Category Archives: civil liberties

FBI delivers subpoenas to four more anti-war, solidarity activists as U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald expands witch hunt

A press release from the Committee to Stop FBI Repression says:

The FBI came unannounced to knock on doors at two apartments in Chicago this morning. FBI agent Robert Parker, under orders from U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s office, delivered a subpoena to Maureen Murphy. Murphy, like several other individuals served subpoenas, is an organizer with the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago.

This continues the repression unleashed by Fitzgerald on the anti-war movement since September 24th, when fourteen subpoenas were delivered to anti-war, labor, and solidarity activists in coordinated raids involving more than 70 federal agents. Armed FBI agents raided homes, taking computers, phones, passports, documents, notebooks, and even children’s artwork. A total of 23 subpoenas have been served to activists around the country.

Maureen Murphy said, “Along with several others, I am being summoned to appear before the Grand Jury on Tuesday, January 25th, in the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago. We are being targeted for the work we do to end U.S. funding of the Israeli occupation, ending the war in Afghanistan and ending the occupation of Iraq. What is at stake for all of us is our right to dissent and organize to change harmful US foreign policy.” Ms. Murphy is also the Managing Editor of the widely-read website, The Electronic Intifada.

In addition, three women in Minneapolis – Tracy Molm, Anh Pham, and Sara Martin – are threatened with reactivated subpoenas by Fitzgerald’s office and new Grand Jury dates. Tom Burke of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression explained, “It is likely the three individuals, like all the others so far, will continue to refuse to take part in Fitzgerald’s witch hunt. Fitzgerald can then call for putting them in jail as long as he wants.”

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Too much freedom in America

There’s too much freedom, a few constitutional amendments need tossing out and the government needs greater powers — this would seem to sum up the views of the majority of Americans… if the latest polling is reliable.

The American public is highly critical of the recent release of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables on the WikiLeaks Web site and would support the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by U.S. authorities, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.

Most of those polled – 68 percent – say the WikiLeaks’ exposure of government documents about the State Department and U.S. diplomacy harms the public interest. Nearly as many – 59 percent – say the U.S. government should arrest Assange and charge him with a crime for releasing the diplomatic cables.

Assange was scheduled to appear in a London courtroom Tuesday to formally contest an extradition order on sexual assault charges in Sweden. U.S. federal authorities are reportedly investigating whether Assange could be charged with violating the Espionage Act by releasing the documents, but his potential extradition to Sweden could significantly complicate any U.S. attempt to quickly try him.

A generational gap was evident among those polled, with younger Americans raised in the Internet age expressing distinct views on the matter. Nearly a third of those ages 18 to 29 say the release of the U.S. diplomatic cables serves the public interest, double the proportion of those older than 50 saying so. When it comes to Assange, these younger adults are evenly split: Forty-five percent say he should be arrested by the United States; 46 percent say it is not a criminal matter. By contrast, those age 30 and older say he should be arrested by a whopping 37-point margin.

As always, the polling information is frustrating as much because of what it doesn’t show as by what it reveals. The answers to these follow-up questions might have helped clarify who was dumber — the pollsters or those being polled:
1. If you believe the release of the cables damaged the public interest, can you list the top five most damaging revelations?
2. If you believe the release of the cables damaged the public interest, can you explain whether you see any distinction between the interests of the American people and the interests of the US government?
3. If you would like to see Julian Assange arrested, can you explain what crime you think he committed?
4. If you think he committed a crime, do you believe that the same charges should be brought against the editors of the New York Times and other newspapers that published the cables?
5. The First Amendment protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Can you explain your understanding of these freedoms and do you believe that the US Constitution can be set aside whenever the government says that national security is at stake?

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Rethinking terrorist blacklisting

Gavin Sullivan writes:

Terrorist blacklisting has been a central plank of the “war on terror” pursued by western states since 9/11. The idea is simple. International or regional bodies (such as the UN and EU) and states (such as the UK) designate individuals and groups thought to be terrorists or “associated with” terrorism, freeze their assets, impose travel bans, criminalise their membership and prevent others from supporting them. Yet after almost 10 years – following a plethora of successful legal challenges, the failure of reforms that have tried to render listing procedures compliant with human rights, and widespread criticism by judges and other officials – the policy of blacklisting is now facing a fundamental crisis of legitimacy.

The evolution of this crisis, and the possible ways of moving beyond it, are detailed in a critical report launched today by the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), which suggests that the time has come for radically rethinking the policy of blacklisting. Following the recent recommendations of Martin Scheinin, the outgoing UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, it calls for the two key security council resolutions underpinning the blacklisting system to be abolished.

Resolution 1267 (and the resolutions that amended it) created the UN sanctions committee, comprised of all members of the security council, to compile a list of individuals and groups “associated with” Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida and the Taliban and compel states to bring proceedings or penalise those designated. Resolution 1373 requires states to criminalise the support and financing of terrorism while giving them the autonomy to set up their own domestic blacklists. The EU has used it to set up its own list criminalising groups such as the PKK and the LTTE as terrorist organisations.

The most persistent criticism of both regimes is that they breach fundamental rights. Most listing decisions are based on secret intelligence material that neither blacklisted individuals nor the courts responsible for reviewing the implementation of the lists will ever see. As courts have repeatedly affirmed, one cannot oppose allegations against them (and exercise their right to judicial review) if they are prevented from knowing what the allegations actually are. Such treatment is a fundamental breach of the right to a fair trial. Yet it is an ongoing Kafkaesque reality for the majority of those who are placed on the blacklists.

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Press freedom threatened by the Obama administration

Glenn Greenwald writes:

During the Bush era, I frequently wrote about escalating attacks by the U.S. Government on press freedoms. The Bush DOJ vowed to prosecute whistleblowers while steadfastly refusing to do the same for the high-level criminals they exposed. Alberto Gonzales openly threatened that the DOJ could prosecute editors and reporters of The New York Times for revealing the illegal NSA spying program. CIA Director Porter Goss vowed to subpoena journalists who publish classified information in order to compel them to disclose their sources or go to prison.

And, worst of all, Bush officials sought for the first time in American history to obtain an espionage conviction — under the Espionage Act of 1917 — against non-government-employees who had received and disseminated classified information. About that case — brought against two AIPAC officials who had passed classified information they received from a Pentagon official to the Government of Israel (the Pentagon official pled guilty) — I wrote about “the Bush Administration’s broader, unprecedented assault on a free press of which the AIPAC prosecution is but a part,” and argued that “the Bush Administration is seeking to criminalize the very act which defines what an investigative journalist does and has always done in America.” The Washington Post‘s Walter Pincus reported at the time, quoting a legal expert, that “administration officials ‘want this case as a precedent so they can have it in their arsenal’ and added: ‘This is a weapon that can be turned against the media’.” After a series of adverse judicial rulings against the Government, the DOJ finally abandoned that AIPAC prosecution.

Amazingly, the Obama administration is surpassing its predecessor when it comes to assaults on whistle-blowing and a free press. As Politico’s Josh Gerstein reported, “President Barack Obama’s Justice Department has taken a hard line against leakers. . . .’They’re going after this at every opportunity and with unmatched vigor,’ said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists.” The New York Times similarly documented: “the Obama administration is proving more aggressive than the Bush administration in seeking to punish unauthorized leaks.” The Obama DOJ has launched nothing less than a full-on war against whistleblowers; its magnanimous “Look Forward, Not Backward” decree used to shield high-level Bush criminals from investigations is manifestly tossed to the side when it comes to those who reveal such criminality. And they even revitalized an abandoned Bush-era subpoena issued to The New York Times‘ James Risen, demanding that he disclose his source for an article in which he revealed an embarrassingly botched attempt to infiltrate and sabotage Iran’s nuclear program.

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The war on free speech

John Naughton writes:

‘Never waste a good crisis” used to be the catchphrase of the Obama team in the runup to the presidential election. In that spirit, let us see what we can learn from official reactions to the WikiLeaks revelations.

The most obvious lesson is that it represents the first really sustained confrontation between the established order and the culture of the internet. There have been skirmishes before, but this is the real thing.

And as the backlash unfolds – first with deniable attacks on internet service providers hosting WikiLeaks, later with companies like Amazon and eBay and PayPal suddenly “discovering” that their terms and conditions preclude them from offering services to WikiLeaks, and then with the US government attempting to intimidate Columbia students posting updates about WikiLeaks on Facebook – the intolerance of the old order is emerging from the rosy mist in which it has hitherto been obscured. The response has been vicious, co-ordinated and potentially comprehensive, and it contains hard lessons for everyone who cares about democracy and about the future of the net.

There is a delicious irony in the fact that it is now the so-called liberal democracies that are clamouring to shut WikiLeaks down.

Consider, for instance, how the views of the US administration have changed in just a year. On 21 January, secretary of state Hillary Clinton made a landmark speech about internet freedom, in Washington DC, which many people welcomed and most interpreted as a rebuke to China for its alleged cyberattack on Google. “Information has never been so free,” declared Clinton. “Even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.”

She went on to relate how, during his visit to China in November 2009, Barack Obama had “defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity.” Given what we now know, that Clinton speech reads like a satirical masterpiece.

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John F Kennedy’s opposition to secrecy

The President and the Press: Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association
President John F. Kennedy, Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City, April 27, 1961

Ladies and gentlemen, the very word secrecy is repugnant, in a free and open society, and we are as a people, inherently and historically, opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and secret proceedings.

We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweigh the dangers which are cited to justify it.

Even today there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating it’s arbitrary restrictions.

Even today there is little value in ensuring the survival of our nation, if our traditions do not survive with it.

And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious who wish to expand it’s meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.

That I do not intend to permit, to the extent that it is in my control.

And no official of my administration whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight, as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes, or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.

For we are opposed, around the world, by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy, that relies primarily on covet means for expanding it’s fear of influence, on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation, instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night, instead of armies by day.

It is a system which has conscripted, vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations.

Its preparations are concealed, not published. It’s mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned. No rumor is printed. No secret is revealed.

No president should fear public scrutiny of his program. For from that scrutiny comes understanding. And from that understanding comes support or opposition, and both are necessary.

I am not asking your newspaper to support an administration. But I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. For I have complete confidence in the response and the dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed.

I not only could not stifle controversy from your readers — I welcome it. This administration intends to be candid about its errors. For as a wise man once said, “an error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it”.

We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors and we expect you to point them out when we miss them. Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed. And no republic can survive.

That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the first amendment, the only business in America specifically protected by the constitution, not primarily to amuse or entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and sentimental, not to simply give the public what it wants, but to inform, to arouse, and to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mould, and educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.

This means greater coverage and analysis of international news, for it is no longer far away and foreign, but close at hand and local. It means greater attention to improved attention to greater understanding of the news, as well as improved transmission, and it means finally, that government at all levels, must meet its obligation, to provide you with it’s possible information, outside the narrowest limits of national security.

And so it is to the printing press, to the recorder of man’s deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news, that we look for strength, and his assistance, confident that with your help, Man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.

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YouTube bows to political pressure and removes Awlaki videos

On Wednesday, The Guardian reported:

Hundreds of videos inciting violence, including some linked to the suspected al-Qaida mastermind of the cargo plane bomb plot, were removed from YouTube today.

The videos were highlighted after the conviction of Roshonara Choudhry for attempting to kill the former [British] government minister Stephen Timms. She was radicalised watching internet sermons by Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamist cleric now in Yemen who the US suspects masterminded several terrorist plots.

In a private speech in the US last week, the security minister, Lady Neville-Jones, called on the White House to “take down this hateful material” in cases where servers were located within its jurisdiction.

“When you have incitement to murder, when you have people actively calling for the killing of their fellow citizens and when you have the means to stop that person doing so, then I believe we should act,” she said. “Those websites would categorically not be allowed in the UK. They incite cold-blooded murder and as such are surely contrary to the public good.”

Will YouTube also now be looking at videos conveying messages of hate from people like Michael Savage?

When Byron Williams went on a shooting spree in California this summer, his desire to “start a revolution” was inspired in part, it was reported, by Savage’s talk radio rants. Speaking about the ACLU, Savage had warned: “They will kill us all if they’re not stopped.” Williams aimed to do just that by killing the ACLU’s leaders.

In 2006, Savage called for the killing of 100 million Muslims:

There are too many RDDBs [red-diaper doper babies, Savage’s term for people supposedly raised by Marxist parents] in high places and in the media and in the courts for us to stand up to this fanatical enemy. And so unless the RDDB is reined in somehow or taken out of power, we’re going to die as a nation. I swear to God that’s what people are saying to me. And these are intelligent people, wealthy people. They are very depressed by the weakness that America is showing to these psychotics in the Muslim world. They say, “Oh, there’s a billion of them.” I said, “So, kill 100 million of them, then there’ll be 900 million of them.” I mean, would you rather die — would you rather us die than them? I mean, what is it going to take for you people to wake up? Would you rather we disappear or we die? Or would you rather they disappear and they die? Because you’re going to have to make that choice sooner rather than later.

In 2008, after the Mumbai attacks, Savage advocated genocide, referring to the tribal areas of Western Pakistan, saying: “[T]here’s no question that entire region needs to be annihilated and stripped off the earth.”

From Michael Savage, to Pastors John Hagee, Rod Parsley and Terry Jones, America has no shortage of hate-mongers whose words are capable of inciting violence. Should YouTube and other publishers and media outlets be policing their operations so that none of these men can find an easily available platform from which to vent their anger?

Not if we want to protect the First Amendment.

In 1969 in Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled that “the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” The ruling went on to cite Noto v United States (1961) which said: “the mere abstract teaching … of the moral propriety or even moral necessity for a resort to force and violence, is not the same as preparing a group for violent action and steeling it to such action.”

On this basis, it seems pretty clear that lectures by Anwar al-Awlaki, available on YouTube, and Michael Savage’s talk-radio rants, are both examples of free speech protected by the First Amendment.

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Iran’s blogfather: 19 years in jail for speaking his mind

For anyone blogging in the US or most other democratic countries, it’s easy to take freedom of speech for granted. The case of Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian-Canadian blogger who was just sentenced to 19 years in prison, is a salutary reminder of the dangers individuals face when simply voicing their thoughts in a country like Iran. Earlier reports that he might get a death sentence are believed to have been a way to make his actual sentence appear in some way lenient.

At IPS, Omid Memarian writes:

Arrested in October 2008, Derakhshan had been charged with “cooperation with hostile states” and “propagating against the regime”, among other counts, the site said. In addition to the lengthy prison term, he was fined and banned from membership in political parties and work in the media for a period of five years.

“We are shocked,” one of Derakhshan’s relatives told IPS on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case and fears of a backlash by security forces. “We never expected this to happen. Even according to Iranian laws, he has not done anything to deserve such a harsh sentence.”

Neither the family nor Derakhshan’s lawyer was aware of the sentence until it appeared on Mashreq’s website. His relative told IPS that Derakhshan did say that after two years in prison, “My state of uncertainty has finally ended,” referring to his long detention without any progress in his case.

Mohammad Ali Mahdavi, Derakhshan’s lawyer, told IPS that the verdict still has not been announced even to him. “I’m waiting for the official announcement to start working on the defence bill for the appeals court,” he said, adding, “I prefer to defend my client rather than bringing the case to the media as it might endanger the fate of the case at this phase.”

Judge Abolqasem Salavati is amongst three judges who are well-known for issuing long and harsh sentences for political prisoners, particularly the post-election detainees. His rulings have included the death sentence and numerous long-term prison sentences.

“I believe that first of all, the charges are totally unfounded, and the verdict demonstrates the injustice that many people have been talking about all these years,” Nikahang Kowsar, an award-winning Iranian cartoonist and blogger based in Toronto, where Derakhshan used to live, told IPS.

“Hossein wasn’t a very nice guy to many of us,” Kowsar said. “He criticised many journalists, bloggers and activists for being critical of the Iranian regime and ridiculing Iran’s leaders. He called us ‘agents of neo-liberalism’ or ‘enemies of Iran’ and tried to portray us as the ones willing to sell our nation to the West, but he was absolutely entitled to express his mind.”

Derakhshan, also known as Hoder, has been dubbed Iran’s “Blogfather” for his role in promoting blogging among Iranians via his popular website, hoder.com.

Immediately following the reform era in 1999, Derakhshan was a technology and internet columnist for one of the reformist newspapers in Tehran. In 2000, he moved to Canada and continued his work as a full-time blogger in Toronto.

In 2006, Derakhshan traveled to Israel as a Canadian citizen, a trip that caused a huge controversy in Iran and abroad, as Iranian law forbids Iranian citizens from traveling to Israel.

“We have a saying in Iran: ‘There is freedom of speech in Iran, but there is no freedom after speech in Iran’,” said Kowsar. “His captors are willing to make an example of him for others,” he added.

Derakhshan’s former wife, Marjan Alema was interviewed on Canadian television earlier today:

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Expanding secrecy and diminishing privacy in Obama’s America

The US government might not have enough evidence to issue an arrest warrant for a US citizen but it claims the right to kill such a person and to keep secret its reasons for doing so.

The U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi is now on the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command capture-or-kill list of suspected terrorists. He is not however on the FBI’s most-wanted terrorist list and has not been indicted. It is believed that he is being hunted down and that he will be killed, if his exact whereabouts become known, but even if that is the case, this “does not foreclose Anwar al-Aulaqi’s access to the courts,” claim Barack H Obama, Robert M Gates and Leon E Panetta, the defendants in a federal case brought by Aulaqi’s father.

Nasser al-Aulaqi has an old-fashioned conception of justice and believes his son has a right to due process and not be subject to a summary execution.

As Glenn Greenwald points out:

[W]hat’s most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is “state secrets”: in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are “state secrets,” and thus no court may adjudicate their legality.

At the very same time that this administration is pushing to expand the boundaries of state secrecy and extra-judicial power it also wants to restrict citizens’ rights to privacy as it seeks sweeping new regulations for the internet that would provide the government with the means to access all electronic communications.

The New York Times reports:

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

In the post 9/11 national security culture, arguments in favor of the expansion of government power are invariably framed in terms of enhancing the security services’ ability to track down “bad guys.” But as the article notes, enhanced surveillance capabilities will also create opportunities of others.

Several privacy and technology advocates argued that requiring interception capabilities would create holes that would inevitably be exploited by hackers.

Steven M. Bellovin, a Columbia University computer science professor, pointed to an episode in Greece: In 2005, it was discovered that hackers had taken advantage of a legally mandated wiretap function to spy on top officials’ phones, including the prime minister’s.

“I think it’s a disaster waiting to happen,” he said. “If they start building in all these back doors, they will be exploited.”

The Greek case — sometimes referred to as the Greek Watergate — is interesting for several reasons. As the Times in another report today on the Stuxnet attack notes, “The level of skill needed to pull off the [Greek] operation and the targets strongly indicated that the culprit was a government.”

Indeed, the list of targets alone makes it hard to imagine that this was anything other than an intelligence agency-run operation. The phones bugged included not only those of the Greek prime minister and his wife but also, IEEE Spectrum reported, those of:

…the ministers of national defense, foreign affairs, and justice, the mayor of Athens, and the Greek European Union commissioner… Others belonged to members of civil rights organizations, peace activists, and antiglobalization groups; senior staff at the ministries of National Defense, Public Order, Merchant Marine, and Foreign Affairs; the New Democracy ruling party; the Hellenic Navy general staff; and a Greek-American employee at the United States Embassy in Athens.

Given the context of the then-upcoming 2004 Athens Olympics which were widely regarded as a potential target for a major act of terrorism, it seems quite likely that this was a CIA-run operation.

Since we live in what is still widely regarded as the “freest” nation on earth, as the Obama administration quietly moves to expand its powers, we should have no doubt that the national security culture that is being established here as a new normal, will also serve as a model for other nations that will justify even more extreme restrictions on civil liberties by virtue of the similarities these measures bear to the American way.

The architecture of world government is not being crafted at the United Nations but behind closed doors at the NSA and the CIA. The people we should be most afraid of are the people who promise to make us feel safe.

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New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s remarks on the proposed mosque and community center in Lower Manhattan

On Tuesday August 3 2010, Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined NYC City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and religious leaders from across New York City at an event on Governor’s Island. He spoke about the importance of religious freedom and the great tradition of tolerance and diversity that has characterized New York City since its founding.

“We have come here to Governors Island to stand where the earliest settlers first set foot in New Amsterdam, and where the seeds of religious tolerance were first planted. We’ve come here to see the inspiring symbol of liberty that, more than 250 years later, would greet millions of immigrants in the harbor, and we come here to state as strongly as ever – this is the freest City in the world. That’s what makes New York special and different and strong.

“Our doors are open to everyone – everyone with a dream and a willingness to work hard and play by the rules. New York City was built by immigrants, and it is sustained by immigrants – by people from more than a hundred different countries speaking more than two hundred different languages and professing every faith. And whether your parents were born here, or you came yesterday, you are a New Yorker.

“We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That’s life and it’s part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11.

“On that day, 3,000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn’t want us to enjoy the freedom to profess our own faiths, to speak our own minds, to follow our own dreams and to live our own lives.

“Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish. And it is a freedom that, even here in a City that is rooted in Dutch tolerance, was hard-won over many years. In the mid-1650s, the small Jewish community living in Lower Manhattan petitioned Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant for the right to build a synagogue – and they were turned down.

“In 1657, when Stuyvesant also prohibited Quakers from holding meetings, a group of non-Quakers in Queens signed the Flushing Remonstrance, a petition in defense of the right of Quakers and others to freely practice their religion. It was perhaps the first formal, political petition for religious freedom in the American colonies – and the organizer was thrown in jail and then banished from New Amsterdam.

“In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion – and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780’s – St. Peter’s on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center.

“This morning, the City’s Landmark Preservation Commission unanimously voted not to extend landmark status to the building on Park Place where the mosque and community center are planned. The decision was based solely on the fact that there was little architectural significance to the building. But with or without landmark designation, there is nothing in the law that would prevent the owners from opening a mosque within the existing building. The simple fact is this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship.

“The government has no right whatsoever to deny that right – and if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question – should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here. This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions, or favor one over another.

“The World Trade Center Site will forever hold a special place in our City, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves – and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans – if we said ‘no’ to a mosque in Lower Manhattan.

“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11 and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values – and play into our enemies’ hands – if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists – and we should not stand for that.

“For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetime – as important a test – and it is critically important that we get it right.

“On September 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked ‘What God do you pray to?’ ‘What beliefs do you hold?’

“The attack was an act of war – and our first responders defended not only our City but also our country and our Constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very Constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights – and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.

“Of course, it is fair to ask the organizers of the mosque to show some special sensitivity to the situation – and in fact, their plan envisions reaching beyond their walls and building an interfaith community. By doing so, it is my hope that the mosque will help to bring our City even closer together and help repudiate the false and repugnant idea that the attacks of 9/11 were in any way consistent with Islam. Muslims are as much a part of our City and our country as the people of any faith and they are as welcome to worship in Lower Manhattan as any other group. In fact, they have been worshipping at the site for the better part of a year, as is their right.

“The local community board in Lower Manhattan voted overwhelming to support the proposal and if it moves forward, I expect the community center and mosque will add to the life and vitality of the neighborhood and the entire City.

“Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure – and there is no neighborhood in this City that is off limits to God’s love and mercy, as the religious leaders here with us today can attest.”

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Obama administration in danger of establishing ‘new normal’ with worst Bush-era policies

The Obama administration has repudiated some of the Bush administration’s most egregious national security policies but is in danger of institutionalizing others permanently into law, thereby creating a troubling “new normal,” according to a new report released today by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Establishing a New Normal: National Security, Civil Liberties, and Human Rights Under the Obama Administration,” an 18-month review of the Obama administration’s record on national security issues affecting civil liberties, concludes that the current administration’s record on issues of national security and civil liberties is decidedly mixed: President Obama has made great strides in some areas, such as his auspicious first steps to categorically prohibit torture, outlaw the CIA’s use of secret overseas detention sites and release the Bush administration’s torture memos, but he has failed to eliminate some of the worst policies put in place by President Bush, such as military commissions and indefinite detention. He has also expanded the Bush administration’s “targeted killing” program.

The 22-page report, which was researched and written by staff in the ACLU’s National Security Project and Washington Legislative Office, reviews the administration’s record in the areas of transparency, torture and accountability, detention, targeted killing, military commissions, speech and surveillance and watchlists. [ACLU press release.]

(Download the ACLU report here.)

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America’s national security protection racket

Every year, the images of a national security state careening out of control, as depicted in Terry Gilliam’s 1985 movie Brazil, become eerily more realistic. In his Ministry of Information, the underlings sneak their entertainment when the overseer steps out of sight, but at the National Counterterrorism Center (a “dumping ground for bad analysts“), entertainment (otherwise known as cable news) is on constant big-screen display.

The Washington Post‘s investigation into “Top Secret America” reveals two sadly predictable tendencies:

1. That the default position inside the US government remains: any problem can be solved if enough money is thrown at it, and
2. the primary responsibility of an investigative reporter dealing with a story like this is supposedly to focus on whether taxpayers’ money is being well-spent and making us safer.

The first feature article in the series says:

At least 20 percent of the government organizations that exist to fend off terrorist threats were established or refashioned in the wake of 9/11. Many that existed before the attacks grew to historic proportions as the Bush administration and Congress gave agencies more money than they were capable of responsibly spending.

The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, for example, has gone from 7,500 employees in 2002 to 16,500 today. The budget of the National Security Agency, which conducts electronic eavesdropping, doubled. Thirty-five FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces became 106. It was phenomenal growth that began almost as soon as the Sept. 11 attacks ended.

Nine days after the attacks, Congress committed $40 billion beyond what was in the federal budget to fortify domestic defenses and to launch a global offensive against al-Qaeda. It followed that up with an additional $36.5 billion in 2002 and $44 billion in 2003. That was only a beginning.

With the quick infusion of money, military and intelligence agencies multiplied. Twenty-four organizations were created by the end of 2001, including the Office of Homeland Security and the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Task Force. In 2002, 37 more were created to track weapons of mass destruction, collect threat tips and coordinate the new focus on counterterrorism. That was followed the next year by 36 new organizations; and 26 after that; and 31 more; and 32 more; and 20 or more each in 2007, 2008 and 2009.

In all, at least 263 organizations have been created or reorganized as a response to 9/11. Each has required more people, and those people have required more administrative and logistic support: phone operators, secretaries, librarians, architects, carpenters, construction workers, air-conditioning mechanics and, because of where they work, even janitors with top-secret clearances.

The report continues:

Not far from the Dulles Toll Road, the CIA has expanded into two buildings that will increase the agency’s office space by one-third. To the south, Springfield is becoming home to the new $1.8 billion National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency headquarters, which will be the fourth-largest federal building in the area and home to 8,500 employees. Economic stimulus money is paying hundreds of millions of dollars for this kind of federal construction across the region.

It’s not only the number of buildings that suggests the size and cost of this expansion, it’s also what is inside: banks of television monitors. “Escort-required” badges. X-ray machines and lockers to store cellphones and pagers. Keypad door locks that open special rooms encased in metal or permanent dry wall, impenetrable to eavesdropping tools and protected by alarms and a security force capable of responding within 15 minutes. Every one of these buildings has at least one of these rooms, known as a SCIF, for sensitive compartmented information facility. Some are as small as a closet; others are four times the size of a football field.

SCIF size has become a measure of status in Top Secret America, or at least in the Washington region of it. “In D.C., everyone talks SCIF, SCIF, SCIF,” said Bruce Paquin, who moved to Florida from the Washington region several years ago to start a SCIF construction business. “They’ve got the penis envy thing going. You can’t be a big boy unless you’re a three-letter agency and you have a big SCIF.”

SCIFs are not the only must-have items people pay attention to. Command centers, internal television networks, video walls, armored SUVs and personal security guards have also become the bling of national security.

“You can’t find a four-star general without a security detail,” said one three-star general now posted in Washington after years abroad. “Fear has caused everyone to have stuff. Then comes, ‘If he has one, then I have to have one.’ It’s become a status symbol.”

Among the most important people inside the SCIFs are the low-paid employees carrying their lunches to work to save money. They are the analysts, the 20- and 30-year-olds making $41,000 to $65,000 a year, whose job is at the core of everything Top Secret America tries to do.

At its best, analysis melds cultural understanding with snippets of conversations, coded dialogue, anonymous tips, even scraps of trash, turning them into clues that lead to individuals and groups trying to harm the United States.

Their work is greatly enhanced by computers that sort through and categorize data. But in the end, analysis requires human judgment, and half the analysts are relatively inexperienced, having been hired in the past several years, said a senior ODNI official. Contract analysts are often straight out of college and trained at corporate headquarters.

Nine years after the 9/11 attacks, the United States has a bloated national security structure of questionable effectiveness, at fantastic cost, and with very little accountability. Yet the analysis implies that if the system was more efficient and could indeed deliver as promised by making America safer, then this would indeed be a good thing.

But do we need to be safer or simply less afraid?

The explosion in the growth of the national security economy occurred right at the moment that the technology industry was desperate for support. The internet bubble had burst, an IPO no longer offered a path to quick fortunes for companies that had yet to develop an effective business model, so if the stock market was no longer willing to throw mountains of cash at speculative technological innovation, in the post 9/11 economy, the US government quickly became the investor of choice — at least for companies that could make a halfway plausible claim that their niche expertise might in some way enhance US national security.

If greed was the engine of economic growth of the 90s, fear has demonstrated its economic value for most of the last decade. But what neither greed nor fear do is to improve the quality of life. That only happens when we look at the ways our lives are impoverished and address those needs.

The need to feel safer is a need that has in large part been manufactured by those eager to capitalize on the economic value of fear.

Just suppose that after 9/11 George Bush’s response had been this: clean up the mess in New York and Washington, improve security on airlines so no one could hijack a plane with a pocket knife, and then be done with it. Would we not now be living in a much better world?

Perhaps we should be less afraid of those who might attack us than those who are in the business of protecting us. Top secret America looks like the biggest protection racket ever created.

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The end of an era?

A few hours before Gordon Brown resigned as Britain’s prime minister, Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former communications director said: “I think the reason why I’ve got involved in the election campaign is because I really think it would be terrible for Britain if David Cameron was prime minister and there was a Tory government, but if that is what happens we’ll just have to accept that. I hope that can be prevented.”

Anyone who lived in Britain through the Thatcher era has good reason to view the return of a Tory government as potentially terrible, but there is one prospect that would be even worse: the continued influence of people like Alastair Campbell.

The final effort of the master of spin to thwart the return to power of the Conservatives was to conjure the prospect of a “progressive alliance” — even when the numbers didn’t quite add up — but as soon as it became clear that that wasn’t going to happen, Campbell rushed to announce the imminent publication of his tell-all diaries. His loss of political influence does no doubt open up fertile new commercial opportunities.

But as for the arrival of a much-dreaded Tory government, the fact that it will instead be a “Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition” — it was the new Conservative prime minister David Cameron who put his partners first — should not, as Jonathan Freedland points out, be seen as a construction of mere political expedience.

Since taking over in 2005, the Tory leader has tried to recast his party as one with which liberal Britons could feel comfortable – modern, tolerant, environmentally aware. That has been an uphill struggle, as the failure to “seal the deal” in last week’s election confirms. Yet at a stroke, Cameron has rammed his point home. How, runs the logic, could anyone dispute the liberal credentials of the new prime minister now? His government is packed full of Liberals. Cameron had always tried to rebrand himself as a liberal Conservative. Today he could speak of his “liberal Conservative government” – and the phrase was no longer empty.

Indeed, Britain’s first coalition government since the Second World War opens up a possibility that should be watched with keen attention by observers who might otherwise have no particular interest in British politics. The era where image-makers such as Campbell turned policymaking into an utterly unprincipled message-shaping process, may finally be drawing to a close as the communications apparatus of a single party will no longer hold sway. David Cameron will not have the luxury of merely needing to sell his message to a friendly media but will have to persuade Liberal-Democrat partners much less willing to swallow the Conservative spin.

The political mechanics of consensus and compromise will be hard enough to manage without the additional strain of attempting to balance the competing demands of two communications teams. For that reason, there is a chance that the spin doctors will be sidelined or their influence at least diminished if they further complicate an already complex process.

Beyond Britain’s slavish allegiance to Washington during the Blair years, nothing represented the Labour government’s abandonment of principle more clearly over the last decade than the relentless erosion of civil liberties in the name of security. There is now the prospect that this trend will be reversed.

Yesterday, Andy Worthington wrote:

Those of us who are concerned about the erosion of civil liberties under the Labour government, and the assault on human rights as part of the “War on Terror,” will be watching the government closely. On ID cards, both parties pledged to scrap Labour’s much-criticized scheme, and wasted no time in announcing today that the scheme would indeed be scrapped. To follow, apparently, are plans to scrap the next generation of biometric passports, to review the libel laws in England and Wales “to protect freedom of speech,” and to regulate the use of CCTV cameras, in particular as used by local authorities. As Channel 4 News’ Home correspondent Andy Davies explained today, “There will almost certainly be a reduction in the capacity for the DNA database to store samples taken from people arrested but not convicted. The national child database in England (‘Contactpoint’) is likely to be abandoned.”

As Andy Davies also explained, civil liberties is “one area where the coalition parties have a struck a similar tone in recent years … In their manifestos, the Lib Dems complain[ed] that the UK has become a ‘surveillance state,’ the Tories bemoan[ed] a ‘database state.’ Both have made significant pledges to roll back what they describe as intrusive, authoritarian executive powers introduced under Labour.”

How this seemingly happy cooperation will translate to questions of terrorism and human rights remains to be seen. Andy Davies noted that “the controversial control order regime could be one of the first Labour counter-terror initiatives to disappear under the new National Security Council.” He added that “the Tories call the orders ‘inherently objectionable’ and want a review” and “the Lib Dems have said they’ll cancel the whole project.”

And if anyone is in any doubt about just how badly eroded civil liberties in Britain have become, watch David Hoffman, a photojournalist who lives in east London, describe how he got handcuffed by police officers who forced their way into his own home on election day after he displayed a mildly offensive political poster in his living room window.

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Israel’s censorship scandal

Judith Miller reports:

You’ve probably never heard of Anat Kamm. Few people have. But for nearly four months, the 23-year-old Israeli journalist has been under house arrest in Tel Aviv for allegedly stealing and leaking secret Israeli defense ministry documents to a journalist from Ha’aretz, one of Israel’s leading dailies.

Kamm would love to tell her side of the story, her friends and associates tell me. So would her lawyers. So, too, would Dov Alfon, the chief editor of Ha’aretz, a liberal paper, and Uri Blau, the reporter to whom Kamm allegedly leaked the documents she was said to have copied while she was completing her military service.

But they cannot talk or write about the espionage case. In an extremely rare action, an Israeli court has ordered the Israeli media not to publish or broadcast a word about Kamm, the allegations against her, or the investigation that has led Blau, the Ha’aretz reporter involved, to flee to London. For almost four months, Blau has been in self-imposed exile there to avoid answering questions about how and from whom he obtained the confidential defense department documents that are said to have resulted in a spate of stories alleging personal and institutional misconduct on the part of the Israeli Defense Forces, the hallowed IDF, and some of its senior officials.

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The return of the neocons

The return of the neocons
By David Margolick, Newsweek, January 22, 2010

Technically, there is nothing “neo” about conservatives like Robert Kagan, the historian and another Washington Post columnist, or John Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary; each is a son of one of neoconservatism’s founding fathers. Indeed, no strain in American politics is so dynastic. It is akin to the right-wing Likud Party in Israel, whose religion and politics, world view, and succession rituals the neocons often share. The definitions, and analogy, are inexact, but both groups have recent ties to Europe and are haunted by the Holocaust, which has left them feeling wounded, suspicious, and sometimes bellicose, determined never again to be naive or to trust the world’s good intentions. Both spent decades in the po-litical wilderness before miraculously acquiring power; both begat “princes” who defied the normal generational tensions and allied themselves with their kingly fathers. When Bill Kristol rose to praise Irving that morning, he was really picking up his scepter.

Had you Googled “neoconservative” and “death” that day, four days after the 89-year-old Kristol expired, you’d have found lots on their long-rumored—and for some, much-anticipated and -savored—demise. On both the left and right, neoconservatism was deemed a spent force. Its ideas, Foreign Policy magazine had pronounced, “lie buried in the sands of Iraq.”

But obituaries can be premature. At the moment, in fact, the neocons seem resurrected. One of their own, Frederick Kagan of AEI (Robert’s younger brother), helped turn around the war in Iraq by devising and pushing for the surge there. More recent-ly, President Obama—whose foreign–policy pronouncements (nuanced, multi-lateral, interdependent) and style (low-key, self-critical, conciliatory, collegial) were a repudiation of neoconservative assertiveness—has swung their way, or so they believe. First, he’s sending an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, nearly as many as leading neocons had sought. Then came his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, which, with its acknowledgment of the need for force, its nod to dissidents in Iran and elsewhere, and its talk about good and evil, was surprisingly congenial.

As if on cue, a Nigerian man with explosives in his crotch nearly brought down an American airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day, leaving the neocons feeling further vindicated and energized. Obama, who’d ratcheted up his rhetoric after an initial response that Bill Kristol and other neocons considered too tepid, had been “mugged by reality,” Kristol declared. It was an obvious homage to his father, who’d long ago defined “neocon” as a liberal to whom just that had happened. “Whether they praise or denounce Obama, the neocons are winning,” says Jacob Heilbrunn, a senior editor at The National Interest and author of They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons (2008). “They’ve got him embracing the surge in Afghanistan and on the run for being ‘soft on terrorists.’ Either way, he ends up catering to them.” With Obama further weakened by an electoral repudiation in Massachusetts, that process might only intensify. [continued…]

Obama quietly continues to defend Bush’s terror policies
By Marisa Taylor, McClatchy, January 22, 2010

Although the FBI has acknowledged it improperly obtained thousands of Americans’ phone records for years, the Obama administration continues to assert that the bureau can obtain them without any formal legal process or court oversight.

The FBI revealed this stance in a newly released report, troubling critics who’d hoped the bureau had been chastened enough by its own abuses to drop such a position.

In further support of the legal authority, however, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel backed the FBI in a written opinion issued this month.

The opinion by the OLC — the section that wrote the memos that justified enhanced interrogation techniques during the last administration — appears to be yet another sign that the Obama administration can be just as assertive as Bush’s in claiming sweeping and controversial anti-terrorism powers. [continued…]

CIA deaths prompt surge in U.S. drone strikes
By Scott Shane and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, January 22, 2010

… officials deny that vengeance is driving the increased attacks, though one called the drone strikes “the purest form of self-defense.”

Officials point to other factors. For one, Pakistan recently dropped restrictions on the drone program it had requested last fall to accompany a ground offensive against militants in South Waziristan. And tips on the whereabouts of extremists ebb and flow unpredictably.

A C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano, declined to comment on the drone strikes. But he said, “The agency’s counterterrorism operations — lawful, aggressive, precise and effective — continue without pause.”

The strikes, carried out from a secret base in Pakistan and controlled by satellite link from C.I.A. headquarters in Virginia, have been expanded by President Obama and praised by both parties in Congress as a potent weapon against terrorism that puts no American lives at risk. That calculation must be revised in light of the Khost bombing, which revealed the critical presence of C.I.A. officers in dangerous territory to direct the strikes. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — The question that the New York Times‘ Washington-based reporters (true to form) fail to address is this: If the Khost bombing killed CIA officers who were critical in choosing the targets for drone attacks, how have subsequent targets been chosen? Are we supposed to believe that right in the aftermath of this huge blow to the CIA’s drone operation, a flood of valuable intelligence swept in?

How convenient… and improbable.

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FBI broke law for years in phone record searches

FBI broke law for years in phone record searches
By John Solomon and Carrie Johnson, Washington Post, January 19, 2010

The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.

E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.

A Justice Department inspector general’s report due out this month is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, bureau officials confirmed. [continued…]

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Obama confidant’s spine-chilling proposal

Obama confidant’s spine-chilling proposal
By Glenn Greenwald, Salon, January 15, 2010

Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama’s closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama’s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs.” In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-“independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper’s abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.

Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.” He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging (on the ground that those who don’t believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government). This program would target those advocating false “conspiracy theories,” which they define to mean: “an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.” Sunstein’s 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger, and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story’s Daniel Tencer. [continued…]

Editor’s Comment — Glenn Greenwald’s whole analysis is well worth reading but I’ll make a couple of points. If Sunstein gave more attention to where conspiracy theories come from, he’d come at this issue from a completely different direction.

Buried deep in his paper is the following remark:

… we have conjectured that there is a causal link between the prevalence of conspiracy theories and the relative absence of civil liberties and a well-functioning marketplace of ideas, so it is unsurprising that such theories are even more widespread in the Muslim world than in the United States.

But as soon as has he makes this important observation he goes on to imply that the US government can exploit political repression overseas to its advantage. He notes that in the foreign arena “the U.S. enjoys greater freedom of action, in part because domestic U.S. politics will tolerate some actions abroad that it would not tolerate if taken at home.”

What Sunstein fails to do is look at the psychological dynamics in play in situations that provide fertile ground for the proliferation of conspiracy theories.

The US, relative the Middle East, might enjoy the protection of civil liberties and a marketplace of ideas — though I don’t know that anyone could seriously describe the latter as well-functioning — yet the appetite for conspiracy theories here, particularly relating to 9/11, is huge.

This is a reflection of two things:
1. Massive and historically deep-rooted mistrust of government, and
2. The widespread and well-founded belief that the citizens of this country exercise little influence over the workings of government.

Both of these factors (and especially the second one) serve to reinforce a profound sense of the grossly inequitable distribution of political power and a subjective experience in which government appears all-powerful and the individual essentially powerless.

The instinctive response to feelings of powerlessness is to grasp hold of a narrative of agency. Rather than feel that we are living in a world out of control, we prefer to believe that the control we lack is possessed by someone or something else. That might be a supposedly benign entity such as a loving God, or alternatively a cloaked and dangerous entity: the US government, a global Zionist conspiracy, aliens… you name it.

The psychological comfort that a belief in malevolent agency provides, is that it tells us we are not truly impotent but we have been deprived of the opportunity to exert our natural power. We are imprisoned but we can still rattle the bars.

Circling back to the problem that Sunstein wants to address, a real solution would not involve any of his preferred Orwellian machinations.

If the US government wants to challenge dangerous conspiracy theories it needs to pursue two far-reaching political goals:

1. Make government more trustworthy.
2. Turn “government of the people, by the people, for the people” into a reality.

For as long as neither of these goals have effectively been accomplished, conspiracy theories will remain popular. They should be seen for what they are: a symptom of an underlying socio-political disease; not the disease itself. People who think like Sunstein are part of the problem; not the solution.

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George W. Obama

George W. Obama
By Nat Hentoff, Village Voice, January 12, 2010

Before President Obama, it was grimly accurate to write, as I often did in the Voice, that George W. Bush came into the presidency with no discernible background in constitutional civil liberties or any acquaintance with the Constitution itself. Accordingly, he turned the “war on terror” over to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld—ardent believers that the Constitution presents grave obstacles in a time of global jihad.

But now, Bush’s successor—who actually taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago—is continuing much of the Bush-Cheney parallel government and, in some cases, is going much further in disregarding our laws and the international treaties we’ve signed.

On January 22, 2009, the apostle of “change we can believe in” proclaimed: “Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of my presidency.” But four months into his first year in command, Obama instructed his attorney general, Eric Holder, to present in a case, Jewel v. National Security Agency, a claim of presidential “sovereign immunity” that not even Dick Cheney had the arrant chutzpah to propose. [continued…]

Poll: Most Americans would trim liberties to be safer
By Steven Thomma, McClatchy, January 12, 2010

After a recent attempted terrorist attack set off a debate about full-body X-rays at airports, a new McClatchy-Ipsos poll finds that Americans lean more toward giving up some of their liberty in exchange for more safety.

The survey found 51 percent of Americans agreeing that “it is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.”

At the same time, 36 percent agreed that “some of the government’s proposals will go too far in restricting the public’s civil liberties.” [continued…]

The U.S. military, al-Qaeda, and a war of futility
By Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse, TomDispatch, January 14, 2010

In his book on World War II in the Pacific, War Without Mercy, John Dower tells an extraordinary tale about the changing American image of the Japanese fighting man. In the period before the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, it was well accepted in military and political circles that the Japanese were inferior fighters on the land, in the air, and at sea — “little men,” in the phrase of the moment. It was a commonplace of “expert” opinion, for instance, that the Japanese had supposedly congenital nearsightedness and certain inner-ear defects, while lacking individualism, making it hard to show initiative. In battle, the result was poor pilots in Japanese-made (and so inferior) planes, who could not fly effectively at night or launch successful attacks.

In the wake of their precision assault on Pearl Harbor, their wiping out of U.S. air power in the Philippines in the first moments of the war, and a sweeping set of other victories, the Japanese suddenly went from “little men” to supermen in the American imagination (without ever passing through a human phase). They became “invincible” — natural-born jungle- and night-fighters, as well as “utterly ruthless, utterly cruel and utterly blind to any of the values which make up our civilization.”

Sound familiar? It should. Following September 11, 2001, news headlines screamed “A NEW DAY OF INFAMY,” and the attacks were instantly labeled “the Pearl Harbor of the twenty-first century.” Soon enough, al-Qaeda, like the Japanese in 1941, went from a distant threat — the Bush administration, on coming into office, paid next to no attention to al-Qaeda’s possible plans — to a team of arch-villains with little short of superpowers. After all, they had already destroyed some of the mightiest buildings on the planet, were known to be on the verge of seizing weapons of mass destruction, and, if nothing was done, might soon enough turn the Muslim world into their “caliphate.” [continued…]

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