AZspot

The campaign against this mosque is one of the ugliest and most odious controversies in some time. It’s based purely on appeals to base fear and bigotry. There are no reasonable arguments against it, and the precedent that would be set if its construction were prevented — equating Islam with Terrorism, implying 9/11 guilt for Muslims generally, imposing serious restrictions on core religious liberty — are quite serious. It was Michael Bloomberg who first stood up and eloquently condemned this anti-mosque campaign for what it is, but Obama’s choice to lend his voice to a vital and noble cause is a rare demonstration of principled, politically risky leadership. It’s not merely a symbolic gesture, but also an important substantive stand against something quite ugly and wrong. This is an act that deserves pure praise. Glenn Greenwald ☀

At least anonymous bloggers are very clear and truthful about what they are: often citizens whose jobs or other interests prevent them from attaching their names to their political expression. By stark contrast, all of these establishment media outlets perpetrate a total fraud on the public by pretending that they have standards for when anonymity will be used even though, as these examples from the last 24 hours alone prove, they routinely violate those alleged standards for absolutely no reason. It just never ceases to amaze how much establishment journalists like Roberts and Phillips love to rail against the Evils of Internet Anonymity when reckless, cowardly anonymity — for purposes ranging from catty, trivial gossip to pernicious propaganda and everything in between — is a central tool of their “profession” and of the political class they cover. Glenn Greenwald ☀

The Government did not fail to detect the 9/11 attacks because it was unable to collect information relating to the plot. It did collect exactly that, but because it surveilled so much information, it was incapable of recognizing what it possessed (“connecting the dots”). Despite that, we have since then continuously expanded the Government’s surveillance powers. Virtually every time the political class reveals some Scary New Event, it demands and obtains greater spying authorities (and, of course, more and more money). And each time that happens, its ability to detect actually relevant threats diminishes. Glenn Greenwald ☀

Isn’t that a strange dynamic for the supposedly Liberal Media: the only viewpoint-based firings of journalists are ones where the journalist breaches neoconservative orthodoxy? Have there ever been any viewpoint-based firings of establishment journalists by The Liberal Media because of comments which offended liberals? Glenn Greenwald ☀

[Jeffrey] Goldberg apparently thinks that if you can find some citizens in an invaded country who are happy about the invasion, then it demonstrates the aggression was justifiable or at least morally supportable (I suppose I should be thankful that he didn’t haul out the think-about-how-great-this-is-for-the-Iraqi-gays platitude long cherished by so many neocons, though — given the hideous reality in Iraq in that realm — that’s now a deceitful bridge too far even for them). I’m not interested in an overly personalized exchange with Goldberg, but there is one aspect of his response worth highlighting: the universality of the war propaganda he proffers. Those who perpetrate wars of aggression invariably invent moral justifications to allow themselves and the citizens of the aggressor state to feel good and noble about themselves. Hence, even an unprovoked attack which literally destroys a country and ruins the lives of millions of innocent people — as the U.S. invasion of Iraq did — is scripted as a morality play with the invaders cast in the role of magnanimous heroes. Glenn Greenwald ☀

More broadly, after 8 years of Bush/Cheney, the very idea that the Presidency is a weak and largely powerless office is laughable on its face. It’s Barack Obama — not the U.S. Congress — that is detaining innocent people without trials, targeting U.S. citizens for due-process-free assassinations, secretly ordering covert wars via Special Forces, ordering a “surge” in the nine-year-old war in Afghanistan, and launching cruise missile strikes with cluster bombs in Yemen. The more honest commentators who are invoking this “weak presidency” defense on behalf of Obama — such as Matt Ygleisas, Ezra Klein, and Scott Lemieux — acknowledge its basic inapplicability to Terrorism and foreign policy, which accounts for a substantial part of the liberal critique of the Obama presidency. And, for that matter, many of the positive steps Obama has taken — changes in drug policy, an improvement in tone with the Muslim world, release of the OLC torture memos — were also actions taken unilaterally using the power of the Presidency. Glenn Greenwald ☀

If citizens remain stuck in Left v. Right wars, then I don’t see any meaningful way for the political establishment to be weakened. The problem is that moneyed interests own and control both political parties, and benefit regardless of which one is in power (albeit with some differences between the two). So if citizens remain convinced that their political salvation lies in loyalty to one of the two parties’ establishments, all they’re really doing is perpetuating the elites’ interests that control the government now, which are most certainly not [the citizenry’s] interests. As long as citizens continue to fight against each other based on these Left v. Right wars, then the citizenry will be weakened and more fractured, and the political establishment will in turn be stronger and more vulnerable. There are obviously important differences between liberal and conservative Americans, but those differences are not the source of the primary ways in which they are shafted and mistreated, and little of that will end as long as they continue to devote themselves to these tribal divisions, which are largely a sideshow from the real systemic problems. Glenn Greenwald ☀

So congratulations to the U.S. for winning the right to wrongfully abduct people and send them to their torture with total impunity. What a ringing statement about our country’s willingness to right the wrongs it commits and to provide access to our courts to those whose lives we devastate with our behavior. Andrew Sullivan today referred to “the cult of the inerrant leader”: the inability and refusal of our political class to acknowledge wrongdoing, apologize for it, and be held accountable. The Maher Arar case is a pathological illustration of that syndrome. Glenn Greenwald ☀

Whether the Israelis fired at the passengers before or after landing on the ship matters little to the crux of what happened here. The initial act of aggression was the Israeli seizing of a ship in international waters which was doing nothing hostile; that action was taken to enforce a horrific, inhumane blockade and, more generally, a brutal, decades-long occupation; and whatever else is true, at least nine civilians were killed by the Israeli Navy, only the latest example of Israel (and the U.S.) using massive military force against civilians. But this incident illustrates — yet again — the eagerness of the American media to “report” on events by doing nothing but mindlessly repeating official government claims. Glenn Greenwald ☀

Or listen to Fox News fear-mongers declare how Christians in the U.S. and/or white males — comprising the vast majority of the population and every power structure in the country — are the Real Persecuted Victims, from the War on Christmas to affirmative action evils. Ronald Reagan even managed to convince much of the country that the true economic injustices in America were caused by rich black women driving their Cadillacs to collect their welfare checks. This kind of blinding, all-consuming tribalism leads members of even the most powerful group to convince themselves that they are deeply victimized by those who are far weaker, whose necks have been under the boots of the stronger group for decades, if not longer. Glenn Greenwald ☀

The Miami Herald’s Carol Rosenberg reports that, this week, yet another federal judge has ordered the Obama administration to release yet another Guantanamo detainee on the ground that there is no persuasive evidence to justify his detention. The latest detainee to win his habeas hearing, Mohammed Hassen, is a 27-year old Yemeni imprisoned by the U.S. without charges for 8 years, since he was 19 years old. He has “long claimed he was captured in Pakistan studying the Quran and had no ties to al Qaida,” and that “he had been unjustly rounded up in a March 2002 dragnet by Pakistani security forces in the city of Faisalabad that targeted Arabs.” Hassen is now the third consecutive detainee ordered freed who was rounded up in that same raid. The Obama DOJ opposed his petition even though the Bush administration had cleared him for release in 2007. He has now spent roughly 30% of his life in a cage at Guantanamo. What’s most significant about this is that Hassen is now the 36th detainee who has won his habeas hearing since the Supreme Court in 2008 ruled they have the right to such hearings — out of 50 whose petitions have been heard. In other words, 72% of Guantanamo detainees who finally were able to obtain just minimal due process (which is what a habeas hearing is) — after years of being in a cage without charges — have been found by federal judges to be wrongfully detained. These are people who are part of what the U.S. Government continues to insist are “the worst of the worst” who remain, and whose release is being vehemently contested by the Obama DOJ. Glenn Greenwald ☀

With both political parties affirming over and over that we are going to be at “war” for years, indeed decades, it’s unsurprising that so few people are interested in debating “war.” That’s true even for the limited question of Afghanistan, where most Republicans won’t question a war their President began and most Democrats won’t question a war their President has vigorously embraced as his own. From the perspective of the permanent factions that rule Washington — from Wall Street and AIPAC to the intelligence and military “communities” — that’s the beauty of the two-party system: as long as both party establishments support a particular policy, any meaningful debate over it comes to a grinding halt. Glenn Greenwald ☀

The U.S. already has one of the most pro-government criminal justice systems in the world. That (along with our indescribably insane drug laws) is why we have the world’s largest prison population and the highest percentage of our citizenry incarcerated of any country in the Western world. It is hard to imagine a worse fate than being a defendant in the American justice system accused of Terrorism-related crimes. Conviction and a very long prison sentence are virtual certainties. Particularly in the wake of 9/11 and the Patriot Act era, the rules have been repeatedly rewritten to provide the Government with every conceivable advantage. The very idea that the Government is hamstrung in its ability to prosecute and imprison Terrorists is absurd on its face. Decades of pro-government laws in general, and post-9/11 changes in particular, have created a justice system that strangles the rights of those accused of Terrorism. Despite that, every new incident becomes a pretext for a fresh wave of fear-mongering and still new ways to erode core Constitutional protections even further. Glenn Greenwald ☀

The New York Times this morning reports that “Mr. Obama effectively framed the choice so that he could seemingly take the middle road by picking Ms. Kagan, who correctly or not was viewed as ideologically between Judge Wood on the left and Judge Garland in the center.” That’s consummate Barack Obama. The Right appoints people like John Roberts and Sam Alito, with long and clear records of what they believe because they’re eager to publicly defend their judicial philosophy and have the Court reflect their values. Beltway Democrats do the opposite: the last thing they want is to defend what progressives have always claimed is their worldview, either because they fear the debate or because they don’t really believe those things, so the path that enables them to avoid confrontation of ideas is always the most attractive, even if it risks moving the Court to the Right. Glenn Greenwald ☀