Skip to content

Month: May 2018

Nobody cares about the criminal in the White House?

Nobody cares about the criminal in the White House?

by digby

Paul Ryan is quitting so he could at least downplay the great Trump magnetism a bit. But he isn’t doing that. I guess we have to assume that he thinks Trump is a-ok. Why else?

House Speaker Paul Ryan said Saturday he thinks President Donald Trump will be an asset to GOP candidates this fall in states like Wisconsin that he narrowly won, even as he warned fellow Republicans that a “blue wave” could wipe out advancements made during his presidency.

Ryan addressed about 600 people at the Wisconsin Republican convention, his final one after 20 years in office. The state’s entire GOP congressional delegation, along with Gov. Scott Walker, honored Ryan, who received a standing ovation and chant from the audience of “Thank you, Paul!”
[…]
Ryan told reporters later he doesn’t think controversies surrounding Trump are resonating with voters in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

“The president is strong in these states,” Ryan said. “He’s an asset. … Whether I’m running around southern Wisconsin or America, nobody is talking about Stormy Daniels. Nobody is talking about Russia. They’re talking about their lives and their problems. They’re talking about their communities, they’re talking about jobs, they’re talking about the economy, they’re talking about national security.””

Right. The president is implicated in a counter-intelligence investigation into collusion with a foreign adversary, his mobbed up personal lawyer is under investigation for payoffs to porn stars on the president’s behalf, he and half the cabinet are engaged in open graft and corruption and he’s a pathological liar whose administration is in total chaos and meltdown every single day. But nobody is talking about it and nobody cares because the economy is good. Actually I hear this from Democrats too only they say nobody cares because the economy is bad.

I don’t believe it. The country is being run by a blatant criminal who is so unfit for the office he’s single-handedly changing the global order because of it. It is the most shocking and stunning political story in my lifetime, akin to what happened in the 1930s and the 1850s. And if it’s true that nobody cares about any of that then our political culture is so fucked up that we might as well throw in the towel.

Politics and Reality with Joshua Holland:Trump’s In-Your-Face Kleptocracy and a deep dive into a Democratic primary

Politics and Reality Radio: Trump’s In-Your-Face Kleptocracy | Meet Two Dem Congressional Candidates Who Might Change the Balance of Power

with Joshua Holland

We kick off this week’s show with a rundown, incomplete but depressing, of what we know so far about how Trump and his inner circle have profited from the presidency.

Then we’re joined by two Democratic candidates vying to run against Rep. John Faso (R-NY) in one of the hottest swing districts this cycle, New York’s 19th. This is the district that got a lot of attention in 2016, when Zephyr Teachout challenged Faso. It could decide the balance of power in the House this fall.

First, we speak with Brian Flynn, a businessman who combines progressive politics with a willingness to fight. You can find out more about his platform by visiting https://www.brianflynn.us/.

Then we’re joined by Antonio Delgado, an attorney and a naturally gifted speaker who is the only Democratic candidate to have raised more cash than Faso. Learn more about him athttps://www.delgadoforcongress.com/.

And we’ll be featuring more of the candidates in NY 19 in subsequent shows!

Playlist:
Bob Dorough: “I’m Just a Bill”
De La Soul: “Transmitting Live From Mars”

As always, you can also subscribe to the show on iTunes, Soundcloud or Podbean.

Trump and the rapture

Trump and the rapture

by digby

This is disrespectful on so many levels I don’t know what to say. Also provocative and dangerous:

Pastor Robert Jeffress, a Fox News contributor, megachurch Baptist preacher from Dallas, and close Trump ally and surrogate, has been chosen by the Trump administration to lead a prayer at Monday’s opening dedication celebration of the new – and highly controversial – U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. The choice of Jeffress makes this highly controversial move all the more problematic, given his views on literally every other religion, including other Christian religions, Judaism, and Islam.

Jeffress, who hosts both radio and TV shows that are broadcast in hundreds of cities in the U.S. and around the world, has a long history of delivering incendiary and bigoted remarks.

In short, Jeffress says that if you’re not a Christian – and a certain type of Christian – you’re going to hell, as Right Wing Watch has documented.

He has said Islam promotes pedophilia, and is “evil,” “violent,” and a “false” religion.

Pastor Jeffress, in a now infamous 2011 interview, also said that “every other religion in the world is wrong: Islam is wrong, it is a heresy from the pit of Hell; Mormonism is wrong, it is a heresy from the pit of Hell, and, “Judaism, you can’t be saved being a Jew.”

Jared and Ivanka are there for the festivities. I guess they think this is fine too which is strange …

The Jerusalem move is one reason why some evangelicals support Trump, by the way:

Many have questioned why devout evangelicals support Trump, a man who has bragged about sexual assault, lies perpetually and once admitted he never asks God for forgiveness. Trump’s lack of knowledge of the Bible is also well-known.

Nevertheless, many evangelical Christians believe that Trump was chosen by God to usher in a new era, a part of history called the “end times.” Beliefs about this time period differ, but it is broadly considered the end of the world, the time when Jesus returns to Earth and judges all people.

Jerusalem has a central role as the city of prophecy and the place where the end of times plays out. According to the prophecy, a 1,000-year period of peace must be followed by seven years of tribulation, during which wars, disease, and natural disasters will lay waste to the earth. In the book of Revelation, Israel is described as a nation that exists during the time of tribulation, and Jerusalem’s Jewish temple is resurrected during this period. The last temple was destroyed around 70 A.D, and today there is a mosque on the Temple Mount where the previous two temples are believed to have stood. Evangelicals believe that a unified Israel with control over Jerusalem will facilitate the construction of a new Jewish temple, and set the groundwork for the end of times.

Will he see into his soul?

Will he see into his soul?

by digby

He’s sees the chance of a breakthrough but I don’t think he has stars in his eyes,” Bolton said of Trump. “I think one advantage of having this meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un so soon, in effect, without months and months and months of preparation is that President Trump will be able to size Kim Jong-un up and see whether the commitment is real… I think the key point here is that the president’s going to make the decision when he sits down with Kim Jong-un just what exactly the North is up to. And he’ll size him up. And he’s an outstanding — got an outstanding ability to do that. And we’ll see what comes from it.

If that makes sense to you you’re a Trumpie.

In other words it makes no sense.

I am seriously suspicious that Bolton wants the talks to fail. He believes regime change is the only answer:

Sept. 23, 2017, on Fox News: Asked whether the United States should shoot down North Korean test missiles, Bolton replied: “Yes, I think that’s at a minimum. But the real question is whether there’s a remaining nonmilitary option.”

Dec. 28 on Fox News: “My proposal would be: Eliminate the regime by reunifying the peninsula under South Korean control,” Bolton said. Asked whether he is calling for regime change, he said: “Yes. Regime elimination with the Chinese. This is something we need to do with them.”

March 7 on Fox News: Bolton said chances are “pretty remote of a diplomatic solution with North Korea,” adding that “the two choices, both bad, are you accept North Korea with nuclear weapons or use military force.”

March 10 on Fox News: “I think nobody wants to see military force used here. But we don’t have very many options after 25 years of talking have failed.”

Maybe he’s changed his mind in the past two months. But I doubt it. God only knows how he’s “preparing” Trump, who has the attention span of a 1 year old unless it’s someone talking about how great he is, in this short period of time. And depending on Trump’s great natural talent for “sizing people up” is a joke. He insults everyone who fails to kiss his ass, and those who do get his warm approval. That’s it. There’s nothing more to it.

Let’s just hope by some fortuitous accident or sophisticated strategy by the South Koreans and the Chinese that we come out of this with a decent result. If it’s even half way good, look for the political media to turn Trump into Nelson Mandela and gird yourself for some really sickening displays of sycophancy. Anything is better than war, but this would not be pleasant either.

.

Origins of Mother’s Day

Origins of Mother’s Day

by digby

Of course he did. Mother’s Day is about him too. 

In case you were wondering, Mother’s Day was conceived for  a deeper purpose that is completely opposed to everything Donald Trump stands for:

The women who originally celebrated Mother’s Day conceived of it as an occasion to use their status as mothers to protest injustice and war. In 1858, Anna Reeves Jarvis organized Mother’s Work Days in West Appalachian communities to protest the lack of sanitation that caused disease-bearing insects and polluted water to sicken or even kill poor workers. In 1870, after witnessing the bloody Civil War, Julia Ward Howe—a Boston pacifist, poet, and suffragist who wrote the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”—proclaimed a special day for mothers to oppose war. Committed to ending all armed conflict, Howe wrote, “Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage. … Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.”

For the next three decades, Americans celebrated Mother’s Days for Peace on June 2. Women political activists of this era fought to end lynching and organized to end child labor, trafficking of women, and consumer fraud. In their view, their moral superiority was grounded in the fact of their motherhood.

When Anna Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter, also named Anna, vowed to honor her mother’s political activism by creating a national Mother’s Day. The gift card and flower industries also lobbied hard. As an industry publication, the Florists’ Review, put it, “This was a holiday that could be exploited.” In 1914, Congress responded and proclaimed the second Sunday in May to be Mother’s Day.

Companies seized on the holiday by setting out to teach Americans how to honor their mothers by buying them flowers, candy, or cards. This outraged Anna Jarvis the daughter. When florists sold carnations for the then-exorbitant price of $1 a piece, she began a campaign against “those who would undermine Mother’s Day with their greed.” But she was hardly a match for the flower and card companies. Soon, the Florists’ Review announced, with a certain triumphant tone, that it was “Miss Jarvis who was completely squelched.” And they were right.

And so a billion-dollar industry was born. Let’s be honest: Who among us dares ignore a holiday that has come to reflect our love and appreciation for our own mothers? And who among us doesn’t hope for just a few words of love and appreciation from our children? Maybe the nonprofits are offering a more virtuous way for us to show it. But what would Julia Ward Howe, who wanted Mother’s Day to promote peace and protest war, think about these organizations using the day to help them survive?

I’m not sure, but I have a suspicion that she would have looked more kindly upon those groups whose work tries directly to improve the lives of women and their families and to end war. The National Women’s History Project, for example, which lobbied Congress for Women’s History Month, asks its supporters to buy various gifts—cards and books and pins—for “the perfect mom.” The project is partly responsible for excavating previously invisible women like Jarvis and Howe, so making money from Mother’s Day makes sense in this case. The Feminist Majority Foundation, whose mission is to work for the “social and political and economic equality for women,” asks if you still “need a gift for Mother’s Day?” And then it assures you that “100% of proceeds go to continuing programs that support the advancement of women and girls worldwide.” MomsRising.org (an offshoot of MoveOn.org) is selling T-shirts for Mother’s Day to raise money for the group’s fight for paid sick leave, health care, child care, and other family friendly policies.

All these groups work to help women and mothers. But it is anti-war organizations like the Ploughshares Fund that return us to the original meaning of Mother’s Day. Ploughshares has always promoted peace. Its current e-mail asks you to sign a declaration for Ground Zero, a campaign to create a nuclear-free world. In making this request, Ploughshares urges, “After all, what better way to honor our mothers than to return to the holiday’s original purpose. … Reclaim the true meaning of Mother’s Day, and leave a peaceful legacy to our children.”

Now here’s a message the founding mothers of the holiday would have understood: just a simple request to sign a declaration demanding the destruction of nuclear weapons so that we leave a safer planet for our children. How delightfully quaint.

Russia crib sheet

Russia crib sheet

by digby

The following Russia investigation crib sheet is from Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei which means that it reflects the common understanding among the villagers. If they could have found a way to make it look better for Trump they would have since their brand is jaded Village wisdom. It doesn’t look good:

One thing is true of all major political scandals: What we know in the moment is but a tiny, obscured, partial view of the full story later revealed by investigators.

Why it matters: That’s what makes the Trump-Russia drama all the more remarkable. Forget all we don’t know. The known facts that even Trump’s closest friends don’t deny tell a damning tale that would sink most leaders.

  • We know Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chair, has been indicted on 32 counts, including conspiracy and money laundering. We know he made millions off shady Russians and changed the Republican platform to the benefit of Russia.
  • We know that the U.S. intelligence community concluded, in a report released in January 2017, that Russian President Vladimir Putin “ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election,” to “denigrate” Hillary Clinton and with “a clear preference for … Trump.”
  • We know that in May 2016, Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat Russia had political dirt on Hillary. “About three weeks earlier,” according to the N.Y. Times, “Papadopoulos had been told that Moscow had thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton.”
  • We know that in June 2016, Trump’s closest aides and family members met at Trump Tower with a shady group of Russians who claimed to have dirt on Hillary. The meeting was billed as“part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
  • We know the Russian lawyer who helped set it up concealedher close ties to Putin government.
  • We know that in July 2016, Trump said: ““Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 [Hillary] emails that are missing,” and urged their publication.
  • We know that on Air Force One a year later, Trump helped his son, Don Jr., prepare a misleading statement about the meeting. We know top aides freaked out about this.
  • We know Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting.
  • We know Michael Flynn, former national security adviser and close campaign aide, lied to Vice President Pence and FBI about his Russia-related chats. We know he’s now cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller. We know Trump initially tried to protect Flynn with loyalty and fervency rarely shown by Trump to others.
  • We know that during the transition, Jared Kushner spoke withthe Russian ambassador “about establishing a secret communications channel between the Trump transition team and Moscow.” We know Kushner omitted previous contacts with Russians on his disclosure forms.
  • We know Trump initially lied about why he fired James Comey, later admitting he was canned because of the “Russia thing.”
  • We know Michael Cohen was a close adviser and lawyer, the fixer and secret-keeper. We know Trump seethed when the FBI raided Cohen’s office.
  • We know that in January 2016, just before Republicans began voting, Michael Cohen tried to restart a Trump Tower project in Moscow.
  • We know Mueller questioned a Russian oligarch tied to a firmthat made payments to Cohen, who paid off a porn star who allegedly had an affair with Trump. [Updated]
  • We know that oligarch was a bad enough dude that the Trump administration sanctioned him.

 The undisputed known knowns about Trump, Russia and his associates are damning and possibly actionable. But the known unknowns of how much more Robert Mueller knows that is publicly unknown is what spooks Trump allies most.

Remember: No one in the media saw Mueller’s indictments of Russian oligarchs coming until the second they were announced, and no one knew until this week that Mueller’s team questioned AT&T five months ago about its payments to Cohen.
Mueller has every incentive to keep the public and Trump himself in suspense.

More than a horse race by @BloggersRUs

More than a horse race
by Tom Sullivan

There is work to do. Now. This year. Which makes it unwelcome to see the front-page Washington Post headline about the Democrats’ “wide-open 2020 presidential field.” Nothing in the article is front-page news. Just a seductive distraction.

As the Jedi master said, “All his life, has he looked away … to the stars, to the horizon … never his mind on WHERE HE WAS!” Good advice in this galaxy in 2018.

Michael Scherer teases some of the the two dozen possible presidential candidates in a Democratic Party “which has yet to congeal around a positive vision.” Perhaps finding one should come before musing about who will carry it two years from now. Perhaps winning back state legislatures this year should come before the next Democratic president faces a GOP-dominated Congress secured by another decade of congressional districts gerrymandered in GOP-dominated state capitols.

While the press speculates about what horses will compete in the 2020 Derby, Ed Kilgore cautions Democrats not to be too proud of the electoral terror of the rumored Blue Wave:

The great talisman for Democrats heading toward November has been the consistent over-performance of their candidates in special elections, which suggests to some that the polls aren’t adequately capturing Democratic “enthusiasm.” While there is historically a significant correlation between House special elections and subsequent regular elections, there is some reason to wonder if Democrats will be able to maintain their “enthusiasm gap” in the context of regular midterm elections in which key components of their coalition (young people and Latinos, in particular) have traditionally failed to vote in numbers proportionate to the older white voters now leaning Republican. And there is another whole set of questions about polls and “enthusiasm,” though 2018 polls that screen out voters who did not participate in the pro-GOP 2010 and 2014 midterms could overestimate GOP odds in a big way.

These too are distractions, nibbling around the edges. Something Dave Johnson tweeted yesterday touched on something deeper:

Perhaps we should focus on the fundamentals, not just on the antagonist. Nick Hanauer did last week:

You don’t need a rich guy like me to tell you that there is something very wrong with the American economy. You feel it every day in your stagnant paychecks, your rising credit card balances, and your creeping fear that everything for which you have worked so hard could quickly slip away.

And President Trump’s massive corporate tax giveaways aren’t going to make your lives any better. To be clear, corporate profit’s take of the U.S. economy had already doubled over the past 40 years — from an average of six percent of GDP during America’s post-war economic heyday to about 12 percent today.

While corporate profits continue their steady dominance over the economy, wages remain flat, economic anxiety keeps rising, and our nation can no longer seem to afford even its most basic needs. Roads, bridges, freeways, and drinking water systems are crumbling. Our public schools and our police and fire departments are dangerously underfunded. Student debt is crushing a new generation of young people, many of whom have given up on the American dream.

Where did all this money go?

Into stock buybacks, for one.

“We cannot flush away five percent of GDP inflating the portfolios of the one percent,” Hanauer writes, “while simultaneously maintaining a modern economy with sufficient investment, growing wages, and an expanding economy.”

Dan Balz last week published a lengthy look at a set of counties along the upper Mississippi that swung from Democrat in 2012 to Republican in the last presidential election. They follow the river in northwest Illinois, eastern Iowa, and southwest Wisconsin. Their local economy is a significant concern not dismissed as an artifact of the culture war.

“Trump Triers,” Rep. Cheri Bustos calls them. The Democrat representing the district on the Illinois shore calls many voters “citizens so fed up — for various reasons — that they were willing to take a chance on the unorthodox non-politician.” Now, as Balz recounts, many are having second thoughts.

Before Democrats settle on which horse to ride into 2020, they might want to pay more attention to 2018 and to crafting a positive vision on which to run. Vision or no, Trump’s base will never waver. The Triers are still undecided.

* * * * * * * *

For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

We Must Be Doing Something Right… by tristero

We Must Be Doing Something Right… 

by tristero

…because the NY Times Week in Review is filled with op-eds about how important it is for liberals to tone down their message, moderate their outrage, abandon Pelosi, same-sex marriage, Even the headline for Michelle Goldberg’s column screams, “How the Online Left Fuels the Right” (I ain’t linking to any of this nonsense). And the Times lead editorial is urging a third party for California – a center-right third party. Good luck with that, folks.

But my favorite is on the front page above-the-fold of the print version: “Liberals, You’re Not As Smart as You Think.” And y’know something? I actually wasted my time reading the fucking article, thereby proving the author’s point. Shame on me. 


But seriously, all these calls to cool it are good news. We’re getting under their skin. Time to double down.

The 2018 SIFF Preview By Dennis Hartley — Vape pen on standby @denofcinema5

Saturday Night at the Movies


The 2018 SIFF Preview

By Dennis Hartley

It’s nearly time for the 44th Seattle International Film Festival (May 17th to June 10th). SIFF is showing 433 shorts, features and docs from 90 countries. Navigating festivals takes skill; the trick is developing a sense for films in your wheelhouse (I embrace my OCD and channel it like a cinematic dowser). Here are some intriguing possibilities on my list after obsessively combing through the 2018 SIFF catalog (so you don’t have to).

Let’s dive in, shall we? SIFF is featuring a number of documentaries and feature films with a socio-political bent. After the War (France) is a drama about an Italian insurgent living in France with his teenaged daughter. When he loses his asylum status, his radicalized past comes back to haunt him and his family. The Swedish doc A Good Week for Democracy takes a look at an annual political free-for-all that gives thousands of lobbyists, politicians a chance to get up close and personal. Crime + Punishment (USA) is a doc examining the NYPD’s quota-based practices, focusing on a group of minority police officers bravely willing to risk their careers by helping expose systemic corruption.

I’m always up for a music doc or biopic. Industrial Accident: The Story of Wax Trax! Records (USA) is about the eponymous Chicago record store-turned underground record label that spearheaded the 80s industrial music scene by nurturing acts like Ministry and My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult. I’m intrigued by The King (USA), in which director Eugene Jarecki gets behind the wheel of Elvis Presley’s 1963 Rolls-Royce and goes on a cross-country trek to paint an analogous portrait of both America and Presley’s rise and erm, fall. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (Japan) profiles the Oscar-winning composer and activist, who returns to the recording studio after a lengthy hiatus due to his health issues.

Docs and biopics about women we love: Nico, 1988 (Italy) dramatizes the final years of the Warhol Factory alum and Velvet Underground singer as she traverses Europe, finding her voice as a solo act and battling addiction. Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist (U.K.) takes a look at iconoclastic fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and her considerable influence on punk and alternative fashion couture. Love, Gilda (USA) uses newly discovered audio tapes and rare home movies to tell the story of SNL icon Gilda Radner.

A couple of intriguing movies about the movies are on this year’s schedule. I’m pretty jazzed to check out Godard Mon Amour (France) as it is the newest film from the always wonderful Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies). The film dramatizes the 1968 romance between director Jean-Luc Godard and his acting muse Anne Wiazemsky. One of my favorite directors is profiled in Hal (USA), a doc about the late great Hal Ashby (The Last Detail, Harold and Maude, Shampoo, etc.). SIFF is also serving up a special archival presentation of Ashby’s 1979 classic, Being There. Nice!

There are thrillers, mysteries and crime dramas aplenty to keep you on the edge of your seat. Bloody Milk (France) is a psychological thriller about a paranoid dairy farmer who buys into a YouTube conspiracy theory about a deadly bovine disease and “recklessly sacrifices one of his cows and then goes to extreme lengths to cover up his tracks”. From Denmark, The Guilty promises to be an “innovative, claustrophobic thriller” about an ex-street cop turned emergency center dispatcher who becomes a caller’s only hope for survival. The Third Murder (Japan) is a courtroom drama about a career defense lawyer having an existential crisis over what he does for a living (shades of And Justice for All).

In the drama department: This year’s Opening Night Gala film, The Bookshop (U.K) stars Emily Mortimer as a widow who opens a bookstore in a provincial village on the English coast in 1959 and finds herself at odds with the chary locals. From Canada, the Quebecois film Fake Tattoos digs into the relationship that develops between an introverted 18 year-old punk rocker with a troubled past and a free-spirited young woman after they meet at a concert. I’m very interested to see Let the Sunshine In (France) for two reasons: Juliet Binoche (one of the best actresses strolling the Earth) and director Claire Denis (Chocolat, Beau travail, White Material, etc.). Who cares what it’s “about”?

Funny stuff: Sorry to Bother You (USA) is this year’s Centerpiece Gala film; billed as “an off-the-wall, neon, drug-fueled black comedy” executed with “surrealist fanaticism”. Right in my proverbial wheelhouse. Don’t disappoint me, Centerpiece Gala selection. I’m getting an Amy Schumer vibe from Hot Mess (Australia), which follows the romantic travails of a 25 year-old woman who is “a budding playwright, a college drop-out, and a complete screw-up” who likes to write “songs about toxic shock syndrome”. I’m there! One of the most anticipated films this year is the Closing Night Gala pick, Gus van Sant’s Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot. Joaquin Phoenix stars in this biopic about sardonic cartoonist John Callahan, who became a quadriplegic at 21 due to a car accident.

Midnight movies! In Praise of Nothing (Serbia) is a “satirical story time parable for adults” based on Erasmus’ 1511 essay “In Praise of Folly”. A “personification” of a character named Nothing (voiced by Iggy Pop!) narrates in simple rhyme, with globe-trotting footage from 62 cinematographers (who were instructed by the director to “shoot nothing”). Wow. Sounds like The Blair Witch Project meets Koyannisqatsi. If horror is your thing, The Field Guide to Evil (Austria) could be the ticket. It’s an anthology based on dark folk tales from around the world. And there’s already some “buzz” from Seattle’s over-the-counter culture regarding * (yes, simply a star symbol), a collage of starry footage, assembled from all of film history, in chronological order. Vape pen on standby!

Obviously, I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ll be plowing through the catalog and sharing reviews with you beginning next Saturday. In the meantime, visit the SIFF site for full details on the films, event screenings, special guests, panel discussions and more.

Previous SIFF reviews

More reviews at Den of Cinema
On Facebook
On Twitter

Dennis Hartley

Speaking of torture advocates, how about Alan Dershowitz?

Speaking of torture advocates, how about Alan Dershowitz?

by digby

As we listen to Alan Dershowitz do back flips to defend the miscreant Donald Trump I notice that a lot of people refer to him as “he great civil libertarian” who is simply defending the president on the basis of his deeply held principles about freedom and democracy.

Ok. But maybe he’s just a guy who has a lot in common with Trump, particularly about torture.

This is a long essay and I’ve only excerpted a part of it. It’s pretty stunning:

The moral dilemma posed by torture can be ignored only if we assume, as some do, that torture never works. I have been criticized for raising a red herring since it is “well known” that torture does not work. The tragic reality is that torture sometimes works, though many people wish it did not. There are numerous instances in which torture has produced self-proving, truthful information that was necessary to prevent harm to civilians.

The Washington Post has recounted a case from 1995 in which Philippine authorities tortured a terrorist into disclosing information that may have foiled plots to assassinate the Pope, crash eleven commercial airliners into the Pacific Ocean, and fly a private Cessna filled with explosives into CIA headquarters. For sixty-seven days, intelligence agents beat the suspect “with a chair and a long piece of wood [breaking most of his ribs], forced water into his mouth, and crushed lighted cigarettes into his private parts.” After successfully employing this procedure, they turned him over to American authorities, along with the lifesaving information they had beaten out of him. And following the killing of Osama bin Laden, CIA officials claimed that valuable information elicited by waterboarding helped in locating the world’s most wanted terrorist. It is impossible to avoid the difficult moral dilemma of choosing among evils by denying the empirical reality that torture sometimes works, even if it does not always work. No technique of crime prevention always works.

The goal of the torture warrant proposal is to reduce the use of torture to the smallest amount and degree possible, while creating public accountability for its rare use. I see it not as a compromise with civil liberties but rather as an effort to maximize civil liberties in the face of the realistic likelihood that torture does and will, in fact, take place below the radar screen of accountability.

It seems to me logical that a formal, visible, accountable, and centralized system is somewhat easier to control than an ad hoc, off-the-books, and under-the-radar-screen non-system. I believe, though I certainly cannot prove, that a formal requirement of a judicial warrant as a prerequisite to nonlethal torture would decrease the amount of physical violence directed against suspects. At the most obvious level, a double check is always more protective than a single check. In every instance in which a warrant is requested, a field officer has already decided that torture is justified; in the absence of a warrant requirement, the officer would simply have proceeded to implement torture. Requiring that decision to be approved by a judicial officer will result in fewer instances of torture even if the judges rarely turn down a request.

Moreover, I believe that most judges would require compelling evidence before they would authorize so extraordinary a departure from our constitutional norms. A record would be kept of every warrant granted, and although it is certainly possible that some individual agents might torture without a warrant, they would have no excuse, since a warrant procedure would be available. They could not claim “necessity,” because the decision as to whether the torture is indeed necessary has been taken out of their hands and placed in the hands of a judge. In addition, even if torture were deemed totally illegal without any exception, it would still occur, though the public would be less aware of its existence.

I also believe that the rights of the suspect would be better protected with a warrant requirement. He would be granted immunity, told that he was now compelled to testify, threatened with imprisonment, and given the option of providing the requested information. Only if he refused to do what he was legally compelled to do—provide necessary information, which could not incriminate him because of the immunity—would he be threatened with torture. Knowing that such a threat was authorized by the law, he might well provide the information. If he still refused, he would be subjected to judicially monitored physical measures designed to cause excruciating pain without leaving any lasting damage.

Of course, there is something different about torture that makes us loath to bring torture within the oversight of our judicial officers. In addition to the horrible history associated with torture, there is also the aesthetic of torture: the very idea of deliberately subjecting a captive human being to excruciating pain violates our sense of acceptable conduct. Yet what moral principle could justify the death penalty for past individual murders, while condemning nonlethal torture to prevent future mass murders? Bentham posed this rhetorical question as support for his argument regarding torture. In the United States we execute convicted murderers, despite compelling evidence of the unfairness and ineffectiveness of capital punishment. Yet many who support capital punishment recoil at the prospect of shoving a sterilized needle under the finger of a suspect who is refusing to divulge information that might prevent multiple deaths.

In our modern age, the death penalty is underrated, while pain is overrated. That we put the prisoner “to sleep” by injecting a lethal substance into his body covers up that death is forever while nonlethal pain is temporary. Despite the irrationality of these distinctions, they are understandable. But in the end, the absolute opposition to torture may rest more on historical and aesthetic considerations than on moral or logical considerations.

We cannot have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on torture that enables our President and attorney general to close their eyes to uses of torture while simultaneously denying torture categorically— the kind of willful blindness condemned by the courts in other contexts. With no limitations, standards, principles, or accountability, the use of torture techniques will expand.

Torture, like any other topic, deserves a vigorous debate in a democracy such as ours. Even if government officials decline to discuss such issues, academics and advocacy groups have a duty to raise them and submit them to the marketplace of ideas. There may be danger in open discussion, but there is far greater danger in actions based on secret discussion. What is a quintessentially democratic problem requires a quintessentially democratic response. In short, it is not inconsistent to be opposed to torture and yet in favor of a torture warrant. Democratic accountability for torture is not an oxymoron.

He’s for torture, he just wants to institutionalize it in a nice, dry, legal fashion. It’s even more monstrous that Trump’s crude declarations of “I love torture.” But at heart, they are two sadistic peas in a pod.

A torture advocate cannot, by definition, be a civil libertarian. People should stop referring to him as one.

.