Month: July 2008

Contractors Fight Drug Trade

Seth Anderson2 Comments

For some reason, this bothers me1 .

The U.S. spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year hiring pilots, mechanics, and military and police trainers to combat the drug trade in South American countries, as well as Afghanistan and other Central Asian states. Lockheed Martin Corp. also supports peacekeeping forces in Darfur.

Last year, the Defense Department tapped Northrop as one of five to lead a five-year contract focused on fighting terrorism and the drug trade. The contract could be worth as much as $15 billion if fully funded, but the work, under the Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office, will be assigned through small contracts depending on the government’s needs. Others given a shot at competing for the work include Blackwater, Raytheon Co., Lockheed and Arinc Inc.

“The military is not enamored of these other missions,” said Brian Jenkins, a senior adviser at Rand Corp. and former Army Special Forces officer.

The Pentagon has awarded Northrop Grumman Corp. seven smaller contracts as part of the larger counterdrug contract, but details are classified. Northrop spokesman Randy Belote said the company is making greater inroads into that line of business as such efforts become more high-tech. “It’s moving more into the electronic surveillance, intelligence and reconnaissance realm, so it’s perfectly aligned with our business,” he said.

[From U.S. Relies More on Contractors To Fight Drug Trade – WSJ.com]

Over Under Sideways

Why are we outsourcing electronic surveillance to the Northrop Grummans of the world? Why are we spending $15,000,000,000 with minimal oversight on drug wars in third world countries? Doesn’t seem like a good use of limited tax resources.

Footnotes:
  1. Digg-enabled link to full article for non-WSJ subscribers via this link. [↩]

Hitchens on Display

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George Packer weighs in on Hitchens and his waterboarding moment.

The uncharitable view is that Hitchens will do anything to be noticed, that celebrity elicits a kind of masochism in him, and that being unpublished or unheard or unseen for even a day must be more agonizing for him than having his pubic hair removed by strips of hot wax or trying to breathe while water is poured over a towel spread across his face. And this view might well be true, but there’s more to it—there always is with Hitchens.

His greatest weakness as a writer is his need to put himself at the center of attention, to win every argument, to walk away from every encounter in prose, as in life, having gotten the better of someone else.

[From Interesting Times: George Packer: Online Only: The New Yorker]

I can’t fault Hitchens for his solipsism1 but since Hitchens has so vehemently supported the Bush version of the war on terror, one does wish Hitchens would have managed to work in more discussion of that topic, perhaps wrapped around his proclamation that torture is waterboarding and waterboarding is torture.

See also tristero for a longer look at George Packer’s little throw-away post.

Footnotes:
  1. not a precise use of the word, by the way [↩]

Waterboarding is Torture

Seth Anderson2 Comments

Everyone who actually undergoes a waterboarding treatment comes away shaken, even those who have the ability to say a code word, and have the torture stop. The America of my dreams would never strip away the dignity and humanity of a person via torture. Christopher Hitchens undergoes a little torture in the name of journalism.

Hitchens gets waterboarded

Here is the most chilling way I can find of stating the matter. Until recently, “waterboarding” was something that Americans did to other Americans. It was inflicted, and endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that they might expect to meet at the hands of a lawless foe who disregarded the Geneva Conventions. But it was something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict.

Exploring this narrow but deep distinction, on a gorgeous day last May I found myself deep in the hill country of western North Carolina, preparing to be surprised by a team of extremely hardened veterans who had confronted their country’s enemies in highly arduous terrain all over the world. They knew about everything from unarmed combat to enhanced interrogation and, in exchange for anonymity, were going to show me as nearly as possible what real waterboarding might be like.

[snip]

And so then I said, with slightly more bravado than was justified, that I’d like to try it one more time. There was a paramedic present who checked my racing pulse and warned me about adrenaline rush. An interval was ordered, and then I felt the mask come down again. Steeling myself to remember what it had been like last time, and to learn from the previous panic attack, I fought down the first, and some of the second, wave of nausea and terror but soon found that I was an abject prisoner of my gag reflex. The interrogators would hardly have had time to ask me any questions, and I knew that I would quite readily have agreed to supply any answer. I still feel ashamed when I think about it. Also, in case it’s of interest, I have since woken up trying to push the bedcovers off my face, and if I do anything that makes me short of breath I find myself clawing at the air with a horrible sensation of smothering and claustrophobia. No doubt this will pass. As if detecting my misery and shame, one of my interrogators comfortingly said, “Any time is a long time when you’re breathing water.” I could have hugged him for saying so, and just then I was hit with a ghastly sense of the sadomasochistic dimension that underlies the relationship between the torturer and the tortured. I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.

[From Believe Me, It’s Torture: Politics & Power: by CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS vanityfair.com]

Read the entire tale here

Durbin Opposes Telecom Immunity

Seth Anderson0 comment

Reposted from my old blog: I haven’t heard back from Senator Durbin regarding my most recent anti-telecom immunity email. If I do, I’ll be sure to note any interesting language. I wonder if Obama has asked Durbin to dial down his opposition?

Strapped On

Senator Richard Durbin (or more precisely, his staff’s email-bot) just emailed me an interesting response to my inquiry re: the criminal Telecom Immunity bill which I’ve been yammering about for a while.
Here it is, in its entirety (with a few paragraph breaks added for readability. Senator Durbin’s staff took the text-only email dictum a bit too far)


Subject: Message From Senator Durbin
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2007 14:26:50 -0400

November 1, 2007
Mr. Seth Anderson
[redacted]
Dear Mr. Anderson:

Thank you for your message regarding the surveillance of American citizens by the National Security Agency (NSA). I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue and share your concerns. Protecting both the security and the freedom of the American people is among my highest priorities. I share an obligation with my fellow senators to ensure that the federal government protects and defends the people of the United States while preserving the civil liberties that have helped make the United States the greatest and most enduring democracy in the world. President Bush has stated that he authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance of communications made by American citizens living within the United States.

At the time of the President’s authorization, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) required the government to seek a warrant from a special court in order to conduct electronic surveillance of communications between American citizens and anyone outside the country. The NSA did not obtain approval from the FISA court or from any other court before initiating its domestic surveillance program. For most of its existence, the NSA’s program has operated without meaningful oversight. Few members of Congress were briefed about the program until its existence was revealed by the media, and those members were sworn to secrecy. The majority of the members of Congress still have not been fully briefed about the program’s operational details.

The Administration has also shut down its own Department of Justice internal investigation into the NSA’s program. In essence, the Administration has attempted to operate this program without any supervision or oversight. The lack of a mechanism for correcting potential abuses in the program undermines our Constitutional system of checks and balances and raises serious concerns about the possibility of excessive intrusion. In addition to the disclosure of the NSA’s domestic wiretapping program, it has been alleged that the NSA has undertaken a massive effort to gather the telephone records of tens of millions of innocent Americans into a searchable database. Again, this program has been conducted without court approval or Congressional oversight.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has issued subpoenas to the Justice Department, the White House, the Office of the Vice President, and the National Security Council for documents relating to the legal justification for the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program. Although Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the chairman of the committee, has extended the deadline for subpoena compliance on two separate occasions, the Administration has failed to comply. Congress has tried to work with Administration officials to update FISA in light of technological advances in communications. Too often, however, the Administration has taken advantage of the program’s secrecy in its negotiations with Congress. In Augst 2007, the Administration proposed a bill to amend FISA. I believe the bill provided too much opportunity for excessive intrusion and potential abuse by the NSA and other intelligence officials. I voted against the measure, as did Chairman Leahy and the Intelligence Committee Chairman, Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia.

Nonetheless, Congress passed the bill and the President signed it into law. Fortunately, the law will expire six months after the date it was signed. When the President and his Administration order actions such as the surveillance of American citizens, these actions must be conducted in a manner consistent with the rule of law and the Constitution’s commitment to civil liberties. I am deeply concerned about the manner in which the Executive Branch has initiated and conducted the NSA surveillance programs. I will continue to work to ensure that government surveillance of American citizens is conducted in a manner consistent with the Constitution, the rule of law, and our security needs.

Thank you again for sharing your views on this issue with me.

Sincerely,
Richard J. Durbin
United States Senator RJD/tf

P.S. If you are ever visiting Washington, please feel free to join Senator Obama and me at our weekly constituent coffee. When the Senate is in session, we provide coffee and donuts every Thursday at 8:30 a.m. as we hear what is on the minds of Illinoisans and respond to your questions. We would welcome your participation. Please call my D.C. office for more details.

Obama and FISA flip

Seth Anderson2 Comments

I was going to refrain from criticizing Obama for being a centrist, venal politician until after he was elected1, but the FISA travesty is just too disgusting. Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for crying out loud, you’d think that would be enough of an education about nuance, but apparently not.

During the Democratic primary campaign, Mr. Obama vowed to fight such legislation to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. But he has switched positions, and now supports a compromise hammered out between the White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership. The bill is expected to come to a vote on the Senate floor next Tuesday. That decision, one of a number made by Mr. Obama in recent weeks intended to position him toward the political center as the general election campaign heats up, has brought him into serious conflict for the first time with liberal bloggers and commentators and his young supporters.

Many of them have seen the issue of granting immunity to the telecommunications companies as a test of principle in their opposition to Mr. Bush’s surveillance program.

“I don’t think there has been another instance where, in meaningful numbers, his supporters have opposed him like this,” said Glenn Greenwald, a Salon.com writer who opposes Mr. Obama’s new position. “For him to suddenly turn around and endorse this proposal is really a betrayal of what so many of his supporters believed he believed in.”

Jane Hamsher, a liberal blogger who also opposes immunity for the phone companies, said she had been flooded with messages from Obama supporters frustrated with his new stance.

“The opposition to Obama’s position among his supporters is very widespread,” said Ms. Hamsher, founder of the Web site firedoglake.com. “His promise to filibuster earlier in the year, and the decision to switch on that is seen as a real character problem. I know people who are really very big Obama supporters are very disillusioned.”

[From Obama Voters Protest His Switch on Telecom Immunity – NYTimes.com]

Its About Judge Ment
[It’s About Judge Ment – Obama graffiti, West Loop ]

Does Obama’s caving in to the Bush administration mean I won’t vote for him in November? No, probably not, but I’m with Markos Moulitsas, aka Kos, on this2 – I just can’t muster much enthusiasm for Obama at the moment.

Markos Moulitsas, a liberal blogger and founder of the Daily Kos Web site, said he had decided to cut back on the amount of money he would contribute to the Obama campaign because of the FISA reversal.

“I will continue to support him,” Mr. Moulitsas said in an interview. “But I was going to write him a check, and I decided I would rather put that money with Democrats who will uphold the Constitution.”

Footnotes:
  1. all liberals probably realize that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama are very liberal, but we hoped that a Democrat could be elected, and our country would move ever so slightly to the left. [↩]
  2. for the first time in what seems like forever, but probably isn’t [↩]

links for 2008-07-02

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Museum of American Cocktail

Seth Anderson3 Comments

Cocktail Hour can strike at any time

Sounds fun, I want to go there, soon.

the Museum of the American Cocktail opening this month will focus on the rich history of sophisticated drinks that have been served since Thomas Jefferson was president 200 years ago.

Cocktails – originally defined as any mixture of bitters, spirits and sugar – were an early fixture in this French port city. Besides easy access to sugar, a European sensibility allowed a drinking culture to flourish when it foundered elsewhere in the south’s Bible Belt.

“I definitely think New Orleans has always been the home of civilised1 drinking,” said Ann Tuennerman, founder of Tales of the Cocktail, an annual festival that attracts thousands.

“The image the tourists have is not how most locals think of drinking. We believe in better, not more.”

The museum is located near the city’s French Quarter and features a collection of rare spirits, books, and Prohibition-era literature. There will be vintage cocktail shakers, glassware, tools, gadgets and other cocktail memorabilia.

[From From martinis to Manhattans, US museum pays homage to mixed drinks | World news | guardian.co.uk]

I have not been to New Orleans since Katrina, except in spirit, but a journey to celebrate spirits sounds like a festive spritzer. Errr, whatever.

Footnotes:
  1. British spelling, from a British paper, we aren’t correcting it [↩]

Yats Cajun Creole

Seth Anderson4 Comments

Was walking east on Randolph, and glanced at a soon-to open restaurant called Yats Cajun Creole. The owner, Joe Vuskovich, a gregarious fellow, recently of New Orleans, came out and chatted for a minute or two. He said the restaurant will be be opening mid-July, or early August, if all goes as planned. I forgot to get a photo of Joe, but I did snap a shot of the storefront (forgive the poor exposure).

Joe mentioned he used to work in a factory over on Fulton1, so it was a homecoming of sorts for him. Also, his dad had been an oyster farmer, so the smells and sounds2 of Fulton Market brought back fond memories.

I am a great lover of all things New Orleans (mostly the music, but the food too), so am eager to have my first meal at Yats Cajun Creole.

Yats Cajun Creole

—
update, now open!

Footnotes:
  1. from his webpage: Most recently, Joe has owned and operated a wholesale business, (a) blending, grinding, packaging, and selling spices to the restaurant trade, as well as (b) offering his spicy native cuisine to restaurants in a pre-prepared fashion. After a few big clients went out of business about two years ago, Joe decided to launch a no-frills, back-to-the-basics, neighborhood restaurant. Thus, Yats was reborn. [↩]
  2. diesel, and food, and other less pleasant items too. I grew up on the edge of Toronto’s Chinatown, and we had a poultry market several buildings down the street, sharing an alley with us, so I know of what Joe is referring. Smells are such powerful unlockers of the dusty corridors of memory. [↩]

McCain the Dick

Seth Anderson0 comment

Part the 3244th. Eric Martin notes the ridiculous John McCain voting against Jim Webb’s GI Bill for the 21st Century (or whatever the frack it was called), then turning around and claiming credit for passing it.

That temptation would lead one astray, however, as McCain shamelessly set about taking credit for the bill’s passage at a recent campaign event:

I’m happy to tell you that we probably agreed to an increase in educational benefits for our veterans that not only gives them an increase in their educational benefits, but if they stay in for a certain period of time than they can transfer those educational benefits to their spouses and or children. That’s a very important aspect I think of incentivizing people of staying in the military.

“We”? Stay classy John. And keep up the straight talk.

Suffice it to say, Obama voted in favor of the bill (and signed on early as a co-sponsor). Which makes this McCain cheap shot even cheaper:

Unlike Senator Obama, my admiration, respect and deep gratitude for America’s veterans is something more than a convenient campaign pledge. I think I have earned the right to make that claim.

Talk is cheap, and tuition is expensive. You earn that “right” by backing up your lofty rhetoric with actual votes. Otherwise, your advocacy is little more than a campaign expedient.

[From Obsidian Wings: Coopt the Vote]

Bob Herbert wrote about the surprisingly dickish John McCain, on May 6th, 2008:

Who wouldn’t support an effort to pay for college for G.I.’s who have willingly suited up and put their lives on the line, who in many cases have served multiple tours in combat zones and in some cases have been wounded?

We did it for those who served in World War II. Why not now?

Well, you might be surprised at who is not supporting this effort. The Bush administration opposes it, and so does Senator John McCain.

and

This is not exactly first-class treatment of the nation’s warriors.

The Bush administration opposes the new G.I. bill primarily on the grounds that it is too generous, would be difficult to administer and would adversely affect retention.

This is bogus. The estimated $2.5 billion to $4 billion annual cost of the Webb proposal is dwarfed by the hundreds of billions being spent on the wars we’re asking service members to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. What’s important to keep in mind is that the money that goes to bolstering the education of returning veterans is an investment, in both the lives of the veterans themselves and the future of the nation.

The notion that expanding educational benefits will have a negative effect on retention seems silly. The Webb bill would cover tuition at a rate comparable to the highest tuition at a state school in the state in which the veteran would be enrolled. That kind of solid benefit would draw talented individuals into the military in large numbers.

Senator Webb, a former secretary of the Navy who specialized in manpower issues, said he has seen no evidence that G.I.’s would opt out of the service in significantly higher numbers because of such benefits.

Senator McCain’s office said on Monday that it was following the Pentagon’s lead on this matter, getting guidance from Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Under pressure because of his unwillingness to support Senator Webb’s effort, Senator McCain introduced legislation with substantially fewer co-sponsors last week that expands some educational benefits for G.I.’s, but far less robustly than Senator Webb’s bill.

“It’s not even close to the Webb bill,” said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, an advocacy group.

Iran-Contra’s Lost Chapter

Seth Anderson0 comment

A little history lesson for us with short attention spans…

As historians ponder George W. Bush’s disastrous presidency, they may wonder how Republicans perfected a propaganda system that could fool tens of millions of Americans, intimidate Democrats, and transform the vaunted Washington press corps from watchdogs to lapdogs.

To understand this extraordinary development, historians might want to look back at the 1980s and examine the Iran-Contra scandal’s “lost chapter,” a narrative describing how Ronald Reagan’s administration brought CIA tactics to bear domestically to reshape the way Americans perceived the world.

That chapter – which we are publishing here for the first time – was “lost” because Republicans on the congressional Iran-Contra investigation waged a rear-guard fight that traded elimination of the chapter’s key findings for the votes of three moderate GOP senators, giving the final report a patina of bipartisanship.

Under that compromise, a few segments of the draft chapter were inserted in the final report’s Executive Summary and in another section on White House private fundraising, but the chapter’s conclusions and its detailed account of how the “perception management” operation worked ended up on the editing room floor.

The American people thus were spared the chapter’s troubling finding: that the Reagan administration had built a domestic covert propaganda apparatus managed by a CIA propaganda and disinformation specialist working out of the National Security Council.

“One of the CIA’s most senior covert action operators was sent to the NSC in 1983 by CIA Director [William] Casey where he participated in the creation of an inter-agency public diplomacy mechanism that included the use of seasoned intelligence specialists,” the chapter’s conclusion stated.

“This public/private network set out to accomplish what a covert CIA operation in a foreign country might attempt – to sway the media, the Congress, and American public opinion in the direction of the Reagan administration’s policies.”

However, with the chapter’s key findings deleted, the right-wing domestic propaganda operation not only survived the Iran-Contra fallout but thrived.

So did some of the administration’s collaborators, such as South Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon and Australian press mogul Rupert Murdoch, two far-right media barons who poured billions of dollars into pro-Republican news outlets that continue to influence Washington’s political debates to this day.

[Click to read more of Iran-Contra’s Lost Chapter – The Consortiumnews.com]

Noticing what happens to one’s country is the first stage. As George Carlin said, more or less, we have the politicians we have because people voted for them. An informed electorate is a healthy electorate.

Marijuana is a Powerful Medicine

Seth Anderson0 comment

Aron Rowe of Wired points out one of the biggest problems with our healthcare system: if a drug was not created in a laboratory, by a pharmaceutical corporation, and subsequently approved by the FDA, then no matter how effective the drug might be, the drug will have an immense barrier to entry.

Marijuana contains an amazing chemical, beta-caryophyllene, and scientists have thoroughly proven that it could be used to treat pain, inflammation, atherosclerosis, and osteoporosis.

Jürg Gertsch, of ETH Zürich, and his collaborators from three other universities learned that the natural molecule can activate a protein called cannabinoid receptor type 2. When that biological button is pushed, it soothes the immune system, increases bone mass, and blocks pain signals — without causing euphoria or interfering with the central nervous system.

Gertsch and his team published their findings on June 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.They focused on the anti-inflammatory properties of the impressive substance — testing it on immune cells called monocytes and also in mice.

Since beta-caryophyllene seems to be powerful, occurs naturally in many foods, and does not get people high, it could turn out to be a nearly ideal medication. The organic compound is also phenomenally cheap. Sigma Aldrich sells it, in kosher form, for forty-two dollars per kilogram.

Unfortunately, big pharmaceutical companies tend not to seek FDA approval for natural chemicals, and most doctors are reluctant to prescribe drugs that have not received a green light from the regulatory agency. Thus, it would require a heroic effort by academic researchers to prove that beta-caryophyllene is safe and effective in humans.

[From Some Proof that Marijuana is a Powerful Medicine | Wired Science from Wired.com]

A real shame. In a fair world, natural remedies would be the first option, not an option only available to law-breakers.

Bridge of Smoke

Using the Web to Join the Attack

Seth Anderson0 comment

Proving yet again that 2008 is much different than previous elections years.1

But in the 2008 race, the first in which campaigns are feeling the full force of the changes wrought by the Web, the most attention-grabbing attacks are increasingly coming from people outside the political world. In some cases they are amateurs operating with nothing but passion, a computer and a YouTube account, in other cases sophisticated media types with more elaborate resources but no campaign experience.

So it was with the Parsley video, which was the work of a 64-year-old film director, Robert Greenwald, and his small band of 20-something assistants. Once best known for films like “Xanadu” (with Olivia Newton-John) and the television movie “The Burning Bed” (with Farrah Fawcett), Mr. Greenwald shows how technology has dispersed the power to shape campaign narratives, potentially upending the way American presidential campaigns are fought.

Mr. Greenwald’s McCain videos, most of which portray the senator as contradicting himself in different settings, have been viewed more than five million times — more than Mr. McCain’s own campaign videos have been downloaded on YouTube.

[From Political Freelancers Use Web to Join the Attack – NYTimes.com]

Just as the blog/webzine phenomena has changed the way we absorb news, so to is the YouTube era changing how we consume politics, especially in the compressed atmosphere of the presidential campaigns.

Mr. Greenwald said he had a political awakening after Sept. 11 and dedicated himself to making liberal films, an endeavor he said he could afford having been “lucky enough to have been majorly overpaid in commercial film and television relative to any rational measure.”

His highest impact has been with his video about Mr. Parsley. The montage was created with help from David Corn, Washington Bureau chief for Mother Jones, who unearthed video of Mr. Parsley inveighing against Islam and saying, “America was founded in part with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed.”

Mr. Greenwald’s team combined it with video of Mr. McCain calling Mr. Parsley, “one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide.” The montage spread quickly across liberal Web sites, and made its way onto ABC News. Mr. McCain released a statement rejecting Mr. Parsley’s endorsement shortly thereafter.

“For years I sat in conversations with people who said the only way we can be effective is we have to raise $1 billion and buy CBS,” Mr. Greenwald said. “Well, Google raised a couple of billion and bought YouTube, and it’s here for us, and it’s a huge, huge difference.”

Like this hilarious Joe Cocker mashup, but with politics…

Footnotes:
  1. and that a lot of the conventional wisdom about elections is bull since according to CW, 2008 is no different than 1932 [↩]

links for 2008-07-01

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