AZspot

For billionaires to see themselves as the True Victims, to complain that the President and the Government are waging some sort of war against them in the name of radical egalitarianism, is so removed from reality — universes away — that’s it’s hard to put into words. And the fiscal recklessness that the Kochs and their comrades tirelessly point to was a direct by-product of the last decade’s rule by the Republican Party which they fund: from unfunded, endless wars to a never-ending expansion of the privatized National Security and Surveillance States to the financial crisis that exploded during the Bush presidency. But whatever else is true, there are many victims of fiscal policy in America: the wealthiest business interests and billionaires like the Koch Brothers are the few who are not among them. Glenn Greenwald ☀

In other words, Obama — for reasons having nothing to do with Congress — worked from the start to preserve the crux of the Bush/Cheney detention regime. Even with these new added levels of detention review (all inside the Executive Branch), this new Executive Order is little more than a by-product of that core commitment, and those blaming it on Congress either have little idea what they’re talking about or are simply fabricating excuses in order to justify yet another instance where Obama dutifully “bolsters” the Bush War on Terror template. Indefinite detention and military commissions are continuing because Obama worked from the start for that goal — not because Congress forced him to do so. Glenn Greenwald ☀

A 48-year-old Afghan citizen and Guantanamo detainee, Awal Gul, died on Tuesday of an apparent heart attack. Gul, a father of 18 children, had been kept in a cage by the U.S. for more than 9 years — since late 2001 when he was abducted in Afghanistan — without ever having been charged with a crime. While the U.S. claims he was a Taliban commander, Gul has long insisted that he quit the Taliban a year before the 9/11 attack because, as his lawyer put it, “he was disgusted by the Taliban’s growing penchant for corruption and abuse.” His death means those conflicting claims will never be resolved; said his lawyer: “it is shame that the government will finally fly him home not in handcuffs and a hood, but in a casket.” This episode illustrates that the U.S. Government’s detention policy — still — amounts to imposing life sentences on people without bothering to prove they did anything wrong. Glenn Greenwald ☀

There are many myths within the political blogosphere, but none is so deeply troubling or so highly treasured by mainstream political bloggers than this: that the political blogosphere contains within it the whole range of respectable political opinion, and that once an issue has been thoroughly debated therein, it has had a full and fair hearing. The truth is that almost anything resembling an actual left wing has been systematically written out of the conversation within the political blogosphere, both intentionally and not, while those writing within it congratulate themselves for having answered all left-wing criticism. That the blogosphere is a flagrantly anti-leftist space should be clear to anyone who has paid a remote amount of attention. Who, exactly, represents the left extreme in the establishment blogosphere? You’d likely hear names like Jane Hamsher or Glenn Greenwald. But these examples are instructive. Is Hamsher a socialist? A revolutionary anti-capitalist? In any historical or international context— in the context of a country that once had a robust socialist left, and in a world where there are straightforwardly socialist parties in almost every other democracy— is Hamsher particularly left-wing? Not at all. It’s only because her rhetoric is rather inflamed that she is seen as particularly far to the left. This is what makes this whole discourse/extremism conversation such a failure; there is a meticulous sorting of far right-wing rhetoric from far right-wing politics, but no similar sorting on the left. Hamsher says bad words and is mean in print, so she is a far leftist. That her politics are largely mainstream American liberalism that would have been considered moderate for much of the 20th century is immaterial. L’Hôte ☀

For those who regularly write and read about civil liberties abuses, it’s sometimes easy to lose perspective of just how extreme and outrageous certain erosions are. One becomes inured to them, and even severe incursions start to seem ordinary. Such was the case, at least for me, with Homeland Security’s practice of detaining American citizens upon their re-entry into the country, and as part of that detention, literally seizing their electronic products — laptops, cellphones, Blackberries and the like — copying and storing the data, and keeping that property for months on end, sometimes never returning it. Worse, all of this is done not only without a warrant, probable cause or any oversight, but even without reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in any crime. It’s completely standard-less, arbitrary, and unconstrained. There’s no law authorizing this power nor any judicial or Congressional body overseeing or regulating what DHS is doing. And the citizens to whom this is done have no recourse — not even to have their property returned to them. When you really think about it, it’s simply inconceivable that the U.S. Government gets away with doing this. Seizing someone’s laptop, digging through it, recording it all, storing the data somewhere, and then distributing it to various agencies is about the most invasive, privacy-destroying measure imaginable. A laptop and its equivalents reveal whom you talk to, what you say, what you read, what you write, what you view, what you think, and virtually everything else about your life. It can — and often does — contain not only the most private and intimate information about you, but also information which the government is legally barred from accessing (attorney/client or clergy/penitent communications, private medical and psychiatric information and the like). But these border seizures result in all of that being limitlessly invaded. This is infinitely more invasive than the TSA patdowns that caused so much controversy just two months ago. What kind of society allows government agents — without any cause — to seize all of that whenever they want, without limits on whom they can do this to, what they access, how they can use it: even without anyone knowing what they’re doing? Glenn Greenwald ☀

Anyone connected to WikiLeaks — even American citizens — are now routinely detained at the airport and have their property seized, their laptops and cellphones taken and searched and retained without a shred of judicial oversight or due process. And this treatment extends to numerous critics of the government having nothing to do with WikiLeaks. In the past month, I’ve spoken with American writers, photographers and filmmakers — who are not ready yet to go public — who have experienced similar and even worse harassment when entering the U.S. Notably, like anyone remotely connected to WikiLeaks, all of them — given the government’s broad surveillance powers — insist upon communicating only behind multiple, highly fortified walls of encryption. The U.S. Government plainly wants any genuine critics to feel fear, and is willing to use any means — no matter how lawless and extreme — to induce it. Glenn Greenwald ☀

Everyone can decide for themselves whether to believe Amazon’s denial: it’s not particularly surprising that a corporation that provides such services would want to quash any notions that they succumb that easily to government pressure, and it seems rather coincidental that it did this after receiving a call from the Homeland Security Committee. But Amazon’s claim is false, as WikiLeaks has not published “250,000 classified documents.” They’ve only published 612, and the only documents from the leak of diplomatic cables published on the WikiLeaks site thus far have all been ones published by its newspaper partners such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, etc., including with the same redactions. Glenn Greenwald ☀

But it may also just as easily be the case that the FBI — as they’ve done many times in the past — found some very young, impressionable, disaffected, hapless, aimless, inept loner; created a plot it then persuaded/manipulated/entrapped him to join, essentially turning him into a Terrorist; and then patted itself on the back once it arrested him for having thwarted a “Terrorist plot” which, from start to finish, was entirely the FBI’s own concoction. Having stopped a plot which it itself manufactured, the FBI then publicly touts — and an uncritical media amplifies — its “success” to the world, thus proving both that domestic Terrorism from Muslims is a serious threat and the Government’s vast surveillance powers — current and future new ones — are necessary. Glenn Greenwald ☀

It’s not hard to see why The New York Times, CNN and so many other establishment media outlets are eager to do that. Serving the Government’s interests, siding with government and military officials, and attacking government critics is what they do. That’s their role. That’s what makes them the “establishment media.” Beyond that, the last thing they want is renewed recognition of what an evil travesty the attack on Iraq was, given the vital role they know they played in helping to bring it about and sustain it for all those years (that’s the same reason establishment journalists, almost by consensus, opposed any investigations into the Bush crimes they ignored, when they weren’t cheering them on). And by serving as the 2010 version of the White House Plumbers — acting as attack dogs against the Pentagon’s enemies — they undoubtedly buy themselves large amounts of good will with those in power, always their overarching goal. It is indeed quite significant and revealing that the John Ehrlichmans and Henry Kissingers of today are found at America’s largest media outlets. Thanks to them, the White House doesn’t even need to employ its own smear artists. Glenn Greenwald ☀

That concept — that the U.S. Government should not be monitoring, surveilling and collecting data on individuals who are not under criminal investigation — was once the hallmark of basic American liberty, so uncontroversial as to require no defense. But decades of effective fear-mongering over everything from Communists to drug kingpins — and particularly the last decade of invoking the all-justifying, Scary mantra of Terrorism — has reduced much of the American citizenry into a frightened and meek puddle of acquiescence which not only tolerates, but craves, a complete deprivation of privacy. Needless to say, both articles this morning are suffused with quotes from government officials tossing around the standard clichés about Scary Terrorists, Drug Lords, and other cartoon menaces hauled out to justify every expansion of government power and every reduction of individual privacy (that, of course, was the same rationale invoked by UAE and Saudi officials: “The UAE issued a statement explaining the decision, saying it had come because ‘certain Blackberry services’ allow users to avoid ‘any legal accountability’, raising ‘judicial, social and national security concerns’.”). 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 ☀

[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 ☀

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 ☀