Author: Seth Anderson

Just another Gen-Xer still posting on a blog

TSA and the Culture of Fear

Seth Anderson0 comment

Speaking of the unreasonable growth of federal bureaucracy, one the Bush-ites longest living legacies is going to be the Transportation Security Administration, and their ridiculous policies. Terrorism theater does nothing to impede terrorists, just annoys passengers.

At this point, the Transportation Security Administration’s policies in general are wrong on so many levels that it’s hard to get one’s arms around them. My apologies to those who’ve tired of my harping on this subject in column after column, but here again are the bullet points:

  • Sharp, potentially dangerous objects can be fashioned from virtually anything, including no shortage of materials found on board any jetliner — to say nothing of the fact that a copycat takeover in the style of Sept. 11 would be almost impossible for terrorists to pull off, regardless of what weapons they possess. Yet we insist on wasting huge amounts of time digging through people’s belongings, looking for what are effectively benign items.

  • Almost as senseless are the liquids and gels restrictions. Experts have pointed out the futility of these measures, yet they remain in place. (Still more from TSA’s you-can’t-make-this-up list of airport contraband: gel shoe inserts.)

  • TSA’s approach is fundamentally flawed in that it treats everybody — from employees to passengers, old and young, domestic and foreign — as a potential threat. We are all suspects. Together with a preposterous zero-tolerance approach to weapons, be they real or perceived, this has created a colossal apparatus that strives for the impossible.

I can’t disagree that some level of screening will always be important. Explosives and firearms, for instance, need to be kept off airplanes. But the existing rules are so heavy-handed, absolute and illogical as to be ultimately unenforceable.

You would think, nearly seven years after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, that TSA would have gotten its act together. Not just tactically, but functionally. Take a look at the typical checkpoint. There are people yelling, bags falling, trash bins overflowing with water bottles. There’s nowhere to stand, nowhere to move. It’s a jury-rigged circus.

But we should hardly be surprised, perhaps, at the Frankenstein monster now before us. Propped up by a culture of fear, TSA has become a bureaucracy with too much power and little accountability. It almost makes you wonder if the Department of Homeland Security made a conscious decision to present bureaucratic incompetence and arrogance as the public face of TSA, hoping that people would then raise enough of a fuss that it could be turned over to the likes of Halliburton. (Funny, how despite this administration’s eagerness to outsource anything and everything, it’s kept its governmental talons wrapped snugly around TSA.)

Except there is no fuss. Serious protest has been all but nil. The airlines, biggest losers in all of this, remain strangely quiet. More and more people are choosing not to fly, and checkpoint hassles are one of the reasons. Yet the industry appears to have little concern while an out-of-control agency delays and aggravates its customers.

And it’s going to get worse, not better. As I’m sure you’ve heard, TSA is deploying body scanners that can see through clothing. It is also implementing gate-side luggage checks similar to those that were common in the days following Sept. 11. After proceeding through the main screening checkpoint, selected passengers will be enjoying a second one just before boarding.

[From Patrick Smith, Ask the pilot | Propped up by a culture of fear, TSA has become a bureaucracy with too much power and little accountability. Where will the lunacy stop?]

Liquids, shoes, butter knives, what an unfunny joke. Patrick Smith tells the anecdote that, even as a pilot, he wasn’t allowed to bring a butter knife through screening, regardless of the fact the knife was given to him on a previous plane.

Saturday Morning Lines
[Saturday Morning Lines, not an airport, but might as well be]

Natural Born

Seth Anderson3 Comments

We’ve joked about this before, but apparently, John McCain is barred from actually becoming President by virtue of being born outside of the borders of the United States, like your humble narrator.

In the most detailed examination yet of Senator John McCain’s eligibility to be president, a law professor at the University of Arizona has concluded that neither Mr. McCain’s birth in 1936 in the Panama Canal Zone nor the fact that his parents were American citizens is enough to satisfy the constitutional requirement that the president must be a “natural-born citizen.”

The analysis, by Prof. Gabriel J. Chin, focused on a 1937 law that has been largely overlooked in the debate over Mr. McCain’s eligibility to be president. The law conferred citizenship on children of American parents born in the Canal Zone after 1904, and it made John McCain a citizen just before his first birthday. But the law came too late, Professor Chin argued, to make Mr. McCain a natural-born citizen.

[Click to read more details of A Citizen, but ‘Natural Born’? McCain’s Eligibility to Be President Is Disputed by Professor – NYTimes.com]

Naturally, our media guides will ridicule and ignore this minor detail, instead focusing on whether Barack Obama is a Muslim or not.

A lawsuit challenging Mr. McCain’s qualifications is pending in the Federal District Court in Concord, N.H.

There are, Professor Chin argued in his analysis, only two ways to become a natural-born citizen. One, specified in the Constitution, is to be born in the United States. The other way is to be covered by a law enacted by Congress at the time of one’s birth.

Professor Chin wrote that simply being born in the Canal Zone did not satisfy the 14th Amendment, which says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”

A series of early-20th-century decisions known as the Insular Cases, he wrote, ruled that unincorporated territories acquired by the United States were not part of the nation for constitutional purposes. The Insular Cases did not directly address the Canal Zone. But the zone was generally considered an unincorporated territory before it was returned to Panama in 1999, and some people born in the Canal Zone when it was under American jurisdiction have been deported from the United States or convicted of being here illegally.

The second way Mr. McCain could have, and ultimately did, become a citizen was by statute, Professor Chin wrote. In Rogers v. Bellei in 1971, the Supreme Court said Congress had broad authority to decide whether and when children born to American citizens abroad are citizens.

At the time of Mr. McCain’s birth, the relevant law granted citizenship to any child born to an American parent “out of the limits and jurisdiction of the United States.” Professor Chin said the term “limits and jurisdiction” left a crucial gap. The Canal Zone was beyond the limits of the United States but not beyond its jurisdiction, and thus the law did not apply to Mr. McCain.

In 1937, Congress addressed the problem, enacting a law that granted citizenship to people born in the Canal Zone after 1904. That made Mr. McCain a citizen, but not one who was naturally born, Professor Chin said, because the citizenship was conferred after his birth.

Cheney Sought to Deny Climate Change

Seth Anderson0 comment

Wouldn’t want to be caught doing anything that might help our planet, would we now, Mr. Cheney?

A disclosure Tuesday that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office sought to alter a federal official’s prepared testimony about the health consequences of global warming intensified an increasingly open conflict between the Environmental Protection Agency and the White House over how to respond to climate change.

The latest in a series of disclosures about internal disputes within the Bush administration came as President George W. Bush was in Japan with other leaders of the Group of Eight nations to forge an agreement on combating climate change. But back home, Mr. Bush’s critics contend that his aides are working to ensure that any actions his administration takes in response to climate change will have a limited impact.

The disclosure about Vice President Cheney’s role came from Jason Burnett, who until last month was the EPA’s associate deputy administrator

[From Cheney Sought to Alter Climate Discussion – WSJ.com]

snip

In his letter, Mr. Burnett notes that at the time of Dr. Gerberding’s testimony “there was extensive debate” over how the EPA should respond to the Supreme Court’s ruling. Mr. Burnett says the White House Council on Environmental Quality suggested to him that he could best serve the EPA “if I would convince CDC to delete particular sections of their testimony.”

In an interview, he declined to elaborate on the assertions in his letter, but said he left the EPA because “I thought I’d done as much constructive work as could be done under this administration” in response to the Supreme Court ruling.

Administration officials said in March that before declaring greenhouse gases endanger health or welfare, the government should first seek public comment. The EPA has yet to do so, however, largely because of a dispute between EPA officials and a White House office that reviews proposed regulations over how to frame the issue, people familiar with the matter said.

Dick Cheney is a truly horrible, corrupted man, though I guess we’ve known that since 1974.

Kids on Statins

Seth Anderson0 comment

Ridiculous, really, there shouldn’t be a pharmaceutical solution for every health issue. Like the cliche goes, to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The drug companies, and their lackeys in the FDA (and drug-industry corrupted doctors) want to sell more pills, no matter the consequences to long-term health of the nation, and to the nation’s healthcare system.

This aggressive new recommendation for warding off heart disease in some children has stirred a furious debate among pediatricians since the American Academy of Pediatrics issued it on Monday.

While some doctors applauded the idea, others were incredulous. In particular, these doctors called attention to a lack of evidence that the use of the cholesterol-lowering drugs, called statins, in children would prevent heart attacks later in life.

“What are the data that show this is helpful preventing heart attacks?” asked Dr. Darshak Sanghavi, a pediatric cardiologist and assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. “How many heart attacks do we hope to prevent this way? There’s no data regarding that.”

Nor, Dr. Sanghavi added, are there data on the possible side effects of taking statins for 40 or 50 years.

Other doctors said the recommendation would distract from common-sense changes in diet and exercise, which are also part of the new guidelines.

[From Well – 8-Year-Olds on Statins? A New Plan Quickly Bites Back – NYTimes.com]

How about banning high-fructose corn syrup instead? Or removing the subsidy from its manufacture so that it isn’t added to every packaged food and beverage?

Evolution and Fat

Seth Anderson0 comment

Apparently, since for most of human history, famine was a bigger concern than feast, our bodies have evolved to maintain a certain weight, making losing weight more difficult than simple caloric reduction and/or exercise, and making it much harder to lose weight once you’ve gained it. Anecdotally, we’ve known this to be true, but now there is some scientific data to support what our bodies have been telling us.

“Loosely put, after you’ve lost weight, you have more of an emotional response to food and less ability to control that response,” says Michael Rosenbaum, lead author of the study in this month’s Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The key driver of this system is leptin, a hormone secreted by fat cells. When humans… lose 10% or more of their body weight, leptin falls rapidly and sets off a cascade of physiological changes that act to put weight back on. Skeletal muscles work more efficiently, thyroid and other hormones are reduced — all so the body burns 15% to 20% fewer calories, enough to put back 25 pounds or more a year.

This mechanism kicks in whether people are obese or relatively lean before losing weight — and researchers believe the effect can last for years. In previous studies, giving subjects replacement leptin reversed the metabolic changes, in effect tricking the body into ignoring the weight loss.

The latest study shows that these metabolic changes are mirrored in altered brain activity when people lose weight. The Columbia researchers put six obese subjects on liquid diets and reduced their weight by 10%, then gave them replacement leptin or a placebo. At each stage, researchers observed their brain activity using functional MRIs when they were shown food and non-food items.

The scans showed that in the weight-reduced state, the subjects had more blood flow in areas of the brain that govern emotional and sensory responses to food and less in areas involving control of food intake. When the subjects were given replacement leptin, brain activity returned to what it had been before they lost weight.

[From Can’t Keep the Weight Off? Maybe Leptin Is the Culprit – WSJ.com]

Not that keeping weight off is impossible, just it takes more willpower than you’d think.

Suron Salad

[You don’t win friends with salad, unless it is really good, like this from Cafe Suron, on Pratt, Rogers Park, Chicago]

[Non-WSJ subscribers can use this link to read the entire article]

McCain and his Budget Whopper

Seth Anderson0 comment

John McCain wants desperately to preside over George Bush’s third term. And Hillraisers consider supporting this schmuck? That’s nothing but a spit in the eye to one of Bill Clinton’s undeniably positive legacies – balanced budgets and budget surpluses. Clinton’s former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, writes:

George W. Bush took the largest budget surplus in history and transformed it into a giant deficit. McCain’s economic plan, announced today, will to even worse. McCain says he’s going to balance the budget by the end of his first term (actually, he didn’t literally say that – he just “demanded” it – implying that a Democratically-controlled Congress would be ultimately responsible if it didn’t happen). And then McCain came up with numbers that will blow the deficit into the stratosphere.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the budget deficit will be $443 billion in 2013, the end of the next president’s first term, if Bush’s tax cuts are made permanent (which McCain pledges to do). So start with this $443 billion hole. Now add in McCain’s promise to cut corporate taxes by a hundred billion a year ($4 billion of this for American oil companies, more than a billion for Exxon-Mobile alone). Then add in McCain’s promise to get rid of the Alternative Minimum Tax, designed to ensure that the very rich pay at least a minimum percent of their income in tax. Obama would properly index it to inflation but McCain will let the rich pay as little as they can get away with. Non-partisan tax experts put the ten year cost of this at $1 trillion. All told, McCain promises more than $650 billion of new tax cuts per year. (That doesn’t even include McCain’s promise to allow corporations to immediately expense all their investments – which, he asserts, would add nothing to the budget deficit at all!)

Who gets all these cuts? Mostly, the very rich and big corporations. The non- partisan Tax Policy Center estimates that 25 percent of McCain’s cuts would go to people earning over $2.8 million a year (the top one-tenth of one percent). Each would get an average tax cut of $269,000, over and above what George Bush gave them.

[Click to read the rest of Robert Reich’s Blog: McCain’s Budget Whopper]

John McCain’s base (the national media) wring their hands re: Obama and tax increases, but John McSame is proudly an economic idiot, willing to destroy the American government any way possible, taking the rest of us with him.

Hillraisers Still Toxic

Seth Anderson1 Comment

There continues to be rumbling from certain high profile Hillary Clinton supporters that they would rather put a Republican in the White House (an anti-choice, anti-environment, pro-war Republican at that) than support the presumptive Democratic nominee. I haven’t decided if there are real delusions among the Hillraisers, or if this is a propaganda ploy promulgated by the McCain/Murdoch/Rove Axis of Evils, and given prominent space by the Wall Street Journal.

the effort involves dozens of the roughly 300 Clinton “Hillraisers,” individuals who raised at least $100,000 apiece for her campaign.

The Clinton holdouts are typically most angry about what they say was the media’s sexist treatment of Sen. Clinton during the campaign. And though few, if any, blame Sen. Obama directly, they fault the Illinois senator and other party leaders for what they say was failing to do enough to stop it.

Susie Tompkins Buell, a Hillraiser from San Francisco, said, “What really hurt women the most was to look back and see all this gender bias.” Ms. Buell said she hasn’t decided whether to vote for Sen. Obama and plans to skip the August Democratic convention.

[From Obama Faces Resistance From Top Supporters of Clinton – WSJ.com]

Why is Obama being blamed for the media coverage of the primaries? Don’t the Hillraisers realize the corporate media is Republican, by and large, and the national media is geared towards supporting their candidate, John McCain? The coverage was often sexist, sure, but it also was quite ridiculous towards the Obama campaign1.

The McCain campaign is pressing its case with former Clinton donors. Roughly two dozen big Clinton backers are looking to meet soon with Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive who is avidly supporting Sen. McCain. The idea, said one person familiar with the campaign’s plans, is to pluck disaffected independents, and especially women, from the ranks of former Clinton supporters. A similar meeting occurred last month in Ohio between Ms. Fiorina and Clinton supporters, the McCain campaign said.

The Democratic fissures come as evidence is mounting that Clinton supporters aren’t falling easily into the Obama camp. A poll released Friday by CNN and Opinion Research Corp. found that nearly a third of those who voted for Sen. Clinton in the primaries said they would stay home in November rather than vote for Sen. Obama. A similar poll taken by the two organizations in early June found only 22% expressing that sentiment. In the latest poll, only 54% of Clinton voters said they were planning to back Sen. Obama.

Really, there are stark differences between Obama and McCain. There are only minor policy differences between Obama’s platform and Clinton’s platform, why would any sane person make such a leap? Maybe this is a simply a Democratic version of Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos?

[Non-WSJ subscribers use this link to read the entire article)

Footnotes:
  1. Rev. Wright, fist bumps, yadda yadda. [↩]

Lewis Lapham on Russert

Seth Anderson0 comment

Lewis Lapham proves again why I’ve always wanted to have a drink or two with him, preferably in the dining car of a cross-country train.

Lewis Lapham isn’t happy with political journalism today. “There was a time in America when the press and the government were on opposite sides of the field,” he said at a premiere party for Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson on June 25. “The press was supposed to speak on behalf of the people. The new tradition is that the press speaks on behalf of the government.” An example? “Tim Russert was a spokesman for power, wealth, and privilege,” Lapham said. “That’s why 1,000 people came to his memorial service. Because essentially he was a shill for the government. It didn’t matter whether it was Democratic or Republican. It was for the status quo.” What about Russert’s rep for catching pols in lies? “That was bullshit,” he said. “Thompson and Russert were two opposite poles.”

[From Lewis Lapham Unhappy With Political Journalism, Including Tim Russert — New York Magazine ]

Now that Russert is safely in the ground, I can say without guilt I always thought Russert was the worst kind of putz.

Rachid Taha Rocks

Seth Anderson1 Comment


“Rock el Casbah: The Best of Rachid Taha” (Rachid Taha)

Rachid Taha is great, too bad he didn’t see fit to include Chicago on his recent tour.

An old-school rock star headlined SummerStage in Central Park on Saturday afternoon. Grinning and unshaven, he strutted around the stage, sang in a knowing growl and cued his band for extended, hard-grooving versions of songs using fuzz-toned guitar riffs over a dance beat.

He wore a leather fedora, then switched to a red cowboy hat. He dumped a bottle of water onto audience members — redundant, since it was raining — and onto his own head. He twirled his microphone on its cord, joked about Ecstasy and cocaine and was less than reverent when handed a flag. For his encore the band vamped and chanted, “Get up, get up,” and the star declaimed, “My name is James Brown! My name is Marvin Gaye!” But his other songs were serious: reflections on exile and cultural strife.

The star was Rachid Taha, an Algerian now based in France. Mr. Taha is the most rock-influenced of Algerian rai singers, who mix Arabic and North African elements with Western ones; he has collaborated with British musicians including Brian Eno, Steve Hillage and Robert Plant. At SummerStage his songs dipped into hard rock, reggae, rumba-pop and Bo Diddley, but often they used Arabic-style beats defined by the hand drum called a darbuka, and Mr. Taha’s voice was answered by oud solos.

Rai’s blunt lyrics have made it both popular and persecuted in Algeria, while in France the music has become a voice for Arab-speaking immigrants. (Mr. Taha had a band in the 1980s called Carte de Séjour, or “residence permit.”) One of Mr. Taha’s hits, and an extended centerpiece at his SummerStage show, was “Ya Rayah” (“Party”), an old Algerian song about emigration and the longing for home, which began with an unmetered, tradition-tinged introduction before the beat kicked in.

Mr. Taha has just released a greatest-hits album in the United States, “Rachid Taha: The Definitive Collection (Wrasse), and he sang some of them, including “Rock el Casbah,” his precise Arabic translation of the Clash’s “Rock the Casbah,” a song about rock as banned but unstoppable music.

[From Music Review – Rachid Taha – Rachid Taha, the Algerian Rock Star, at SummerStage – Review – NYTimes.com]

We’ve raved about Mr. Taha previously

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Eric K. Arnold is also a fan:

Rachid Taha compares his music to a plate of couscous. Interviewed via translator from his home in France, the 49-year-old Algerian-born singer and global punk icon says he was happy to discover that “Frank Zappa had come to the same conclusion when he said, ‘How to describe my music? Difficult to explain if you’ve never tasted couscous.’ “

Known for playing a modified version of the oud called the mandolute, Taha says he represents a link “between Africa, the Orient and the West. In the same way as Omar Sharif is to cinema,” he adds wryly.

A career-spanning Taha retrospective, “Rock El Casbah: The Best Of,” was released in the United States this month, in time for a four-city tour (which brings him to San Francisco’s Stern Grove Festival July 13). Like couscous, the 15-song CD draws its flavor from many different elements. There’s the punk side, represented by his celebrated version of the Clash’s “Rock the Casbah” and the rabble-rousing “Douce France.” Taha’s love of traditional folk music comes through on his covers of Farid El Atrache’s “Habina” and Dahmane El Harrachi’s “Ya Rayah.” A philosophical, existentialist aspect shows up in “Kelma” (“Thoughts”), and “Ida” (“If”). And “Menfi” – which translates to “The Exile” – addresses a prominent theme in Taha’s music, that of identity.

Specifically, the identity of being Algerian, Arabic and Muslim while living in a country that hasn’t always been friendly to immigrants. Coming to France from Algeria at a young age, he says, “I knew what to expect.”

Tradition plays a big role in Taha’s music. Yet he’s incorporated progressive elements into his style, paving the way for such later artists as Natascha Atlas and Cheb Mami. In his solo career, he’s worked extensively with producer Steve Hillage, who, in addition to adding electronic textures to Taha’s sound, “is a guitar-playing Peter O’ Toole,” he says. (Think “Lawrence of Arabia,” not “My Favorite Year.”)

[From Rachid Taha’s punk world music]

I probably already own most of the songs on the Greatest Hits package1, but I’ll probably still pick it up.

Footnotes:
  1. I’m too lazy to check right now [↩]

Green Merchandise Mart

Seth Anderson3 Comments

Green Exchange
Cool1. I’ve always meant to take a photo of this building. Now I have more reason to – I think this is a great idea.

Green light goes on at old Cooper lamp factory | Crain’s Chicago Business :

A Chicago real estate developer aims to turn the former Frederick Cooper Lamp Co. factory in Logan Square into a green Merchandise Mart, with showrooms featuring eco-friendly products and services.
After churning out lamps for 35 years, the 250,000-square-foot building alongside the Kennedy Expressway would become the Green Exchange, housing a building supply business, a furniture maker, a printing company and other environmentally conscious businesses, says developer David Baum, who bought the property with his brother Douglas last year. The companies will have greater marketing power under one roof than they would apart, he says.
“If you’re a customer that wants to buy paint that has no toxins, you may also have interest in using a green architect and investing in a socially responsible mutual fund,” David Baum says. “I think we’re hitting a tipping point in environmentalism and it’s becoming mainstream.”
…
He says he won’t seek city subsidies for the project. Several businesses have signed non-binding “letters of interest” to lease space in the building, including Consolidated Printing Co., which uses an environmentally sustainable printing process, and Greenmaker Supply, which sells eco-friendly building supplies.

(H/T)
—
Website www.greenexchange.com

and another repost2 : We wrote about this previously, the Tribune has more details.

Going green: Project envisions eco-friendly shopping center :

When David Baum decided last year to convert the old Cooper Lamp factory in Logan Square into a one-stop shopping center of green businesses, he knew it would be a risky and expensive proposition.

“Wind turbines don’t necessarily make economic sense today, but we want to engage the imagination,” said Baum, who plans to spend more than $30 million renovating the sprawling yellow brick structure where craftsmen once turned out custom-made lamps. “We do still plan to make a profit, albeit a small one.”

Baum is aiming to tap into the growing consumer demand for eco-conscious merchandise and services. Dubbed the Green Exchange, he wants his project to become one of the first places in the nation to offer an entirely green space for entirely green work.

Baum envisions places like an organic restaurant, an environmentally friendly building supply store, green-friendly architects and eco-design firms. There could even be a sustainable clothing store, a bicycle shop and a car showroom, he said.

The project would be three times larger than The Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center in Portland, Ore., where roughly 20 tenants, including Patagonia, offer sustainable goods and services in a 70,000-square-foot facility.

Continue reading “Green Merchandise Mart”

Footnotes:
  1. Reposted from my old blog to house a new photo [↩]
  2. combining two entries into one [↩]

Beck Abides

Seth Anderson0 comment


“Modern Guilt” (Beck)

Beck has a hit and miss track record. Some of his albums were an intrinsic part of my soundtrack in those heady late 90s, Sea Change is a great change of pace, Mutations worked as a melancholy Tropicalia, but other releases are prosaic, disposable.

“It is a bit random, what ends up getting released and what stays in the can,” Beck, who is known by his first name, said in his ambling So-Cal drawl. “Some of it’s embarrassing, and some of it’s better than you thought. Some of it should be burned.”

He compared his unreleased songs to planes on a runway, some still waiting to take off and some that never will, and marveled at the many unexplored destinations where his muse might have led him. “There’s so many directions things could have gone,” he said.

The paths taken and not taken have brought him to another valedictory point in his mercurial career. On Tuesday, his 38th birthday, Beck will release “Modern Guilt,” his eighth major-label studio album. It is his first collaboration with Danger Mouse, the D.J. and producer who is half of the funk-rock group Gnarls Barkley, and his final release under the recording deal that began with Beck’s 1994 breakthrough, “Mellow Gold, ”which featured the ubiquitous novelty song “Loser.”

[From Music – In a Chaotic Industry, Beck Abides – NYTimes.com]

Chan Marshall aka Cat Power sings some backup vocals. Worth a second glance at least.

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. [↩]

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 [↩]