The Talking Dog

January 12, 2014, Fighting the power with the talking dog

Yesterday marked the twelfth "anniversary" of America's most visible demonstration of its post-Constitutional existence, the opening of its Caribbean resort gulag at Guantanamo Bay Cuba. Somewhere around 150 protesters braved Washington, D.C.'s rain for an event that started across from the White House and proceeded to the National Museum of American History; this account offers a picture (that's probably me there in the front row in the orange rain poncho).

The most poignant part of the event took place after it "officially" ended, as a group of activists "occupied" the interior of the museum, for a human tableau depicting hoods and orange jumpsuit wearing protesters posed in front of an exhibit on the history of American wars entitled "The Price of Freedom," which included, among other things, a reading of a letter from cleared-for-release-Guantanamo-prisoner Shaker Aamer with a background of American patriotic martial music emanating from the museum's multimedia exhibit.

One of the subtexts your talking dog picked up from overheard conversations with activists concerns (my college classmate) President Obama's political dodge of his own responsibility-- and I mean exclusively his and no one else's-- for this continued abomination, because he managed to successfully blame Congress, especially the Republicans, for tying his hands. Well, he asked for relaxed standards for release of prisoners in a National Defense Authorization Act, and he got it... But, although a few prisoners have recently been released, it's still proceeding at a comparative trickle. And so, the little pressure now, after a dozen years, to end this... will, we hope... pick up steam.

Fight the power!

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January 1, 2014, Happy new year

I resolve (maybe) to blog just a little more than last year. That shouldn't be too hard.

Might this be the year our mighty, but nowhere near as mighty as it pretends, nation, finally begins to recognize reality? One of the greatest slogans, in my view, of our nation's most preeminent industry-- propaganda-- is from a margarine company whose name I forgot, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

The sad reality is that, while it isn't nice to fool Mother Nature, she ain't no fool. It's ourselves we've been fooling, by believing a propaganda machine telling us of high stock prices and low unemployment and now the huge throbbing lie of a new "energy renaissance".

In the end, as daunting as our social, environmental, economic, moral and other coming crises are, my fear is of the most troubling failure-- that of imagination...failure of mindset...that a faulty belief system itself is as deadly as the unsustainable arrangements it creates.

I can only put stuff out there, be it about Guantanamo Bay, or the economy (such as it is) or urban gardening or the law or whatever... and hope it triggers something in mindset, that something clicks about how much of our reality is simply about fitting things into established narratives... Because we're not fooling Mother Nature... only ourselves...May this be the year we stop that, and conform our hearts and minds to reality, and not an establishment driven fantasy or parody of it.

Happy new year.

December 23, 2013, Happy Festivus

We mean it man. We love our airing of grievances. And now...the feats of strength.

December 11, 2013, TD Blog Interview with John Hickman

John Hickman is Associate Professor of Government and International Studies at Berry College in Mt. Berry, Georgia. He is the author of Selling Guantanamo: Exploding the Propaganda Surrounding America's Most Notorious Prison, in which he offers a detailed critique of the "official narrative" the public has been provided surrounding Guantanamo Bay and the men it holds. On December 11, 2013, I had the privilege of interviewing John Hickman by telephone. What follows are my interview notes, as corrected by Professor Hickman.

The Talking Dog Traditional first question... Where were you on 11 Sept., 2001?

John Hickman: I was sitting at my desk here in Evans Hall on the campus of Berry College, then as I am right now. One of my academic specialties is election research-- often dry, quantitative research -- and that's what I was working on when a student telephoned to tell me to get to a television set immediately. Walked down to the Evans Hall faculty lounge, and watched the horrors unfold with other faculty members and students.

The Talking Dog What got you, a mild-mannered government professor at Berry College in Georgia, interested in the subject of Guantanamo, and in particular, in its propaganda underpinnings?

John Hickman: I note that there are probably a number of more mild-mannered professors here at Berry College (which I should note is actually the largest contiguous college campus in the world at 28,000 acres, here in Northwestern Georgia-- with 2,000 students, we have an acres per student ratio!) It's a beautiful campus, if anyone is interested in visiting! Back to the question, I grew up on Army bases. I was constantly around evidence of the power of the state, at bases in Wurzburg, Germany, El Paso, Texas and other locales. Later, I found myself in Oxford, Mississippi in the last days of segregation. I became acutely aware that some people would just believe anything-- such as older people who believed in nonsensical justifications for segregation and then pitched them to me.

As such, I have always been interested in the power of ideas, and the presentation of those ideas, especially when they are used by the powerful for purposes of deceiving.

In the case of Guantanamo, I watched [former Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld speak about Guantanamo, and I was bothered by his presentation-- his words, his tone, his body language. I note that the Guantanamo decision was an extraordinary one-- and the reasons given for it were implausible on their face. I thought that perhaps there might be a book in this!

I know a number of others have dealt with aspects of the imprisonment itself-- but I wanted to tell the story of the narrative offered for it, and how it both seemed, and it turned out, is, both extraordinary, and implausible.

The Talking Dog Notwithstanding my personal proximity to the WTC on 9-11 (my office was a block away, I lost my job, some people I knew were killed, and my home in Brooklyn and the lungs of myself and my family were subjected to God knows what burning from the site for the next several months), of your reckoning of "the official rationale" for holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay (they represented extraordinary threats to the American people, possessed valuable enemy intelligence, and were awaiting prosecution for terrorism or war crimes), it was the last one-- possible prosecution in a "new Nuremberg" paradigm"-- that first drew me in to the subject, possibly as a matter of professional interest to me as a lawyer. I should also note-- and I will ask specifically about him below-- that I was also extremely concerned about the Jose Padilla situation. I note that after I interviewed attorneys involved in the defense of prisoners set for military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, I learned that the commissions turned out to be the tip of a rather troubling iceberg of hundreds of other men detained at GTMO who should never have been held as prisoners to begin with. Did any of the "official narrative" rationales strike you as particularly more compelling subjects of your interest, as opposed to the others?

John Hickman: What seemed to have caught everyone was "the worst of the worst" language. It struck me that the elevation of a bunch of nobodies into terrorist supermen reminded me of the domestic invention of "super-predator" criminals. It struck me as a brilliant right-wing narrative-- tapping into the anxiety and anger surrounding the September 11th perpetrators combined with the general anxiety about violent crime.

Of course, what was lost on American audiences was why Guantanamo was significant in terms of what it meant for international law, such as the Geneva Conventions. Americans did not pay attention to the broader significance of American unilateralism, whereas European and Asian audiences, perhaps more sensitive to violations and abandonment of those structures in World War II and other recent conflicts, did "get it" in a way that simply didn't register with most Americans. I teach a course in Genocide and War Crimes, and my students learn that much of international humanitarian law originates here in the United States, with the Civil War era Lieber Code. But notwithstanding the American origins of this body of law, somehow, its apparent abandonment seemed to resonate so little with Americans in general.

The Talking Dog You observe that in "the early days" of Guantanamo Bay, decisions were made to exhibit the prisoners to politicians, diplomats, and other elites, and, of course, the press was given a glimpse of the shackled men in orange jumpsuits, which played to cheers domestically, and jeers in the rest of the world (almost without exception). In some sense, I tend to think that many of the decisions surrounding Guantanamo initially, while doubtless doctrinally driven, were rather ad hoc, and in all cases, were driven by domestic political concerns. The question, if I can ever get it out, is whether you believe the orange-jump-suit "perp walks" and the open air kennel cages first shown to the world were anything more than a knee-jerk, ad hoc decision, which, on further reflection, were made politically useful after the fact (which may actually explain all of GTMO detention operations)... or if they were actually intended from the get-go to serve the propaganda equivalent of Roman legions returning with barbarians in chains dragged through the imperial capital... (something as you observed that was also done by American forces with native Americans at times in our history)... or if there is yet another possibility I didn't consider?

John Hickman: Was it intended-- from the outset-- as a spectacle? I am convinced that the answer to this is "YES."

The guys making the decisions were politicians with an acute awareness of how to run campaigns. They even saw longer term time horizons than the next hour or day or short term horizons. They were experienced at making decisions like that, designed to impact both the immediate news cycle and the broader campaign.

Let's just say that many if not most decent human beings are less calculated in their actions than these decision-makers, who make decisions based on the likely public reception of their messages, designed for multiple time horizons. Decisions based on how they were played in news cycles, and whether you win in the end, were calculated, and in the case of the Guantanamo narrative, calculated quite successfully.

The Talking Dog You have observed, quite accurately, that both explicitly and implicitly, journalists, pundits, lawyers, academics, and even released prisoners who authored books about the island prison (many of whom have themselves been the subject of TD blog interviews) endorsed some or most of the elements of the official narrative. This leads me to (at least) a two-part question... (a) in some sense, this is almost a meta-problem, straying from the official narrative too far might make it very hard for one to get published (especially in North America), or indeed, it might make it hard even for sympathetic readers to grasp on to the story, and so the question becomes how one could reasonably expect someone that close to the story to express it differently-- or if you like, how would you have preferred the stories to have been expressed?... And (b) the flip side of that question, which I've been trying to deal with for years myself, noting that for the most part the people willing to be interviewed by, say, me, a one-off independent anonymous blogger with a small readership, are generally those for whom "the regular channels" aren't effectively dispensing their message... admittedly, I am not wedded to "the official narrative," but nor am I able to overcome the incessant official-narrative drumbeat ("worst of the worst," "you're with us or you're with the terrorists," "can't be tried but too dangerous to release") that virtually all Americans apparently accept with the same degree of certainty as tomorrow's sunrise... in other words, maybe it's just the first part of the question all over again... but unless one is willing to invite the whole "Susan Sontag" treatment to be brought upon themselves, isn't it just about impossible to avoid the "official narrative," even as one is criticizing it?

John Hickman: Once again, the thing to recognize is that Bush Administration�s official narrative about Guantanamo were spectacularly successful. The messages were repeated with impressive consistency, and audiences started repeating it back to themselves without even thinking about it! Indeed, even those close to the story-- such as former prisoners themselves-- often end up repeating large parts of it! It is an extraordinarily clever narrative. It was put out there-- and other elites, such as the news media, did not challenge it, which was their professional responsibility.

And now to this day, figures such as one of Georgia�s Senators, Saxby Chambliss, just call everyone at Guantanamo "a terrorist." This is an extremely powerful lie.

And yet, many people feel compelled to repeat the lie; it is not even clear if it's even conscious any more-- it's that powerful a narrative.

As a scholar, however, I can speak to a wide range of audiences, and can to that extent, "be free" to challenge it. But it is clear that the effectiveness of the official narrative must be respected, and it must be feared. It's that powerful.

The Talking Dog Following up that last question (or questions?), one of the works you critiqued for advancing "the official narrative" was that of Army linguist Erik Saar, author of "Inside the Wire", whom I interviewed back in 2006. You noted that Saar, himself at GTMO as a linguist there to assist in interrogations, naturally "bought into" the "intelligence gathering" rationale (even as he clearly did not buy into "the worst of the worst" rationale.) I'd ask you about my series of questions and Saar's answers below (my question to you is right after that):

I personally have no doubt of Saar's sincerity in the belief of his responses... my question to you is whether you would be willing, at least in part, to accept the Charlie Foxtrot ("cluster-f*ck") possibility of-- even accepting that the "intel" rationale was patently absurd on its face-- that what was really driving things was the pathological stupidity of senior members of the Bush Administration... [or if you, like, please feel consider Yogi Berra's adage, "in theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, they are different..."] or put another way, that, regardless of the actual facts, whether reasonably or unreasonably, some people in the military-- and possibly higher up in the Bush Administration-- actually believed that if they simply scooped up enough adult Muslim males in South Central Asia and then shipped them to Cuba to be given "the third-degree", someone would have something of intelligence value. Possible... or just absurd? How would you respond to that?

John Hickman: We have to recognize that the "product" out Guantanamo did not have to be effective as intelligence in its own right. It just had to convince the American public that it was, and to effectively signal to the rest of the world that we were changing American foreign policy to jettison such niceties as the Geneva Conventions and other limitations on American assertion of power. On those terms, it succeeded brilliantly!

I grew up on Army bases. Many of my extended family have served in the military. There is a mindset of the loyal soldier that you go forward with your orders and your mission. If, as happens from time to time, that your orders and your mission require you to mouth nonsense, that's just part of the deal. As an academic, I don't have to do that.

I have to say, yet again, that the success of the narrative is there-- as a propaganda success of course, rather than an "intelligence" success, because from the "intel" standpoint, there was little or nothing useful obtained as "an intel" matter from the prisoners at Guantanamo.

The Talking Dog: One area that your answer suggests is the comparison of "the narrative" concerning Guantanamo with the narrative that led us into the Iraq War. Can you discuss these connections?

John Hickman: The Iraq rationales were offered to the public in sequence rather than all at once as with Guantanamo. As one rationale for the Iraq War failed -- be it, Saddam's "WMD" stockpiles, the need to bring "democracy" to Iraq, Saddam's harboring of terrorists, or human rights abuses in Iraq, a new one would be offered. Much of the public eventually recognized that each of these rationales was a fraud of some kind, and hence, the Iraq narrative-- as a narrative-- was ultimately unsuccessful.

What connects Iraq to the Guantanamo narrative, however, is the spectacle of victory. We held the virtual prisoner parade to show that Afghanistan was a quick, decisive victory, which would in turn pave the way for us to go on to the main event-- the Iraq war.

The Talking Dog You have provided a plethora of scholarship and outstanding analysis to conclude that the official narrative was cover for the actual propaganda agenda of GTMO, which you show had three components: (1) the prisoners were put on display as symbols of military victory, (2) the prisoners suffered "enhanced interrogation"-- better known as "torture" (or "cruel and degrading treatment" under international law at an absolute minimum) so that someone could be punished as substitutes for the architects of 9/11 who remained at large, and (3) the prisoners were used as pawns in a neoconservative move to signal a new U.S. foreign policy that ignored the United Nations (and irritating things like the Kyoto protocols), disregarded the Geneva Conventions, and scoffed at the International Criminal Court. Assuming (accurately) that I accept those as the underlying policy rationale for establishing "the legal black hole" on the edge of Cuba, my first question is whether you believe any of those three was the most compelling reason for the Bush Administration's opening of the place-- and for my college classmate Barack Obama to keep it open years after promising to close it... I would argue that (1) and (2) are largely the same reason for American domestic consumption, and that the appearance of Neanderthal-like toughness by both George W. Bush, and later by Barack Obama, ends up being its own political reward (see "Kerry, John"). How would you respond?

John Hickman: I should note that the audiences being pitched to are a little different, depending on whether the person pitching was George W. Bush, or Barack Obama.

That said, the strands of the official narrative fit together nicely for a political decision maker. The narrative wasn't just a "two-fer"-- you get all three of the advantages I describe (a political spectacle of victory, and the public gets to feel avenged and the public still gets to believe "swift justice" will be affected). And furthermore, the various groups of administration officials participating in the Guantanamo decision-making each got something that they wanted, from the standpoint of "there's something in this for me too!"

Looking at Obama specifically, I can only conclude that he must be the kind of guy who pulls bandages off very slowly, so as to avoid even tiny amounts of pain! Viewed through this lens, rather than take on the most powerful (though obviously blatantly false) aspects of the narrative ("worst of the worst") directly, Obama and his people just side-stepped those. The unfortunate effect was that they seemed to implicitly endorse the rest of the narrative! That's part of the power of the original narrative-- even opponents are rightly afraid of it. In trying to avoid conflict, everywhere, Obama has dodged some of "the tougher" issues this way, even as he would be a far more effective leader had he been willing to accept more conflict.

The Talking Dog Same predicate as the previous question, but I would add, as a fourth real rationale for the GTMO project, the prisoners were used as a demonstration project for inserting the "national security wildcard wedge" firmly and permanently into American law; dividends have included "official state secrets" litigation privileges everywhere from lawsuits into improper surveillance of Islamic charities, to torture of GTMO prisoners (such as Binyam Mohammad) or others (such as Maher Arar), to improper eavesdropping on lawyers (the Wilner v. NSA suit for example), and, of recent post-Snowden history,to just about anything involving telecom interception... in that sense, the complete wildcard-- just say "terrorism" and "national security" and the need for the government to actually defend the merits of its own outrageous conduct in lawsuits disappears like magic... as an added bonus, we now have a possible model for brutal treatment for eventual use in the regular American penal system... or put another way, to me, the most compelling development in "the law" of the last dozen years did not involve any of the GTMO cases (Rasul, Hamdi, Hamdan, or Boumediene), but rather that of an American citizen named Jose Padilla (and a legal Qatari immigrant named Saleh al-Mari, to the same effect). It is now established law in at least one federal circuit (the Fourth Circuit based in Richmond) that the President can waive a magic wand called "national security" and arbitrarily incarcerate any citizen (or non-citizen) in a military brig for years, without recourse to the courts or Bill of Rights protections... that the Supreme Court didn't decide the issue that way but rather ducked the question in the name of "federal venue" is not comforting at all... but my question is how you would comment on the same legal geniuses (John Yoo, David Addington, etc.) who gave us "the torture memos" and the other rationales for detention policy in "the war on terror," and may well have used the term "legal black hole" for Guantanamo (while certainly cognizant of its unique "legal purgatory" status), and then later gave us Padilla, have now succeeded in degrading everyone's rights, to the point that at their core, our "rights" are best described as "privileges" or "allowances" the government affords to us rather than, well, "rights," and that THIS RESULT (much of which has been codified by "constitutional scholar" Barack Obama in such gems as the National Defense Authorization Acts), has become a situation that had never before the case [at least, as you have noted, for "non-savages" ... exceptions always seem to have been available as a historical matter for such people as Native Americans, whom the American state treated as second class at best.] I would argue that this was the signal achievement of Guantanamo Bay and post-9-11 American policy. Would you accept that as "an addendum" to your analysis, and if not, why not?

John HIckman: My response to that is "I don't know." I wish I had a clearer answer. As you frame it, did the architects of Guantanamo see it as a component of a larger, more powerful national security state? You make a compelling case that they did. Many worry about the erosion of liberty and due process rights since September 11th. In some ways, the national security state has expanded in ways we can't even detect. Snowden and the other recent leakers have revealed what was there, but what we apparently didn't and couldn't see-- as if chalk dust were sprayed over a previously invisible structure.

The American public�what I observe from my students, who may in turn be channeling their parents and the broader society�feels increasing unease about the growth of our "national security state"-- the level of surveillance, secrecy and departures from the rule of law are aspects they find more and more disturbing. People seem more aware of this-- perhaps as never before-- and I take a degree of hope from that.

The Talking Dog Certainly, to me, the most obvious and compelling "official lies" concerning Guantanamo involve the fact that "the high value terror suspects"-- Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and the supposed organizers of the September 11th attacks-- were in CIA "black sites" for years before abruptly and cynically being transferred to Guantanamo just in time to secure passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, thus completely putting the lie to the "intelligence gathering" or "worst of the worst" official rationales for GTMO prior to that time (again, to me). But the military commissions fiasco speaks for itself... far more prisoners have died at Guantanamo than have been convicted in its military commissions (I believe there have been four or five such convictions, all of whom are now legally suspect as they involved "war crimes" that weren't "crimes" at the time they were committed!) Clearly, the commissions have not "brought the perpetrators to swift justice," as over seven years after their arrival, even "the high value detainees'" cases are proceeding at a snail's pace at best. My question is, once again, rather than cynically intended as a subterfuge by Bush (and later, by Obama) to justify the project-- at least at the outset, would it not be fair to believe that the Bush people actually believed that the military people would roll-over and let them have their show-trials rather than actually behave as professionals and try to comport themselves within the law (whether reasonable or not... do you question whether this belief was sincere?)

John Hickman: What I will pull out of this rather long question is to ask and then answer the question of why the established, but false, narrative did not fall apart when the "high value detainees" were moved to Guantanamo, even though all of the elements of the factual basis for Guantanamo were obviously false. And the answer to this is a testament to the underlying strength of the narrative itself.

The "high value detainees" - one of my favorite expressions-- were moved there at the very moment the GTMO narrative was weakening. The high value detainees were moved to there to shore up the basis for the GTMO decision-- and the tactic worked. It was successfully employed to show that there were actual bad guys at Guantanamo!

That said, it certainly would have been preferable to hold real trials in real courtrooms in the United States of America. Both the rest of the world and the United States would have been better off for it. The law is a very good tool for the public solving of certain problems.

But what this episode showed is that even a liberal democratic national public can be led into a desire for vengeance: it's an extremely powerful desire.

Of course, what historical war crimes tribunals-- Nuremberg and Tokyo for example-- do successfully is leave an extremely powerful narration in the form of transcripts and trial evidence, as to show just who the good guys, the bad guys and the by-standers were. The decisions of such courts stand as authoritative statements of responsibility and as such prevent further conflict. In short, trials end disputes.

In the Guantanamo case, however, the military commissions set up were not likely to end up with those kinds of trial transcripts. And the original designers of the Guantanamo arrangement were probably very pleased with that. The Neo-cons and others in the Bush Administration had found a strategy that never ends disputes-- and as such, there remained a continuing motivation to pursue the policy they wanted, specifically, perpetual policing of the Middle East and environs by the United States.

The Talking Dog Is there anything I should have asked you but didn't, or anything else you believe my readers need to know about these subjects, or anything else you'd just like to add?

John Hickman: I think it would be extremely helpful to hold up any news story coming out of Guantanamo-- any news story at all-- and ask how it fits into the established narrative, and virtually any story coming out of Guantanamo should be suspect on first appearance, and subjected to this kind of analysis.

The Talking Dog On behalf of all of my readers, I thank John Hickman for that intriguing interview. Interested readers should check out Selling Guantanamo: Exploding the Propaganda Surrounding America's Most Notorious Prison.

Readers interested in legal issues and related matters associated with the "war on terror" may also find talking dog blog interviews with former Guantanamo military commissions prosecutors Morris Davis and Darrel Vandeveld, with former Guantanamo combatant status review tribunal/"OARDEC" officer Stephen Abraham, with attorneys David Marshall, Jan Kitchel, Eric Lewis, Cori Crider, Michael Mone, Matt O'Hara, Carlos Warner, Matthew Melewski, Stewart "Buz" Eisenberg, Patricia Bronte, Kristine Huskey, Ellen Lubell, Ramzi Kassem, George Clarke, Buz Eisenberg, Steven Wax, Wells Dixon, Rebecca Dick, Wesley Powell, Martha Rayner, Angela Campbell, Stephen Truitt and Charles Carpenter, Gaillard Hunt, Robert Rachlin, Tina Foster, Brent Mickum, Marc Falkoff H. Candace Gorman, Eric Freedman, Michael Ratner, Thomas Wilner, Jonathan Hafetz, Joshua Denbeaux, Rick Wilson,
Neal Katyal, Joshua Colangelo Bryan, Baher Azmy, and Joshua Dratel (representing Guantanamo detainees and others held in "the war on terror"), with attorneys Donna Newman and Andrew Patel (representing "unlawful combatant" Jose Padilila), with Dr. David Nicholl, who spearheaded an effort among international physicians protesting force-feeding of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, with physician and bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles on medical complicity in torture, with law professor and former Clinton Administration Ambassador-at-large for war crimes matters David Scheffer, with former Guantanamo detainees Moazzam Begg and Shafiq Rasul , with former Guantanamo Bay Chaplain James Yee, with former Guantanamo Army Arabic linguist Erik Saar, with former Guantanamo military guard Terry Holdbrooks, Jr., with former military interrogator Matthew Alexander, with law professor and former Army J.A.G. officer Jeffrey Addicott, with law professor and Coast Guard officer Glenn Sulmasy, with author and geographer Trevor Paglen and with author and journalist Stephen Grey on the subject of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, with journalist and author David Rose on Guantanamo, with journalist Michael Otterman on the subject of American torture and related issues, with author and historian Andy Worthington detailing the capture and provenance of all of the Guantanamo detainees, with law professor Peter Honigsberg on various aspects of detention policy in the war on terror, with Joanne Mariner of Human Rights Watch, with Almerindo Ojeda of the Guantanamo Testimonials Project, with Karen Greenberg, author of The LeastWorst Place: Guantanamo's First 100 Days, with Charles Gittings of the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions, and with Laurel Fletcher, author of "The Guantanamo Effect" documenting the experience of Guantanamo detainees after their release, to be of interest.

December 6, 2013, Invictus

Nelson Mandela passed away at 95.

The post-title could relate to a mediocre semi-bio-pic (of Mandela) with Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman of a couple of years ago... but I'd prefer relating it to this poem, by William Ernest Henley [a poem supposedly recited by Mandela himself during his long incarceration at South Africa's notorious Robben Island political prison]:
:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Mandela dies at a moment when he was, over a decade after he left office as state president of South Africa, still the most significant human being on the planet (Gorbachev is arguably the only other living person, in my view, even worthy of consideration for that title).

I may, one of these days, discuss his grace under fire, that a man incarcerated for the bulk of his life could nonetheless reconcile with, and actually forgive both the system that incarcerated him and its perpetrators, for the greater good. An exemplary man who genuinely lived his life larger than life... changed the world in the way we were meant to aspire to. Compare this man of grace, integrity, and the power of his character to those running our current era of corner-cutting and fear-mongering. One of these days.

For now, R.I.P., Madiba.

November 16, 2013, Pot pourri

It's Mrs. TD's birthday... so happy birthday to Mrs. TD!

The White House is "optimistic" the President can bounce back from the biggest opportunity for genuine positive transformation in American history flushed down the toilet in order to give us Mitt Romney/Newt Gingrich's Frankenstein monster of propping up health insurers by giving them public money "health care reform" and difficulties over the troubled roll-out thereof. Did we mention Michele O's college classmate Toni, an executive at the company involved in said roll-out? [The evidence is somewhat dubious here, actually... and as a college classmate of Mr. Obama myself, I can safely say that such a "relationship," by itself, is hardly evidence of much of anything... and let's face it... had "healthcare.gov" been a project of the NSA, you can be damned sure it would have had all possible money and resources thrown at it.]

Filipinos in the city of Tacloban aren't so optimistic about much of anything, as even the grim task of burying the dead as a result of the recent typhoon is proving overwhelming. All we can do from the other side of the world is watch, weep, and maybe contribute to our favorite international aid organization... but sadly, much of this is just beyond anyone's control.

As awful as the devastation of the ever-more "super-storms" is (and as, it seems, even Exxon Mobil, the Koch Bros., etc., don't even have the energy to put out quite as much global-warming-denial propaganda as they used to... or so it seems to me, anyway...) even if the host-city of UN climate change talks is also the host city for Big Coal's meeting... how convenient is that?

Say... where was I...?

Oh yes... something that might be far scarier than even global climate disruptions... it would be amusing if it were amusing, as some morons actually consider this ultimate doomsday monster "a solution" to said climate change issues, rather than, you know, talking about "sacrifice," or, good God!, lowering our "standard of living" (voluntarily)... that being, of course, good old "nucular power"... because... it's another week... and hence, another new record in radiation measured at good old Fukushima as a result of yet another new leak there... Here is "Anne Kaneko's Fukushima Blog"... a fascinating blog by someone (writing in English) nearby... seriously... you'all might just want to check in on Fukushima Prefecture on a regular basis...

In GTMO news... Candace and Andy are both chock full of "new developments," which are more in the realm of stuff that Candace, Andy and I have kind of known about for years, but about which the public is (finally) getting some more news...assuming anyone cares all that much...

Alrightie then... enjoy the rest of your weekend!

November 5, 2013, A penny for the Guy

Happy Guy Fawkes night. This year, it's also an election, where my fair city will finally be replacing Mayor Millionaire Mike Billionaire Mike Bloomberg with Hillary Clinton's former campaign manager.

Still recovering from Sunday's chilly NYC Marathon.., my 12th NYC finish and 37th marathon overall... perhaps 5 or 6 minutes faster than "the usual time" (and about that behind Pamela Anderson).

My political realization of the day: Barack Obama owes a great deal to Bob the Builder.

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October 25, 2013, Coming attractions

Well, the President decided he was coming right here to Brooklyn, landing in (and tying up) our beloved Prospect Park, and giving a speech on his education shtick at a Brooklyn high school. No comment, really... the problem with education in this country is the federal government... Can a call for school uniforms be far behind?

Alrightie then.

An earthquake and tsunami hit near Fukushima, Japan... yes, that Fukushima... Because the fact that the nuclear plant is in deep trouble and could, you know, result in some "bad" outcomes (up to... oh... wiping out life in the Northern hemisphere)... but, since it's not being reported...

Seriously-- on that Fukushima thing? A few of our billionaire overlords really should get together and, as a service to humanity, buy up the waste from the four or five hundred nuclear power plants in the world, and clad the waste in stable material (it is technically doable-- just, you know, more expensive than dumping the crap in pools of water... except, of course, it wouldn't require perpetual electric power to maintain the cooling) and then finding somewhere geologically stable to dump the crap... and, of course, decommissioning every one of these nightmares ASAP... as ironic as it is, we can live with less electricity... we probably can't live with massive radiation releases... just saying...

And the Germans seem pissed that we are spying on them... it's not as if we can understand a freaking word... they talk in some foreign language...

Hey, I hear the Jets are over .500!

And the dog turns 51 (and Hillary Clinton turns 66)... tomorrow...

October 9, 2013, Fed Up

So the suspense is over... it's monetary bid'ness as usual, as the President nominates Federal Reserve Vice-Chair[wo]man, [Brooklyn-born-and-bred] Janet Yellen to be the next most important person on Earth Federal Reserve Chair[wo]man.

If you think Bernanke had a tough time improvising some way through the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent prolonged depression "Great Recession," Ms. Yellen will promptly have to deal with even bigger "too big to fail" banks, even more debt and derivatives everywhere, the ongoing playground urinating contest government shut down and the granddaddy of them all... the ultimate own-goal... the potential American default, now slated for around October 17th (although, ironically, not paying nearly a million federal workers because of "the shutdown" will have the bizarrely salutary effect of improving the Government's cash flow, so it may get an extra week or two before having to miss any legally required payments.)

Not to worry-- the answer to these, and all other woes, will be the magic bullet (yes, that's the term... "silver bullets" only either kill werewolves or contain Coors Light) known as creating currency through purchase of ever more dodgy debt "Quantitative Easing," and Ms. Yellen is not only with the program, she will "un-taper" and probably buy even more crap each month than Greenspan Bernanke did, and ultimately, stick the bill to the taxpayers (a declining number of people as full-time jobs fade away, and this trend will accelerate, in part, due to increased hiring costs caused by... Obamacare.)

The current fiasco of Republicans purporting to hold the nation hostage was set in motion by one Barack Obama... when he sold us out back in 2010 with the Bush tax cut extension (and I thought he was just doing what his backers wanted). I thought things were bad when I noted that extending the Bush tax cuts-- which would, and did, add trillions in cumulative deficit, without a concomitant increase in the debt ceiling was political malpractice. But "bad" was understating. Obama's extension of the Bush tax cuts in exchange for nothing was as gross an act of political malpractice as has ever been committed, and may, because this President has shown Republicans that he will always cave when push comes to shove, actually result in a calamitous "default" situation (which, btw, could be disastrous even absent an actual default if the interest the U.S. government has to pay on bond interest goes up significantly as a result of the perceived risk)... and it's entirely Obama's fault.

I can't say that enough times. And his present position-- holding the line that Newt Gingrich's Mitt Romney's health care plan is so sacrosanct that all else must be sacrificed to it--. is just stupid. Don't get me wrong-- the Republicans (to the extent you believe that all of this isn't just some giant kabuki to benefit financial interests who have placed huge bets on the chaos and that they are actually different from "the Democrats") are plenty stupid too.

And so there we have it-- two groups of stupid people (or one group, if you like) having a gigantic schoolyard "hold your breath" contest... Good luck to the rest of us. Because while I can't predict a "winner," I can sure as hell tell you who is going to lose.

September 18, 2013, Twelve years of blogging

Dear Lord, it's been a dozen years, to the day, since the first post on this blog. Where does the time go?

September 17, 2013, More bad stuff

John Cole gets right to it on "the national debate" after the D.C. Navy Yard shooting which left a dozen victims (plus the apparent perp) dead.

The national consciousness will, of course, "move on," like it always does. But this sort of thing seems to be happening more and more frequently.

And yes... it is because we are becoming a more crass and violent society at every level (starting with the rotting fish head at the top as he proposes another pointless war against someone somewhere, because his overlords in finance demand it), as we promote violence in every last corner of the world that we don't already occupy. And yes, it is because of our national perverse, one-off attitude toward private gun ownership (Second Amendment my ass... the rest of the Bill of Rights is now "optional"... this is the one we give a sh*t about?). And yes, it is because of a simultaneously failing economy and ever-increasing stress level. Note the victims so-far identified are in their 40's and up-- the workforce is aging, even as young people have fewer prospects. And finally, yes, it is because we consume most of the world's output of psychotrophic drugs; it is extraordinarily unlikely that an autopsy would not reveal large quantities of anti-depressants, anti-anxiety meds and God knows what else coarsing through the veins of the shooter.

Nothing to see here, folks. Move along...

September 11, 2013, Once more... with feeling.

.

Because September 11th only comes once a year. It's only been a dozen years... indeed, I've been blogging for all of them... and yet, it all seems... so long ago when I got put out of my office a block from the WTC by the morning's events, which seem ever more a distant memory (though I was there), and yet, the perpetual underpinning of what America has become.

Ah... just a dozen years ago... back when things like the Bill of Rights seemed so... relevant. When it wasn't my college classmate (twelve years ago, a political non-entity in the Illinois state senate) and now, the President of the United States. the alleged Muslim socialist radical arch-liberal who used the occasion of this 9-11 Eve to propose murdering Syrian civilians himself in retaliation for Bashir al-Assad murdering Syrian civilians...

And today... a primary race in New York, to finally replace Mike Bloomberg, who was pretty much elected mayor a dozen years ago... because of 9-11.

Well... just saying... enough musing from me... happy 9-11 everybody.

August 24, 2013, Bad stuff

There seems to be nothing good to say about anything coming out of Syria, as the government of Bashar al-Assad [and his visible allies, Hezbollah and Iran and his less visible allies, Russia] and "the rebels" [a wild consortium, almost certainly sponsored by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and without doubt possibly the CIA], now accuse each other of unleashing a chemical attack on the Syrian city of Ghouta in the suburbs of Damascus, which is estimated to have killed well over 300 people and sickened thousands... as the Obama Administration deploys some U.S. naval vessels ever closer to Syria... for some inadequately explained reason, because direct American intervention in Syria would probably start World War III be bad.

This Grey Lady op-ed by Edward Luttwak suggests that a prolonged unpleasant bloody stalemate is the only outcome favorable to American interests (he certainly cautions against-- and rightly so-- American intervention in Syria), noting that the Islamist extremists likely to emerge after a "rebel" win are not favorable to American interests, nor would an Assad regime that relied on assistance from Hezbollah and Iran (and presumably, Russia.)

Really? REALLY? Have we learned NOTHING? The list of our misguided and utterly f***ing DISASTROUS interventions seems endless, be they of recent vintage such as in Iraq... Afghanistan... Libya... Somalia... and our less obvious involvement in places like Egypt, and Bahrain, not to mention slightly older adventures in Southeast Asia, Iran (back when we overthrew a democratically elected government to install the Shah), and of course, all over the Western Hemisphere.

In short-- Mr. Luttwak is correct that American intervention-- of any kind, for any reason (other than perhaps giving humanitarian aid to surrounding countries like Jordan that have to deal with refugees)-- would be "ill-advised." And somebody's use of chemical weapons is, alas, just not a good reason for American intervention. And the presence of U.N. weapons inspectors already in Syria at the time of the attacks and the attacks just a few miles from their hotel-- makes me wonder about whether the Assad regime is that stupid (hint... I don't think so, though it certainly might be). Naturally, other than the rebels themselves, it seems the United States government is arguing the loudest that it is the Assad regime (rather than "the rebels") that is responsible for the chemical attack. None of us can say for sure, but right now, the evidence is inconclusive at best, and what American officials get out of stirring this pot (other than some really sweet contracts for whoever gets to provide support for the presumed sh*tstorm they're trying create)... is a mystery, at least to me.

Anyway, as awful as it is, Syria is unlikely to have a liberal, democratic government any time soon. I tend to think that a stable, albeit unpleasant regime like Assad's would be far, FAR better than either an Islamist sh*t-hole state (see how well that one just worked out in Egypt, for example) or an unstable, corrupt semi-failed state resulting in ostensibly permanent anarchy and civil war (of the kind we have installed and unleashed in Iraq and Afghanistan). And this result would also be true for Israel, which, without doubt, wants stability on its Northeastern border, and would (presumably) prefer not to have an Islamist regime reminiscent of Hamas in control of an entire well-armed country.

At the end of the day, the Middle East is a tough neighborhood with no good prospects... American intervention in the region has achieved exactly zero unqualified successes (save arguably Israel's position as regional powerhouse... and even there, our support has not involved direct military intervention)... and getting involved in this one-- chemical weapons or not-- would be yet another bad idea.

Just saying.

Update (8-25-13): Syria will allow weapons inspectors full access to the site of the attack. Another strong hint as to its provenance... at least in my view. And yet... seeing as Assad's Syria is a client-state of, you know, Russia, I don't think American forces will be ordered to back off anytime soon.

August 21, 2013, Thirty-five years

That's the sentence handed down by a military court-martial to Bradley Manning for leaking evidence of the United States's war crimes and other acts of malfeasance. The idea is to deter others who might have the audacity to try to let the public know what their government is up to. Hell-- the government was arguing for an even longer sentence-- of sixty years or more, to assure that Manning would die in prison for having the audacity to tell the American people what their government and military are doing in their name with their tax money. Damn him.

Of course, it bears noting that our government recently begged a country headed by a former KGB Colonel to hand back one of our citizens, assuring Russia that we [probably] wouldn't torture Edward Snowden [too much].

Interesting times. Do you not think we're living in 1984, only maybe even "new and improved"? Well... reminds me (albeit tepidly) of how Candace [and to some extent, I] were muzzled by this Administration shortly after it assumed power.

But go ahead, alleged progressives, and tell me about "lesser of two evils" and all...

August 8, 2013, Exercises in Credulity-Defying

Well, this piece from WaPo sort of lays out the conventional wisdom (as WaPo is wont to do)... to wit, given that the majority of the poor bastards still held at GTMO hail from Yemen, and given that there is a purported "threat" coming from "Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," allegedly based in Yemen, this will "complicate" the return of said Yemeni men to their home country, which of course, had been held up by Barack Obama for years now, in response to "the underpants bomber," but was supposedly "resumed" in response to the GTMO hunger strike. Of course, the Obama Administration, and every government agency asked to do so, has found that some 86 men at GTMO, many of them Yemeni, pose no threat whatsoever because they were NEVER terrorists of any kind... meaning... what freaking difference would it make to return men who were never part of al Qaeda to begin with to a country with a purported al Qaeda presence? (Stop with reality...)

Of course, the "credible threat" arising from "intercepted chatter" [that has led to the closing of around twenty-two diplomatic embassies and missions throughout the Islamic world] is, presumably, completely made up as a political stunt to get Congress to back off its recent efforts to rein in NSA spying on Americans. Of course, the scope of that spying is, surprise, surprise, broader than the government had been telling.

I say this because, and I admit its only IMHO... but I tend to think after all the trouble that OBL went through to make it hard to find him... that al Qaeda leadership is probably just not stupid enough to have a conference call... but, of course, in a nation that used to lead the world in most things and now leads it only in propaganda, the American people probably are stupid enough to believe that "the evildoers" would form a Legion of Doom on an easily intercepted open line.

You know, over a decade ago, on this very blog's "talking dog points," given former President George W. Bush's tendency to refer to "evil doers" and "war on terror" and "axis of evil" and the like, we pondered whether his National Security team (then led by Condi Rice) was briefing him with comic books... We have, of course, often quipped about how seamlessly, it seems, the Obama Administration has wholly adopted Bush Administration policies in everything important... such as the never-ending expansion of totalitarianism "the national security state..." but now even the asinine nomenclature and diction of the Bush Administration has trickled down to its worthy successors... in the Obama Administration.

And so... as my college classmate the President, who turned 52 a few days ago (happy birthday, Mr. President) petulantly tries to out-Bush Bush by reigniting the Cold War (over pique that a political dissident has fled from the United States to Russia!), by stepping up those killer robot drone strikes, by the ongoing war on whistleblowers in general, and by so many other Bush-like policies...

I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought. Kind of, you know, like the President did with that whole "close GTMO" thing. Sigh.