Month: November 2013

by digby

There’s been so much detailed information revealed in the Snowden documents that sometimes I find myself a little bit overwhelmed.  And I miss things.  Like this one from Greenwald in The Guardian back in September:

Top secret US government documents obtained by the Guardian from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden characterize even the most basic political and legal opposition to drone attacks as part of “propaganda campaigns” from America’s “adversaries”.

The entry is part of a top secret internal US government website, similar in appearance to the online Wikipedia site. According to a June interview with Snowden in Hong Kong, the only individuals empowered to write these entries are those “with top secret clearance and public key infrastructure certificates”, special access cards enabling unique access to certain parts of NSA systems. He added that the entries are “peer reviewed” and that every edit made is recorded by user.

One specific entry discusses “threats to unmanned aerial vehicles”. It lists various dangers to American drones, including “air defense threats”, “jamming of UAV sensor systems”, “terrestrial weather”, and “electronic warfare employed against the command and control system”.

But alongside those more obvious, conventional threats are what the entry describes as “propaganda campaigns that target UAV use”.

Under the title “adversary propaganda themes”, the document lists what it calls “examples of potential propaganda themes that could be employed against UAV operations”.

One such example is entitled “Nationality of Target vs. Due Process”. It states:

Attacks against American and European persons who have become violent extremists are often criticized by propagandists, arguing that lethal action against these individuals deprives them of due process.”

In the eyes of the US government, “due process” – the idea that the US government should not deprive people of life away from a battlefield without presenting evidence of guilt – is no longer a basic staple of the American political system, but rather a malicious weapon of “propagandists”. The ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights, among many other groups, have made exactly that argument against the US drone targeting program (“the US government’s killings of US citizens Anwar Al-Awlaki, Samir Khan, and 16-year-old Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011 violated the Constitution’s fundamental guarantee against the deprivation of life without due process of law”).

Now I realize that we are all supposed to feel quite confident that unless we are Muslim, this will never be used against us, so why worry, right? (Too bad about the millions of innocent American Muslims, and Muslims around the world, but hey, waddayagonnado?) Still, the fact that the legal justification even exists to target those who are anti-drone activists as “propagandists”  and, therefore, subject to terrorist surveillance programs should at the very least make you wonder how far this could go under the right circumstances.  After all, we’ve had prominent Americans calling for Greenwald’s arrest and characterizing his partner as a drug mule. Imagine if there is a major terrorist attack.  Do you think they won’t do it?

Update: Alan Rusbridger editor of The Guardian did a Q&A with the Washington Post today. Very interesting. It certainly makes one realize why the old boys who insisted on constitutional freedom of the press did so.

Happy Birthday Shirley Chisholm

by digby

“Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.”


I don’t know where I first heard that famous Shirley Chisholm line but I do remember that I was shocked. It represented of huge moment of consciousness raising for me — until then, as a child of the 1960s, I could not imagine that anything could be as daunting as being black in this world. Certainly, I didn’t think I was a person who might have obstacles to overcome, however insignificant they might be by comparison. And then I learned that I did.

Shirley Chisholm was an early political hero of mine for a lot of different reasons. I remember the 1972 campaign as a teenager and thinking, “wow, a woman president?” I voted for her in my AP history class — the only one who did, if I recall correctly. I think I foolishly assumed that now that everyone could see how absurd it was that half the population was barely represented in our democracy it would happen quite soon. Funny. It’s more than 40 years later. But I’m assured by everyone that it’s almost a woman’s turn, so that’s good. Maybe it will happen before I die.

Anyway, today is Shirley Chisholm day. If you want to read a nice piece about her life and her legacy, I enjoyed this one from Andrew O’Hair from a couple of years back. She was an original. As she said, somebody had to go first, and so she did.

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Quagmires, sunk costs and apple pie

by digby

There is never a time when our humanitarian war makers want to call it a day. Once we’ve “sacrificed” American lives we have all these sunk costs and we must “see it through.” Every damned time.

Here’s our good friend the Very Serious Iraq war hawk Michael O’Hanlon making the case for us to own Afghanistan forever:

And finally, let’s not forget the progress purchased so dearly in this decade and more of war. We must not permit Mr. Karzai’s pique to flush all this down the drain. The United States can ride this one out. And given the enduring American strategic interests in this part of the world, as well as our huge sacrifice, that’s exactly what we should do. In the end, this is about the American and the Afghan peoples, not about Hamid Karzai.

“Ride it out” is an interesting euphemism for continuing a military occupation.

Anyway, Charles Pierce makes the obvious Westmoreland analogy much more colorfully than I ever could and then concludes:

Jesus H. Christ on the bill at the Fillmore, it’s 1967 all over again. And, not for nothing, but there once was a country in that region where women were comparatively free. That was Iraq. Then, Michael O’Hanlon and his friends helped euchre us into a war there and now, well, not so much for that women’s rights thing. Turns out Poppy Bush was right. We have kicked The Vietnam Syndrome. We punted it all the way into the Brookings Institution.

Maybe one of these days the Very Serious People will convince our government to do something that won’t make things worse. It hasn’t happened yet in my lifetime, but I’m sure it must be possible.

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Torture yourself for charity: the new American safety net

by digby

Electro-shock for a good cause:

A police chief of a small eastern Indiana town who was shot by a stun gun at fundraising event to buy a new squad car says he raised about $800 in cash and received a $25,000 pledge from a Texas company.

Knightstown Police Chief Danny Baker says he’s been receiving calls from all over the country and expects to collect more money. His goal was to raise $9,000 so the town of about 2,100 people about 25 miles east of Indianapolis could lease a new squad car. He says he might be able to get a second car.

He says the feeling of being hit with 50,000 volts of low-amp electricity Wednesday night felt like someone hitting him in the back of the head repeatedly.

That’s interesting, isn’t it? Apparently, this police chief must think it’s ok to inflict what feels like repeated hits to the head on anyone who doesn’t comply with an officer’s orders. (I assume he thinks that’s ok, since most police officers do.) And yet, if police were to actually hit everyone from five year old kids to bedridden senior citizens over the head repeatedly I don’t think people would think it’s such a wonderful new policing technique.

It’s the fact that it’s high tech, sanitary and doesn’t leave many marks that makes it so grand. Sure, it kills a few people, just like hits to the head do. But it’s done from a distance and is much more clinical. If I were given to hyperbole (which I am) I would have to evoke Hannah Ahrendt here. This is an example of the banality of evil.

It’s lucky this police chief wasn’t among the thousands of the people who die from taser shots, isn’t it? Boy would that have been embarrassing …

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The one good thing

by digby

Here’s a hopeful sign for one victim of a miscarriage of justice:

A Florida woman sentenced to 20 years in prison after firing a “warning shot” during an argument with her abusive husband has been released on bond while she awaits retrial under a controversial part of the state’s self-defense law.

The case of Marissa Alexander, who was convicted of aggravated-assault with a deadly weapon, touched off a furor when her supporters compared it to the self-defense case of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted earlier this year of murdering an unarmed black teenager.

Although no one was injured in Alexander’s case, the court gave her a 20-year prison sentence under the state’s mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines because she had fired a gun during the assault.

A state appeals court ruled in September that Alexander, who is black, deserved a new trial because the judge failed to properly instruct the Jacksonville, Florida jury about her self-defense argument. She was convicted in May 2012.
[…]
A slightly built woman who stands 5 feet 2 inches (1.57 meter), Alexander said her 245-pound (111 kg) husband was about to attack her when she fired into a kitchen wall during the August 2010 incident. He had previously been convicted of domestic violence for attacking her.

Prosecutors said the shot endangered Gray. At the time, Alexander had an active restraining order against her husband and she carried a concealed weapons permit.

It shouldn’t have taken the murder of an unarmed 17 year old boy to gain attention to this case. But it did. And maybe that’s the one good thing that will come out of the whole ugly mess.

h/t to @Chicago_Todd

Stephen is the reason for the season

by digby

Just … enjoy:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive

I wasn’t watching TV today so I wasn’t able to keep up with all the fast breaking shopping news. I assume they were the usual scintillating stories about lots of people walking around malls buying stuff.

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It’s never to soon to panic

by digby

Fergawdsakes:

Here’s the scenario the Obama administration wants to avoid at all costs on Saturday: It declares the Obamacare website fixed, a bunch of cable news network anchors try to log on again on live TV, and they get more error messages.

And suddenly, everyone’s showing that clip of George W. Bush standing on the USS Abraham Lincoln in front of the “Mission Accomplished” banner.

But Democrats on Capitol Hill have their own nightmare scenario, too: The White House gives them nothing to brag about, no evidence that the site is actually better — just as some of the most vulnerable Democrats are getting ready to blast the administration if they’re not convinced it’s fixed.

That leaves the administration with two jobs ahead of the deadline Saturday when the federal Obamacare enrollment website is supposed to be fixed — or at least useable for most Americans. They’ll tiptoe to avoid declaring victory on the site too soon, but still give those vulnerable Democrats something to seize.

Even though I have long criticized this administration — and the Democratic Party in general — for celebrating their alleged victories prematurely, I cannot imagine they are dumb enough to do that with the Obamacare implementation. It would be catastrophically dumb. Vulnerable Democrats aren’t facing an election until next fall. They’re just going to have to wait to see what happens. And let’s just face facts: if that web site isn’t working by then they have much bigger problems.

Everybody needs to just relax on the politics of Obamacare. There is nothing Democratic politicians can do except pray/hope/wish that the administration does what it takes to make it works better over the next few months. Panicking won’t help.

Beltway conventional wisdom … oy.

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They’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore

by digby

Meanwhile, in the land of smiles:

Protesters in Thailand stormed the grounds of the national army headquarters on Friday, asking the military to support their increasingly aggressive campaign to topple Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. The army insisted it will not take sides in the dispute.

In a letter addressed to the army chief, the protesters stopped short of calling for a coup but urged military leaders to “take a stand” in Thailand’s spiraling political crisis and state which side they are on. The crowd of 1,200 people stayed on the sprawling lawn of the Royal Thai Army compound for two hours before filing out peacefully.

Army commander Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha responded with a call for the protests to be democratic and law-abiding.

“Don’t try to make the army take sides because the army considers that all of us are fellow Thais, so the government, state authorities and people from every sector must jointly seek a peaceful solution as soon as possible,” Prayuth said in a statement.

Yingluck has proposed talks but the protesters have rejected them.

The incursion on the army’s turf was a bold act heavy with symbolism in a country that has experienced 18 successful or attempted military coups since the 1930s.

The most recent was in 2006, when the military ousted Yingluck’s brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who is living overseas to avoid a corruption conviction but is central to Thailand’s political conflict.

Protest organizers later declared that Sunday would be their “victory day,” and told followers to seize all state ministries, state telecommunications agencies and other state enterprises, police headquarters and the zoo.

The targets also include the prime minister’s offices. In 2008, anti-Thaksin demonstrators occupied those offices for three months to back their demands that his allies step down.

Sounds like Occupy Wall Street on steroids, doesn’t it?

But there’s an interesting wrinkle:

For the past week, thousands of anti-government protesters have marched in Bangkok in a bid to unseat Yingluck, whom they accuse of serving as a proxy for her billionaire brother. Thaksin is adored by much of the country’s rural poor and despised by the educated elite and middle class who accuse him of widespread corruption and other offenses.

So, Thaksin is a billionaire, and he and his sister are widely loathed by the middle class and elites for their alleged corruption. But the rural poor revere him. (In fact, in 2010 the current government killed about 90 of them in street protests.)

I know very little of Thai politics, obviously. I’ve written a bit about it from time to time because I lived there as a child and my brother has lived there for many years. It’s clearly very complicated, with many details unique to the Thai system and culture. But regardless of how it shakes out, I think it’s yet another example of how the status quo is no longer holding anywhere on the planet.

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Just because it was a lie doesn’t mean it wasn’t true

by digby

No surprise here:

CBS News confirmed on Monday that Logan and producer Max McClellan were asked to take a leave of absence after an internal review of her reporting found major flaws. Logan had been forced to apologize and issue a partial retraction when reports from other media outlets showed that her source, security contractor Dylan Davies, was not at the U.S. mission in Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2011 terrorist attack as he had claimed.

On Wednesday morning, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade asked Huckabee to respond to the news that Logan had been effectively suspended indefinitely from 60 Minutes.

“Very shocked,” Huckabee said. “And I think that the fact is that we’re missing the big story here. We still don’t know what happened in Benghazi. Our government lied to us, they covered it up.”

“Lara Logan is certainly a hero journalist to at least attempt to get the story out,” he added.

She is a hero journalist who has been in the path of great danger over the years, true. But in her “attempt to get the story out” as she wanted to tell it, she reported a hoax. Maybe if she hadn’t jumped to conclusions about what happened in Benghazi from the beginning (as the whole right wing has done) she wouldn’t have been so eager to believe her source’s absurd story — which anyone with half a brain could see was right out of a cheap novel or video game.

But this does illustrate how Fox News looks at the facts. They just don’t matter. Which is not “advocacy journalism.” It’s propaganda.

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The “social justice” boogeyman

by digby

Check out this charming little tid-bit from Lee Fang:

Worker Center Watch has no information its website about its sponsors. Yet the group attacks labor activists and community labor groups for lacking transparency. “Hiding behind these non-profits, unions mask their true motivations, circumvent operational requirements and skirt reporting and disclosure obligations,” says Worker Center Watch, referring to labor-supported worker centers like OUR Walmart.

TheNation.com has discovered that Worker Center Watch was registered by the former head lobbyist for Walmart. Parquet Public Affairs, a Florida-based government relations and crisis management firm for retailers and fast food companies, registered the Worker Center Watch website.

The firm is led by Joseph Kefauver, formerly the president of public affairs for Walmart and government relations director for Darden Restaurants. Throughout the year, Parquet executives have toured the country, giving lectures to business groups on how to combat the rise of what has been called “alt-labor.” At a presentation in October for the National Retail Federation, a trade group for companies like Nordstrom and Nike, Kefauver’s presentation listed protections against wage theft, a good minimum wage and mandated paid time off as the type of legislative demands influenced by the worker center protesters.

The presentation offered questions for the group, including: “How Aggressive Can We Be?” and “How do We Challenge the Social Justice Narrative?”

Isn’t that special? These rich bastards must lie awake at night worrying that “social justice” might appeal to average peoples’ moral values and then where will be be?

It’s only a matter of time before they have to go full Randroid and take on Jesus himself.

The Black Friday Walmart strikes are happening all over the country. You can follow the action on twitter at #WalmartStrikers