might determine who shall live and who shall die.

"[W]hen the supply of medical care is controlled by politicians and bureaucrats," Phillips told a 1997 gathering of his Conservative Caucus Foundation, "and the demand for that care exceeds the supply, then individual human beings created in God's image become price factors in the eyes of medical gatekeepers -- they're not even medical, they're bureaucratic gatekeepers -- who determine medical decisions not on the basis of medical needs, but on the basis of bureaucratic priorities."

Phillips' disdain for feminists is palpable, and his language about LGBT people, routinely labeled on his Web site as "perverts," "homos" and "sodomites" is contemptible. He refers to Planned Parenthood as "Murder Incorporated."

I called Phillips for comment on this article, but he was en route to Mexico where he has convened a press conference to protest the nonexistent North American Union, another right-wing conspiracy theory. (Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, is an invited speaker.)

Phillips advanced the career of Randall Terry, founder of the militant anti-aborton group Operation Rescue. At one point, it seemed that his U.S. Taxpayer's Party was to Operation Rescue what Sinn Fein is to the Irish Republican Army -- the political wing of a movement steeped in violence. (In Terry's case, the violence was in rhetoric and obstruction designed to incite others to act.)

Conspiracy of Silence

On Aug. 4, Terry, who is seeking to make a comeback with his new organization, Operation Rescue Insurrecta Nex, sent out an e-mail blast urging followers to attend health care town halls convened by members of Congress.

Trotting out the trope the that health-care reform bills provide for taxpayer-funded abortions, he urges his followers:

Stir up some dust!

Be "unreasonable!"

In fact, you might want to be a little noisier and a little more intense than you might normally be.

I put it this way: If you were in danger of being murdered, and I could possibly save you at a town hall meeting, how would you want people to behave in a town hall meeting?

At a July press conference, Terry warned of "random acts of violence" that would occur if the health-care bill passed. There would be violent "reprisals against those deemed guilty," he said.

Think Terry's too out on the fringe to matter? Think again. When AlterNet reported that the Supreme Court nomination hearing of Judge Sonia Sotomayor was being disrupted by Terry's followers, not one Republican senator condemned him by name.

When Terry staged a demonstration outside the White House featuring men in Obama masks "whipping" him, not a distancing word was placed between him and the GOP establishment.

And now he is promulgating the false Republican claim that health-care reform will mean socialized euthanasia for the aged.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin also has links to Phillips; for seven years, her husband, Todd, claimed membership in the Alaska affiliate of the Constitution Party -- the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, whose convention Palin addressed last year via video.

Every other day, it seems, I receive an e-mail from one right-wing organization or another, warning of the grave consequences of health-insurance reform.

The subject line in an e-mail from Human Events magazine screams at me "Grandmas and babies exterminated by Obama 'health' plan," even as another of its e-mails asks, "Obama birth certificate destroyed?" The anti-gay American Family Association warns: "Liberals seek to silence and demonize those who oppose their socialism."

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council sent a plea for money to finance a television ad that features an elderly couple complaining of the government's denial of surgery for the man while financing abortion with taxpayer dollars.

Think these organizations are not the Republican establishment? Consider that the annual Values Voter Summit sponsored by the Family Research Council's PAC will feature former "moderate" GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney as a keynote speaker.

In the corridors of Washington's K Street lobbying offices, in the district offices of Republican members of Congress, and in the executive suite of one singular mogul, the men of power must be well-pleased with themselves, watching YouTube videos of the mayhem they have unleashed on the rest of us. But they may just get their pound of flesh.

Land of Perpetual War: US Troop Levels in Afghanistan to Double from Last Year

According to a report by Paul Tait of Reuters, published at Truthout.org, U.S. forces in Afghanistan have expanded to near double the level of last year, with plans to expand to 68,000 troops or more by December, up from 32,000 at the end of 2008. Currently, with both U.S. and other allied troops, there are over 100,000 soldiers facing what is reported to be a more "aggressive" and "brazen" Taliban force.

Forty-one U.S. troops died in Afghanistan in the past month; 71 allied troops overall. The article gave no figures for Afghan deaths.

Commander of U.S. forces, U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal -- formerly head of Special Forces for the Pentagon, during a time when Special Operations units were implicated in torture in Iraq -- "said the resurgent Taliban have forced a change of tactics on foreign forces and warned that record casualty figures would remain high for some months" (emphasis added). No one asks why the Taliban should be stronger now, almost eight years after 9/11 -- well, no one in the mainstream U.S. press.

The war in Afghanistan continues to escalate, even as no one is really sure what the war is about anymore, or what endgame is envisioned. But things are getting clearer and clearer to Afghans themselves. Here's some testimony from Malalai Joya, from Afghanistan, published in the Guardian UK (H/T Chris Floyd):

In 2005, I was the youngest person elected to the new Afghan parliament. Women like me, running for office, were held up as an example of how the war in Afghanistan had liberated women. But this democracy was a facade, and the so-called liberation a big lie....

Almost eight years after the Taliban regime was toppled, our hopes for a truly democratic and independent Afghanistan have been betrayed by the continued domination of fundamentalists and by a brutal occupation that ultimately serves only American strategic interests in the region.

You must understand that the government headed by Hamid Karzai is full of warlords and extremists who are brothers in creed of the Taliban. Many of these men committed terrible crimes against the Afghan people during the civil war of the 1990s.

For expressing my views I have been expelled from my seat in parliament, and I have survived numerous assassination attempts. The fact that I was kicked out of office while brutal warlords enjoyed immunity from prosecution for their crimes should tell you all you need to know about the "democracy" backed by Nato troops....

So far, Obama has pursued the same policy as Bush in Afghanistan. Sending more troops and expanding the war into Pakistan will only add fuel to the fire.... Today the situation of women is as bad as ever. Victims of abuse and rape find no justice because the judiciary is dominated by fundamentalists....

This week, US vice-president Joe Biden asserted that "more loss of life [is] inevitable" in Afghanistan, and that the ongoing occupation is in the "national interests" of both the US and the UK.

I have a different message to the people of Britain. I don't believe it is in your interests to see more young people sent off to war, and to have more of your taxpayers' money going to fund an occupation that keeps a gang of corrupt warlords and drug lords in power in Kabul.

Author Tariq Ali reports in the London Review of Books (again, H/T Chris Floyd):

This is now Obama’s war. He campaigned to send more troops into Afghanistan and to extend the war, if necessary, into Pakistan. These pledges are now being fulfilled. On the day he publicly expressed his sadness at the death of a young Iranian woman caught up in the repression in Tehran, US drones killed 60 people in Pakistan. The dead included women and children, whom even the BBC would find it difficult to describe as ‘militants’. Their names mean nothing to the world; their images will not be seen on TV networks. Their deaths are in a ‘good cause’....

In May this year, Graham Fuller, a former CIA station chief in Kabul, published an assessment of the crisis in the region in the Huffington Post. Ignored by the White House.... not only did Fuller say that Obama was ‘pressing down the same path of failure in Pakistan marked out by George Bush’ and that military force would not win the day, he also explained... that the Taliban are all ethnic Pashtuns, that the Pashtuns ‘are among the most fiercely nationalist, tribalised and xenophobic peoples of the world, united only against the foreign invader’ and ‘in the end probably more Pashtun than they are Islamist’. ‘It is a fantasy,’ he said, ‘to think of ever sealing the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.’ And I don’t imagine he is the only retired CIA man to refer back to the days when Cambodia was invaded ‘to save Vietnam’....

You don't have to be a genius to see the Democrats, led by Barack Obama, sauntering down the same path as Jack Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson -- or Richard Nixon, for that matter -- and blundering into Asian war, led by the nose by the war profiteers, by the military brass and intelligence agencies that stand to get tons of money and promotions fighting the wars of their generation, oblivious that this grasping after money and glory could have some social cost. Just ask the generals of the former Red Army, or the Wehrmacht, for that matter, about the price of such empire-building, going all the way back to Ipsus and Marathon.

What's worst is the paralysis of much of the liberal left, who cannot bring themselves to call up the old antiwar chants hauled out previously in the early Bush years. Over time, the antiwar movement became subordinated to electing Democrats, and forgot how to do anything else. Now the Democrats are in power and they are pushing the war, and what's a good antiwar progressive to do but grit his or her teeth and hope things will change.

Well, that's bullshit, and if those who call themselves progressive can't bestir themselves to see they must oppose this militarist, imperialist aggression, whose legacy is only death, hatred, and more cycles of violence and war, then they deserve their ignominious fate, which is irrelevancy and a slow descent into reactionary politics, or exit from politics altogether.

Update:
The following information adds corroboration to what I am saying in the diary, and comments not only on the war cost issue, but puts into perspective the military strategy pursued by the U.S. in this new, more deadly phase of fighting in Afghanistan. Jim Maceda, who has reported from Afghanistan since 2001, had this to say, reporting from NBC news (emphasis added, H/T chrississippi in Daily Kos comments):

But [McChrystal's] plan to put troops into heavily populated areas isn't a new strategy. Thousands of Canadian forces have been doing just that for several years in Kandahar, trying to "separate the enemy from the people," with little success.

What is new (that word again) is the commitment of large numbers of U.S. forces to reinforce those Canadian units in the South.

U.S. military experts, quoted in Sunday's Washington Post, said that these security and political commitments will last at least a decade and potentially cost the U.S. more than the war in Iraq.

Mir agreed with the time line. "It could take another decade," he said, "to convince the Taliban that fighting is useless."

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Rallies for Torture Accountability Day, Thursday, June 25

Hat-tip to David Swanson at AfterDowningStreet.org

Rallies Around U.S. To Demand Accountability for Torture
http://accountability4torture.com

Thursday, June 25, 2009, has been designated Torture Accountability Action Day by a large coalition of human rights groups planning rallies and marches in major U.S. cities, including a rally in Washington, D.C.'s John Marshall Park at 11 a.m. followed by a noon march to the Justice Department where some participants will risk arrest in nonviolent protest if a special prosecutor for torture is not appointed.

Events are planned in Washington, D.C.; San Francisco, CA; Pasadena, CA; Thousand Oaks, CA; Boston, MA; Salt Lake City, UT; Seattle, WA; Portland, OR; Las Vegas, NV; Honolulu, HI; Tampa, FL; Philadelphia, PA; and Anchorage, AK, with details available online:
http://tortureaccountability.webs.com/eventsacrossus.htm

In Washington, D.C., groups will maintain literature tables from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at John Marshall Park, 501 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. A rally will begin at 11 a.m. with speakers including:

* Marjorie Cohn, President of the National Lawyers Guild, professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law;
* Njambi Good, Director of Counter Terror with Justice Campaign, Amnesty International USA;
* Enver Masud, Founder and CEO of The Wisdom Fund, recipient of the 2002 Gold Award from the Human Rights Foundation for his book "The War on Islam";
* Max Obuszewski, member of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance;
* Marcus Raskin, Cofounder of the Institute for Policy Studies;
* Patricio Rice, torture survivor;
* Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Cofounder of the Partnership for Civil Justice;
* Kevin Zeese, Director of VotersForPeace.US, Board Member of VelvetRevolution.US.
With performances by Jordan Page, Tha Truth, and David Ippolito.

Participants will march at noon to the Department of Justice, where some but not all of the participating organizations will engage in nonviolent resistance if the Attorney General has not yet agreed to appoint a special prosecutor for torture. (Some of the organizations sponsoring the day of rallies do not engage in civil disobedience.)

In Pasadena, Calif., at 12 p.m. PT citizens will submit a formal judicial misconduct complaint against 9th Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, former Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel: Courthouse steps, Chambers Courthouse, 125 South Grand Ave., Pasadena, CA 91105.

Statement of Purpose:

The highest officials in our government have trampled on our traditional ideals of making America a nation of laws, not of men, by illegally narrowing the scope of torture and authorizing waterboarding, walling, and other inhumane interrogation techniques. In doing so, they have violated the Anti-Torture Act, the War Crimes Act, the Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment.

In order to enforce our laws and restore the free society that our forefathers envisioned, citizens must demand accountability for abuses of the laws pertaining to torture. In the tradition of the Civil Rights movement, change will not occur unless citizens stand up for their rights under the law.

Torture Accountability Action Day Is Sponsored By:

Action Center for Justice
After Downing Street
Amnesty International
Bryn Mawr Peace Coalition
BuzzFlash
Coalition for Peace Action
Code Pink
Consumers for Peace
Democrats.com
Eldoradans Against Torture
Global Exchange
High Road for Human Rights
Hip Hop Caucus
Historians Against the War
IndictBushNow
Individuals for Justice
Marcus Raskin
National Accountability Network
National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance
NJ Peace Action
NJ People's Organization for Progress
Northern Virginians for Peace and Justice
Polygraph Radio
Peace Action
Peace and Justice Forums Billings Montana
Portland Peaceful Response Coalition
Progressive Democrats of America
Project Vote Count
School of the Americas Watch
Senior Action Network
The Torture Abolition Survivors Support Coalition
US Labor Against War
Veterans for Peace
War Criminals Watch
Washington Peace Center
We Are Change LA
Witness Against Torture
World Can't Wait

Bill Maher: We Need a Progressive Party

It takes a nighttime cable talk show host to say what a slew of talking head pundits, well-meaning bloggers, and witless politicians cannot bring themselves to say: Obama is no "socialist," he's not even a liberal. The Democrats are a center-right party, and the GOP have degenerated into a bunch of right-wing, flat-earth loonies. There is no political party that calls for cuts to defense, or tax hikes for the rich.

Maher's riff on Obama and the Democrats starts about 2:00 minutes into the video.

U.S. Militiary and CIA Interventions Since WWII: A Listing

If you haven't caught it yet, William Blum's Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, is a remarkable, if brief, compendium of U.S. criminal actions in the past 60 years. The table of contents, reproduced below, with links to sample chapters, represents a list of military and covert interventions around the world that in their totality mark the United States as a rogue nation, a terrorist state.

Most Americans would feel the above statement was extremely harsh or even nonsensical. They have been taught that the U.S. is the beacon of the world's people, even the last, best hope for mankind. The truth is often too awful to imagine, to stare in the face. But just as a house dweller cannot ignore forever the termites eating away at the foundations of his house, the American people must come to terms with what the leaders of their country have done in the recent historical period. If the trillions-dollar economic doesn't wake them up that something is seriously wrong with this country and how it is run, then nothing may awaken them.

From the website, killinghope.org (each linked chapter is footnoted with source material):

Introduction
1. China - 1945 to 1960s: Was Mao Tse-tung just paranoid?
2. Italy - 1947-1948: Free elections, Hollywood style
3. Greece - 1947 to early 1950s: From cradle of democracy to client state
4. The Philippines - 1940s and 1950s: America's oldest colony
5. Korea - 1945-1953: Was it all that it appeared to be?
6. Albania - 1949-1953: The proper English spy
7. Eastern Europe - 1948-1956: Operation Splinter Factor
8. Germany - 1950s: Everything from juvenile delinquency to terrorism
9. Iran - 1953: Making it safe for the King of Kings
10. Guatemala - 1953-1954: While the world watched
11. Costa Rica - Mid-1950s: Trying to topple an ally - Part 1
12. Syria - 1956-1957: Purchasing a new government
13. Middle East - 1957-1958: The Eisenhower Doctrine claims another backyard for America
14. Indonesia - 1957-1958: War and pornography
15. Western Europe - 1950s and 1960s: Fronts within fronts within fronts
16. British Guiana - 1953-1964: The CIA's international labor mafia
17. Soviet Union - Late 1940s to 1960s: From spy planes to book publishing
18. Italy - 1950s to 1970s: Supporting the Cardinal's orphans and techno-fascism
19. Vietnam - 1950-1973: The Hearts and Minds Circus
20. Cambodia - 1955-1973: Prince Sihanouk walks the high-wire of neutralism
21. Laos - 1957-1973: L'Armée Clandestine
22. Haiti - 1959-1963: The Marines land, again
23. Guatemala - 1960: One good coup deserves another
24. France/Algeria - 1960s: L'état, c'est la CIA
25. Ecuador - 1960-1963: A text book of dirty tricks
26. The Congo - 1960-1964: The assassination of Patrice Lumumba
27. Brazil - 1961-1964: Introducing the marvelous new world of death squads
28. Peru - 1960-1965: Fort Bragg moves to the jungle
29. Dominican Republic - 1960-1966: Saving democracy from communism by getting rid of democracy
30. Cuba - 1959 to 1980s: The unforgivable revolution
31. Indonesia - 1965: Liquidating President Sukarno ... and 500,000 others
East Timor - 1975: And 200,000 more
32. Ghana - 1966: Kwame Nkrumah steps out of line
33. Uruguay - 1964-1970: Torture -- as American as apple pie
34. Chile - 1964-1973: A hammer and sickle stamped on your child's forehead
35. Greece - 1964-1974: "Fuck your Parliament and your Constitution," said
the President of the United States
36. Bolivia - 1964-1975: Tracking down Che Guevara in the land of coup d'etat
37. Guatemala - 1962 to 1980s: A less publicized "final solution"
38. Costa Rica - 1970-1971: Trying to topple an ally -- Part 2
39. Iraq - 1972-1975: Covert action should not be confused with missionary work
40. Australia - 1973-1975: Another free election bites the dust
41. Angola - 1975 to 1980s: The Great Powers Poker Game
42. Zaire - 1975-1978: Mobutu and the CIA, a marriage made in heaven
43. Jamaica - 1976-1980: Kissinger's ultimatum
44. Seychelles - 1979-1981: Yet another area of great strategic importance
45. Grenada - 1979-1984: Lying -- one of the few growth industries in Washington
46. Morocco - 1983: A video nasty
47. Suriname - 1982-1984: Once again, the Cuban bogeyman
48. Libya - 1981-1989: Ronald Reagan meets his match
49. Nicaragua - 1981-1990: Destabilization in slow motion
50. Panama - 1969-1991: Double-crossing our drug supplier
51. Bulgaria 1990/Albania 1991: Teaching communists what democracy is all about
52. Iraq - 1990-1991: Desert holocaust
53. Afghanistan - 1979-1992: America's Jihad
54. El Salvador - 1980-1994: Human rights, Washington style
55. Haiti - 1986-1994: Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?
56. The American Empire - 1992 to present

Notes
Appendix I: This is How the Money Goes Round
Appendix II: Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-1945
Appendix III: U. S. Government Assassination Plots
Index

Blood Pacts Are Seldom Broken

While the ACLU, CCR, EFF and other civil liberties groups are fighting valiantly to protect Americans against governmental eavesdropping, the fight may be losing for technological-political reasons, and not simply legally.

The vast web that is electronic snooping is world-wide and includes reciprocal agreements between countries to share information. The actual wiretappers, in many instances, are "private" companies contracted out by the NSA or other governmental agencies. In both such cases, Fourth Amendment protections are ineffective, and FISA courts inapplicable.

Take the 2006 agreement the U.S. government made with Mexico to build a huge telecom/Internet eavesdropping center. They don’t need to concentrate solely on communications originating or terminating in the United States… they are contracting it out!

What follows is from the State Department document used to procure vendors for the project with AFI (Mexico’s version of the NSA) noted above (.doc link and Google cache link):

This procurement action is undertaken to establish a lawful interception solution that will provide the Government of Mexico, Procuraduria General de la Republica de Mexico (PGR), Agencia Federal de Investigaciones (AFI) with the capability to intercept, analyze, and use intercepted information from all types of communications systems operating in Mexico…. Equipment supplied must be manufactured in the United States….

The proposed system must comply with the following AFI stated requirements for interception of target calls and sessions from (1) TELMEX PSTN network, through analog lines, (2) TELCEL TDMA and GSM network, (3) NEXTEL iDEIM/GSM network, (4) TELEFONICA network, (5) UNEFON network, (6) IUSACELL CDMA network and TDMA network, (7) Existing CISCO VoIP network at customer’s premises, (8) packet data from the Mexico PRODIGY ISP network. Additionally the client desires the establishment of a central monitoring center with the capabilities of (1) real-time and off-line playback, (2) fax decoding, (3) packet data decoding, (4) storage of all calls for at least 25,000 hours, (5) storage of all session related information, (6) 30 monitoring stations and 30 printers, (7) cellular location and tracking. Capabilities must include TDMA, GSM, CDMA, iDEN, AMPS, PCS, landline, FAX, Email, chat, internet, SMS and VoIP….

1. The successful solution will fulfill the following:

a. Help deter, prevent, and mitigate acts of major federal crimes in Mexico that include narcotics trafficking and terrorism.
b. Strengthen the USG’s and Mexico’s protective posture to disseminate timely and accurate, actionable information to each country’s respective federal, state, local, private, and international partners.

As James Bamford noted in this book, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, p. 228:

Since the U.S. certainly qualifies as an “international partner,” it means Mexico is obligated to disseminate its data to a U.S. agency. But what is perhaps even more troublesome is the requirement to share its data with “private” partners — in other words private surveillance companies within the U.S.

This type of arrangement with Mexico and other countries may in fact be among the most secret parts of the Bush administration’s entire warrantless eavesdropping program. That is because it completely bypasses the requirement for probable cause that one of the parties is connected to al-Qaeda. The intercepted data is gathered by Mexicans in Mexico… and passed in bulk to the U.S., possibly to the NSA or FBI or Drug Enforcement Administration.

Astute commenter, William Ockham, pointed out the following at an interesting post at Emptywheel/FDL yesterday:

... if you read (between the lines of) the documents filed in the Nacchio case, you can see that the NSA was paying the telcos to tap into all the fiber optic cable laid overseas so that the NSA could pull all that traffic into the Narus systems any time they wanted.

As a famous quote from an Oliver Stone movie says, “We are through the looking glass here, people.”

U.S. democracy is proving to be a giant failure, and in its place we are seeing the worst sort of nightmare any dystopian author could imagine.

Echelon II

Bamford calls the system of setting up taps on all fiber-optics cables, in conjunction with the use of private companies like Verint or Narus or NICE Systems, Echelon II. (For more introduction to Project Echelon, a massive signals intelligence global interception and relay system run by the U.S. and its closest allies, see this article.)

Bush attorney Stephen Bradley testified before the House Judiciary Committee (Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security), during hearings to discuss updating FISA (9/6/06), as reported at In These Times:

As a Justice Department attorney [Bradbury] told the House Judiciary Committee after the wiretapping program was revealed, “I think the president has made it clear that there is no other program that involves domestic electronic surveillance of domestic communications,” leaving open the possibility that foreign electronic surveillance of both foreign and domestic communications is still ongoing.

The NSA and other government agencies are throwing smoke and mirrors, and the ACLU and other groups are already lagging behind events. The government has been routing its eavesdropping work around U.S. prying eyes for some time. Bush’s real crime, from the standpoint of the spooks and FBI types is that he pushed hard to do in the U.S. what the government has promoted in dictatorships and authoritarian countries for some time, including reciprocal agreements, secret backdoors, etc. to such up the info. By pushing hard in the U.S., he was bound to stir up a hornets nest of civil libertarians, etc., or whistleblowers like Mark Klein, a San Francisco AT&T; tech who demonstrated how the government was sucking all U.S. Internet traffic into servers at Room 641A at AT&T;'s Folsom Street building.

It’s not that Comey or the FBI were upset about all the wiretapping when they went to Ashcroft's hospital bed to get him to reject Bush/Gonzales's surveillance request. These cops got their dream come true when CALEA passed in 1994. They’ve spent much the subsequent years finding ways to expand access to the Internet, and one way they did that to get close to Verint, the private company that secretly taps most U.S. communications.

They just don’t want to get caught. If I’ve learned anything from my anti-torture work, it’s that these governmental crimes are concerned with cover-up from day one. If you think about it, it’s built into the covert mind-set and SOP. In fact, it’s one way to identify what is a covert op, i.e., there’s misdirection and cover-up from the very beginning.

We cannot be protected by FISA anymore. Nothing can protect us. That’s the shocking truth.

Orwellian Pessimism vs. Social Struggle

As if the reader cannot tell... I am very pessimistic these days. The release of the ICRC report on the CIA barely stirred a ripple, unless you frequent certain websites (as we do), but in Congress and the press as a whole, it’s business as usual, diverted by the circus that is the financial cataclysm. The latter itself is essentially a threatened strike by big finance capital to bring down the entire world financial system if it is not compensated for its amazing losses, once their attempt to totally game the system fell apart, mainly because they believed their own propaganda about the market.

The political parties are morally and practically dead. What they do doesn’t matter anymore. This is the legacy of lawless war, torture, and out-of-control spying. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Americans now staff this military-spy-surveillance world, both private and government, and they have a vested interest in its preservation. Moreover, the boards of the private companies move seamlessly in and out of the corporate world, including its financial, major energy and industrial sectors.

One asks, "Who’s in charge?" Is it really Dick Cheney from a safe house in Arlington? A very good question.

Do not look for a single individual. The rule is out there for anyone to see. It’s not a dictatorship of a single person. It’s rule by committees, and these committees are "democratically" open to anyone who has the money or has risen as a dedicated and talented servant of the system. It's rule by a class.

We’re about to have verified (oh, sometime this year, I believe), that the U.S. did conduct drug and behavioral experiments upon prisoners, and most likely Jose Padilla among them. (See also Padilla's attorneys' Motion to Dismiss for Outrageous Government Conduct.) Will anything happen as a result? Will we even see post-Church Committee laws passed to protect us? No. The demand for consensus was drawn in the sand on 9/11 (or rather in subsequent months and years), and sealed with the deaths of 100,000s of Iraqis and an unknown number of victims who suffered death by torture (likely in the hundreds, at least).

Blood pacts are seldom broken. If you didn’t speak out before, it’s very hard to do so now.

As a result, we will have both social decay, and more tumult and oppression. This is because while the populace is passive, it is disgruntled, and the oligarchy will want to snuff out any sparks of resistance or effective opposition. Obama may be humane - god, I hope so - but he totally accepts the need for the oligarchy to rule.

I’m not sure what should be done at this point. Without some kind of social struggle, the last bastions of liberty, which were set aside by having an independent judiciary, will succumb, and there will be nothing left to protect us.

CIA Director Panetta Skewered: "Plus Ça Change, Plus C'est La Meme Chose"

Melvin A. Goodman, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University, and an intelligence agency veteran, has written a withering review at The Public Record of the first months of Leon Panetta's tenure as Director of the CIA.

According to Goodman, Panetta compares to two previous poor managers of the CIA, Porter Goss and George Tenet. Panetta "ignored the Senate’s own investigation of CIA intelligence on Iraq that documented the misuse of intelligence... [while] guaranteeing to the Senate intelligence committee that he would make no leadership changes at the CIA, even though he was taking charge of a political culture that has been dominated by the cover-up of key intelligence failures."

As a result, Panetta has left in place the deputy director of the CIA, Stephen Kappes, who was a leading figure in the operations directorate when the program of extraordinary renditions went into full swing; the introduction of the use of torture and abuse even before a memorandum from the Department of Justice sanctioned such measures; and the establishment of the secret prisons or “black sites” that the CIA used to conduct so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

If President Obama and Leon Panetta were serious about stopping torture and abuse as well as extraordinary renditions that led to torture and abuse in third world countries, then why would they not adjust the chain of command to remove those high-ranking individuals responsible for these measure?

An excellent question, if you assume the predicate of the question, i.e., that Obama and Panetta are actually serious about stopping torture. In fact, decisions to utilize the Bagram prison for individuals rendered from anywhere, without recourse to judicial review, and to defend the Rumsfeld torture machinery against any exposure, while granting the administration the same claims to executive power under the post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that Bush did, argues that the Panetta policy is consistent with Obama's new (old) national security policy.

The latest news concerns Panetta's announcement that he was appointing former U.S. senator Warren Rudman as a "Special Adviser" to the Senate Intelligence Committee's announced hearings on CIA "past practices in terrorist detention and interrogation."

Goodman has Rudman's number, too:

Panetta has established his own review group within the Agency but has prominently placed current members of the National Clandestine Service (NCS) in the group.

The NCS has been a major player in the culture of cover-up at the CIA, including the destruction of the 92 torture tapes that is currently being investigated by the FBI. Members of NCS would have a great interest in making sure that the Senate committee did not receive the worst of the evidence in this investigation. By placing Rudman as an intermediary between the review group and the Senate intelligence committee, Panetta has ensured himself that the most damaging information will never see the light of day. Rudman was the most active member of the Senate intelligence committee in trying to block CIA officials from testifying against the nomination of Robert Gates as CIA director in 1991.

Senator Rudman actually branded those few individuals willing to come forward as “McCarthyites” in an effort to marginalize their testimony and to make sure additional witnesses would not testify or submit written affidavits against Bob Gates.

The political maneuvering around the interrogations/torture/detentions issue is fierce. One could get whiplash from following all the twistings and turnings and gyrations of the actors involved. The latest participant is Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Bush administration Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson's article at The Washington Note is titled "Some Truths About Guantanamo Bay."

"Some" is right. While the article has some interesting insights into the internecine struggles within the Bush administration over legitimating its policy decisions to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, and how they disregarded evidence from the beginning that the vast majority of the prisoners they were harvesting were totally innocent, the real purpose of the article is to paint Colin Powell as an innocent. Nay, even a closet rebel holding down the worst excesses of the Bush administration. It's a nice fairy tale.

The third basically unknown dimension is how hard Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage labored to ameliorate the GITMO situation from almost day one.

For example, Ambassador Pierre Prosper, the U.S. envoy for war crimes issues, was under a barrage of questions and directions almost daily from Powell or Armitage to repatriate every detainee who could be repatriated.

This was quite a few of them, including Uighurs from China and, incredulously, citizens of the United Kingdom ("incredulously" because few doubted the capacity of the UK to detain and manage terrorists). Standing resolutely in Ambassador Prosper's path was Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who would have none of it. Rumsfeld was staunchly backed by the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney....

But their ultimate cover was that the struggle in which they were involved was war and in war those detained could be kept for the duration. And this war, by their own pronouncements, had no end. For political purposes, they knew it certainly had no end within their allotted four to eight years. Moreover, its not having an end, properly exploited, would help ensure their eight rather than four years in office.

Hmm... I don't seem to remember Colin Powell denouncing the "war on terror" rhetoric anytime back in 2004, or even 2008 (despite his endorsement of Barack Obama, who also uses "war on terror" rhetoric on occasion). And wasn't Powell one of the "principals" at National Security Council meetings held in the White House that, according to an ABC report last year, "discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency", and in particular the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah in spring 2002? And was not this fact recently verified in a secret ICRC report linked to Mark Danner who published excerpts in the New York Review of Books just earlier this week? And weren't the following all present at these Principals meetings where torture was approved: "Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft"?

Of course this is all true, and Wilkerson's piece is a clever mea culpa for Powell, Armitage, and secondarily Rice, who all may be feeling the cold breath of indictments breathing down their necks. Cheney, it seems, has taken a different tack, brazenly lashing out in various interviews about the rightness of his administration's policies, and the dangers (supposedly) of following Obama's leadership changes. (Armageddon? again? -- And where is Donald Rumsfeld these days, anyway, last seen watching Oliver Stone's movie "W"?)

The cover-up of U.S. government torture continues apace. The problem is that too much is known. They are counting now on whitewash fake exposes, faux investigations, and time to take people's minds off what really happened. They are hoping that public rage towards AIG bonuses will siphon off the outrage energy, leaving little left for any concerted push for prosecutions and real government reform.

Their strategy may yet work, but it's up to the American people to stand them down. It will take as much fervor as we have got. The opposition is formidable, but our dedication is, too. And I am counting on the bedrock moral goodness of the American people. It is there. Do not doubt it. And it has not yet spoken its final word.