The Commentariat -- Aug. 26, 2013
Laura Poitras, et al., in Der Spiegel: "President Obama promised that NSA surveillance activities were aimed exclusively at preventing terrorist attacks. But secret documents from the intelligence agency show that the Americans spy on Europe, the UN and other countries." The documents come from Edward Snowden. CW: First, Obama did not promise that the NSA wouldn't spy on other countries. He was talking about specific NSA programs that target terrorists in the cited remark. No one in the world thinks that the U.S. limits its spying to Al Qaeda & Friends. Second and more important, exactly how is Patriot Snowden (not to mention Poitras, who is a U.S. citizen, too) helping the U.S. public by revealing E.U. building floor plans obtained from the NSA? Are Americans shocked, shocked, that their government wants to know what other governments are saying? This whole article is infuriating crap. ...
... Spreading the Wealth. Ben Smith of BuzzFeed: "The non-profit investigative reporting group ProPublica is among the media organizations with access to some NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden, another suggestion that the reportorial investigation into the National Security Agency's programs and practices is broader than previously known.... ProPublica's president, Richard Tofel, confirmed the collaboration in an email, and suggested the group has quietly been in the mix for some time."
NYC's CIA. Matt Apuzzo & Adam Goldman in New York: "After 9/11, the NYPD built in effect its own CIA -- and its Demographics Unit delved deeper into the lives of citizens than did the NSA." And it was Ray Kelly's bright idea. "The activities Kelly set in motion after 9/11 pushed deeply into the private lives of New Yorkers, surveilling Muslims in their mosques, their sporting fields, their businesses, their social clubs, even their homes...."
Oh, great. Tweeting foreign policy while on vacation. Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg News: "This week, the Barack Obama administration's most eloquent and ardent advocate for humanitarian intervention overseas, Samantha Power, the ambassador to the United Nations, tweeted the following about the alleged Syrian chemical weapons attack: 'Reports devastating: 100s dead in streets, including kids killed by chem weapons. UN must get there fast & if true, perps must face justice.' Since then, she's been publicly silent. Apparently, she's on a previously scheduled, and unfortunately timed, vacation (which a handful of Republicans are casting as a scandal of some sort, Democrats not being allowed to take vacations in August)." ...
... Shane Harris & Matthew Aid of Foreign Policy: "The U.S. government may be considering military action in response to chemical strikes near Damascus. But a generation ago, America's military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks far more devastating than anything Syria has seen, Foreign Policy has learned.... [Recently declassified] CIA documents ... show that [during the Reagan administration] senior U.S. officials were being regularly informed about the scale of the nerve gas attacks. They are tantamount to an official American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons attacks ever launched."
Mary Shinn, et al., of the Washington Post: "While veterans waited longer than ever in recent years for their wartime disability compensation, the Department of Veterans Affairs gave its workers millions of dollars in bonuses for 'excellent' performances that effectively encouraged them to avoid claims that needed extra work to document veterans' injuries, a News21 investigation has found. In 2011, a year in which the claims backlog ballooned by 155 percent, more than two-thirds of claims processors shared $5.5 million in bonuses, according to salary data from the Office of Personnel Management. The more complex claims were often set aside by workers so they could keep their jobs, meet performance standards or, in some cases, collect extra pay, said VA claims processors and union representatives."
Jelani Cobb of the New Yorker: "There's a bizarre dissonance that comes with watching the first black Attorney General give a speech to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington and recognizing that the themes of his speech might have fit well with those given at the original march, in 1963." ...
... Bryce Covert of Think Progress: "On Face the Nation this Sunday, Colin Powell ... warned his fellow Republicans that the continuing push to restrict voting rights is going to 'backfire' and harm the Republican Party." ...
I'd like to see [President Obama] be more passionate about race questions.... I mean, in my lifetime, over a long career in public life, you know, I've been refused access to restaurants where I couldn't eat, even though I just came back from Vietnam, we can't give you a hamburger, come back some other time. And I did, right after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, I went right back to that same place and got my hamburger, and they were more than happy to serve me now.... But we're not there yet. We're not there yet. And so we've got to keep working on it. And for the president to speak out on it is appropriate. I think all leaders, black and white, should speak out on this issue. -- Colin Powell
What’s going on about voting rights is downright evil because it is something that really needs to keep going forward not backward. -- Cokie Roberts, on "This Week" yesterday
First smart thing Roberts has said in 50 years. -- Constant Weader
E. J. Dionne: "... after three years of congressional dysfunction brought on by the rise of a radicalized brand of conservatism, it's time to call the core questions: Will our ability to govern ourselves be held perpetually hostage to an ideology that casts government as little more than dead weight in American life? And will a small minority in Congress be allowed to grind decision-making to a halt?" CW short answer: Yup.
Paul Krugman on the fall of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, the travails of Microsoft & dynastic history. "Even though Microsoft did not, in fact, end up taking over the world, those antitrust concerns weren't misplaced. Microsoft was a monopolist, it did extract a lot of monopoly rents, and it did inhibit innovation. Creative destruction means that monopolies aren't forever, but it doesn't mean that they're harmless while they last. This was true for Microsoft yesterday; it may be true for Apple, or Google, or someone not yet on our radar, tomorrow."
In the August 24 Commentariat, contributor Trish Ramey writes a sensitve & informative response to my query about whether or not to honor Chelsea (ne Bradley) Manning's request to refer to her as a female.
Dexter Filkins of the New Yorker on the large-scale chemical-weapons attack in Syria last week.
Senate Race
Kim Severson of the New York Times: "Conservatives in South Carolina are eager to oust [South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham [R], who has enraged the far right for, among other things, reaching across the aisle on immigration and supporting President Obama's nominations for the Supreme Court. Tea Party supporters called him a community organizer for the Muslim Brotherhood when, instead of heading home for the Congressional break this month, he went to Egypt at the request of the president.... At least 40 [South Carolina] groups align themselves along Tea Party and Libertarian lines, and trying to unify them to topple the state's senior senator will be no easy task."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Red Burns, an educator who gained wide recognition for pushing for more creative uses of modern communications, helping to lead the movement for public access to cable television and starting a celebrated New York University program to foster Internet wizards, died on Friday at her Manhattan home. She was 88."
Washington Post: "An aerial drone ... crashed Saturday ... into the grandstand at Virginia Motorsports Park during the Great Bull Run.... Four or five people suffered very minor injuries...." It was apparently being used to videotape the event. Or not.
AFP: "Firefighters reported progress Monday battling a huge blaze on the edge of Yosemite National Park, but warned it remains an 'extreme' threat as it nears the top US tourist destination and San Francisco's water supply. The Rim Fire, which began nine days ago, has grown to become the 13th largest in California's recorded history and has sparked the closure of one of the main roads into the spectacular natural beauty spot."
AP: "The Air Force has removed the commander of a nuclear weapons unit at a Montana base following a failed safety and security inspection that marked the second major misstep this year for one of the military's most sensitive missions.Military leaders say the decision to relieve Col. David Lynch of command at Malmstrom Air Force Base stems from a loss of confidence."
New York Daily News: "A bigoted thug brutally beat a transgender woman to death in Harlem just moments after realizing his friend was actually born a man, the victim's family and officials said Friday. It was the latest in a series of troubling bias attacks in the city, which is on pace to double the number of crimes against the gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual community in 2013 compared with last year."
Washington Post: "U.N. inspectors attempting to visit the site of an alleged chemical weapons attack in eastern Damascus were forced to turn back on Monday after their convoy came under what the United Nations described as intentional fire. The team plans to try again to access the area within a few hours, the statement said. In the meantime, three key U.S. allies, [Britain, France & Turkey,] indicated on Monday that they would back the Obama administration if it decides to take action against Syria without a United Nations mandate." ...
... Update: "U.N. chemical weapons inspectors on Monday successfully entered a Damascus suburb that was allegedly hit last week with poison gas, part of an assault on three rebel strongholds that left hundreds of people dead." ...
... New York Times Update: "Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that the use of chemical weapons in attacks on civilians in Syria last week was undeniable and that the Obama administration would hold the Syrian government accountable for what he called a 'moral obscenity' that has shocked the world's conscience."
CNN: "An 8-year-old Louisiana boy intentionally shot and killed his elderly caregiver after playing a violent video game, authorities say. Marie Smothers was pronounced dead at the scene with a gunshot wound to the head in a mobile home park in Slaughter, Louisiana, the East Feliciana Parish Sheriff's Department said in a prepared statement.... Authorities identified the woman as the boy's 'caregiver,' without stating whether she is a relative. But CNN affiliate WBRZ reported that the woman was the boy's grandmother." The gun belonged to her.
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Reader Comments (8)
Juan Cole has some interesting news via Bill Quigley about NSA surveillance:
http://www.juancole.com/2013/08/surveillance-secrets-quigley.html#more-37011
What ya gonna do? Mike Rogers doesn't come out very well. Ron Wyden and Alan Grayson do, but their hands are tied.
@Barbarossa. Thanks. Quigley doesn't say anything new, but his highlighting Mike Rogers' repeated untruthful remarks about the scope of NSA surveillance was useful. The first comment to the post, by Arn Varnold, is useful, too. Varnold points out that any U.S. Senator can make any remarks s/he wants to on the floor of the Senate without fear of prosecution. Instead of hinting (for a couple of years now, on Wyden's part) that the public doesn't know the half of it, Wyden, Udall or any other Senator should stand up & tell us the half of it. As I see, that's their job.
Marie
The other day Ken wrote a comment comparing Tom Clancy and Elmore Leonard in response to Leonard's passing. More specifically, he was comparing Clancy's ubiquitous hero, Jack Ryan, with Leonard's characters.
His description of Ryan as a company man with brains is completely accurate. He does do things his own way within a system, like many Leonard characters do (Raylen Givens, Chili Palmer, or Harry Mitchell from "52 Pick-up") but Clancy's abilities with characterization are much more limited and the overlay of right-wing politics scars most of his later stories to the point of unreadability (my last attempt, "The Bear and the Dragon", I couldn't even finish).
Ryan, like most of Clancy's other characters serves largely as a somewhat two dimensional prop for the plot twists and the politics. A more apt comparison might be between Clancy's Jack Ryan and John Le Carre's George Smiley. Smiley, a conflicted, brilliant, determined spy runner, is frequently presented with harsh choices involving people he cares about, decisions he must live with afterwards. He is a fully fleshed out three dimensional character. Jack Ryan's biggest decisions are often whom to shoot first, the liberals or the Commies.
That being said, Clancy writes great action scenes. The opening chapter of "Red Storm Rising" hits the ground running and doesn't stop for breath. But his characters tend to be manqués, left or right-wing cardboard cut-outs. Unlike Leonard, whose writing is fluid, spare, almost improvisational, Clancy is interminably prolix and clunky (when not writing about stuff blowing up).
In musical terms, Clancy is John Philip Sousa. Leonard is Miles Davis.
The commemorations of the 1963 march on Washington over the last week or so remind us of how far we still have to go.
One of the most important speakers of that day, John Lewis, an early promoter of non-violent protest in an extremely violent era, was excoriated with taunts and racial epithets only a couple of years ago by Teabaggers on the steps of the Capitol. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus required police protection (one member, Emanuel Cleaver, was spat on) to protect them from attacks by wingnut bigots pulled into DC by GOP leaders to protest the fact that a black president cared about their healthcare.
Way back in '63, people like John Lewis may have hoped that kind of reaction would be gone 50 years hence.
And, according to conservative leaders like John Roberts and Nino Scalia, it is. No need to worry anymore.
Lucky for us. Otherwise I might have to think that the Modern GOP had juiced up the monster of racism for its own political purposes and is keeping it alive and healthy with regular feedings of hatred, misinformation, and fresh blood.
Line of the day, so far, comes from a piece on wonkette.com referring to grizzly mom Sarah Palin's decision not to run for an Alaskan senate seat "at this time".
Palin's in and (quickly) out, up and down political career is compared to a "herpes flare-up".
She didn't rule out the possibility entirely though, meaning a new viral outbreak could still be imminent. Nice to remember that the Greek root for "herpes" means "creeping". Or maybe "creepy"?
Could it be that someone told poli-sci flunk-out Palin that senators serve for six years? A long time between cushy wingnut media gigs.
UN spokesman Farhan Haq commenting on disclosure of US hacking "The inviolability of diplomatic missions, including the UN and other international organizations, whose functions are protected by the relevant international conventions like the Vienna Convention has been well-established international law."
Vienna Convention: 'A host country cannot search diplomatic premises or seize its documents or property. Host government must permit and protect free communication between diplomats of the mission and their home country'
Deutsche Welle: 'The alleged spying activities are illegal. The US has a long standing agreement with the UN stipulating that the US refrain from covert operations with regards to the UN's activities.'
Obama, August 9: "And to others around the world, I want to make clear once again that America is not interested in spying on ordinary people. Our intelligence is focused on finding the information that's necessary to protect our people and, in many cases, protect our allies."
To be honest I would think most people would not consider diplomats to be 'ordinary people' like mechanics or house wives but does Obama really agree with Bolton that the UN and its black helicopters are a legitimate threat to the US? I would expect that the EU mission to the UN qualifies for the same theoretical guarantees of freedom from spying given to the UN itself.
The question E.J. Dionne poses in the article linked by Marie has an even darker side than conservative antipathy to government and governance.
The kind of suspicion of government snidely introduced by Reagan ("Government is the problem") and shepherded along by Saint Ronnie acolytes has morphed, under the ministrations of even more radical thinking (well, not sure we can actually call it thinking...it's more like the result of self-inflicted emotional and psychological trauma) in stages, through distrust to enmity to animus into blind, spitting hatred.
One cannot truthfully describe this progression as unchecked. That would imply detachment or negligence on the part of those who could have stopped or ameliorated this juggernaut of invidiousness. Instead, we have hordes of wingers in government and media actively promoting discontent, hostility, and treason.
The result has been not simply an entire generation of the misled and the malicious, who hate guvmint "just because", but the natural and entirely predictable growth of malignant tumors like the sovereign citizen movement on the body politic, whose chosen methods of protest include kidnapping, torture, murder, chaos, and general mayhem.
People must answer for this. This movement is the direct result of years of conservative vituperation, venomous lies, and warped ideology.
Does anyone think mea culpas might be in the offing from the likes of Beck or Limbaugh or Gohmert the next time cops are gunned down by these nuts or another government building is blown up?
As some people I know have opined a number of times, Colin Powell gave up his "card" a long time ago. His outrage is a bit late and certainly much less powerful given his current retired and fading status. Takes a pretty small set of balls to be so outspoken.
After reading Benen's post today on the young Australian who was killed while jogging, I followed his link to the Parker WAPO piece. Truly, what an idiot and proof of her breathtaking ignorance is in full flower as she compares her experience of being followed by a salesclerk while wearing ratty clothing to the Trayvon Martin situation. Hmmm. I guess the salesclerk was "standing her ground" against a poorly groomed white woman - no mention of a gun and the encounter didn't seem to be fatal. Apparently the result was merely an excessive loss of brain cells.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/kathleen-parker-obamas-race-remarks-exacerbate-tensions/2013/08/23/7491bb2e-0c1f-11e3-9941-6711ed662e71_story.html