Looking ahead to "after Bush"

Lots of well-known progressive bloggers are at Netroots Nation in Austin today. Good for them. Some of us couldn't make it. Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight makes an interesting observation.

The focus is more on long-term organization and party-building, House and Senate races, and governance if and when Obama takes office [than on the Presidential race].

Good. Having watched the Democrats in Congress flounder since 2006, we need to be organizing ourselves about these matters now.

My friend Brendan Smith and his writing buddy Jeremy Brecher have contributed to thinking about "after" in a new Nation article laying out nine reasons to investigate war crimes. Their reasons are worth remarking. Here they are with my comments [in brackets.]

Here are nine reasons why we must not let bygones be bygones:

1. World peace cannot be achieved without human rights and accountability.

According to Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunals, "The ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars, which are inevitable in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible to law." Moving in that direction will be impossible unless such responsibility applies to the statesmen of the world's most powerful countries, and above all the world's sole superpower... [First we have to convince the people of the United States that peace itself is a good, devoutly to be wished for, and worked for. One of the lessons of the Bush regime is that too many of us don't know this. We haven't had a war on our soil, except to seize Indian land, since the 1860s. The awful, but more theatrical than materially damaging, attacks of 9/11 were enough to throw us for a loop. Most of the world has more immediate experience of war and knows viscerally that peace is a value to cherished and nourished.]

2. The rule of law is central to our democracy.

Most Americans believe that even the highest officials are bound by law. ... [Powerful people always think that doesn't apply to them; they are special exceptions. Societies work when the powerful are wrong. This one is not currently working.]

3. We must not allow precedents to be set that promote war crimes.

Executive action unchallenged by Congress changes the way our law is interpreted. According to Robert Borosage, writing for Huffington Post, "If Bush's extreme assertions of power are not challenged by the Congress, they end up not simply creating new law, they could end up rewriting the Constitution itself." [Hey, aren't we supposed to use the amendment procedure to change the Constitution?]

4. We must restore the principles of democracy to our government.

The claim that the President, as commander-in-chief, can exercise the unlimited powers of a king or dictator strikes at the very heart of our democracy. ... Countries like Chile can attest that the restoration of democracy and the rule of law requires more than voting a new party into office -- it requires a rejection of impunity for the criminal acts of government officials. [We're not electing a warrior general this fall. We're electing a politician who represents and in good times leads us in ways that serve the country. Generals are employees of the country. Presidents are employees and leaders of free people. When they get uppity and ignore the people, they should get tossed.]

5. We must forestall an imperialist resurgence.

When they are out of office, the advocates of imperial expansion and global domination have proven brilliant at lying in wait to undermine and destroy their opponents. ... [I am very concerned with this principle. They need to be locked up or at least permanently excluded from legitimate politics.]

6. We must have national consensus on the real reasons for the Bush Administration's failures.

[Otherwise they'll be selling the stab in the back crap as long as they live. And they hang around -- they still think they would have won in Vietnam except the American people failed them.]

7. We must restore America's damaged reputation abroad.

...To establish international legitimacy, we must demonstrate that we are capable of holding our leaders to account. [Obama seems a natural for the role of restoring US reputation -- but he'll need some substance, not just glitz.]

8. We must lay the basis for major change in US foreign policy.

...The American people must understand why international cooperation rather than pursuit of global domination is necessary to their own security. And other countries must be convinced that we really mean it. [Tough stuff. We actually might get the first part if only because our once globally dominant economy no longer delivers. But will the rest of the world put up with us?]

9. We must deter future US war crimes.

The specter of more war crimes haunts our future. Rumors continue to circulate about an American or American-backed Israeli attack on Iran. ... Holding war criminals accountable will require placing the long-term well-being of our country and the world ahead of short-term political advantage. [When we were wealthy and powerful enough, we sometimes understood that honey beats vinegar hands down. Think the Marshall plan. Even, think AIDS funding for Africa. If this country wants positive roles to play, it can find them.]

These writers are pointing to an uphill struggle that serious progressives are going to have to wage come 2009, whoever gets elected. Another Nation writer, Ari Melber, reports from Netroots Nation that holding the criminals accountable is not much on the agenda of at least some Obama advisers.

Cass Sunstein, an adviser to Barack Obama from the University of Chicago Law School, cautioned against prosecuting criminal conduct from the current Administration. Prosecuting government officials risks a "cycle" of criminalizing public service, he argued, and Democrats should avoid replicating retributive efforts like the impeachment of President Clinton -- or even the "slight appearance" of it.

Oh yeah, the "take it off the table" route. But all is not hopeless. Not long after Melber posted that, Sunstein got back to him:

Update: Sunstein emailed to emphasize that he also said and believes that "egregious crimes should not be ignored."

In general, "our leaders" are better at remembering that they are supposed to enforce the law when we keep banging away at them to do their jobs. Lots of work ahead.

The economy and the peace movement

Yesterday a McClatchy News headline screamed: "Just in time for Obama, economy becomes Issue No. 1."

This week, 53 percent of Americans ranked the economy their top concern heading into the election, while 16 percent ranked Iraq their chief worry, according to a national survey by Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. In May 2007, the priorities were the opposite, with 57 percent naming Iraq the top issue and 5 percent naming the economy.

The focus of the story was on how the shift in public concern is supposed to aid the Democrat. And it may.

But I have to wonder whether this is a misreading of the results. What if most people in the United States, vividly aware as we are of the painful mess our economy is in, blame a good part of the economic pain on the war? This was certainly true in April. A CBS News poll asked, "How much has the Iraq war contributed to U.S. economic problems?" Fully 67 percent answered "a lot." By and large, it looks as if the U.S. people believe the war is a big part of why gas, food, and even imported Wal-Mart plastic goods cost more. They may not understand what pushing the country into ever deeper debt for the good of the Republican plutocratic base has done to the value of our money, but they know something big has been done wrong and the war is at the center of the mess.

Tom Hayden just put out a good essay on how all this interacts with the election. For the elite imperial consensus, citizen awareness that we've been had creates a "crisis of democracy," both in occupied Iraq and in the United States.

... the electorates in both countries are threatening to topple the principle warmakers at the ballot box.

Such a popular democratic outcome is intolerable to al-Maliki's circle, to the Pentagon, to the Republicans to neo-conservatives, and apparently unthinkable to the mainstream media. ...

The most that can be expected at this stage are November electoral mandates for peace and a speedy withdrawal from both American and Iraqi voters. This will not be easy, despite the peace majorities entrenched in both countries.

I think Hayden has nailed this. It's going to be hard to get our guy to follow through with his withdrawal promise. On the other hand, the underlying understanding the people at large have -- the knowledge that empire on a global scale is no longer affordable -- is right. So a President Obama will be pushed back by reality to scale down faraway wars.

Every iteration of a peace movement in my lifetime has tried to tell the U.S. people that our wars undermined their economic wellbeing. For all our efforts, it has always been a hard message to sell. Getting it required making connections that were too remote from daily life. I don't think we've sold it much better in the context of the Iraq war, but it seems that people more and more do "get it," no thanks to the peace movement.

Reality bites. Hard.

Flushing of the effluent of 43

It's nice to know I'll have something positive to vote on this November. Thanks to the efforts of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco, I'll be able to recommend renaming the building pictured here.

Yes we did! The San Francisco Department of Elections has qualified our initiative to rename the sewage plant in honor of George W Bush for the Nov 4th general election.

San Francisco Republicans are usually described in news coverage as "embarrassed" by the measure. But we don't really have many Republicans -- something like 13 percent of city voters at last count.

San Francisco is is changing. High land values and sky-high housing costs are driving out folks with children and many of the people who do the ordinary work. But I don't think San Francisco yet contains enough people who want the city to be taken seriously to defeat this. I could be wrong. ***

Maybe while we're at it, we could propose Nicaraguans name this one in their country after Ronnald Reagan?

Think you've seen it all in campaigns?

This just has to be the most creative campaign gambit I've ever seen. And one of the most enjoyable. Click on the picture above and enjoy. Entirely work-safe.

H/t Daniel De Groot.

Pictures of security

Though it is currently 80 degrees warm here, this is what security looks like in the country.



The other accommodation we're making way out here to current imperatives is "thinking like it is still World War II." That means responding to contemporary gas prices by carefully planning trips to town to maximize the number of errands that can be done on one go. Simple, but something all of us will do more in an energy-scarce future.

That New Yorker cover "My gut squirmed"

From a comment at Michelle Obama Watch:

When I saw that picture, and the pulp-style branding of Mrs. Obama, I had an uncomfortable visceral reaction. Literally, my gut squirmed. It was painful. This is the reaction that the artist should have had or had and foolishly stifled with the words “Well I’m fighting these perceptions with this work so it’s okay.”

This “work of art” is the product of an adult who has lost touch with their intuition, dare I say their emotional humanity. The world is a cold set of 1’s and 0’s of right and wrong, missing the heart.

They figure, “Well because my intentions are good, this isn’t harmful - you see I’m actually making fun of this sort of mentality.” But they don’t get that they are adding to a landscape already glutted with harmful caricatures and stereotypes and ignorant responses without adding to the dialogue.

I wonder whether people like artist Barry Blitt who drew this thing and considers it "satire" ever realize that idle "cleverness" reinforcing hateful narratives injures real human beings?

Sure, the Obamas presumably have hides like rhinos -- anyone fool enough to run for ruler of the empire has to. But the stereotypes used to demean them here have real world consequences everyday for African Americans and U.S. Muslims, consequences like assaults, police harassment and worse. ***Local note: the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial cartoonist goes to bat for his fellow "artist" in an oped today. Here's his lede:

"I don't get it." Along with "that's not funny" and "there has been a fatwa declared against you," they are the words any cartoonist least wants to hear.

I can only assume Tom Meyer wants people to think the Obamas are closet Muslims, religious terrorists. This isn't just cool snark. It is vicious racism.

What happened at Postville

There is nothing obscure about this document -- I downloaded it from a link [pdf] within a New York Times editorial. I offer excerpts here so that a few more of us cannot claim we do not know this is happening.

Then began the saddest procession I have ever witnessed, which the public would never see, because cameras were not allowed past the perimeter of the compound (only a few journalists came to court the following days, notepad in hand). Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10. They appeared to be uniformly no more than 5 ft. tall, mostly illiterate Guatemalan peasants with Mayan last names, some being relatives (various Tajtaj, Xicay, Sajché, Sologüí...), some in tears; others with faces of worry, fear, and embarrassment. They all spoke Spanish, a few rather laboriously. It dawned on me that, aside from their Guatemalan or Mexican nationality, which was imposed on their people after Independence, they too were Native Americans, in shackles. They stood out in stark racial contrast with the rest of us as they started their slow penguin march across the makeshift court.

The author of this account, Erik Camayd-Freixas, has served for 23 years as a certified Spanish interpreter for federal courts. He teaches interpretation at Florida International University. In May he was called upon to translate in proceedings subsequent to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid on Agriprocessors Inc, the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse and meat packing plant located in the town of Postville, Iowa. The raid rocked the town of some 2300.

At the local high school, only three of the 15 Latino students came back on Tuesday, while at the elementary and middle school, 120 of the 363 children were absent. In the following days the principal went around town on the school bus and gathered 70 students after convincing the parents to let them come back to school; 50 remained unaccounted for. Some American parents complained that their children were traumatized by the sudden disappearance of so many of their school friends. The principal reported the same reaction in the classrooms, saying that for the children it was as if ten of their classmates had suddenly died.

Because what he participated in seemed such a mockery of justice clothed in the appearance of legality, he chose to make public a 14 page account of what happened in Postville.

Later in the day, three groups of women were brought, shackled in the same manner. One of them, whose husband was also arrested, was released to care for her children, ages two and five, uncertain of their whereabouts. Several men and women were weeping, but two women were particularly grief stricken. One of them was sobbing and would repeatedly struggle to bring a sleeve to her nose, but her wrists shackled around her waist simply would not reach; so she just dripped until she was taken away with the rest. The other one, a Ukrainian woman, was held and arraigned separately when a Russian telephonic interpreter came on. She spoke softly into a cellular phone, while the interpreter told her story in English over the speakerphone. Her young daughter, gravely ill, had lost her hair and was too weak to walk. She had taken her to Moscow and Kiev but to no avail. She was told her child needed an operation or would soon die. She had come to America to work and raise the money to save her daughter back in Ukraine.

The workers picked up in the raid were indeed undocumented. Many had bought false Social Security cards from unscrupulous fixers in the U.S. If they were lucky, the numbers were just made up. But nearly 300 were unlucky enough to be using numbers that belonged to someone else. They were charged with felony identity theft and got the full treatment.

The client, a Guatemalan peasant afraid for his family, spent most of that time weeping at our table, in a corner of the crowded jailhouse visiting room. How did he come here from Guatemala? "I walked." What? "I walked for a month and ten days until I crossed the river." We understood immediately how desperate his family's situation was. He crossed alone, met other immigrants, and hitched a truck ride to Dallas, then Postville, where he heard there was sure work. He slept in an apartment hallway with other immigrants until employed. He had scarcely been working a couple of months when he was arrested. Maybe he was lucky: another man who began that Monday had only been working for 20 minutes.

The identity theft charges were a hammer that forced the arrested workers to plea down to 5 month jail sentences. The charges would not have held up if they had fought them as no actual theft was intended or performed. But fighting the charges would have meant waiting around in jail for 2 years while their families starved.

"Knowingly" and "intent" are necessary elements of the charges, but most of the clients we interviewed did not even know what a Social Security number was or what purpose it served. This worker simply had the papers filled out for him at the plant, since he could not read or write Spanish, let alone English. But the lawyer still had to advise him that pleading guilty was in his best interest. He was unable to make a decision. "You all do and undo," he said. "So you can do whatever you want with me." To him we were part of the system keeping him from being deported back to his country, where his children, wife, mother, and sister depended on him. He was their sole support and did not know how they were going to make it with him in jail for 5 months. None of the "options" really mattered to him. Caught between despair and hopelessness, he just wept. He had failed his family, and was devastated. I went for some napkins, but he refused them. I offered him a cup of soda, which he superstitiously declined, saying it could be "poisoned." His Native American spirit was broken and he could no longer think.

Even the judges were trapped into confirming injustice.

It works like this. By handing down the inflated charge of "aggravated identity theft," which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 2 years in prison, the government forced the defendants into pleading guilty to the lesser charge and accepting 5 months in jail. Clearly, without the inflated charge, the government had no bargaining leverage, because the lesser charge by itself, using a false Social Security number, carries only a discretionary sentence of 0- 6 months. The judges would be free to impose sentence within those guidelines, depending on the circumstances of each case and any prior record. Virtually all the defendants would have received only probation and been immediately deported. In fact, the government's offer at the higher end of the guidelines (one month shy of the maximum sentence) was indeed no bargain. What is worse, the inflated charge, via the binding 11(C)(1)(c) Plea Agreement, reduced the judges to mere bureaucrats, pronouncing the same litany over and over for the record in order to legalize the proceedings, but having absolutely no discretion or decision-making power.

All the arrested worker knew was that they had been caught up in a cruel web of punishment. Neither they nor their lawyers had any wiggle room. Effectively, ICE legal tactics made undocumented work itself a crime, though no statute does this.

But with the promise of faster deportation, their ignorance of the legal system, and the limited opportunity to consult with counsel before arraignment, all the workers, without exception, were led to waive their 5th Amendment right to grand jury indictment on felony charges. Waiting for a grand jury meant months in jail on an immigration detainer, without the possibility of bail. So the attorneys could not recommend it as a defense strategy. Similarly, defendants have the right to a status hearing before a judge, to determine probable cause, within ten days of arraignment, but their Plea Agreement offer from the government was only good for seven days. Passing it up, meant risking 2 years in jail. As a result, the frivolous charge of identity theft was assured never to undergo the judicial test of probable cause. Not only were defendants and judges bound to accept the Plea Agreement, there was also absolutely no defense strategy available to counsel. Once the inflated charge was handed down, all the pieces fell into place like a row of dominoes.

Why this determination from ICE to make undocumented labor a crime? Can you say the survival instinct of a burgeoning bureaucratic police force?

Never before has illegal immigration been criminalized in this fashion. It is no longer enough to deport them: we first have to put them in chains. At first sight it may seem absurd to take productive workers and keep them in jail at taxpayers' expense. But the economics and politics of the matter are quite different from such rational assumptions. ... ICE is under enormous pressure to turn out statistical figures that might justify a fair utilization of its capabilities, resources, and ballooning budget. For example, the Report boasts 102,777 cases "eliminated" from the fugitive alien population in FY07, "quadrupling" the previous year's number, only to admit a page later that 73,284 were "resolved" by simply "taking those cases off the books" after determining that they "no longer met the definition of an ICE fugitive" (4-5). De facto, the rationale is: we have the excess capability; we are already paying for it; ergo, use it we must.

Erik Camayd-Freixas believes he saw an early battle in a "New War" -- the merger of the "war on terror" with a "war on migrants," all lawless, all profoundly anti-democratic.

Furthermore, by virtue of its magnitude and methods, ICE's New War is unabashedly the aggressive deployment of its own brand of immigration reform, without congressional approval. "In FY07, as the debate over comprehensive immigration reform moved to the forefront of the national stage, ICE expanded upon the ongoing effort to re-invent immigration enforcement for the 21st century" (3). In recent years, DHS has repeatedly been accused of overstepping its authority. The reply is always the same: if we limit what DHS/ICE can do, we have to accept a greater risk of terrorism. Thus, by painting the war on immigration as inseparable from the war on terror, the same expediency would supposedly apply to both. Yet, only for ICE are these agendas codependent: the war on immigration depends politically on the war on terror, which, as we saw earlier, depends economically on the war on immigration. This type of no-exit circular thinking is commonly known as a "doctrine." In this case, it is an undemocratic doctrine of expediency, at the core of a police agency, whose power hinges on its ability to capitalize on public fear. Opportunistically raised by DHS, the sad specter of 9/11 has come back to haunt illegal workers and their local communities across the USA.

Those of us who are citizens need to decide if we'll tolerate such a republic of fear.

Rock-star philosopher on our election

Bernard-Henri Levy is a French philosopher and writer. If we were French, apparently we would know of him. Here in the United States, we are only likely to perhaps have encountered his controversial book Who Killed Daniel Pearl? or his American Vertigo : Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville, a journalistic encounter with contemporary U.S. democracy and society. In the last year, he's been lecturing on a phenomenon he calls "the new global anti-semitism."

Not too surprisingly given his current preoccupations, he's recently published his thoughts about the U.S. campaign in The New Republic. The article is thought provoking. There are assertions that immediately remind one that this is a remote observer -- he simply gets things wrong. McCain is absolutely not "surprising in his opposition to torture and Guantanamo..." When push came to shove, McCain came right around to supporting Bush's weakening of military prohibitions on torture. And no one really on top of the campaign would ask: "When will the below-the-belt stuff begin? On what Internet site will the first photomontages appear of Barack Obama tricked up as a radical Islamist?" That garbage has been out there for months.

Nonetheless, Levy makes a couple of assertions that seem to me worth thinking about.

Unlike, say, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton or Condoleezza Rice, [Obama] does not carry with him the heritage of slavery or the memory of segregation because he was born of a Kenyan father. The difference is enormous, because the mirror he holds up to America is no longer one that reflects those dark times, no longer one of unbearable ancestral culpability. Barack Obama can win because he is the first African-American to take, by the grace of his birth, a step away from the two sides of a deep divide--and the first who may now play the card--not of condemnation or damnation--but of seduction, and--as he says over and over--of reconciliation.

However much Obama and his campaign may want us to put it aside, the U.S. history of racism -- our peculiar, particular structure of white supremacy -- will shape this campaign. The first Black man to get a serious shot at the Presidency necessarily navigates a minefield of fears and hopes. That we don't see him doing this doesn't mean the racial hazards aren't there -- it just means Obama has been, so far, supremely good at overcoming surface-level prejudices with inspiration. Levy may be onto something in pointing out that it is the immediateness of his African roots, having a father from a newly post-colonial, independent state, that allows him to leap past rather than confront directly the hurdle of historic white guilt. Of course he is a Black man in this United States, so he also knows, and is careful not to arouse, the deeper-level racial animus that could be let loose by a false move. We are seeing a virtuoso racial tightrope performance and cheering the guy while holding our breath at his boldness.

The other Levy tidbit that bears some consideration:

America has changed. ... one could also... see the shock and desperate mobilization of an America that knows it is dying but is trying nonetheless to delay the moment when it realizes it must surrender.

Levy doesn't explicate this further. He seems to be a man on a mission to develop a U.S. audience to go with his French one; perhaps he doesn't want to alienate the customers?

Here's what I think this means: the current campaign does show that there is a considerable mass of people in this country who know something has to give. The country isn't working for too many people. Ruling the empire by force isn't working. It looks as if pretty soon the planet will stop working. Obama says "change" and masses of us attach our sense of unease to the "hope" he offers. Levy and Obama have spotted a genuine cultural current and Obama may well ride it to the Presidency. Levy thinks he will.

Will this movement that Obama now rides, though it is not of his making nor will he necessarily be able to master it, carry us anywhere we want to go? That might be still up for grabs. Obama needn't be the only one grabbing the potential energy we feel on the knife edge between hope and terror. We live in interesting times.

Heart breaking lawlessness,Heart warming calls for justice

Finally, at long last, discussions are breaking out all over about how to bring to justice some of the people who instigated and abetted in the U.S. torture regime. Here's an "expert" opinion.

Human-rights organizations and foreign prosecutors are building databases on U.S. officials involved in activities considered violations under international law. It may be only a matter of time before indictments are drawn up for the arrests of targeted Americans when they travel abroad.

Milt Bearden,
The Washington Independent,
July 1, 2008

Milt Bearden served as senior manager for clandestine operations in the CIA's Directorate of Operations.

Patrick Noonan is a citizen who wrote a Letter to the Editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. He cries out against torture.

Editor - As human beings, it's important to forgive President Bush for his policies which resulted in the abuse and torture of prisoners of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. But as citizens of a good and great country, it's important that we ask for some consequences for those responsible for breaking international law and American law and laws of just plain common decency. ...

Meanwhile, publication of British lawyer and international law professor Phillip Sands' Torture Team: Rumsfeld's memo and the betrayal of American values helped tease out this from Larry Wilkerson, a former army officer and chief of staff to Colin Powell:

"Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzalez and - at the apex - Addington, should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court."

Guardian UK,
April 19, 2008

Yes -- the lawyers must be made accountable.

And this week, Jane Mayer's The Dark Side apparently will provide further documentation of crimes via the International Committee of the Red Cross.

"[T]he Red Cross document 'warned that the abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted.'"

Glenn Greenwald

It's all torture all the time in Bush's neighborhood. Can those "highest officials" ever be brought to some kind of justice?

Friday cat bloggingIn which she looks contented

Really, that's how she looks when happy. It's wearing sometimes.

Panic receding

Apparently, despite the howls of restrictionists like Lou Dobbs, we're calming down about immigration. The Gallup organization reports a poll showing that the percentage of U.S. citizens favoring cutbacks in immigration has fallen from 58 percent immediately after 9/11, to 45 percent last year, and only 39 percent this year. Moreover, 64 percent of us think that immigration is a good thing for the country -- and only 27 percent expect that immigration issues will be "extremely important" in how they vote in November.


In fact, for all the screaming, broad opinion trends have pretty much reverted to where they stood in 2000 -- except the number wishing for more avenues for legal immigration seems to have risen from about 12 to 18 percent.

And despite the stuttering economy, fully 79 percent think immigrants "take low-paying jobs that Americans don't want," up from 74 percent two years ago. It doesn't look as if most people are clamoring for more I.C.E. raids, checkpoints on roads and in bus stations, and mass deportations. Somebody tell the Bush Administration.

One reason the aggregate numbers appear more friendly to immigrants than past polls is simply the growing size of the Latino segment of the U.S. population. While majorities of whites and blacks think immigrants "cost U.S. taxpayers too much," fully 65 percent of Latinos insist immigrants "pay their fair share."

Our lawless surveillance state

So our Senators have ripped up our Constitutional protections against being searched on some bureaucratic snooper's say-so. (And remember, the snooper's view of the world is too often closer to Dick Cheney's than yours or mine.) That's really what the new verion of the FISA law they just passed does with our phone and email communications.

And yes, our champion of hope and change, Senator Obama, didn't care enough to lift a finger to stop it. He just wants all the noisy defenders of civil liberty to shut up and walk precincts for him. And many of us will, a testament to the tyranny of the two party system.

The wholesale destruction of our presumption of individual privacy for our opinions, foibles, and habits is happening for two reasons.

• It has become extremely cheap and easy to snoop. Electronic data can be swept up in enormous volume and stored and analyzed at very little cost to the sweeper. Our phones report our whereabouts through their GPS function; visual records of us on thousands of surveillance cameras more and more can be studied electronically without human labor. And if all else fails, they can track us by satellite.

• We never had to devise legal protections from this level of grab bag surveillance because such measures used to be to be beyond the capacity of people who want to sell us things or government agencies. Our privacy relied on the difficulty of breaching it. No more.

If we don't like the emerging Lawless Surveillance State (in Glenn Greenwald's excellent formulation), we're in a for a prolonged struggle. I believe this struggle is vital to the survival of a quasi-democratic society.

First, we need to make it understandable what we are fighting for. This is not easy. Technological change has made forms of surveillance once literally unimaginably now easy and feasible. We have to help people understand what is going on, that something they never thought possible is happening.

As well, we have to cut through the fear -- "but there are terrorists under the bed." There might be terrorists somewhere (though probably not under the bed) but that can't be allowed to justify sweeping up everything about everybody. Might as well hand the country over to the terrorists if we're all to be treated as suspect until cleared by the spooks.

This set of tasks, those that involve defining the problem and cutting through the fear, are, mostly, tasks that relate to an older generation of folks. This isn't entirely about chronological age -- it's about folks stuck in mindsets that were once rational and have become dangerous to liberty. Both an awareness that everything about our lives can be an open book and that this country, so isolated by its oceans and history, could be subject to foreign-based terrorist attacks are wildly new and dissonant ideas to lots of us who've lived awhile. Something did change after 9/11 -- authoritarians won license to curtail our historic freedoms.

That goes, especially I think, for many of our lawmakers. On this subject, a Diane Feinstein (or even more a computer-illiterate John McCain) is simply stupid, utterly without relevant understanding of what's at stake when they gut civil liberties. (And yes, they might also be more than a little ready to do favors for the companies that pay for their campaigns.) Building a fight against the lawless surveillance state has an element that is analogous to what an old (chronologically) friend of mine once said about achieving gay marriage: "Some people are going to have to die off." There are people, heavily represented in Congress, who are never going to understand what is happening in this arena. We have to replace them. And we, and the passage of time, will replace them.

There's a further obstacle to fighting the lawless surveillance state: more informed people's resignation and cynicism. The more technically savvy among us, often younger people, take for granted that they give away a lot of privacy in order to play with their tech toys -- and either don't mind losing their privacy or don't think having the world know their innermost souls and habits can hurt them. I get this -- I live it and I like my toys. It's all too easy on this side of the digital divide to believe that "resistance is futile."

Those of us who live inside this new world of easy surveillance aren't going to really understand what has gone wrong until we see or experience abuses ourselves. It won't always be somebody over there -- some hapless foreigner, some powerless brown person, some drug trafficker -- on the wrong end of unregulated government snooping. True stories of abuse will leak out -- and those of us in the electronic arena will amplify those stories. The snoops will pick the wrong target. Or they'll just plain do something dumb as they did in the cases the telecoms got thrown out today; plaintiffs' lawyers were sent transcripts of illegal wiretaps for which no warrants existed.

Building a movement for civil liberties that fits the contemporary lawless surveillance state is not going to be the work of a few months or even years. Remedies need to be envisioned that take into account the new, enormous, and cheap capacity for privacy invasions that technology has brought us. Both Canada and the European Union have something like "privacy officials" whose mandate is prevent abusive surveillance. Maybe there is something in that approach, rather than trying to reinstate warrants. I don't know -- these are things we'll learn by political struggle and in the doing.

It's good to know that some semi-establishment voices are already denouncing the surveillance regime, for example this New York Times editorial.

The magnitude of the threat to individual autonomy is so great that the very terrain of the fight will of necessity change. What now appear unlikely coalitions will make sense because we are confronting something new. Specifically, I'm going to have to work in cooperation with libertarians, though as I said the other day, I think the way they understand a good society is crackpot.


The always excellent Glenn Greenwald has made a start on building a movement to bring the lawless surveillance state back under legal limits -- not surprisingly, it is called "Strange Bedfellows." Click on the graphic about to explore that project.

And even after betrayal on FISA, we have to keep kicking back -- that's what free people do.

Remember Europe?

Bush talks with Medvedev (AP Photo/Kimimasa Mayama, POOL)

Let's see -- the U.S. has two wars going on and is losing both of them. In addition, it looks as if India and Pakistan might be about to fight a low intensity battle in the middle of one of those wars. And in between these combatants, we're threatening a knockout blow we can't deliver against the country that has gained the most from these ill-advised adventures.

So what does our regime do? Open some more fronts, apparently. The arc of conflict running from Egypt through Afghanistan presents so many horrors, that here in the U.S. we've largely looked away from what the Bush Administration is doing in Europe. Bad idea -- those people need all the surveillance we can muster.

For starters, this week Bush met the recently installed new Russian President (who may just be a stooge for the previous President, Vladimir Putin.) Our boy is at it again, trying to get a read on the new Russian, Dmitry Medvedev. He's a little more cautious than he was when he first encountered Putin, "looked into his soul," and pronounced him trustworthy. But only a little more.

I'm not going to sit here and psychoanalyze the man, but I will tell you that he's very comfortable, he's confident, and that I believe that when he tells me something, he means it."

Detroit Free Press,
July 8, 2008

Uh oh -- Bush thinks he knows what's going on again, always very dangerous.

Meanwhile, Condoleeza Rice is in the Czech Republic signing an agreement to stick part of an anti-missile system there. Thing is, the Russians feel threatened by having a U.S. radar installation parked on their doorstep.

Russia has said it will be forced to react with military means if the US and Czech Republic go ahead with plans for a missile shield.

The statement came hours after the US signed an initial deal to base part of Washington's controversial missile defence system in the Czech Republic.

BBC,
July 8, 2008

It's hard not to get the impression that the Russians are seriously pissed off by this Bush move.

And they aren't the only ones. Most Czechs don't want to play the role of Washington's advance base against Russia.

"Do not make a target of us," proclaimed the banner at Letna hill overlooking the Czech capital ...

Polls regularly show around two-thirds of Czech opposed to hosting the US radar. A survey by the CVVM agency published this month showed 68 percent opposed to the US radar.

AFP,
July 8, 2008

Meanwhile, Bush reminded Medvedev that though he may have only six months left in office, he is "sprinting toward the finish." Uh oh.

FISA passage delayed

Jesse Helms finally did something for his country. Die.

The Senate will postpone until Wednesday votes on an overhaul of electronic surveillance law for lawmakers who want to attend Tuesday’s funeral of former North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., said Monday.

Congressional Quarterly

Won't make any difference in the long run if passage of FISA shreds the Fourth Amendment a day later, but it's nice to know the old racist was good for something.

UPDATE: Jesse's still persecuting the principled.

RALEIGH - L.F. Eason III gave up the only job he'd ever had rather than lower a flag to honor former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms.

Eason, a 29-year veteran of the state Department of Agriculture, instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff Monday, as called for in a directive to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley.

When a superior ordered the lab to follow the directive, Eason decided to retire rather than pay tribute to Helms. After several hours' delay, one of Eason's employees hung the flags at half-staff. ...

Eason, who had worked for the Agriculture Department since graduating from college, was paid $65,235 a year as the laboratory manager.

The News and Observer

Let's poll ourselves

Let's play here. Let's poll ourselves. Today the AP released their summation of what people answered when asked for their off-the-top, one-word description of the Presidential candidates.

...one in five say "change" or "outsider" for Barack Obama and "old" for John McCain

Okay, what do you say?

I think "slick" for Obama and "phony" for McCain. Drop your quick reactions in comments if you wish.
***

I'm not surprised that my immediate reaction to both these guys is skeptical. According to The Political Compass quiz, I'm close to off the charts on both economic leftism and attachment to liberty. Actually, I'm so far off their charts that I think their axes are crackpot: I believe individual freedom is only possible in the context of relative economic equity. Anything less is just self-serving bullshit. But like I said, I'm off the charts.

You can see where our Presidential candidates rank on this scale here.

Obama as a scary Muslim

Obama preaching at Apostolic Church of God, Chicago. June 15, 2008. Photo: Alex Brandon/AP

Lately I've noticed one of the most popular search threads that draws people to this blog is "why not to vote for Obama". People who go to the link find a snark post about the phony story that the Democratic candidate is a Muslim.

A diary at Dailykos gave me a more nuanced idea of how the "Obama is a Muslim" rumor works. DeanDemocrat describes a tiresome coworker he was stuck with for several years. The guy was a rightwinger and a completely unimaginative bore. But DeanDemocrat worked on the guy. And he made some progress in 2004:

The Democrats were getting some serious press coverage with their many many debates and at one point for some reason Al Sharpton was in the news. I think it was because he criticized a speech Bill Cosby gave about Blacks and more specifically inner city youth. And if I am remembering correctly Sharpton was pissed. Ed of course agreed with Bill Cosby, and made a racist remark about Al Sharpton. I countered with something about how electing a black President might help knock down some of the barriers young blacks see standing between them and being successful.

It was then Ed said something interesting. He said and I quote "I would vote for someone like Bill Cosby in a heart beat. But never Al Sharpton." that made me think Ed wasn't racist he was just really really conservative and Sharpton rubbed him the wrong way.

Not too long after, Ed quit and DeanDemocrat didn’t have to think about him until he ran into him recently. Curious, he raised the topic of Obama's Father's Day speech in which he held up the responsibility African America adults should take for young Blacks in the inner city, much as Bill Cosby had. Ed agreed that Obama had said something he could agree with.

Called Obama "A classy guy, smart, charming, a once in a lifetime candidate." He said he'd never seen a politician who so plainly stood out as an obvious leader. He even said he'd make a good President. Reminded him of Bill Cosby.

... So I asked if he was going to vote for Obama. He said no. I asked why. He said 'I heard he's a Muslim.'

... And thats when I realized Ed isn't simply a moron. He is a racist. And a cowardly one at that. Fully aware that racial discrimination is no longer acceptable in polite society he's instead clinging to the Muslim rumors as nothing more than an excuse. He could find no reason not to vote for the Black guy so he invented one. As if not voting for someone because they're Muslim is somehow more acceptable than not voting for someone because they're Black.

This story made me wonder about the people who search for "why not to vote for Obama." Are they people who can't say, to others or even to themselves, that they won't vote for the scary Black man, who are looking for cover? I suspect some of them are.

Think where that leaves U.S. Muslims.

FISA sidelight

It's an ugly business, the determination of an apparent majority of Democrats in the Senate to legalize grab bag electronic snooping permanently and to immunize telecommunications companies that did it on GWB's say-so. Even uglier, is Senator Obama's retreat from his strong assertions last fall and winter that he wouldn't be a party to trashing our Constitutional protections against being searched without a court process.

But the FISA fight has thrown up one unexpectedly creditable actor, Federal District Judge Vaughan R. Walker in whose court the lawsuits are being heard that would force the telecoms to reveal what they did. In the course of these lawsuits, Walker has ruled 1) that the companies could not reasonably have believed that what they were doing didn't violate FISA as it then existed and that 2) the Government can't claim on unsupported assertion that allowing the suits to proceed will violate a "state secrets" privilege. Those are actually quite radical repudiations of the Bushie's power grabs. Glenn Greenwald explains the intricacies here.

Walker should be a familiar name to progressive San Franciscans. When Daddy Bush appointed him in 1988, civil rights advocates were up in arms and we did our feeble best to prevent his confirmation. In too recent memory, as a partner in the corporate law firm of Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro, Walker had carried, and won, the copyright infringement case the United States Olympic Committee brought against the "Gay Olympics." No matter that the USOC had never moved against the Nebraska Rat Olympics or the Police Olympics. Queers were not to sully the good name of the sporting event.

And Walker wasn't just a dispassionate advocate for his client. We were particularly distressed when the USOC sought a damage lien against the house of Dr. Tom Waddell, founder of the Gay Olympics and a U.S. decathlete in the 1968 Mexico Olympics. Waddell died of AIDS in 1987. The "Gay Games" has since served to humanize LGBT people in five more quadrennial versions. It's now a fine international party.

Back then, lots of us loathed Walker.

''I think his lack of compassion and inhumanity and coerciveness certainly disqualify him from consideration for the Federal judiciary,'' said Mary Dunlap, a San Francisco lawyer who opposed Mr. Walker in the Olympics case.

New York Times,
January 14, 1988

Nobody paid much attention to outraged queers and friends in those days.

And Walker has gone on to become an interesting judge with an independent streak. Would that more judicial appointees showed his fiber.

It's a great country

Michelangelo meets Dr. Seuss for the glorious Fourth. Spotted in Vineyard Haven, Mass.

Is ad too true to life?

This is kind of fun. Marc Ambinder suggests

Unless I'm mistaken, the woman whose hand McCain shakes is wearing an Obama tee-shirt.

Maybe. You do have to wonder what she is carrying that obscures the shirt.

But what gets me is the expression on the face of the guy watching her shake that pasty old guy's hand. What you doing with him? he seems to be thinking.

You can see the entire McCain ad here.

Sanctuary panic sells

Really, I'm sympathetic to the San Francisco Chronicle's need to sell newspapers. And all I have to do is pick one up to know the familiar birdcage liner is in trouble. It's shrunk to a sliver of its former self.

But I could sure do without its periodic campaigns to demonize someone or something in order to attract attention. Last summer it took aim at the 200 or so of San Francisco's homeless people who take refuge in Golden Gate Park. Day after day, a columnist bashed the campers and the authorities who didn't remove them.

This week, the Chron found a juicy target in the city's sanctuary ordinance and the slightly dopey measures city officials have taken to comply with it.

What's a "Sanctuary" law? It's a promise to undocumented immigrants that local authorities won't turn them over to immigration police unless absolutely required to do so by law. As recently as April, San Francisco pols were proud of how San Francisco enforced its ordinance. From the mayor's website:

In 1989, San Francisco passed the "City of Refuge" Ordinance (Sanctuary Ordinance) which prohibits City employees from helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with immigration investigations or arrests unless such help is required by federal or state law or a warrant. The Ordinance is rooted in the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980’s, when churches across the country provided refuge to Central Americans fleeing civil wars in their countries.

In February 2007, Mayor Newsom reaffirmed San Francisco’s commitment to immigrant communities by issuing an Executive Order that called on City departments to develop protocol and training on the Sanctuary Ordinance.

The Sanctuary Ordinance helps to maintain the stability of San Francisco communities. It keeps communities safe by making sure all residents feel comfortable calling the Police and Fire Departments during emergencies. It keeps families and workforce healthy by providing safe access to schools, clinics and other City services.

"As a Sanctuary City, San Francisco has and will continue to provide compassionate services to all immigrants, regardless of status," said Supervisor Ammiano. "When certain people are targeted and denied access to vital social services, the health and safety of the entire city is compromised."

That all sounds pretty sensible and probably most of us here agreed -- until the Chron broke the news that the city was dealing with undocumented Honduran juveniles picked up for dealing crack by flying them home at city expense. Hmmm. That does seem a little wacky. And now mayors, and juvie bureaucrats, and the U.S. Attorney, and judges are all throwing around this hot potato in a desperate attempt to leave someone holding responsibility for the (now ended) policy. It's hard to blame the Chron for having some fun with this.

However, as is often the case, our elected Public Defender Jeff Adachi made one the few sensible responses to the revelation:

"We see these children as children. The law states that we must act in the best interest of the child. These are not cookie-cutter situations. Most come from very poor families, in some cases very repressive countries."

Wouldn't want to take context into account when we're in a panic, now would we? ***


Meanwhile, out in the 'hood, tenacious folks from Brigada Contra Las Redadas (Brigades Against the Ice Raids) were holding a sign outside the Police Station at 17th and Valencia yesterday afternoon. They live in another reality. Out here, according to their flyer:

Swarms of police suddenly appear to attack street vendors, youth on street corners...arresting people because they "look like" they are criminals or don't move quickly enough.

The I.C.E.-MIGRA police are allowed twice a week to arrest undocumented immigrants in SF. Then they can be deported.... because San Francisco is not really a "Sanctuary City".

Somehow, I bet real life is a little more like this for most of our undocumented workforce than it is like the Chron's picture of a foolish, "illegal"-coddling paradise.

But I don't have to sell papers.

A Republican ask

What the caller wanted ...

My mother got a call from the national Republican Campaign Committee this evening, seeking a contribution to help John McCain prevent the Democrats from doing all those terrible things Democrats do. The call didn't do the Reps much good, since mother has been dead for nine years.

But it had interesting aspects. Curious, I chatted with the caller, neglecting to disabuse him of the idea that he was talking with Mother.

• He referred to Obama's party as "Democratic." I was surprised. I thought the proper usage was "Democrat."

• He sounded old. Really old. Now perhaps that was appropriate targeting, given that my mother would have been 99 if she were still living. But I had to wonder, are they dragging old men in off the street to make fundraising calls? Is our economy that bad, that elderly gents need to work in call centers?

• Nothing in his accent or diction suggested he was anything but a white bread sort of guy. Most polling calls I get these days, the interviewers sound African American or perhaps foreign born. I guess that wouldn't work for Republican cash calls.
  

• Most surprisingly, this caller was not a professional. He could barely get through the script. He was so inept, I wondered if he was a raw volunteer. I'd be surprised if the national Republican Party was using volunteers for fundraising calls. That means they really do need the money.

He didn't sound unduly surprised when I told him I'd be voting for Senator Obama. Must be a tough job.

Mr Weathervane feels a breeze Wants to blow it at Obama

"...acknowledging changed ideas in response to changed facts is considered a failing by the political class."

George Packer,
July 2008

I guess Packer is making his claim for full membership in the political class here. Packer needs approval for his changing ideas -- after all, he's been an Olympian weathervane on the war since it was just a gleam in Dick Cheney's evil eye. At first, Packer liked the idea of Iraq invasion. Then it got ugly and he got cold feet. Now things are a little quieter, at least momentarily for those Iraqis who are still around. No use talking about the one million dead ones and the 4-5 million forced from their homes. So he likes it again. He's telling Obama to weasel out of his promise to end the war, to be a good little boy who serves the U.S. imperial purpose.

Oh, Packer was nuanced about the war way back then. He didn't trust the Bushies and the neocons, but he sure liked the idea of the United States laying down the law in other people's countries.

To invade Iraq without immediate provocation is wrong and dangerous; to allow Saddam to threaten his own people, his neighbors, and us is wrong and dangerous; to lift sanctions strengthens him; to leave them in place hurts Iraqis; to disarm him through inspections perpetuates his people's suffering. There is a case to be made for removing a tyrant with a demonstrated willingness to use chemical weapons and a single-minded desire to acquire nuclear weapons, when there's a decent chance of a democratic opening. But the wrong people are doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. The Bush administration's motives are not democratic and internationalist, and so the consequences of a war are unlikely to be, either.

January, 2003

When it became obvious to anyone with eyes that Iraq was both wrong and FUBAR, he equivocated.

Before the war, I was ready to accept these possibilities as one argument for war, but about this my view has changed: The time I spent in Iraq was an education in the limits of war as an instrument of political transformation and the limits of America as its standard-bearer. Liberal democracy requires participation and consent, and as long as American military power is the prime tool for building it, Muslims around the world are unlikely to change their ideas. We need to decouple America and the promotion of democracy; the Iraq war did the opposite. The fact that tens of millions of Muslims around the world harbor increasingly hateful feelings toward America might not be rational, but it is a serious problem if this is a war for liberalism (as I think it is), though it isn't a reason not to fight worldwide Islamism.

January 2004

A little later he went looking for an escape route -- an escape route from his own previous opinions.

Q: You were "just barely" pro-war when it started.

A: There were compelling arguments -- the nature of Saddam's regime; our obligations to the Iraqis because we left him there (after the first Gulf War) and imposed sanctions, which were destroying the country; his serial aggressions in the region; his manifest desire to arm himself, whether or not he had done it; and the fact that sooner or later Iraq would implode or explode. All of that to me, and most especially the human rights argument, weighed pretty heavily. Obviously there were very good reasons on the other side, notably the regime in this country and my grave misgivings about their ability to conduct the war. I can't say that it was a rational deduction. It was just hope winning out, by a whisker, over fear.

December 2005

Now this weathervane wants to tell the U.S. people who are sick, tired and repulsed by the war that a President Obama should renege on his promise to end it? Obama may eventually violate his promise -- but I think even this candidate so vigorously currently moving to the center has shown he is smart enough to ignore this sanctimonious blitherer. ***Thanks to Spencer Ackerman's reporting, we have access to this graph of violent incidents in Iraq since last October. The private contractor Gardaworld advises entrepreneurs interested in doing business in Iraq. It created this image to show prospective clients what they are up against. These guys need to be right, or they are dead.


Get the picture? No real change in the frequency of violent events since last October. Maybe a slight up tick. Would Mr. Weathervane want to live with this?