US Current Affairs

In Praise of Glenn Greenwald, Ctd.

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

A lecture given to students at Yale Law School, based on Greenwald’s recent book, “With Liberty And Justice For Some”:

 

This lecture is well worth a view, and is a wonderful antidote to the oversimplification of over-used terms such as “the rule of law”,  and the attempt by many people (especially those on the American right) to almost deify the founding fathers and portray them as a unified, homogenised group.

The crux of Greenwald’s argument really comes in an anecdote he gives 28 minutes into the above video, where he contrasts a “healthy, free” society with a tyrannical one. The free society, he says, is one in which those who wield power do so with a healthy amount of fear that they will suffer some harm if they ever abuse that power. This may be fear of civil or criminal liability, fear of reputational harm or fear of potential physical injury to themselves (which of course neither Greenwald nor I would advocate, but nonetheless).

The tyrannical society is the exact opposite of this – a land where not only do those in power have no fears of any kind which might restrain them from abusing their power, but in which the citizens themselves live in fear of the leaders.

Given the fact that we are now five years into an Obama administration in which almost none of the gross infringements on civil liberties introduced by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have been halted or reversed, this insight from Greenwald – and a fearless, uncompromising assessment of where we currently sit on the continuum between freedom and tyranny – is needed now more than ever.

In Praise of Glenn Greenwald

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Glenn Greenwald, former blogger at Salon.com and now writing at The Guardian, is one of the best and most articulate people talking about civil liberties and pressing back against the intrusive power of the government today.

Exhibit 1, in which he tears apart the war criminal Dick Cheney for the casual way in which he celebrated his own lawbreaking and contempt for the US constitution on the eve of the publication of his memoirs:

 

Exhibit 2, in which he rips into CNN (both the network, the host and her former Bush administration talking head stooge) for their coverage of Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks scandal:

 

And finally exhibit 3, in which he takes on Bill Maher and Andrew Sullivan in a roundtable discussion on the morality and constitutionality of extra-judicially ordered drone strikes on US citizens.

 

Keep fighting the good fight, Glenn.

The Cowardice Of The American Right

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

It was recently confirmed that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing investigation, has been presented with criminal charges for his actions.

Predictably, this has made many people on the American right wing very unhappy indeed.

Fox News had devoted hours of coverage post-capture to whether or not Tsarnaev should be read his miranda rights, and the talking heads are not pleased with this turn of events, which will see the suspect given access to legal advice and representation if he chooses to avail himself of it.

The ever-opportunistic Lindsey Graham has been vigorously agitating for Tsarnaev to be treated as an enemy combatant, despite being a United States citizen detained on US soil.

And Donald Trump – whom Republicans actually toyed with the idea of making their presidential nominee in 2012 – took to Twitter in high outrage, and was already dusting off his waterboard in order to torture the suspect before the criminal charges were filed.

All of these things happened, and were easily predictable, because the Republicans are the ones with the strong national security credentials, right? They are the ones that make the tough decisions required to keep us safe.

No. All of these things happened because the Republicans who espouse these views are cowards.

Cowards, cowards, cowards.

Of course, this form of cowardice has to masquerade as macho strength and firmness, but cowardice is what it is, and cowardice is what I will call it today.

There is no evidence as yet that the evil plot to kill and maim innocent civilians as they watched and ran in the Boston Marathon was part of a wider international conspiracy. It may be the case that the suspects acted under foreign direction, or received their radicalisation or training from abroad, but no evidence of this has yet been presented.

Neither is there any credible intelligence that these attacks were the first action of a broader wave of related strikes on the US mainland. Yes, there followed some suspicious mail packages in the following days, as happened after 9/11, but these are not thought to be related.

Nor does anyone yet know the motivations for the attack (not that this should matter – as with capriciously invented “hate crimes”, we should be punishing the act, not the motivation), whether it be jihadist in nature, domestic grievances or the alienation and evil act of specific individuals acting alone.

None of this is known.

And yet the Republican party – this group of people who routinely and unabashedly wrap themselves in the American flag and proclaim themselves the only real “patriots” and defenders of the constitution, would happily, eagerly, throw away some of the most fundamental rights granted to US citizens under the constitution.

It is absolutely astonishing that no one calls out the GOP for the rank hypocrisy which has emanated from the mouths of some of their members in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings.

That the same party who proclaimed “I Stand With Rand” when Senator Rand Paul mounted his laudable filibuster to register his objection to the idea of aerial drone strikes being used to kill US citizens on US soil denied those very same principles and agitated for the government to strip those same citizens of the right to a civilian trial.

These are the people, remember, who like to pump up their base with talk of second amendment remedies – because if you can’t beat Obama at the ballot box, the answer, of course, is to strap on your guns, rise up and overthrow his democratic mandate by force.

This is the party that says “you can pry my rifle from my cold dead hands” whenever anyone questions the modern applicability of, or limits to, the Second Amendment.

These are the people who take the fight to the enemy, who pre-emptively launch wars in order to “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”.

In other words, those on the neo-conservative right in America like to play the hard man, and strut around as though there were a very large, impressive appendage between their legs whenever they talk about foreign policy or national security. Right up until the moment that something happens to spook them close to their own back yard.

But when the nation suffers an attack such as that which took place last Monday in Boston, all of the tough talk disappears and these Republican armchair warriors rush to shelter behind the legs of the Big Government that they love to trash at all other times, and they urge that erstwhile-“tyrannical” government to use the full weight of its vast might, plus an added heap of unconstitutionally appropriated power, to hurt the Bad People and make them go away. Even if the Bad People are US citizens. It’s pathetic.

Weak, weak, weak.

Andrew Sullivan says it best today on his blog, and I quote in full:

The first US citizen, Jose Padilla, was captured on US soil, detained without formal charges, accused of plotting a dirty bomb, and then brutally tortured until he was a human wreck. Eventually, the dirty bomb charges were dropped in the legal process. And there was a serious question about whether, after such brutal torture and isolation, he had been psychologically brutalized by his own government to the point of insanity.

Tsarnaev, in contrast, was formally charged this morning, will be tried in a civilian court, go through due process, and face a weight of evidence against him.

This is why we elected Obama. To bring America back. To defend this country without betraying its core principles.

Hear, hear.

The World Of Jennifer Rubin

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Sometimes someone just says it better than you ever can.

And on this occasion, Andrew Sullivan hits the nail on the head.

I have previously blogged about the ocean of willful ignorance in which pundits like Kimberley Strassel and Jennifer Rubin gently bob, but Sullivan reboots the attack and gives us the big picture. Behold – this is what determined head-in-the-sand, willing self-deception can make a person – in this case Jennifer Rubin – say.

Andrew Sullivan's avatarThe Dish

rubin

[Re-posted from earlier today]

Come join me, for a while, in an alternative universe. In this universe, Obama is clearly a worse president than George W. Bush. Now how do we get there? Here’s a start:

Many of [Bush’s] supposed failures are mild compared to the current president (e.g. spending, debt).

But by far the biggest factor in today’s debt are the unfunded wars Bush launched and lost, the massive tax cuts which took us from surplus to deficit, a spending spree on Medicare, and a collapse of the economy which occurred on Bush’s watch after eight years of negligent regulation of Wall Street. This sentence is therefore almost perversely deceptive.

Unlike Obama’s tenure, there was no successful attack on the homeland after 9/11.

Does 9/11 not count? The biggest national security failure since Pearl Harbor – resulting in more than 3,000 deaths? After the president was explicitly warned

View original post 606 more words

A Terrorist In The Family

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Like everyone, I have been watching the troubling events unfolding in Boston with mounting concern and alarm.

At this early stage, there is not much to be said on this blog that cannot be easily read on Twitter, or seen on the wall-to-wall television coverage. But this video – an audio recording of the uncle of one of the Boston Marathon bombers reacting to the news of the death of his nephew, and the circumstances in which it happened – is very sobering indeed:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/danoshinsky/boston-bombing-suspects-uncle-they-do-not-deserve-to-exist-o?sub=2157117_1090512

It appears that both men were enjoying asylum which had been granted to them by the United States of America, but at some point (either prior to or following their arrival) had become radicalised. Which can only lead us to wonder, given the apparent ease with which one can assemble a bomb using a pressure cooker and nails to maim the maximum number of people with the minimum of difficulty – how many other such angry, radicalised young people are currently living among us? And what can possibly be done to prevent a recurrence?