Month: January 2015

Liberals are to blame of course

by digby

I wrote about the controversy surrounding free speech and the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Salon today.  I had waited for the inevitable attacks on liberals who had found the magazines cartoons to be offensive or needlessly provocative to be blamed and sure enough it happened. It mostly takes the form of right wing attacks on “political correctness” but there have been more than few of the more centrist variety who have made similar claims. Like Jonathan Chait who even condemned President Obama’s former press secretary Jay Carney for suggesting that people not gratuitously offend the religious sensibilities of other people — something that used to be called “being a nice person” and is now akin to throwing in with terrorists.

It’s a complicated subject and I don’t think I was entirely successful in tackling it. ( Matthew Yglesias did a better job of it here, I think, although we have different conclusions.) In the end what really concerns me is not the fact that liberals are being blamed for terrorism (again) but that this sort of thing ends up only empowering the people with the real power: authoritarians.

Here’s our good friend Michael Hayden, like the cat who licked the cream:

“I was talking to you guys about 12 months ago about these massive amounts of metadata that NSA held in storage. That metadata doesn’t look all that scary this morning …”

Let’s just say that some people are going to get a lot of mileage out of all this and it isn’t going to be civil liberties advocates.

Update: read Greenwald’s take on this.  Very thought provoking.
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Keep Calm and Carry On
by Tom Sullivan

Writing for the Guardian, Nesrine Malik insists that retreating into tribal camps is not the way to respond to the Charlie Hebdo shootings. The attackers, she insists, “belong to no single community or country or mosque.” This is not a clash of civilizations. It is a strategic attack aimed at terrorist recruitment, as Juan Cole explains:

Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.

Like early Stalinists or Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, Cole writes, the Paris attackers hope to provoke a backlash to help radicalize an inconveniently docile population by “sharpening the contradictions” between communities:

“Sharpening the contradictions” is the strategy of sociopaths and totalitarians, aimed at unmooring people from their ordinary insouciance and preying on them, mobilizing their energies and wealth for the perverted purposes of a self-styled great leader.

The only effective response to this manipulative strategy (as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani tried to tell the Iraqi Shiites a decade ago) is to resist the impulse to blame an entire group for the actions of a few and to refuse to carry out identity-politics reprisals.

Malik concurs in rejecting any us-them framing:

To engage in war talk – about a Muslim threat that needs to be combated by an aggressive reassertion of whatever composite identity of liberal values one believes is under attack – is to give in to the reductionism demanded by terrorists.

Whether it is Islamic State (Isis), al-Qaida or lone actors, they will use religiously focused grievances as a vehicle for political, personal and mental maladies. Don’t buy it. The way to honour the dead and find a way out of what seems like a depressingly inevitable downward spiral would be to resist the polar narrative altogether. It will not only heal painful rifts, it might even save lives.

Shorter Malik: Don’t give them what they want.

In “David and Goliath,” Malcolm Gladwell tells a story about the bombing of London in WWII. What the Nazis expected (and British authorities, too) was that panic would sweep London, demoralizing the citizens. Unexpectedly, the opposite happened. Because, as Canadian psychiatrist J. T. MacCurdy deduced, the dead don’t panic and those nearly killed are few; and the far more numerous, those who survived multiple attacks unscathed, felt invincible. Gladwell writes:

So why were Londoners so unfazed by the Blitz? Because forty thousand deaths and forty-six
thousand injuries—spread across a metropolitan area of more than eight million people—means that
there were many more remote misses who were emboldened by the experience of being bombed than
there were near misses who were traumatized by it.

Keep Calm and Carry On.

That’ll teach us

by digby

Matt Bors on the NYPD slowdown:

You have to read this extended whine from a NYPD cop to get a true sense of just how hurt and upset they are:

The gestures of protest by many officers toward Mayor Bill de Blasio — including turning their backs to him when he appeared at both officers’ funerals — have been characterized in some quarters as squandering the credibility of the department and reeking of self-pity.

When I hear this sort of thing, my blood pressure goes through the roof. Mr. de Blasio is more than any other public figure in this city responsible for feelings of demoralization among the police. It did not help to tell the world about instructing his son, Dante, who is biracial, to be wary of the police, or to publicly signal support of anti-police protesters (for instance, by standing alongside the Rev. Al Sharpton, a staunch backer of the protests). If there is any self-pity involved, which I doubt, it is only because we lack respect from our elected officials and parts of the media. It has taken two dead cops for some people to take a step back and realize what a difficult job cops have…

[de Blasio] should have been acknowledging our accomplishments months ago, instead of aligning himself with grandstanding opportunists. His words and actions before the killings of Officers Liu and Ramos showed a contempt for the police all too common on the left, and it is this contempt that the officers who have turned their backs to him are responding to.

Yes, there is self-pity involved. Obviously.

He does complain about being overworked from all the “broken windows” stuff and thinks it should be stopped but because the mayor is an icky old lefty, he can’t be the one to do it.

If this NYPD officer is typical it means they believe that people should not be allowed to protest the police, the mayor must not associate with anyone who offends the police and the police are not to be questioned because they have hard jobs and everyone must respect them. In other words, they run the place.

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Prison Blues

by digby

This is something to think about, folks:

There were 2.3 million prisoners in the U.S. as of the 2010 Census. It’s often been remarked that our national incarceration rate of 707 adults per every 100,000 residents is the highest in the world, by a huge margin. 

We tend to focus less on where we’re putting all those people. But the 2010 Census tallied the location of every adult and juvenile prisoner in the United States. If we were to put them all on a map, this is what they would look like:

Note that my Big Blue state of California seems to be locking people up by the boatload.

What does this say about liberalism, I wonder?

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Dynamic scoring

by digby

The first order of business in the new congress was to rig the numbers (aka “dynamic scoring”) so Republicans could reward their rich friends with tax cuts and it wouldn’t look like they are exploding the deficit which they purport to care so much about. This charts shows how it stacks up when reality bites:

As the article accompanying that chart points out, there are reasons other than numbers rigging that made those projections so wrong — wars and economic crises. But that works in their favor as well. The same people who care so much about deficits will back any war no matter how expensive or daft. And when the economy inevitably tanks, often due to policies designed by both parties to make rich people richer, they can use the new deficit projections to keep the government from helping average people.

Oh, and then when the economy eventually turns around, despite their best efforts at thwarting any policies that might have helped make the crisis less severe or shorter, they will take credit for the recovery.

Just saying.

Just thought I’d mention it

by digby

… for the record

A homemade explosive Tuesday blew up outside the Colorado Springs, Colorado, chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in what the FBI has called a deliberate incident, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The chapter’s offices, as well as Mr. G’s Hair Design Studios barber shop located inside the building, sustained minor damage from the explosion. No deaths or injuries have been reported.

Witnesses reported hearing a “loud boom” around 10:45 a.m. local time. “There was smoke everywhere, the building on the side was burnt,” one onlooker told local television station KDVR. The Los Angeles Times reports an improvised bomb appears to have been positioned against the outside wall of the building on South El Paso Street. It was placed right next to a gasoline can, but the latter didn’t burst during the explosion, according to FBI spokeswoman Amy Sanders.

FBI officials speaking to the Los Angeles Times said the explosion that shook the neighborhood “was caused deliberately.”

The FBI, as well as its Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are investigating the incident. “The investigation is ongoing and it is not known at this time if the NAACP or a business in the vicinity was the intended target,” said spokeswoman Sanders in a statement.

It’s possible that someone got a bad haircut at Mr G’s Hair Design Studio but it’s unlikely.

Je suis Scorsese?


by digby

@danstew13 Dan Stewart, reminded me of this on twitter earlier. I wonder what right wingers think of it?

On October 22, 1988, a French Christian fundamentalist group launched Molotov cocktails inside the Parisian Saint Michel theater while it was showing the film. This attack injured thirteen people, four of whom were severely burned. The Saint Michel theater was heavily damaged, and reopened three years later after restoration. Following the attack, a representative of the film’s distributor, United International Pictures, said, “The opponents of the film have largely won. They have massacred the film’s success, and they have scared the public.” Jack Lang, France’s Minister of Culture, went to the St.-Michel theater after the fire, and said, “Freedom of speech is threatened, and we must not be intimidated by such acts.”

The Archbishop of Paris, Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, said “One doesn’t have the right to shock the sensibilities of millions of people for whom Jesus is more important than their father or mother.” After the fire he condemned the attack, saying, “You don’t behave as Christians but as enemies of Christ. From the Christian point of view, one doesn’t defend Christ with arms. Christ himself forbade it.” The leader of Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a self-described Christian group that had promised to stop the film from being shown, said, “We will not hesitate to go to prison if it is necessary.”

The attack was subsequently blamed on a Christian fundamentalist group linked to Bernard Antony, a representative of the far-right Front National to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, and the excommunicated followers of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Lefebvre had been excommunicated from the Catholic Church on July 2, 1988. Similar attacks against theatres included graffiti, setting off tear-gas canisters and stink bombs, and assaulting filmgoers.

At least nine people believed to be members of the Christian fundamentalist group were arrested.Rene Remond, a historian, said of the Christian far-right, “It is the toughest component of the National Front and it is motivated more by religion than by politics. It has a coherent political philosophy that has not changed for 200 years: it is the rejection of the revolution, of the republic and of modernism.”

For that matter, I wonder what Bill Maher thinks of it? After all, he’s constantly insisting that in spite of abortion bombings and doctor killings for the past 30 years in America, that Islam is the only religions still killing people in the name of God.

And apropos of the alleged attack on free speech by North Korea, that film was boycotted by homegrown Christian fundamentalists in the US resulting in a large theater chain refusing to play it. It doesn’t take a foreign country or Muslim terrorists the threaten free speech.

But we knew that right?

QOTD: Wingnut hysterics

by digby

I’ve got your freedom loving, anti-government tyranny patriots for you right here:

On a long and interminable “Outnumbered” segment, Fox News’ Eric Bolling used the opportunity to display his obscenely short memory, arguing that Charlie Hebdo is an argument that we should over-militarize our cops. As he puts it: “There’s been a very serious push from the left saying ‘let’s not over-militarise our cops.’ That [the Hebdo massacre] should put an end to that discussion. We should over-militarize.”

“We are being hunted,” co-host Harris Faulkner adds, while, host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery suggests “the best thing that Americans can do is arm themselves.”

Shannon Bream takes the time to point out that it can be difficult to identify bad guys sometimes when they don’t “look like” bad guys: ”That’s my question about these guys. If we know they were speaking unaccented French and they had ski masks on, do we even know what color they were, what the tone of their skin was? I mean, what if they didn’t look like typical bad guys?”

Yeah, getting hysterical in the face of terrorism is certain to preserve our freedom. Or some people’s freedom anyway. Just don’t be so sure yours will be among them.

Martha MacCallum and her guest Michael Goodwin take the opportunity to criticize De Blasio and Police chief Bill Bratton and to defend racial profiling and Mosque surveillance in New York. Per MacCallum, the NYPD being cautionary and defensive instead of aggressive would be “exactly what these kind of terrorists would love to see happen across the country because it makes things much softer for them.”

On “America’s Newsroom,” Ralph Peters points to the recent torture report, saying “these terrorists who did this monstrous attack in Paris are the people Senator Feinstein doesn’t even want to waterboard.”

The attack yesterday was certainly an attack on Western values. But don’t kid yourself that in “protecting” America from such attacks people like these and leaders like Lindsay Graham and others will not do everything in their power to finish the job for them.

This sure makes me proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.

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How It’s Done — Cops Bring Notre Dame’s “I Can’t Breathe” Basketball Team Back Into Line

by Gaius Publius

A story in three headlines. All it took was one little talking-to (sorry, “meeting”) and the team is brought back into line.

December 13, 2014:

Notre Dame women’s basketball team wears ‘I can’t breathe’ shirts

The Notre Dame women’s basketball team wore shirts that read “I Can’t Breathe” when it took the floor for pre-game warmups on Saturday.

The shirts, which have been worn by basketball players like LeBron James and teams like the Los Angeles Lakers, protest the death of New York man Eric Garner, who was killed by police earlier this year after an officer placed him in a chokehold. Garner, who was allegedly selling illegal cigarettes, was unarmed, but a Staten Island, N.Y. grand jury announced earlier this month that it wouldn’t indict the officer.

December 19, 2014 — One week later:

Notre Dame women’s basketball team meets with police representatives

In the wake of their decision to wear “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirts before a game last weekend, members of the Notre Dame women’s basketball team have met with police union representatives from South Bend, Mishawaka and St. Joseph County.

The meeting “provided an opportunity to share perspectives on recent events that have received local and national attention,” according to a news release from the Notre Dame media relations office. …

December 21, 2014 — Two days later:

Notre Dame women, police officers meet in united front

The Notre Dame women’s basketball players were joined by area law enforcement personnel prior to Sunday’s 64-50 victory over Saint Joseph’s in a show of support and solidarity to ease tensions from a public stand the Irish women took eight days earlier in support of the family of Eric Garner.

What “tensions” you ask? These, from the second story:

But the move touched off debate and controversy, with many people accusing the team of making an anti-police statement. One Mishawaka police officer who runs a store in South Bend began selling T-shirts that say, “Breathe easy, don’t break the law.” 

Welcome back to the “well regulated” middle class. You strayed, but now you’re back. (But don’t judge the team too harshly. This is a story about the cops, their need for control, and their little “meeting.”)

GP

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Perilous times for free speech
by Tom Sullivan

I have long said that loss of the ability to laugh at yourself is the first warning sign of fundamentalism. That applies whether the fundamentalist is a jihadist of the right or from the fringe left. Plus a lot in between. A priest I know once said it was a healthy thing, now and then, to spit on your idols. That is, if you can still recognize when beliefs have become idols.

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, even Ross Douthat argues that the right to blaspheme is “essential to the liberal order.” And although shock for shock’s sake adds little to public debate, “If a large enough group of someones is willing to kill you for saying something, then it’s something that almost certainly needs to be said.” We will see, after the transient outpouring of support for France, how well some of our compatriots (and Douthat) warm to defending that idea when their own sacred cows are gored.

Time‘s Bruce Crumley responded to the firebombing of Charlie Hebdo in 2012:

It’s obvious free societies cannot simply give in to hysterical demands made by members of any beyond-the-pale group. And it’s just as clear that intimidation and violence must be condemned and combated for whatever reason they’re committed — especially if their goal is to undermine freedoms and liberties of open societies. But it’s just evident members of those same free societies have to exercise a minimum of intelligence, calculation, civility and decency in practicing their rights and liberties—and that isn’t happening when a newspaper decides to mock an entire faith on the logic that it can claim to make a politically noble statement by gratuitously pissing people off.

Perhaps, but Jonathan Chait counters how in the current environment a double-mindedness prevails, even as it did at the White House then. As Chait deconstructs it:

On the one hand, religious extremists should not threaten people who offend their beliefs. On the other hand, nobody should offend their beliefs. The right to blasphemy should exist but only in theory. They do not believe religious extremists should be able to impose censorship by issuing threats, but given the existence of those threats, the rest of us should have the good sense not to risk triggering them.

The line separating the two, writes Chait, is “perilously thin.” Defense of blasphemy in theory is meaningless without defending the practice.

Not to put too fine a point on it, if you make a habit of straddling fences, I strongly suggest you wear a cup.

The attack on free speech by non-state, religious extremists this week (and public outcries) will likely obscure more insidious attacks happening less visibly under the color of law. “Public order” convictions for Facebook posts in England, for example, as Glenn Greenwald reports. If you are a Muslim, that is. And otherwise?

To put it mildly, not all online “hate speech” or advocacy of violence is treated equally. It is, for instance, extremely difficult to imagine that Facebook users who sanction violence by the UK in Iraq and Afghanistan, or who spew anti-Muslim animus, or who call for and celebrate the deaths of Gazans, would be similarly prosecuted. In both the UK and Europe generally, cases are occasionally brought for right-wing “hate speech” (the above warning from Scotland’s police was issued after a polemicist posted repellent jokes on Twitter about Ebola patients). But the proposed punishments for such advocacy are rarely more than symbolic: trivial fines and the like. The real punishment is meted out overwhelmingly against Muslim dissidents and critics of the West.

Not only the UK. The U.S. has “joined, and sometimes led, the trend to monitor and criminalize online political speech.” Greenwald cites chilling examples. He concludes:

Like the law generally, criminalizing online speech is reserved only for certain kinds of people (those with the least power) and certain kinds of views (the most marginalized and oppositional). Those who serve the most powerful factions or who endorse their orthodoxies are generally exempt. For that reason, these trends in criminalizing online speech are not so much an abstract attack on free speech generally, but worse, are an attempt to suppress particular ideas and particular kinds of people from engaging in effective persuasion and political activism.

Clowns to the left of me. Jokers to the right. Perilous times indeed.