Dissident Veteran For Peace

On December 8, 2020, I wrote about the State of Texas' motion in the Supreme Court to allow it to file a complaint over alleged problems in the 2020 election in several states. Back then I made two observations relevant to the present post.

First, I said: "I think the State of Texas should have standing but that is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition and it's motion comes awfully late." Second, I said: "If, as seems likely, the Supreme Court refuses to hear this complaint then it's probably game over for all the election challenges."

The Supreme Court did indeed reject Texas' motion. Here's the full text of the Court's unsigned order:

The State of Texas's motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.

Now, it's clear Texas does not have an interest in how other states elect their own state officials. But the notion that they have no "judicially cognizable interest" in how other states elect the one President and VP of all of the United States defies logic and facially undermines constitutional republicanism. I'm not suggesting there were no reasonable grounds to deny Texas' motion but, rather, that the one the Court came up with was unreasonable. 

Supporters of Biden like to mention that many of the federal judges denying 2020 presidential election challenges have been Trump appointees. The implication is that the legal challenges have been so hollow that even Trump loyalists had to reject them.

There may truth to this but it doesn't follow that because Trump nominated these judges that they would necessarily do him any favors. That is the whole point of lifetime appointments for federal judges—to try to insulate them from political influence.

Also, Trump "relied on outside conservative legal organizations and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell" to select and manage the confirmation of his judicial nominees. Moreover, these are people who were on the judiciary career path long before anyone took a Trump presidency seriously and who always knew they would likely be on the bench long after Trump was gone. They might even despise Trump but were willing to accept a nomination (or, possibly, reject an election lawsuit) to advance their own careers and political commitments.

Thus, there are scant grounds to think Trump necessarily got special or even fair consideration of his post-election legal complaints. I'm not saying he was treated unfairly but that you cannot infer much from the fact that some Trump judicial appointees rejected his election claims.

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The January 6, 2021, Capitol rioters are criminals who should be prosecuted. They are also fools and idiots who played right into the hands of the "progressive" authoritarians and their program of racism and repression.

Trump has now been impeached a second time on purely political grounds—they're afraid he'll beat them in another election. Barring a miraculous transformation I hope Trump quietly retires to another, far away country.

In any event, I read the new article of impeachment and it presents no sound legal basis to claim that Trump criminally incited the rioters. If prosecutors believe there is probable cause that Trump committed a crime then they should seek an indictment.

Instead, the Democrats and their media allies are simply hyping and milking the riot for every political advantage they can extract no matter how dishonest the effort. Referring to the upcoming impeachment trial, Jonathan Turley writes: "A private citizen is being called to the Senate to be tried for removal from an office that he does not hold." 

The Democrats had some conceivable legitimate grounds to impeach Trump while he was president though not on events connected to Russia or Ukraine. For instance, the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was, arguably, illegal under US and international law. It was also dangerous and counter to American strategic interests. Yet, because that attack was perceived to be in Israel's interests impeachment was never on the agenda for it.

Trump might also have been impeached for his attempt to suborn Mike Pence to violate the Constitution and federal law by unlawfully interfering with the certification of Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021. But, no, to impeach Trump for that would draw more unwanted attention to Pence who refused Trump's entreaties and followed the law while also undermining the Dems specious and profoundly hypocritical claims that for members of Congress to lawfully object to certification "borders on sedition or treason" and such.

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The election of Donald Trump was always a symptom of the larger problems of, in no special order, economic inequality, toxic consumerism, empire, corporate globalization, Democratic race grifting for power, and the corruption of the media and political elites. Trump ran on a campaign that showed awareness of some of these problems but he was seemingly always a con man exploiting the justified grievances of millions of Americans. He betrayed them and never rose to the call of his office or of history.

Unfortunately, Trump's disastrous term has only worsened matters and emboldened "progressive" authoritarians to step up the repression of their political enemies, including the White working class, in general (which is not to say the GOP were ever their allies). This is Trump's fault, the fault of his many enemies, and, to no small extent, the fault of voters duped by him.

Biden claims he wants to unify the country but—and I hope I'm wrong when I say this—that's a lie to judge from so many of his other utterances and policy plans. When I saw recent photos of the unprecedentedly large military presence in the Capitol for the inauguration I was reminded of all the unpopular, repressive governments the US has propped in foreign countries over the years. Are chickens coming home to roost?

Virginia National Guard members in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 13, 2021 (U.S. Air National Guard photo by SSgt Bryan Myhr).

New Jersey National Guard members in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 12, 2021 (U.S. Air National Guard photo by MSgt Matt Hecht).

See also: Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations IV

 

Labels: Biden, class, Democrats, Empire, Iran, Israel, law, media, military, politics, race, repression, Supreme Court, Trump, voting

Labels: civil liberties, humor, Remy, repression, video, War

Enemies of freedom of thought and expression are hailing Facebook's recent reversal on banning "White nationalists" from its platform and from Instagram starting next week. Facebook's previous policy was as follows:

- Q: What is our stance on white supremacy, white nationalism and white separatism?

• We don't allow praise, support and representation of white supremacy as an ideology. Eg. "White supremacy is the right thing"; "I am a white supremacist"; "Join the next White Supremacy rally!"

• We allow praise, support and representation of white nationalism as an ideology. Eg. "White nationalism is the only way"; "I am a proud white nationalist"

• We allow praise, support and representation of white separatism as an ideology. Eg. "White separatism is the perfect solution to America's problems"; "I am a white separatist". By the same token, we allow to call for the creation of white ethno-states (Eg. "The US should be a white-only nation")

At the time, in May 2018, someone from Facebook allegedly explained to a Quartz writer that: "the company consulted researchers and academics while crafting this policy, and they noted that there is a difference between supremacists' drive to dominate and the belief that races should be separated. Another factor Facebook took into consideration was that there are other separatist movements, such as Black and Basque separatism, as well as Zionism. Such groups don't necessarily preach inferiority of others, the spokesperson said."

Since then Facebook has been lobbied and attacked by the Humpty Dumpty brigade. Here's how the new policy arose according to Vice:

"We've had conversations with more than 20 members of civil society, academics, in some cases these were civil rights organizations, experts in race relations from around the world," Brian Fishman, policy director of counterterrorism at Facebook, told us in a phone call. "We decided that the overlap between white nationalism, [white] separatism, and white supremacy is so extensive we really can't make a meaningful distinction between them. And that's because the language and the rhetoric that is used and the ideology that it represents overlaps to a degree that it is not a meaningful distinction."

Wow! "[M]ore than 20 members of civil society ..." That's surely representative of the full scope of views on the subjects of White nationalism and freedom of thought and expression. Of course, it is completely coincidental that Brian Fishman has been part of "regular consulting meetings" between Facebook execs and representatives of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's (SWC) Digital Terrorism and Hate Project, including Rabbi Abraham Cooper, SWC Associate Dean.


Also coincidental is that, apparently, only "White nationalism" will be banned by Facebook because no one ever died from violent Jewish nationalists (see here, here, and here) or violent Chinese nationalists or violent Black nationalists (see here, here, and here). On that subject The Deseret News reports:

As Motherboard [a Vice subdomain] reported, Facebook will still allow content relating to black separatist movements and the Basque separatist movement to be posted, due to experts' arguments that white separatism should be handled differently "because of the long history of white supremacism that has been used to subjugate and dehumanize people of color in the United States and around the world."

However, Facebook does ban content centered on black nationalism, Motherboard reported. The Southern Poverty Law Center has characterized groups that espouse black nationalist ideology as hate groups, with the added proviso that "they should not be seen as equivalent to white supremacist groups — such as the Ku Klux Klan or neo-Nazis — in terms of their history of violence and terrorism."

To paraphrase Orwell, when it comes to Facebook Farm: All nationalisms are equal but some nationalisms are more equal than others. We'll see what happens when the new policy is implemented but as of today the Facebook page featured below was still live on Facebook:


This seems to contradict the claim made in The Deseret News. You see, Louis Farrakhan is profiled as an "extremist", "antisemite", and a "Black Nationalist" by the SPLC and he is the head of the Nation of Islam (NOI), which is an "SPLC Designated Hate Group". The pictured video sub-page is entitled "Minister Louis Farrakhan - The Raw Evil Nature of White People Exposed" and Farrakhan's main page prominently features a link to the NOI main web site.

To be clear, I am no proponent of the SPLC and I don't support banning Farrakhan or the NOI from Facebook. Nor do I support banning White nationalists or supremacists. I do support banning people and entities advocating violence and related criminal activity although I don't think mere criminal advocacy or activity should be the threshold for censorship on Facebook.

For example, it was once a crime for Black people to, among other things, ride at the front of the bus or to dine in certain restaurants. Today, it is illegal, under Israeli law, for anyone anywhere in the world to advocate for a boycott of Israel; sedition is still, arguably, a crime in the United States; apostasy from Islam is punishable by death in some countries; and, a man in China was fined this year for using a VPN to access foreign web sites. Should Facebook censor speech reporting, supporting, or enabling those crimes?

While I have some sympathy with those who support regulating Facebook as a utility, I'm not fully convinced it would be a good idea. Moreover, I doubt that it will happen because that might open the door to treating Facebook as a common carrier and therefore intolerably impinge on the Left's ability to successfully pressure Facebook to censor crimethink.

In any case, my preferred approach to controversial speech is Millian:

But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error ...

Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right ...

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.

Labels: censorship, freedom, J.S. Mill, media, Orwell, quotations, race, repression, technology, thoughtcrime, violence, White folks

"The Three Percenters - Original" (TTPO) bills itself as "a national organization made up of patriotic citizens who love their country, their freedoms, and their liberty [and] are committed to standing against and exposing corruption and injustice." They further claim "We are NOT a militia" and "We are NOT anti-government."

Nevertheless they have been branded by the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which works closely with US law enforcement, as part of the "sector of the radical right known as the 'Patriot' or antigovernment extremist movement". According to the "anti-hate activists" at the SPLC, the " 'Patriot' movement ... includes the militia movement, which comprises groups such as the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers, who actively engage in paramilitary activities."

TTPO has been similarly and negatively profiled by Political Research Associates and media outlets (see e.g. here and here and here). They have also been targeted by the Anti-Defamation League, another outfit with a history of legally-actionable defamation and of spying on constitutionally-protected activities.

As a result, TTPO has indicated that the SPLC is an example of an external threat "defined as 'those threats and forces that originate from an individual or organization that does not identify nor ever has identified themselves as belonging to the patriot movement and have aligned themselves in staunch opposition of The Three Percenters Original or our affiliates and allies and have through direct action and behavior sought to harm, damage and defame our members or this organization and allies or affiliates damaging than threats posed to us from an external source." Thus, the SPLC is subject to placement on TTPO's official "Blacklist".

TTPO has also adopted, in their national bylaws, communications standards that designate "the forum located at ​www.thethreepercenters.org" as "the primary method of communications between all levels". The national and all of their state chapters have Facebook pages. The bylaws also state: "The use of Facebook pages should only be used for non-sensitive postings or to alert members to a posting on the forum."

So, I suppose someone thinks TTPO has implemented some level of communications security. Here's what I don't get: If you know you are an active target why would you have any Facebook pages at all for your group at any all level unless you want to give Facebook ("the perfect mass surveillance tool"), the National Security Agency, and law enforcement a great means to collect data on your members and supporters?

The national TTPO Facebook page has 166,922 likes and 166,896 followers—an intel treasure trove giveaway by TTPO, a group that claims: "Our goal is to utilize the failsafes put in place by our founders to rein in an overreaching government and push back against tyranny." I'm neither a supporter nor an opponent of TTPO—I'm not making a judgment about their purposes or activities. I'm highlighting the striking disconnect between what they claim to stand for and what they've done with Facebook.

Update: The Clowns (or is it Agents?) of TTPO

Labels: civil liberties, National Security Agency, politics, privacy, repression, surveillance, Three Percenters

It's 1987 and Rep. Brooks (D-TX), during the Iran-Contra hearings, asks Lt. Col. Oliver North about Garden Plot, REX 84, etc. and, boy, is Ollie miffed. Sen. Inouye (D-HI) stops that line of questioning and the mainstream media, for the most part, dutifully ignore the story. And the American public, for the most part, dutifully stay asleep. As far as I can tell Brooks never again bucked the powers that be on the subject.

See also:

• “Look It Up, Check It Out”: REX 84 and the History of an American Conspiracy by Michael Grasso
• "Church and Pike Committees Post-mortem" by VFPD
• Operation Northwoods on the National Security Archive site

Labels: civil liberties, conspiracy, history, media, politics, repression, United States

An intelligence service is the ideal vehicle for a conspiracy. Its members can travel about at home and abroad under secret orders, and no questions are asked. Every scrap of paper in the files, its membership, its expenditure of funds, its contacts, even enemy contacts, are state secrets.

Source: Allen Dulles, US Director of Central Intelligence (1953-1961) as quoted in James Srodes, Allen Dulles: Master of Spies (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 1999) p. 252.

See also:

• "Conspiracy Theories and Stylized Facts" by Kurtis Hagen in the Journal for Peace and Justice Studies. (Vol. 21, No 2; 2011) pp. 3-22.
• "Pentagon Proposed Pretexts for Cuba Invasion in 1962" on the National Security Archive web site.
• Conspiracy Theory in America (Austin: Univ. of Texas Pr., 2013) by Lance deHaven-Smith.

Labels: conspiracy, critical thinking, politics, quotations, repression, War

I just reread the two volumes of Maus, Art Spiegelman's graphic biography of his father, Vladek. In this post I will talk about some of the less obvious items of interest in the books, meaning things less central to the main theme.

It has long been admitted—by folks such as Benjamin Ginsberg and Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin—that Jews have historically been disproportionately involved in communism. For some Jews this is a source of pride. For others, it is cause for shame or denial. Likewise, the fact that Jews are, in general, wealthier than non-Jews. Both things can simultaneously be true but when someone so indicates that I've noticed that defenders of all things Jewish and the 'politically correct' will frequently pounce on this contrived contradiction.

It therefore caught my attention when Art Spiegelman reveals that his father's fiancée (who would become Art's mother), Anja Zylberberg, was the very embodiment of Jewish communist supporter and rich, capitalist Jew. On page 20* we are told: "The Zylberberg family was very well off - millionaires!" The setting is 1936 Poland. According to Patricia Clavin, author of The Great Depression in Europe, 1929-1939, Poland was one of the three European countries "worst affected" by the Great Depression. Most Poles were hit very hard by the crisis but not the Zylberbergs.

Later, in 1937, it turns out that "Anja was involved in conspirations [sic]!" ( p. 29). She was translating "communist messages" into German and "pass[ing] them on". Warned by a friend that the police are coming, instead of destroying the incriminating documents Anja foists them upon a seamstress, a tenant in the Zylberberg's apartment, who ends up taking the fall and spending upwards of three months in prison.

Another interesting thing are the expressions by Jewish characters of disbelief in the holocaust. Here's an example from page 90:

Art: When did you first hear about Auschwitz?
Vladek: Right away we heard ...
Vladek: Even from there - from that other world - people came back and told us. But we didn't believe.

Art doesn't seem to question the idea that people could go to and return from "that other world" and Vladek doesn't elaborate.

On page 109, the following conversation takes place inside (!) a Jewish internment camp in 1943:

Persis: ... You've all heard the stories about Auschwitz. Horrible unbelievable stories.
Matka Zylberberg (Vladek's mother-in-law): They can't be true!

The Goldhagen thesis suggests that the German people were "Hitler's willing executioners". But even Jews living in Poland, where most of the "death camps" were located, didn't believe the stories, according to Maus. This is consistent with what many Germans have said, too—they didn't know.

There's an exchange on page 171 where Art and his wife, Françoise, talk about how she should be represented. Spiegelman chose to portray Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, Americans as dogs, Gypsies as moths (and you never see any in the camps), and Swedes are antlered deer. The conversations goes like this:

Art: ... what kind of animal should I make you?
Françoise: Huh? A mouse, of course!
Art: But you're French!
Françoise: Well ... how about the bunny rabbit?
Art: Nah, too sweet and gentle.
Françoise: Hmmph.
Art: I mean the French in general. Let's not forget the centuries of anti-Semitism.
Art: I mean how about the Dreyfus Affair? The Nazi collaborators! The -
Françoise: Okay! But if you're a mouse I ought to be a mouse too. I converted didn't I?
Art: I've got it! Panel one: My father is on his exercycle ...
Art: I tell him I just married a frog ...
Art: Panel two: He falls off his cycle in shock.
Art: So you and I go to a mouse rabbi. He says a few magic words and zap! ...
Art: By the end of the page the frog has turned into a beautiful mouse!
Françoise: Hmph
Françoise: I only converted to make Vladek happy.

There's a lot in this passage. As it turns out, Spiegelman does represent French people as frogs, including the Frenchman who saved his father's life (p. 253). This passage above also tells us that Spiegelman's choice of animals is indicative, in part at least, of what he perceives as a people's national character. It is meaningful, then, that Poles are pigs, etc.

And the "magic words" from the rabbi have real power in Maus, even an insincere conversion transforms Françoise into a mouse, as she is represented throughout the book. Contrast this with the children on page 291—the offspring of a German mother and a Jewish father are hybrid cat-mouse creatures.

Finally, it's interesting how Art's broad-brush charge of French anti-Semitism goes unchallenged by Françoise. Didn't even Jews collaborate with Nazis as Maus attests? And the Dreyfus Affair split French society and resulted in a complete exoneration and reinstatement of Alfred Dreyfus into the French Army.

In closing, I'll turn to the impact on Vladek of his suffering at the hands of the Nazis. Was it a harsh lesson that instilled in him a sense of compassion and a hatred of injustice and violence against all innocent people? Well, not exactly. On page 290, we are treated to a recounting of Vladek's visit to Würzburg in the immediate aftermath of WW II.

Würzburg was subjected to Dresden-style aerial bombardment. Here's one brief description of the devastation: "About 82% of the living space, almost every public building and most of the cultural monuments and churches are destroyed. A total of about 5,000 people - about 3,000 of whom are women and 700 children and adolescents - perish in the inferno."

Here's the exchange on p. 290:

Vladek: We came to one place, Würzburg - what a mess!
Vladek or his traveling companion Shivek: Where can we find water?
German father: Hah! We haven't had any water in three days!
German mother, holding child: The Americans destroyed - sob - everything!
Vladek: Not one building was still standing.
Vladek: We came away happy.
Vladek: Let the Germans have a little what they did to the Jews.

* All page numbers refer to the 1991 Pantheon Books edition of Maus, in which both volumes are bound together.

See also: Poles as Pigs

Labels: art and literature, Art Spiegelman, history, holocaust, repression, War

Terrorism ... revolutionizes state repression, and, indeed, in some cases was instigated by the secret police for the express purpose of legitimizing a state of emergency. The mass left, indeed the working class as a whole, was repeatedly victimized for the "heroic" deeds of a few. And despite the traditional disclaimers of its theoreticians, terror substitutes the messianic role of the self-sacrificial individual--or the magical totemism of the attentat [i.e. an act of 'propaganda of the deed']--for the conscious movement of the masses.

Source: Mike Davis. In Praise of Barbarians: Essays Against Empire. (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2007) p.273.

Labels: quotations, repression, terrorism

It is part of the wisdom, I think, of the religious tradition always to be skeptical of what governments are doing. ... One has to keep reminding oneself and other people that an exalted contempt for human life lies at the basis of diplomacy; and that one had better think of the unprotected and innocent, and be prepared for the bad news when the leaders meet.

-Daniel Berrigan and Thich Nhat Hanh. The Raft is Not the Shore: Conversations Toward a Buddhist/Christian Awareness. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975) p. 69.

I want to return for a moment to the NPR segment, "Capture Or Kill? Lawyers Eye Options For Terrorists" I mentioned in my last post. On the subject of "detaining terrorists" the piece also contains the following:

University of Michigan law professor Monica Hakimi worked at the State Department in the last administration. She does not like the idea of long-term detention. But, she says, none of the alternatives seem much better.

"The benefit of capturing them is that we might be able to get from them certain intelligence that we can use to hunt down future terrorists," says Hakimi. "The cost is that once we capture them it's not really clear what we're supposed to do with them."

Hakimi is a 2001 Yale Law grad--one of America's 'best and brightest' young scholars. In "International standards for detaining terrorism suspects: moving beyond the armed conflict-criminal divide" (Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 40.3 (Fall 2009)), the solution she articulates to the problem of "what we're supposed to do with them" is, in the main, the legalization of existing illegal practices of "administrative detention."

The current dilemma facing governments, according to Hakimi, is two-fold. First, many prisoners from the "fight against transnational al jihadi groups" are seized "away from any recognizable battlefield ... in houses, on street corners, and at border crossings around the globe." Thus, the "law of armed conflict" is inapplicable for justifying their imprisonment.

Second, criminal procedure is no good because "its focus is retrospective, rather than prospective; it is maladroit for transnational operation; and it often fails to accommodate the tools used and evidence available in terrorism cases." Another way of putting this is that a criminal justice approach won't work because you are not normally allowed to prosecute "precrime;" other countries might not want to or be able to cooperate in your non-battlefield raids on their populace; most courts won't accept evidence obtained by torture or otherwise in violation of due process principles. In short, you just can't easily lock up as many people as you might want to lock up.

What's a poor government to do? According to Hakimi, "pure security-based detention" are permitted under "An alternative legal framework [that] already exists under human rights law in the form of administrative detention." She notes approvingly that "India and Israel--two states with long histories of trying to combat transnational terrorism--consistently have used such detention for that purpose." Her argument here rests in large part on her contention that "pure security-based detention is permitted under the ICCPR," i.e. the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (she also cites the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in support of her argument but I do not mention it here because the US is not a state party to that treaty).

In effect, what she has done is to take the ICCPR--a treaty putatively designed to impose obligations on each state party to respect the rights of "all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction" (Article 2)--and turn it into an instrument justifying repression of individuals by state parties under the rubric of human rights.

I would like to be able to say that Hakimi's is a completely incredible reading of the ICCPR but that wouldn't be true. For while there is no affirmative provision in the treaty for "administrative" or "security-based detention" and the only articles explicitly mentioning detention restrict it, the state parties generously gave themselves the right to ignore most of the individual rights (incl., most crucially, Article 9) during "time of public emergency which threatens the life of the nation ..."(Article 4). (I should note that Hakimi does not rely on Article 4 for her argument but interprets Article 9 as making implicit provision for administrative detention).

In concluding, Hakimi says:

International practice demonstrates that, although most states have declined to detain non-battlefield terrorism suspects based on the law of armed conflict, many are looking for options for incapacitating these suspects outside the criminal process. The bipolar paradigm for thinking about non-battlefield detentions--as armed-conflict or criminal--is out of step with that practice and is mistaken as a matter of law. Human rights law permits administrative detention for reasons of national security, subject to important constraints. Those constraints are not now sufficient in the counterterrorism context. But if the law in this area is developed, administrative detention may strike the most appropriate balance between liberty and security for certain categories of terrorism detainees.

Get it? The law needs to catch up--to be "developed"--to what governments are already doing. Hakimi is a fine example of what Gramsci called "experts in legitimation" and one wonders how human societies made it this far without the benefit of her helpful take on human rights law. I couldn't help being reminded by Hakimi's arguments of her colleague Alan Dershowitz's call to legalize torture.

Labels: civil liberties, law, repression, United States

"The history of secret geographies shows that when they do come into contact with the legal system, the legal system tends to change in order to accommodate them." Thus writes Trevor Paglen, author of Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World (p. 140). One of the legal cases discussed by Paglen is 1953 United States v. Reynolds decision, which cemented the "state secrets privilege" in American law. But the privilege did not protect national security but rather a lie that implicated the US Air Force in the death of Bob Reynolds in a swampy field near Waycross, Georgia. This is just one of the places Paglen ties to "blank spots" in the law or on a map, including Area 51.

Paglen also discusses the blank spots in the federal budget, writing (pp. 183-4):

The Founding Fathers understood the golden rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules." They understood that, in the halls of government as it is in so many other affairs, money is both information and power. As such, [Article I, Section 9, Clause 7] is a rebuke to the old monarchism the Founding Fathers wanted to free themselves from. "The people," argued George Mason, "had a right to know the expenditures of their money." Open books, argued James Madison, imparted both knowledge and responsibility upon a democratic citizenry: "A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both," he wrote. "Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

Yet, as Paglen notes, even the amount, let alone what it pays for, of the "black budget" is secret . Nevertheless Paglen offers an estimate from R. J. Hillhouse of $60 billion--"roughly comparable to what the Chinese military—the second-largest military in the world—spends each year." Two-thirds of that figure goes to even less accountable private contractors (p. 205).

In the book's epilogue (p. 275), Paglen says:

The black world has sculpted the United States in numerous ways. Creating secret geographies has meant erasing parts of the Constitution, creating blank spots in the law, institutionalizing dishonesty in the halls of government, handing sovereign powers--what used to be the unlimited power of monarchs over their subjects and territories--to the executive branch, making the nation's economy dependent upon military spending, and turning our own history into a state secret.

All in all Blank Spots on the Map was a quick and fascinating read. It is highly recommended.

Labels: James Madison, law, militarism, repression, United States, US Founding Fathers

Below are three images from "Running the Numbers: An American Self Portrait" by Seattle-based photographer Chris Jordan. The first image, called "Prison Uniforms," depicts 2.3 million folded prison uniforms, equal to the number of Americans incarcerated in 2005. As I mentioned in "Lenin's Foresight," the US locks up more people than any other country.

The last two images are from "Barbie Dolls," comprised of 32,000 Barbies, equal to the number of elective breast-augmentation surgeries performed monthly in the U.S. in 2006. To see more images and read an interview with Jordan go to "Chris Jordan photographs our culture of excess in hopes of changing it."

Labels: art and literature, environment, gender, identity, repression, United States

In Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy John le Carre has the Soviet double agent Bill Haydon say: "In capitalist America economic repression of the masses is institutionalised to a point which not even Lenin could have foreseen ..." (p. 365 of the 2002 Pocket Books paperback edition). A listener referenced this line in an e-mail comment to the Diane Rehm Show during a segment with William Greider (48:39). This view has much to commend itself given the taxpayer-financed bailout of corporate giants, growing homelessness, the mortgage foreclosure crisis, the dismal state of America's corrupt labor unions, and the fact that the US has the largest prison population in the world.

See also: "In hard times, tent cities rise across the country" by the AP.

Labels: art and literature, class, Lenin, poverty, repression, United States

In "Robbing the Cuckoo's Nest", I mentioned the Celilo Falls on the Columbia River. The News Magazine of the Screen clip below is from 1956 and there is a segment on the Celilo Falls at 6:07.

Click here to see Andrew Fletcher's 2009 6-minute student documentary Lost Echoes of Celilo Falls. Fletcher's choice of Enigma's "Return to Innocence" for the soundtrack is kind of bizarre. You'd think he might want to choose an American Indian song instead of one by a German group using a Led Zeppelin drum beat and music "stolen" from aboriginal Taiwanese singers. The video includes some footage from the half-hour long Celilo Falls and the Remaking of the Columbia River.

Labels: Empire, environment, history, Indians, Ken Kesey, repression, United States, video

Until recently, I had seen the film but I had never read Ken Kesey's novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The book is all about America's culture of death. Chief Bromden, the novel's narrator, calls it "The Combine" and it was The Combine that sucked the life out of his father, robbed his tribe of their land along the Columbia River, and then drowned the Celilo Falls. The mental hospital that is the main setting of Cuckoo's Nest is part of The Combine and Nurse Ratched is its living embodiment.

Not coincidentally, all three of novel's main characters are Army veterans. Chief Bromden says, "I was hurt by seeing things in the Army, in the war." McMurphy's Army record is summed up succintly: "Distinguished Service Cross in Korea, for leading an escape from a Communist prison camp. A dishonorable discharge, afterward, for insubordination."

In contrast to Bromden and McMurphy, Nurse Ratched has internalized the worst of military values and adapted them to the civilian world. As Robert Faggen writes of her in his introduction to the 2007 Penguin Classics edition:

Funny though she may seem at times as Big Nurse, her manipulative skill and ability to destroy by insinuation render her an infuriating and insidious corporate tool. She executes her cold professionalism with an unshakable sanctimonious piety. A former army nurse--part of the military hierarchy--she does her job without emotion, and her almost puritanical sexlessness makes her inscrutable and indeed "wretched." She represents a sentimental culture that has taken genteel manners into the workplace to fill the void empty of any other compelling spiritual or moral authority. ... This beneficent beast of prey enforces benefits calculated to soothe the inmates out of their wits.

When manipulation and "genteel manners" fail her, the "Big Nurse" falls back on the brute force of her orderlies, drugs, electroshock therapy, and finally, in the case of McMurphy, lobotomy. By 1975, when the film was released, James W. Gibson's cultural "New War"--fought over issues of "power, sex, race, and alienation"--was already under way. Hollywood was one of the main weapons used to wage the "New War" and, thus, there is no mention of the Army in the film.

When Hollywood got Cuckoo's Nest in its clutches they left in much of the latent misogyny but robbed the novel of most of its powerful cultural and political critique. Crucially, in the film, Chief Bromden's voice and his back story almost disappear. The Combine, in concept or word, is never uttered or identified. Thus, although the mental hospital and Nurse Ratched still don't come off well in the film, the larger system/society that destroys people and their fishing grounds and produces 'mental patients,' mental hospitals, and Nurse Ratched is left unexamined. For its efforts, Hollywood gave itself all five major Academy Awards for the film version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Funny how that works.

See also "Celilo Falls Video"

Labels: art and literature, critical thinking, film & television, Hollywood, Indians, Ken Kesey, repression, United States, War

This is a bit produced for a parody of the Vancouver Sun by the Palestine Media Collective of Vancouver, British Columbia in June 2007. The owners of the Sun were not amused and filed a law suit. Thanks to CW for the tip.

by CYN SORSHEEP

ASPERVILLE – A ground-breaking new academic study has revealed that truth is inherently biased against Israel. "We expected, or at least hoped that the Truth would be fair and balanced – like Fox News," said lead researcher Dr. Ig Norance, "but we were sadly disappointed – anti-Israel bias was endemic."

Professor Norance, director of the Asper School of Business Information at the University of Winnipeg, said the study was the largest academic analysis of the Truth ever undertaken. "In most subject areas we studied, the Truth proved to be objective but it was shockingly hostile to the actions of the state of Israel."

When the subject of Israel was investigated by researchers, the Truth would shamelessly spew anti-Israeli facts such as "Israel's military killed 20 times more Palestinian civilians in 2006 than Israeli civilians were killed by Palestinians" or "Israel continues to occupy and colonise the Palestinian lands it took by force in 1967 in defiance of international law and 32 UN security council resolutions."

As a doubly-blind experimental control, researchers used Canadian media coverage of Israel. "We found that Canadian media portrayed Israel much better than the Truth did," Dr. Norance noted.

Researchers confronted the truth with pictures of Israeli children killed by Palestinian suicide bombers. The Truth sullenly replied that "In the last year, the Israeli army killed more than 130 Palestinian children while Palestinians did not kill a single Israeli child. Since September 2000, 825 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers while 120 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians."

But shouldn't Israel be allowed to build a fence to protect itself from terrorists, the researchers demanded of the Truth. The Truth could only respond "Israel's 700 km long "security" wall is being built 80% on Palestinian territory, and will trap more than 50,000 Palestinians in "no mans land" on the "Israeli" side of the wall. According to the International Court of Justice the wall is illegal and should be dismantled immediately."

The researchers were initially puzzled by the Truth's intransigent anti-Israeli stance. "We realized we were witnessing a new kind of new anti-Semitism – where Truth and the facts overwhelmingly condemn Israeli actions," said Norance. "I think it is vital that the Truth be treated with mistrust and handled with care on the question of Israel.'

Leonard Asper, CEO of CanWest/Global said he was not personally surprised at the findings. "This confirms my suspicion that the Truth is fanatically anti-Israel, and vindicates our vigilance in managing the Truth about Israel's activities in all our converged media assets," he said.

Norance suggested that all media organizations should take similar steps so that truthful anti-Israeli bias didn't poison their coverage and subject them to accusations of New New-Anti-Semitism. "We are not recommending outright lying," Norance explained "just selective presentation of the Truth that is more balanced."

As an example, he cited the common media practice of ignoring the vast majority of Palestinian civilian deaths while reporting every Israeli casualty – often without specifying if they are civilians or soldiers. "This creates the carefully balanced impression that Israelis and Palestinians civilians are dying in roughly equal numbers in this conflict despite the rabid anti-Israeli nature of the truth of the matter."

See also:

• "CanWest huffs and puffs while free speech burns" on Straight.com
• "CanWest: Media Bully" on workingTV.com
• Seriously Free Speech, blog of the Seriously Free Speech Committee, formed in response to the CanWest lawsuit
  

This page revised on 10/1/08.

Labels: censorship, Israel, media, repression, Zionism

Our system is one of detachment: to keep silenced people from asking questions, to keep the judged from judging, to keep solitary people from joining together, and the soul from putting together its pieces. --Eduardo Galeano, "Divorces"

Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy. --Wendell Berry

Source: Epigraphs to Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor by Paul Farmer.

Labels: critical thinking, Justice, law, repression

The George Carlin bit above is self-explanatory but the video montage (YouTube deleted the original montage video) below from John Carpenter's 1988 film, They Live (THEY = The Hierarchy Enslaving You), could stand a little explanation. The 'sermon' soundtrack is from the opening scenes which feature a Christian minister preaching in a Los Angeles park until the police stop him. Part of the text of the Street Preacher's (his name in the film's closing credits) sermon is taken from Paul's epistle to the Romans (3:13-18), which, in turn, hearkens back to Isaiah 59. Here are some of the representative verses from Romans 3: "... they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. ... in their paths are ruin and misery ... There is no fear of God before their eyes."

12 Sep 2021 addendum: As noted in Reason, more than four years ago, John Carpenter issued a Tweet that said: "THEY LIVE is about yuppies and unrestrained capitalism. It has nothing to do with Jewish control of the world, which is slander and a lie." Okay, it's pretty clear who the "yuppies" and capitalists are but who do the alien ghoul overlords disguised as humans represent in the film?

Elsewhere, Carpenter has said the film was a critique of Ronald Reagan, his policies, and the 1980s cultural milieu. All of this make perfect sense and is persuasive but how do Carpenter's ghouls fit in and why are they aliens?

By the way, I read Jonathan Lethem's book about the film (mentioned in the Reason article) and thought Lethem did a poor job. Among other things, he makes no mention of the opening sermon by the Street Preacher and, thus, he does not analyze it's biblical origins or its relevance to the film's overall theme.

Labels: class, critical thinking, culture, film & television, repression, United States, video

According to a June 12, 2008, article in the Los Angeles Times: "the video footage [above] suggests that Salazar's removal is justified," according to "Senior Deputy Supt. Ramon C. Cortines through a spokesman. The course materials are appropriate, but the advocacy may have crossed the line, he said." Joshua Pechthalt, a vice president with United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), is quoted as follows: "I think she was a terrific teacher, who had a real connection with kids, but teachers in her position have a hard time winning these battles". Of course, that's especially true when their union does almost nothing to help them. As of this writing, the UTLA web site has nothing to say about Salazar's case--she got her dismissal notice in April--and Pechthalt's remarks are hardly a call-to-arms. No doubt many of the leaders of the UTLA are uncomfortable with Karen Salazar's methods and politics. One is reminded of the remarks of Doug Magann:

One would think that the School Board would be taking whatever actions needed to attain reasonably adequate and equitable funding for the schools (including, but not limited to, educating the general public about how things really work and how to change the rules). One would also think that the Teacher Union might be involved in such an endeavor, but both have been acculturated into the beggar mentality.

No one wants to offend the rulers. Never mind that the people cannot help themselves or that, given the existing rules, the Legislators are the only ones in a position to help the children. If they become offended, there will be retribution. This is the plantation, and such retribution could, and probably would, affect certain offending individuals personally.

What should we call the invocation of politeness, gentility, and civility as weapons to obscure the truth and effectively preclude the victims from influencing their destinies or those of their children? When people have been taught to accept the premise that open confrontation with authority figures is 'rude' and to be avoided at all cost, regardless of the circumstances or how they are being treated, it is more than sufficient to establish bondage to those that make the rules. And how should we describe those in the community who see these things, recognize them for what they are, and turn away in self-serving complacency?

See also: savesalazar

Labels: Karen Salazar, Malcolm X, repression, resistance, thoughtcrime

Below, via Behind the Lines: Poetry, War, & Peacemaking, are the first two paragraphs of an unsigned appeal on behalf of Professor Thomas Abowd at Wayne State University

Dear colleagues,

I need to write to you about a set of very serious racist and discriminatory attacks against Professor Thomas Abowd in his dispute with the Wayne State University administration and right-wing Zionist elements on campus. These circumstances are but a few of several offensive, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim happenings on this campus over the last few years, coming both before and after the attacks against Law Professor Wadie Said who applied for a job at WSU. The specific attacks against Professor Abowd are particularly troubling because, in this case, a WSU official has used racist and offensive language against Professor Abowd in the course of an official university investigation.

Included below is a short description of the line of questioning engaged in by officials of Wayne State University, particularly one Ms. Amy Stirling during her December 2007 investigation of Professor Thomas Abowd for several baseless and fabricated charges of "anti-semitism." (charges eventually all dropped for lack of evidence). A Union representative was present during this meeting with Ms. Stirling, and witnessed the racist language directed at Abowd. The Union representative took notes during the more than 2 hour conversation. It is clear to many that Stirling's line of questioning (as well as her generally hostile demeanor) was extremely inappropriate and had anti-Arab implications.

Read the entire appeal here.

Labels: Islamophobia, race, repression, thoughtcrime, Zionism

Historian Kathryn S. Olmsted's Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI (Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. of North Carolina Pr., 1996) is a retrospective look at the 1975-76 work of the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the "Church Committee") and the House Select Intelligence Committee (the "Pike Committee"). Olmsted argues that the outcome of these "inquiries show that American political culture of the 1970s was characterized more by continuity than by change." More specifically, she highlights the "resistance to change in three important areas:"

1. Congress "hesitated" to take responsibility to oversee the operations of US intelligence agencies.
2. "The media proved reluctant ... to confront the national security state."
3. The American people "were reluctant to acknowledge unpleasant truths about their secret agencies."

Each of the points above is drawn from Olmsted's "Introduction" and is an example of scholarly understatement, as the body of the book makes clear. For example, as Olmsted, quoting I.F. Stone, notes: "at the end of the investigations, their net effect 'has been to accustom the public mind to the evils exposed and to institutionalize and legalize them by systems of congressional "oversight." ' " Olmsted quotes former CIA head William Colby drawing a similar conclusion.

In the chapter, "Sensational Scoops and Self-Censorship" the case of Mr. Colby shows how the press generally performed a lapdog rather than a watchdog role. Concerning Project Jennifer—the CIA's secret operation with Howard Hughes to retrieve a sunken Soviet submarine—Colby is shown to have contacted the editors of major US news organizations and they all "agreed to suppress the story." As Olmsted continues:

For his part, Colby was "totally surprised and pleased" by the media's self-censorship. ... Indeed, "responsibility," not aggressivesness, was the watchword for the post-Watergate press in the case of Project Jennifer. Far from playing the mythic role popularly assigned to them after Nixon's fall, the nation's editors seemed terrified of the potential risks of defying the government.

An earlier chapter, "Trusting the 'Honorable Men' " explores how the media suppressed information about the CIA's involvement in domestic spying and in Watergate affair.

There are mostly villains and anti-heroes—including the American public—in Olmsted's book but a few heroes emerge, too: Otis Pike, Seymour Hersh, Daniel Schorr, Jack Anderson. General Lyman Lemnitzer makes a cameo appearance in the book. In 1962, Lemnitzer, "infuriated [then-Representative Gerald] Ford by deleting some of his questions on the U-2 spy plane program from the transcript of a defense appropriations hearing" and Ford complained, at the time, of a " 'totalitarian' attempt to suppress information." In the wake of Seymour Hersh's expose on CIA involvement in the Chilean coup of Augusto Pinochet, however, Ford appointed Lemnitzer to his Commission on CIA Activities in the United States, along with Lane Kirkland and Ronald Reagan, because Ford knew that Lemnitzer could be trusted to guard the CIA's secrets and power.

I first learned of Lemnitzer while reading a book about the National Security Agency by James Bamford. During the Kennedy administration, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lemnitzer was one of the proponents of Operation Northwoods—a secret plan that included killing American civilians in false-flag operations to be blamed on Cuba. According to a March 13, 1962 memorandum, the point was to create "pretexts which would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba." The Northwoods memo was supported by the other Joint Chiefs and sent to the Secretary of Defense for his approval. In 1963, Lemnitzer left the JCS to become Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and Operation Northwoods remained secret for 25 years.

Labels: civil liberties, history, media, politics, repression, Ronald Reagan, surveillance, United States