(1) The Editor-in-Chief of Publishers Weekly, Sara Nelson, has devoted her column this week to discussing the pre-release success of How Would a Patriot Act?, including the impact it could have on independent publishing:
The book, How Would a Patriot Act?, addresses what the author, Glenn Greenwald, deems to be the deceptions of the Bush administration, in a well-reasoned and lively 146 pages priced at $12. But let's not be partisan: the sudden success of Patriot spells good news for the whole publishing business, especially that of the grassroots, independent variety.
Why? Because the book became Amazon's #1 "without a single penny being spent on marketing or advertising," according to Greenwald. The book's sudden and so far enduring popularity (at press time it had dropped only to #160) is all the more intriguing when you consider that the book doesn't, technically, exist yet; its now sold-out first printing of 20,000 copies will be shipped the week of May 15. (A second printing is in the works.)
She also expressed the standard bewilderment at the emerging ability of the blogosphere to compete with, and even surpass, mainstream, conventional corporate promotional tools:
For promotion, she [Editorial Director Jennifer Nix] relied on Greenwald's popular blog and "about five or six" other bloggers to spread the word. Obviously, they managed to do so.
The Internet has been used wisely as a promotional tool before (I'm thinking of author MJ Rose, among many other early adopters) and, as many an anxious refresh-button–pushing author will tell you, a couple of good days on one Web retailer does not necessarily a bestseller make. Still, now that virtually every major retail outlet, online and off, has placed its orders, I can't help thinking we're going to be hearing and seeing more of Greenwald and his Patriot Act.
I've spoken with a lot of reporters from national media outlets over the past week regarding the success of the book. Because the book hasn't been released yet, they are more interested at the moment in talking about how the book has generated so much attention without any paid marketing or advertising than they are in talking about the substance of the book. Most of them seemed genuinely baffled that the blogosphere has the power to generate that kind of impact -- something which, for some time, has been readily apparent to those who participate in the blogosphere. As this realization spreads to those who are still largely unaware of what blogs really are, the blogosphere will be taken much more seriously and will have a much greater impact to influence the national dialogue, something which, as I have noted before, can only be a good thing.
(2) The New York Sun has a surprisingly informative and balanced article on the Bush administration's latest effort to expand its war against investigative journalism -- "with an aggressive and unusual move to force two San Francisco Chronicle reporters to identify their sources for stories about secret grand jury testimony from a federal investigation of steroid use in professional baseball."
There is a long history of striking a balance in this country between allowing investigative journalism to flourish through the use of leaks and the need to safeguard secrecy needs. As is true in so many other areas, every presidential administration since the Roosevelt administration has accepted and worked within roughly the same framework. The Bush administration is waging war against so many of these traditions, and its obsessive efforts to eliminate all anti-administration leaks, and thereby eliminate investigative journalism in this country entirely, is one of its most dangerous assaults on the operating rules to which we have collectively agreed.
The administration is an aggressive practitioner of politically self-serving leaks, and is seeking to ensure that all leaks are eliminated other than those which serve its interests and promote its version of events. Just imagine what we would not know about our government over the last five years if there had been no leaks -- warrantless eavesdropping, the use of torture and rendition, secret Eastern European gulags, Abu Ghraib, the inconvenient pre-war intelligence which was ignored. And then imagine the even more extreme measures the administration would have felt free to pursue had they known that there was no chance of leaking. That is the world they are trying to create.
(3) Following up on the discussion from the last few days over the efforts by conservatives to disassociate themselves from the failed Bush presidency, Digby has a great post detailing the by-now familiar tactic of smearing anyone with the curse-word "liberal" who is to be held out as impeding the Success of Conservatism -- whether that be military Generals, career CIA agents, or even the President himself:
As we all know, conservatism itself cannot fail. It can only be failed. And it isn't just the mediocre conservatives think tank intellectuals who believe this. Here's a
commmenter on the blog Parapundit writing about Bush and the US Military:It would still be possible to win if Junior was willing to brutally prosecute the war, as Roosevelt or Truman would have done. It is clear now that Shrub is way too liberal for that. It is not clear if he could have gotten away with it even if he was not a modern liberal. It is not clear if US Army is capable of prosecuting a brutal war now (but Marines probably could do it), way too many officers are squishy liberals in various stages.
Today, the CIA is crawling with liberals. The military is crawling with liberals. The Bush administration itself is nothing but a bunch of liberals as must be the GOP congress since they signed off on everything Bush has proposed.
The media are, needless to say, nothing but squishy liberals. The country is going to hell in a handbasket. The president and the congress and all their policies are dramatically unpopular. This, then, is just further proof of the failure of liberalism.
The only thing that can save us is conservatism.
Bush supporters have dominated and run every center of government power for the last five years. But still, the failure of the war and of their terrorism policies generally are still all the fault of liberals.
(4) A British helicopter crashed this weekend in Basra, and the grateful, pro-coalition, soon-to-be-our-partner-for-peace Iraqis cheered the crash, attacked the helicopter, and threw stones at it. According to John Podhoertz in the Corner, the people doing this were "followers of the monster-thug Moqtada al-Sadr" -- one of the most popular Shiite political leaders in Iraq. For Podhoretz, this underscores the fact that "one of the biggest mistakes we've made" in Iraq was -- as he revealingly put it -- our "decision to let al-Sadr live."
That seems to be a nice, emerging theme among those responsible for this failed war - that the reason we haven't won in Iraq is because we haven't been violent and ferocious enough. If only we had killed more of their political and religious leaders, they would have been a lot more welcoming to us and we would have won their hearts and minds a lot more quickly. But the liberals in the military and the CIA and in the Bush administration just weren't man enough (the way John Podhoretz is) to do what had to be done, and so we lost. Or, as Digby put it: "The only thing that can save us is conservatism."
UPDATE:
(5) Virtually on cue from the script Digby provided, National Review today has posted an Editorial lamenting all of the horrible failures -- both past and current -- at the CIA, but fortunately, they know exactly what is wrong over there:
Too often the agency has performed that job miserably, the greatest example being its gargantuan miscalculations about the Soviet Union. In retrospect, this is perhaps unsurprising. The CIA has always had a leftist bent, well represented in its upper echelons even under directors of staunchly anti-Communist and pro-national-security orientation.
I don't see how this can be doubted. For an entire generation now, socialist hippies have been faced with the defining leftist career choice -- a post-modern/feminist-lit post at Berkeley, teaching nonviolent protest seminars for Greenpeace and Earth First, or becoming a covert operative for the CIA. The ranks of the CIA have long swelled with lefitsts, which is why it has been so dainty and why it has failed so miserably.
And what does an institution (like the CIA) which is filled with leftists need? National Review has the answer:
The president is has named Gen. Michael Hayden, former head of the NSA and current deputy to national intelligence director John Negroponte, as Goss’s successor. It is crucial that the administration and Hayden make clear from day one that, while Goss is gone, the CIA purge is far from over. Those who are using the agency to undermine the war effort must be rooted out, no matter who is in charge.
That's right. What the CIA needs is a hard-core Stalinist purge of all those Lefitsts who have been ruining it. Or, as Digby put it: "The only thing that can save us is conservatism."
This administration is not only at war against leaks and at war against investigative journalism and at war against electronic privacy -- they are at war against privacy in the bedroom and against reproductive health.
ReplyDeleteYesterday's NY Times paints a genuinely creepy picture of what passes for reproductive health policy in the Bush administration. And the help they are getting from some Congressional Republicans.
The father-daughter "purity dances" and purity rings. The 2007 federal guidelines for abstinence education specifying that "a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity."
Why aren't our libertarian friends all over the administration about this?
But Glen, according to Drudge, it wasn't doing so well....;)
ReplyDeleteWas Druged.....GASP...... wrong??? Say it ain't so!
<sarcasm>
ReplyDeleteImagine the consternation at swift-boat HQ when they find out that they swift-boated the wrong guy! "Mr. Warbucks is gonna be really pissed when he finds out that Bush was the liberal!"
</sarcasm>
Most of them seemed genuinely baffled that the blogosphere has the power to generate that kind of impact -- something which, for some time, has been readily apparent to those who participate in the blogosphere.
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting point. I'm active in the NetRoots project. We've been trying to find a way to communicate to Beltway insiders the power of the blogosphere.
But CtG's and Patriot's success may be a more effective means of getting the powers that be in the meatspace to make the connection.
Free publicity is the holy grail for publishing and many other commercial ventures. That a free site that's existed for only about 6 months and Alexa ranks at 33,000th in popularity can pre-sell, sight unseen, 20,000 books is a real heads up to the world of PR. And, since politics is just juiced-up PR, that's gotta trickle up.
There's something going on here, and [they] don't know what it is, do [they], Mr Jones?
It would still be possible to win if Junior was willing to brutally prosecute the war, as Roosevelt or Truman would have done. It is clear now that Shrub is way too liberal for that.
ReplyDeleteSo Roosevelt wasn't a liberal? I'm not sure if he's talking about Teddy or FDR, but either way, that's news to me.
Podhoretz is a monster in person, too.
ReplyDeleteHere's an evisceration of him.
Money quotes:
And for John Podhoretz, the name, as even his mother admits, is “a lot of baggage.” When he worked at the conservative Washington Times, the joke goes, people thought his name was “John P. Normanson,” because the paper’s editor, Arnaud de Borchgrave, a friend of his parents’, walked around the office introducing him as John Podhoretz, Norman’s son. He is very close to his family; he stayed with his parents recently while he was looking for an apartment, and he is good friends with Elliott Abrams, the Reagan undersecretary of state convicted of lying to Congress during the Iran-contra affair and Podhoretz’s brother-in-law.
Also, John Podhoretz has inherited his father’s literary narcissism, but without the ideological vigor.
And my personal favorite: No subject was too trivial to share with readers. Topics included his trip to an amusement park; his hatred of household pets; his love of Jell-O; conversations with his imaginary friend. He recounted events in mind-numbing detail: "I missed the 2:30 shuttle, so I had to wait for the 3:30 shuttle . . . I arrived in Washington at 5:15." He'd also do things like type "SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX sex sex sex sex sex," apropos of nothing ("I can see your eyes drifting"). One column ended with "Podhoretz . . . this is without question the dumbest column you've ever written. Stop it now!"
Okay, one more JPod story from the same article, because I just couldn't resist:
ReplyDeleteIn an article called “Dole, the GOP, and the Genetically Endowed,” Podhoretz argues that the arrival of a new crop of blondes with “Rachel-from-Friends hairstyles” meant the conservative movement was revived. “The 22-year-olds look like winners because they are. They are eye-catching, they speak well, they are quick if not deep. They have bestowed their bounty on the GOP, in the service of conservatism.” (Not surprisingly, the blondes were not amused: “If this is his sweet way of asking all of us for a date, it has failed, as have his direct attempts in the past,” one wrote.)
Come now, davidbyron. Some folks who are genuinely conservative are truly dismayed and always have been at this administration. I should know- I'm an Alabamian born and bred and some of my closest friends and relatives are die-hard, rock-ribbed conservatives. Some of the things they believe, you or I would take issue with, such as the rights of gays. But otherwise, they believe in clean gov't, with people of the highest morals (and not just of the sexual kind) in charge, adherence to constitutional principles such as the right to worship and believe as they and their neighbors wish without interference, the right to be secure in their persons and belongings (read, property rights)and the right to speak out against the gov't without being punished for it.
ReplyDeleteWe can all agree on those principles, I think. Not all conservatives are neo-cons. There is a difference. I've heard some Republicans around here (tho naturally,not all) railing against the "rich oil men in charge" from the very start.
Who'd they vote for in 04, sunny?
ReplyDeleteIt comes as no surprise that they're beginning to recycle their Vietnam mythology: that we lost because we were unwilling to really get serious and bomb the place back to the stone age.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if we'll see an attempt at rehabilitating Bush (a la Nixon) 'round about 2010.
This issue of insane ferocity masquerading as ideology is at the root of the nonsensical "conservative" movement. For difficult political problems, their preferred solution is a fist, a boot, a bullet, or a nuclear weapon. I am appalled by what these murderous people say without any sense of shame.
ReplyDeleteThe next time you refer to Bush as "wildly unpopular" you can link to this: Midterm Presidential Approval and 2006. It's a statistical projection of where Bush's approval rating will be come October. Even the highest likely outcome puts him at the lowest level for any post WWII President.
ReplyDeletesunny: What Bush does may not be your idea of "conservatism", but your version, to put it bluntly, hasn't ever seemed to matter much to the "conservatives" who actually wield power. From Glenn's previous post:
ReplyDelete"Bush may not be a model of Hayekian conservative theory, but he nonetheless is quite conservative in the way in which modern conservatism manifests when in power -- namely, as a movement devoted to expanding government intrusion and federal power in order to promote its own moral and ideological ends. Many self-proclaimed conservatives have now expressly embraced this so-called "large government conservatism."
FWIW, this is not an original idea--Kevin Phillips, who was much-beloved by the GOP when he was telling them how well the Southern Strategy was going to work, said pretty much the same thing (with exhaustive research to back it up) in one hell of a good book called "Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich", some 20 years ago.
Sunny: But otherwise, they believe in clean gov't, with people of the highest morals (and not just of the sexual kind) in charge, adherence to constitutional principles such as the right to worship and believe as they and their neighbors wish without interference, the right to be secure in their persons and belongings (read, property rights)and the right to speak out against the gov't without being punished for it.
ReplyDeleteThis is important.
While I'm pleased the nation is waking up (and applaud Glenn's efforts in that), it is important the Democrats resist the reflexive snark and casual overgeneralization. Not only does it really not help, it is just a bit early for triumphalism.
Don't forget how powerful the "yeah, but the other guy's worse!" logic is.
-- A libertarian who is voting Democratic, for now.
In reference to a thread that appeared at this blog several weeks ago, the rebuttal to their critics by Mearsheimer and Walt deserves mention:
ReplyDeleteWe agree that there is strong public support for Israel in America, in part because it is seen as compatible with America’s Judaeo-Christian culture. But we believe this popularity is substantially due to the lobby’s success at portraying Israel in a favourable light and effectively limiting public awareness and discussion of Israel’s less savoury actions. Diplomats and military officers are also affected by this distorted public discourse, but many of them can see through the rhetoric. They keep silent, however, because they fear that groups like AIPAC will damage their careers if they speak out. The fact is that if there were no AIPAC, Americans would have a more critical view of Israel and US policy in the Middle East would look different.
On a related point, William Pfaff, alluding to the original Mearsheimer and Walt article that caused such a stir, ties in the meme about how a war against Iraq and Iran benefits Israel:
Israeli interest thus is served when the Arabs are politically disorganized and conventionally powerless, as the Palestinians are now. Its interest is also served when the Arabs are divided along sectarian or ethnic lines, as is happening in Iraq, as a result of the American invasion, with the emergence of rival Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish entities.
If a unified Iraq disappears, Iran will remain the only major Muslim state in the immediate region, with Syria a minor, if influential, actor. Hence it is in Israel's interest that the United States bring about regime change in Iran. Israelis know that such an effort could produce the same consequences as in Iraq, which could be to their advantage - although not to Washington's.
"that the reason we haven't won in Iraq is because we haven't been violent and ferocious enough"
ReplyDeleteThe beatings will continue until moralle improves!
The New York Sun has a surprisingly informative and balanced article on the Bush administration's latest effort to expand its war against investigative journalism -- "with an aggressive and unusual move to force two San Francisco Chronicle reporters to identify their sources for stories about secret grand jury testimony from a federal investigation of steroid use in professional baseball."
ReplyDeleteThis action has nothing to do with national defense as this article whines. As you should know as an attorney, it is a felony to leak grand jury testimony to protect the privacy of the witnesses testifying without benefit of counsel and often not knowing what questions are going to be asked.
Contrary to their self aggrandizement, the First Amendment does not provide the press with special immunity to violate the law and the First Amendment does not give anyone the right to publish grand jury testimony. These reporters are accomplices in a felony crime.
There is a long history of striking a balance in this country between allowing investigative journalism to flourish through the use of leaks and the need to safeguard secrecy needs.
There is no such long history. This is a post Vietnam phenomenon which was rare previously. A few weeks ago, I challenged you to come up with similar examples prior disclosures of classified information to the enemy and you could come up with none.
As is true in so many other areas, every presidential administration since the Roosevelt administration has accepted and worked within roughly the same framework.
So what? That does not make the actions of the press in violation of the Espionage Act and several other criminal statutes any more legal.
The Bush administration is waging war against so many of these traditions, and its obsessive efforts to eliminate all anti-administration leaks, and thereby eliminate investigative journalism in this country entirely, is one of its most dangerous assaults on the operating rules to which we have collectively agreed.
When did anyone "agree" (sic) to this "tradition" of law breaking? Was this put to a vote and was a press shield statute enacted legalizing these disclosures to the enemy? I think not.
Just imagine what we would not know about our government over the last five years if there had been no leaks -- warrantless eavesdropping...
Let me clarify that spin...
Just imagine what the enemy would not have learned over the past five years if there had been no leaks - the means and methods of NSA surveillance of al Qaeda telephone calls and emails into this country resulting in the identification of at least 10 al Qaeda targets per year...
the use of torture and rendition, secret Eastern European gulags
The disclosure to the enemy of the techniques we use to interrogate their prisoners so that the enemy may now train their terrorists to expect and resist such techniques just like we do for our service members in SERE school...
The disclosure to the enemy of what countries and possible locations we are keeping their most senior captured officers...
the inconvenient pre-war intelligence which was ignored.
You mean the intel which was "ignored" by being included in the NIE itself?
Hopefully, the press did not compromise and get any of our intelligence sources killed through these disclosures.
Abu Ghraib
You cannot classify criminal activity. This was the only proper leak in your list which did not result in illegal damage to the war effort.
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ReplyDeletebart: It must get disconcerting to be so wrong in your proefession of choice.
ReplyDeleteGlen wrote: There is a long history of striking a balance in this country between allowing investigative journalism to flourish through the use of leaks and the need to safeguard secrecy needs.
You responded: There is no such long history. This is a post Vietnam phenomenon which was rare previously. A few weeks ago, I challenged you to come up with similar examples prior disclosures of classified information to the enemy and you could come up with none.
Constitutional law professor, Geoffrey Stone, agrees with Glenn's take on the history and the law:
Never once in the history of the United States has the national government criminally prosecuted the press for publishing information the government would rather keep secret. ...
... But the government can never punish the press for publishing information of legitimate and important public concern, and especially not when the information reveals possible government wrongdoing, as was true in both the secret prison and NSA situations. Such revelations are essential to effective self-governance and they are at the very core of the First Amendment.
This is BILL CLINTON'S fault. That's right, he's been out of power since 2000, but his insidious tentacles
ReplyDeleteIt's not his tentacles....
Who'd they vote for in 04, sunny?
ReplyDeleteJay Ackroyd @ 12:26 pm
For Bush, naturally. But an entire swath of counties in the middle of the state went for Kerry. Also, his margin of victory was down 2% from 2000. I believe it would have been a different story had we not had paperless electronic voting machines in most of the counties.
Go here and you'll see the map. The counties that went for Kerry are in the so-called "black belt" the poorest counties who still rely mostly on paper ballots. (heads up: the map is bass-akwards. Kerry counties in red)
Jay Ackroyd @ 12:26 pm: Who'd they vote for in 04, sunny?
ReplyDeleteHilzoy at Obsidian Wings examines why Reps backed and voted for Bush:
I don't hang out with major Republican movers and shakers. But I know some people who know some of them, and so, over the last few years, I've asked them: why on earth did they all get behind this manifestly unqualified person? And the answer has always been the same: They thought he would win, and that's what mattered to them. [emphasis in original]
Think about that, as the remaining two and a half years of a failed Presidency drag on. The people who decide which of the Republicans who want to be President get to field a plausible candidacy knew George W. Bush. They had to know that he was manifestly unsuited for the job: that he had no capacity for reflection and self-criticism, no curiosity, no sense of the seriousness of the responsibilities of a President and the importance of living up to them, and no humility in the face of those responsibilities. He had failed at everything he had tried, except for being the front man for a baseball team and the governor of a state in which the governor has virtually no power. And yet they all got behind him, because he could win.
I’m getting a nice laugh out of the "Bush is a liberal" argument. He was their guy until the inevitable outcome of actually implementing their bad ideas came to fruition. The key was in the statement that "conservatism can't fail, it can only be failed," that is the world view, we're right you're wrong; if someone is wrong they aren't one of us. It's a completely insular world view.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, now that they’ve turned on him, they’ll have to find someone even more putrid to implement their grand designs. The scary part of looking at this mindset is realizing that no matter how abysmal the failure they’ll put someone else forward to try exactly the same program, and claim it was the individual who failed not the ideology.
Glenn commented on the religious nature of this movement earlier. It looks more and more like that all the time, but with Bush declared a heretic you have to wonder what happens next.
Bart said:
ReplyDelete"Just imagine what the enemy would not have learned over the past five years if there had been no leaks - the means and methods of NSA surveillance of al Qaeda telephone calls and emails into this country resulting in the identification of at least 10 al Qaeda targets per year..."
oh, come on now, you mean that al Qaeda members had NO idea that their telephone calls and emails might well be under surveillance....your blind acceptance of the administration's line would be amusing if it wasn't so scary to think that you really believe the stuff you write. And besides, even when the govt. has the goods on what al Qaeda is up to, it took 9/11 for the feds to realize that they needed to translate al Qaeda phone calls and emails immediately instead of waiting 2 days to get around to it. As for "the identification of at least 10 al Qaeda targets per year," pray tell, what reliable administration source gave you that info? bart, you crack me up.
ggr:
ReplyDeletewhen you have a chance go over to TalkLeft
and look thru the comments appended to the article
"Michael Hayden:Warrant less Surveillance...."
look for a coment by the site "admin" made at 11:54 pm
which could serve as one model for dealing with out of bounds comments.
it struck me as a simple and effective way to deal with comments-best-left-unsaid by one of that sites long-time commenters.
From cynic librarian @ 1:28 pm:
ReplyDeleteAnd the answer has always been the same: They thought he would win, and that's what mattered to them.
This is true of the money people, the movers and shakers, but many rank and file reps are so naive and/or undeducated they are highly susceptible to the right-wing noise machine.
from anon @ 1:33 pm re bart:
your blind acceptance of the administration's line would be amusing if it wasn't so scary to think that you really believe the stuff you write.
bart's too smart to still believe that swill- which makes him a shill. Reference my above comments on why many rank and file may still believe.
What to do about the rank and file? Not denigrate, but educate, educate.
What to do about bart and his ilk? Damned if I know. But you can be sure I won't try to
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ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThis link refuses to submit to html tags- I meant to couch it in these terms, continuing my previous post:
ReplyDeleteI refuse to try and "eliminate barts right to speech or threaten his very existence. Paste the following link to go read about "eliminationist" rhetoric, something Glenn has touched on before:
http://www.radmod.com/2006/prop/eliminationist-rhetoric-from-republican-media-figures-must-stop/
sunny: This is true of the money people, the movers and shakers, but many rank and file reps are so naive and/or undeducated they are highly susceptible to the right-wing noise machine.
ReplyDeleteThis goes directly to the question of insiders and king-makers. These are easily denounced as non-democratic since they obviate any input from everyday voters whose interests these people are supposed to serve.
The fact of backroom king-making is well-known in US politics and has given birth to all types of conspiracy scenarios ranging from Illuminati to the hilarious one portrayed in Being There.
I am open to discussion but I am also skeptical about the possibility that this state of affairs will ever change in the current way that the powers that be influence the electoral process. This is not simply because they have too strong a hold on the strings that make the puppets dance but because this si nature of any political system anytimes anywhere.
As the philosopher Simone Weill put it, the struggle for power is not bewteen the bottom and the top. It never has been and never will be. It's the struggle for power between those individuals and groups already in power. Those in power change depending on the economic system. In a capitalistic system, the power struggle is between the industrialists, technocrats, and media moguls.
"Thus soldiers who lowered their pants were ordered to exchange them, and disciplinary action was taken.”
ReplyDeleteI see you are still screaming about people appropriating the term "liberal" for their own purposes.
ReplyDeleteGlenn, don't be such a shill -- you and the circle of links are also using it for your own purpose. The "superblogs" that you constantly link to do not have anything to do with being liberal or progressive.
You either know this already or you are not as bright as I once thought.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black...
You shall know the the truth and the truth shall set you free!
ReplyDeleteYup, sounds like a bunch of pinko-commie-hippies to me!
"You cannot classify criminal activity. This was the only proper leak in your list which did not result in illegal damage to the war effort."
ReplyDeleteIts anti-American leftists like you giving aid and comfort to the enemy who pose a threat to this country. The release of the Abu Ghraib images, already being investigated and punished by the military, could only benefit the enemy. Just admit you're opposed to America fighting al Qaeda.
"Purge"?
ReplyDeleteThe corporate socialists, who've been posing as "conservatives" for a generation, are officially out in the open.
Defeat socialism! Vote for a Democrat!
.
The pub date on Wealth and Democracy was 2002.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing he meant The Emerging Republican majority. New Rochelle, N.Y., 1969.
.
glenn writes: That seems to be a nice, emerging theme among those responsible for this failed war - that the reason we haven't won in Iraq is because we haven't been violent and ferocious enough.
ReplyDeleteIf only the conservatives calling for pogroms and massacres were not 1) self-deluded about the tactics currntly being used in Iraq, 2) knowingly purveying a sanguine view to clud the reality in Iraq, or 3) disingenuously trying to create a cover story for the eventual disclosure of the atrocities already perpetrated in Iraq and presently underway.
One indication of what's really underway in Iraq comes via Brad Leiter at the Lieter report. It describes the current implementation by the CIA and special forces of what is known as the "Salvador Option." Basically, this option is known from its use in El Salvador during the years that Herr Uber-president Reagan was breaking the Boland laws.
The option involves training, equipping and managing groups of militias who carry out pinpoint assassinations to foment social disorder and fratricidal violence. According to John Pilger:
The Ministry of the Interior in Baghdad, which is run by the CIA, directs the principal death squads. Their members are not exclusively Shia, as the myth goes. The most brutal are the Sunni-led Special Police Commandos, headed by former senior officers in Saddam's Ba'ath Party. This was formed and trained by CIA "counter-insurgency" experts, including veterans of the CIA's terror operations in central America in the 1980s, notably El Salvador. ...
According to the investigative writer Max Fuller (National Review online), the key CIA manager of the Interior Ministry death squads "cut his teeth in Vietnam before moving on to direct the U.S. military mission in El Salvador." Professor Grandin names another Central America veteran whose job now is to "train a ruthless counter-insurgent force made up of ex-Ba'athist thugs." Another, says Fuller, is well-known for his "production of death lists." A secret militia run by the Americans is the Facilities Protection Service, which has been responsible for bombings. "The British and U.S. Special Forces," concludes Fuller, "in conjunction with the [U.S.-created] intelligence services at the Iraqi Defense Ministry, are fabricating insurgent bombings of Shias." ...
>In retrospect, this is perhaps unsurprising. The CIA has always had a leftist bent<
ReplyDeleteIts all that damn fact-finding they do. Next thing you know the CIA will claim to be reality-based!
davidbyron:
ReplyDeleteAs voters they are simply put, immoral.
Once again, that may be true of the money people, but regular working class reps are naive and/or uneducated. The answer is not to call them names, as right-wingers do to us, but to help them understand that liberal policies in gov't help allworking people. If you take the time to talk to them as individuals and expose right-wing lies for what they are, you will see they can be brought around.
For instance, the abortion issue. I am against abortion, tho not at all inclined to curtail the rights of women who want to seek them. A young woman I worked with a few years ago said she couldn't believe that I would support Democrats knowing they were for abortion. I answered her that Democratic politicians cannot force me to have an abortion, but Republicans could force me to live with a stagnant economy, preemtive wars, outsourcing, etc. etc. She saw my point, and eventually I talked her into seeing things my way.
On a related topic, dem vs. rep morals, this can be deflated with a quick quip, offered to another co-worker: "Honey, if you trust any politician to be an example for the rest of us, you need a "morality check."
Ah, yes, nothing like a good Stalinist purge for Republicans. The thought of a “purge” must bring back fond memories for Rummy and Cheney when they were Nixon’s henchmen pursing his grand plan.
ReplyDeleteNixon’s grand plan was to concentrate executive power in an imperial presidency, politicise the bureaucracy and crush its independence, and invoke national security to wage partisan warfare. He intended to “reconstitute the Republican party”, staging a “purge” to foster “a new majority”, as his aide William Safire wrote in his memoir. Nixon himself declared in his own memoir that to achieve his ends the “institutions” of government had to be “reformed, replaced or circumvented. In my second term I was prepared to adopt whichever of these three methods - or whichever combination of them — was necessary.”
But now George Bush is building a leviathan beyond Nixon’s imagining. The Bush presidency is the highest stage of Nixonism. The commander-in-chief has declared himself by executive order above international law, the CIA is being purged, the justice department deploying its resources to break down the wall of separation between church and state, the Environmental Protection Agency being ordered to suppress scientific studies and the Pentagon subsuming intelligence and diplomacy, leaving the US with blunt military force as its chief foreign policy.
The three main architects of Bush’s imperial presidency gained their formative experience amid Nixon’s downfall. Donald Rumsfeld, Nixon’s counsellor, and his deputy, Dick Cheney, one after the other, served as chief of staff to Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, both opposing congressional efforts for more transparency in the executive.
With perfect Nixonian pitch, Cheney remarked in 1976: “Principle is OK up to a certain point, but principle doesn’t do any good if you lose.” During the Iran-contra scandal Cheney, a republican leader in the House of Representatives, argued that the congressional report denouncing “secrecy, deception and disdain for the law” was an encroachment on executive authority.
So, Cheney hasn't changed a bit. How dare Congress denounce “secrecy, deception and disdain for the law” – those are good things necessary for government to work.
Well, an authoritarian government anyway.
Sigh.
Uof Chicago Law School constitutional professor Geoffrey Stone recently gave a talk on "the scope of Presidential power."
ReplyDeleteFrom the “been there, done that” file at the New York Times.:
ReplyDeleteNixon fretted in 1972 about needing better 'propaganda' on Vietnam war and purge of thousands of supposedly disloyal CIA employees..
And now, we need better propaganda to nuke Iran – and the only way to do it is a “purge” of disloyal CIA employees.
Well, at least we know where these guys got their training.
Recognition of the underlying reason for Patriot's pre-publishing success-the sheer determination of the blogosphere to be heard-is a great forebearer for the presence of bloggers in not only the campaign world but in the future policies of our government. Patriot and CTG are harbingers of a building movement. Thanks Glen.
ReplyDeletehttp://antiwar.com/justin/
ReplyDeleteThe Next World War
A turning point is reached
I contribute to the discussion of Democrat vs. Republican, the only two parties which ever get in office (although it seems the posters on this blog prefer to talk about conservative vs. liberal and cast various blames for some reason I do not fully understand) by quoting extensively from one of the two best political observers on the scene, in my estimation, but someone who seems to never get quoted on this blog by anyone but me so I take it Republicans, Democrats liberals and conservatives do not like him.
His articles cannot be linked to on blogspot (it would have taken Bill Gates ---an enterpreneur--a few minutes to correct that defect but appartently it is above Google--a government enabled non-meritricious monopoly) so I will post a long excerpt:
Tip to Readers: Justin writes primarily about the War Party, who happen to be the people who run America and control every aspect of our lives. Every program, policy, outrage, abuse is a direct result of policies which are put in place to maximize the profits (both monetary and in a larger sense---control and power) of the War Party.
The War Party is not Republican, Democrat, liberal, or conservative. It is simply the Rulers Of This Country.
Or haven't you all noticed?
All the wheels and pulleys of a very familiar narrative are swinging into motion, creaking and grating against gears, as the usual suspects grind out their war propaganda. Every day, it seems, there is some newly discovered quotation from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran in which he seems to be auditioning for the part of Hitler's doppelganger....
The great danger of war with Iran as an imminent possibility resides not only in this administration's proven warlike proclivities, but in the very similar appetites of the "opposition" party. Leading Democrats, including likely presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, far from seizing on recent pronouncements by the Bush White House as another round of duplicitous war propaganda, have accused the administration of appeasing the Iranians and promised – or, rather, threatened – to be much tougher on Tehran.
If our readers have learned anything over the months and years of perusing the news and commentary at Antiwar.com, it is that the War Party is not synonymous with the GOP. Far from it. Without the support of both "major" U.S. political parties, the cabal that lied us into war could not have gotten away with it. As I have consistently warned my readers in this space, the political and evidentiary foundations of the Iraq war were laid during the Clinton administration: U.S. foreign policy under George W. Bush is merely a continuation (albeit in somewhat extreme form) of trends that can be traced back through several administrations. Continuity, and not change, is the leitmotif of American foreign policy in the 21st century.
We are now heading toward a new election cycle, and the hopes (and illusions) of many are enjoying an inflationary surge. As in the case of economic inflation, however, they are bound to discover, sooner or later, that the whole thing is a mirage. The prospect of a Democratic sweep of the House and possibly the Senate fills some with hope that the truth about how and why we were lured into a disastrous invasion of Iraq will be brought out. I wouldn't bet the ranch on it, however.
The reason I wouldn't make that bet is that both parties were complicit in bringing us to where we are today, i.e., poised at the edge of the biggest strategic disaster in American military history, as Gen. William E. Odom puts it.
Now especially read these next sentences.
In cases where one party is clearly to blame, the other party can of course be counted on to do an investigation that issues a few subpoenas, assigns guilt, and even gets a few officials reprimanded and disgraced, if not jailed. But once the probe gets to the point of revealing the complicity of both parties in dragging us into an unnecessary and horrifically destructive war, the will to investigate evaporates. Unless it can be shown that real crimes occurred, as in the Scooter Libby case, no one is ever going to be prosecuted for engaging in a campaign of systematic deception that ended in the deaths of many thousands.
The greatest crime of this administration, however, is worse than all this: it consists of having set us up for yet another conflict – one that promises, if it ever comes to pass, to go down in history as the opening shot of World War III, or World War IV, depending whether you take our president and/or Norman Podhoretz seriously.
It is almost unbelievable that the War Party would try again so soon to lie us into war, after having pulled the same stunt so recently. Yet that is part of the "chutzpah" strategy I outlined in an earlier column, in which they brazen it out and attribute all their own failures to their enemies. The revisionist mythology is already taking shape in the lamentations of our laptop bombardiers: We lost Iraq because we didn't send in enough troops; politicians and political correctness led to a fatal lack of will to carry out the measures necessary for victory; and, last but not least, the traditionally "isolationist" and essentially narcissistic American public, with its well-known colossal indifference to events overseas, simply bailed out when the going got tough.
Even before the first intimations of disaster, the neoconservatives were at the ready with their rationalizations – the incompetence of the Bush administration, the "treason" of the media elite, the unwillingness of the American public to endure the sight of blood spilled for no apparently good reason, and the U.S. public's similar inability to see the Abu Ghraib prison scandal as performance art. These neocons are really, really smart, and there's no end to the permutations their protests of innocence could take. The Internet, in any case, is filled with their confessions, their memoirs of disillusionment, their testimony to having been deluded into worshipping The God That Failed. From Francis Fukuyama to Andrew Sullivan to Larry Diamond, the legion of disillusioned imperialists is recruiting hand over fist.
That deity, of course, is the unmatched military power of the United States government, to which they pledged allegiance and entrusted the magical transformation of Iraqi society, whose inhabitants, first of all, were supposed to have greeted our arrival with rose petals and cries of "Hosanna!" How to explain the recent spectacle of Iraqis cheering the downing of a British helicopter and the hail of stones that greeted allied rescuers? But the neocons, as we all know, are brilliant: don't worry, they'll think of something.
This, I think, suggests a solution to the problem of how to get all those troops we should have but didn't send to Iraq in the first place: let's strongly encourage these guys to sign up. They'll be just in time to fight the next war – which is coming, I fear, sooner than even the worst pessimists imagined.
The next war will see us facing the Iranians, but not just in Iran: from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq, where pro-Iranian factions are powerful and on the ascent, the fires of the conflict will rage. The Middle East is slated to be the main battlefield of the next world war, but there is no reason to believe it won't follow the example of previous global conflicts and spill over into Africa and the former Soviet Union – where the volatile possibilities are seemingly endless. Even Europe, where the French intifada could re-ignite momentarily, and "liberated" Kosovo, where, thanks to Bill Clinton, the Albanian Mafia rules the roost and operates the biggest open-air arms bazaar in the world, is a likely venue for future outbreaks.
The arc of crisis extends, potentially, from the heart of Europe – the former Yugoslavia, down through gangster-ruled Montenegro, into Turkey and Lebanon, sweeping over Syria and trisecting Iraq, and then driving westward into Sudan, Egypt, and further along the North African shore. Long before we launch an invasion of Iran – at the moment not even Michael Ledeen is openly suggesting it – more than a few of these proxy conflicts are far more likely to erupt.
One already has since Justin wrote this apparently.
The neocons may not be able to take out Tehran just yet, but Hezbollah will do in a pinch. And if victory in Afghanistan proves increasingly elusive, as appears to be the case, then what about a quick "victory" in Syria, where the brittle regime of Bashar al-Assad is supposedly ready to crumble at the first hint of an American invasion? I hear there's a Syrian Chalabi waiting in the wings, and it would certainly take peoples' minds off the bad news from Iraq.
So, you want to divert attention away from the failure of an unpopular and losing war? Easy. Just start another war. The sheer gall of such a strategy is bound to catch the opposition off guard, and by the time they recover, the shooting will have already started.
We are committed to no political party or faction. We report the news and publish commentary on world affairs, motivated by a single overriding principle: the idea that war is the enemy of human liberty. It is the great destroyer of civilization as it progresses from savagery through semi-savagery to the heights imagined by 19th-century classical liberals, who assumed that the graph of mankind's historical development would be a straight-line progression upwards.
This illusion was shattered by the tragedy of the Great War and remained in pieces in the aftermath of World War II, as the shadow of the Cold War descended on a weary world. It was only after the sudden implosion of Communism and the end of the global conflict between the U.S. and the USSR that the old illusions returned. At the conclusion of the Cold War, it looked as if the ideological battle between liberalism (in the broadest sense) and illiberal regimes had finally been resolved in favor of the former. One neoconservative theoretician even declared the "end of history," to near universal applause, and the prospect of a permanent peace enforced by the overwhelming firepower of the American military loomed large in the imagination of certain intellectuals and makers of government policy.
The irony is that this very dominance led to blowback – in CIA parlance, the unintended consequences of an action or policy – that may have sparked the next world war, a potential cataclysm that could lead to a worldwide downturn not only economically, but in every other area. The developing global conflict could even usher in a new dark age marked by permanent warfare and widespread destruction on a scale we can only begin to imagine.
No, human progress is not automatic or inevitable, history is not an eternal upward spiral, and knowledge, once gained, can be lost. We are, I believe, at a turning point, standing on a knife's edge. Will we lurch, stupidly, into another catastrophic world conflict comparable to the Great War in its pointlessness as well as its horrific political consequences? At the moment, such a disastrous course is avoidable, but only barely.
Now you can all talk about swift-boats and Kos can talk about how warm Hillary Clinton is and FDL can talk about whether Libby will get indicted for LYING or praise Fitz who so far hasn't done one single thing which has in any way impeded the War Party so who cares anyway or you can shift your focus to what patriotic Americans can do to stop the War Party before its insane policies wreck all our lives and destroy the World.
Conservatism must be strangled in it's bed. Not drowned like a baby in a bathtub, as Grover Norquist intended for government (read liberalism), but smothered in it's sickbed where it now lies because of it's own non-viability. Not a mercy killing but an act of self-defense. What better way to prove to certain quarters that we are quite capable of the defense of this nation, and ourselves? It must be made history, but not erased from history. It needs to take it's place alongside other failed ideologies like Marxism, Communism, Fascism and Nazism.
ReplyDeleteThe enemy.
EWO:
ReplyDeleteHis articles cannot be linked to on blogspot (it would have taken Bill Gates ---an enterpreneur--a few minutes to correct that defect but appartently it is above Google--a government enabled non-meritricious monopoly) so I will post a long excerpt: ……
Or, maybe you should get over your Google “hysteria” and just look to the right where the actual links to his articles are it would have taken you a few seconds.
Duh.
the link to Justin’s article
Please spare us in the future. Thank-you.
Or, maybe you should get over your Google “hysteria” and just look to the right where the actual links to his articles are it would have taken you a few seconds.
ReplyDeleteDuh.
Heh.
the cynic librarian said...
ReplyDeletebart: It must get disconcerting to be so wrong in your proefession of choice.
It must be disconcerting not being able to read for content after all of your years of alleged education. Let's take a gander at what was posted...
Glen wrote: There is a long history of striking a balance in this country between allowing investigative journalism to flourish through the use of leaks and the need to safeguard secrecy needs.
You responded: There is no such long history. This is a post Vietnam phenomenon which was rare previously. A few weeks ago, I challenged you to come up with similar examples prior disclosures of classified information to the enemy and you could come up with none.
Constitutional law professor, Geoffrey Stone, agrees with Glenn's take on the history and the law:
Never once in the history of the United States has the national government criminally prosecuted the press for publishing information the government would rather keep secret. ...
There is no contradiction between by statement and that of Professor Stone. I pointed out that the press before Vietnam did not violate the Espionage Act and other classification laws by disclosing secrets to the enemy. Therefore, there would be no reason for the government to prosecute the press for violating these laws.
The only example of which I am aware was a Chicago paper disclosing the military plans before Midway during WWII. The government did not go after this paper because they did not want to bring this story to the attention of the enemy.
... But the government can never punish the press for publishing information of legitimate and important public concern, and especially not when the information reveals possible government wrongdoing, as was true in both the secret prison and NSA situations. Such revelations are essential to effective self-governance and they are at the very core of the First Amendment.
This is a lesson to always challenge your professors when you know them to be wrong.
Justice White wrote in Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972) “[i]t would be frivolous to assert . . . that the First Amendment, in the interest of securing news or otherwise, confers a license on either the reporter or his news sources to violate valid criminal laws.”
Professor Stone also needs to read the Supreme Court decision in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971). In that case, a majority of the Court wrote opinions which denied the government prior restraint in the form of an injunction against the NYT barring them from publishing classified material, but they did indicate that the NYT could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act after publication.
Today's Supreme Court is much more conservative than the Burger Court of the Nixon Administration.
Halteclere said...
ReplyDeleteBart said: Just imagine what the enemy would not have learned over the past five years if there had been no leaks - the means and methods of NSA surveillance of al Qaeda telephone calls and emails into this country resulting in the identification of at least 10 al Qaeda targets per year...
Anonymous beat me to this: oh, come on now, you mean that al Qaeda members had NO idea that their telephone calls and emails might well be under surveillance...
The fact that the NSA Program was intercepting and identifying al Qaeda is not even in dispute.
The leaker(s) to the NYT admitted that this program had stopped at least two al Qaeda operations of which they are aware.
The WP revealed that Justice sought FISA warrants to gather criminal evidence against an average of ten al Qaeda targets per year which were identified by the NSA Program.
al Qaeda obviously did not know they were being intercepted until Risen and the NYT informed them.
Bart said:
ReplyDelete"Just imagine what the enemy would not have learned over the past five years if there had been no leaks - the means and methods of NSA surveillance of al Qaeda telephone calls and emails into this country resulting in the identification of at least 10 al Qaeda targets per year..."
-----------------------------
These reporters gave information to American citizens, Bart- do you consider American citizens to be "the enemy"?
And identifying "at least 10 al Qaeda members each year"? You're making that up, aren't you?
cfaller96 said...
ReplyDeleteBart said: "Just imagine what the enemy would not have learned over the past five years if there had been no leaks - the means and methods of NSA surveillance of al Qaeda telephone calls and emails into this country resulting in the identification of at least 10 al Qaeda targets per year..."
These reporters gave information to American citizens, Bart- do you consider American citizens to be "the enemy"?
The information is classified to keep it from the enemy. The NYT cannot disclose it only to the American people.
And identifying "at least 10 al Qaeda members each year"? You're making that up, aren't you?
No. Here is the URL for the article. The WP article concerns how Justice and FISA segregated cases where the defendant was identified by the NSA program from the rest of the warrants being sought. Look at the bottom of the first page.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/08/AR2006020802511.html
Glenn, am eagerly awaiting your book, and have ordered copies for family and friends.
ReplyDeleteGlenn,
ReplyDeleteSome time ago you wrote a post that essentially said that what passes for "conservatism" these days really isn't-- it's some bizarre variant on corporate fascism.
In order to sell their vicious agenda to the electorate, it was critical that the Right camouflage it with an accepted, traditional name like 'conservatism.' The term imparts a sort of old-fashioned respectableness, and serves to mask the underlying agenda. Tearing that facade down will go a long way toward fixing what is wrong with our political culture. I think the subject is rich enough for an entire book.
Now that you are an established author with time on your hands...
The previous 62 comments mostly used the term "conservative" and occasionally "neoconservative". Never did anyone mention paleoconservatives. You guys do not seem to appreciate that the Right has factions and the faction currently in power is atypical.
ReplyDeleteYou are taking the people in power and labelling them "conservative". But really they aren't. They aren't Burkean conservatives. They aren't Tories. They aren't even the older generation of social scientist neoconservatives. They are second generation neocons of the sort you'll find at the Weekly Standard. The National Review had a purge in the late 90s that ousted all the paleocons such as John O'Sullivan and Steve Sailer. A Likudnik Jewish friend of mine tells me that when he visits National Review Onliine he gets it confused with Commentary.
So I find this whole discussion hopelessly naive motivated far more by partisan animus than by any interest in understanding the Right.
As for Iraq and liberalism: The Iraq Debacle is a result of liberal assumptions about human nature. The neocons are liberals who found the Democratic Party as too dovish for their goals. Christopher Hitchens has commented that when he had a long discussion with Paul Wolfowitz about a variety of political topics he found Wolfowitz to be a bleeding heart. Yes, exactly.
ReplyDeleteThe liberals are unable to mount an effective criticism of the Iraq Debacle because Bush has promoted the Iraq intervention in liberal terms about democracy and spreading freedom and how everyone wants to be free. When paleocons have argued that, no, not everyone has either the desire or the capacity (think average national IQ and cousin marriage) Bush's response is that they are racists. He's making a liberal argument. No wonder you can't refute him. You'd have to abandon some tenets of your secular religion in order to do so.
Iraq actually demonstrates the flaws of liberalism. No, liberalism is not the universalist belief system that its promoters pretend it is. The tribals and religious sects in Iraq don't give a damn about religious freedom or freedom of speech. They don't care about uncorrupt government. They just want to be the ones who dominate everyone else.
We are going to remain in a pointless war because too many on the Right are loyal to their leader and because too many on the Left won't admit basic truths demonstrated by the Iraq Debacle.
slartibartfart,
ReplyDeleteRove will be indicted. Can't wait to not read your book!
FuturePundit said...
ReplyDeleteThe previous 62 comments mostly used the term "conservative" and occasionally "neoconservative". Never did anyone mention paleoconservatives. You guys do not seem to appreciate that the Right has factions and the faction currently in power is atypical.
Thank you, futurepundit. Most know, but just don't care. Conservatism is dead. Long live liberalism. The Book of the Dead:
Sectors of the US Right
Secular Right
Corporate Internationalists—Nations should control the flow of people across borders, but not the flow of goods, capital, and profit. Sometimes called the "Rockefeller Republicans." Globalists.
Business Nationalists—Multinational corporations erode national sovereignty; nations should enforce borders for people, but also for goods, capital, and profit through trade restrictions. Enlists grassroots allies from Patriot Movement. Anti-Globalists. Generally protectionist and isolationist.
Economic Libertarians—The state disrupts the perfect harmony of the free market system. Modern democracy is essentially congruent with capitalism.
National Security Militarists—Support US military supremacy and unilateral use of force to protect perceived US national security interests around the world. A major component of Cold War anti-communism.
Neoconservatives—The egalitarian social liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s undermined the national consensus. Intellectual oligarchies and political institutions preserve democracy from mob rule. The United States has the right to intervene in its perceived interests anywhere in the world.
Religious Right
Religious Conservatives—Play by the rules of a pluralist democratic republic. Mostly Christian, with a handful of conservative Jews and Muslims and other people of faith. Moral traditionalists. Cultural and social conservatives.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christian Nationalism (Soft Dominionists)—Biblically–defined immorality and sin breed chaos and anarchy. America’s greatness as God’s chosen land has been undermined by liberal secular humanists, feminists, and homosexuals. Purists want litmus tests for issues of abortion, tolerance of gays and lesbians, and prayer in schools. Overlaps somewhat with Christian Theocracy.
Christian Theocracy (Hard Dominionists)—Christian men are ordained by God to run society. Eurocentric version of Christianity based on early Calvinism. Intrinsically Christian ethnocentric, treating non-Christians as second-class citizens. Implicitly antisemitic. Includes Christian Reconstructionists.
Xenophobic Right
Patriot Movement (Regressive Populists)—Secret elites control the government and banks. The government plans repression to enforce elite rule or global collectivism. The armed militias are one submovement from this sector. Americanist. Often supports Business Nationalism due to its isolationist emphasis. Anti-Globalist, yet support unilateralist national security militarism. Repressive towards scapegoated targets below them on socio-economic ladder.
Paleoconservatives—Ultra-conservatives and reactionaries. Natural financial oligarchies preserve the republic against democratic mob rule. Usually nativist (White Nationalism), sometimes antisemitic or Christian nationalist. Elitist emphasis is similar to the intellectual conservative revolution wing of the European New Right. Often libertarian.
White Nationalism (White Racial Nationalists)—Alien cultures make democracy impossible. Cultural Supremacists argue different races can adopt the dominant (White) culture; Biological Racists argue the immutable integrity of culture, race, and nation. Segregationists want distinct enclaves, Separatists want distinct nations. Americanist. Tribalist emphasis is similar to the race-is-nation wing of the European New Right.
Extreme Right (Ultra Right)—Militant forms of revolutionary right ideology and separatist ethnocentric nationalism. Reject pluralist democracy for an organic oligarchy that unites the homogeneic nation. Conspiracist views of power that are overwhelmingly antisemitic. Home to overt neofascists, neonazis, Christian Identity, Creativity (Church of the Creator), National Alliance.
JaO said...
ReplyDeleteAnd identifying "at least 10 al Qaeda members each year"? You're making that up, aren't you?
bart: No. Here is the URL for the article. The WP article concerns how Justice and FISA segregated cases where the defendant was identified by the NSA program from the rest of the warrants being sought. Look at the bottom of the first page.
1) First, a quibble; These were not "defendants" or proven Al Qaeda members," but rather U.S. persons for whom there was probable cause to believe to be that they were agents of a foreign power, which might include Al Qaeda, who became targets of subsequent FISA warrants.
These are US residents, not necessarily citizens.
I never said they were criminal defendants. They are al Qaeda targets whom we never would have identified without the NSA program, which is the entire point.
There certainly have not been 10 suspected terrorists actually charged each year.
For once, think about this like we are at war.
The objective is not necessarily to arrest and convict these targets. Rather, it might be a much better idea to either continue to monitor the target to gain leads to other al Qaeda or to build a criminal case to blackmail the target into acting as a double agent.
The vast majority of these targets are most likely sympathizers or support. There are very few actual terrorists in their networks.
So far we have been told of only one case, the Brooklyn Bridge torch plotter, where the NSA surveillance was even a factor.
The NYT reported on two prevented operations, but in a modicum of responsibility did not identify the second.
2) The figure of about 10 cases per year that rose to such a level actually justifying FISA warrants for domestic surveillance is a very small percentage -- about 1 percent -- of some 5,000 persons the Post said had been intercepted under the warrantless program since 9/11. That leaves about 99 percent not deemed to justify such legal wiretapping.
They are speculating as to the exact number. However, I would not be at all surprised if the vast majority of calls flowing in and out of these captured numbers are unrelated to terror. This is the case when we wire tap mafia and other organized crime. Thousands of hours of tape boil down to a few hours of evidence.
3) By the terms of the requirements imposed by the chief FISA judges, and described by the Post story, the evidence justifying the 10 warrants per year had to be derived independently of and untainted by the prior warrantless surveillance. So unless administration officials lied under oath when they certified to the FISA chief judges that the NSA surveillance was not the source of the information against the suspects, it could not be said that the surveillance was "resulting in the identification" of them, as bart claims.
Hardly. The NSA identifies the target. The target is placed under FBI surveillance. Probable cause is developed for the FISA warrant from that surveillance.
4) The Post story indicates that both the chief judges and the DOJ official responsible for seeking the warrants, James A. Baker, feared that the prior warrantless surveillance could not withstand judicial review.
I think their worry is overblown. The Truong and other cases held that evidence gained in warrantless surveillance was admissible so long as the primary purpose of the surveillance is intelligence gathering and not criminal investigation. Justice needs to stay out of the intelligence gathering so as not to give a criminal court the excuse to say it was for criminal investigation.
5) If DOJ wanted to assert that the warrantless surveillance really was lawful and constitutional, as AG Gonzales asserts outside of any court today, it would have been a straighforward matter to apply for the 10 FISA warrants per year anyway, and establish that precedent.
How? Until you identify the target as al Qaeda, you have no probable cause for a FISA warrant.
Sunny:
ReplyDelete"This link refuses to submit to html"
Evidently Blogger has a bug when dealing with links that end in a slash. However, frequently that trailing slash isn't necessary. So you could write the link like this.
anon:
ReplyDeleteOr, maybe you should get over your Google “hysteria” and just look to the right where the actual links to his articles are it would have taken you a few seconds.
Duh.
Or maybe you should spare me your sarcasm. Duh.
I do links by copying the "properties" and then pasting that after the a href stuff.
You don't?
When I try to post any "property" that ends in a / as many of Justin's articles do, it won't go through.
That's one.
I read comments by two other bloggers who said they had the same problem and it was because blogger sometimes ate those links.
That was two and three so I thought it was a curve.
I still cannot post any of those in a link but I am always willing to learn.
What did I do wrong?
Or maybe it's certain computers or certain providers which do that?
Even if you demonstrate I was doing something wrong, I still don't like Google and do not intend to change that view of mine.
For one thing, many innocent journalists and innocent people are sitting in jails rotting because of them while you are happily sitting at your computer.
I agree with Martin Luther King.
Eyes Wide Open:
ReplyDelete"I still cannot post any of those in a link but I am always willing to learn. What did I do wrong?"
You did nothing wrong; it is a Blogger bug. But try simply removing the / at the end of the URL. It is usually (but not always) unnecessary.
"It would still be possible to win if Junior was willing to brutally prosecute the war, as Roosevelt or Truman would have done. It is clear now that Shrub is way too liberal for that. It is not clear if he could have gotten away with it even if he was not a modern liberal. It is not clear if US Army is capable of prosecuting a brutal war now (but Marines probably could do it), way too many officers are squishy liberals in various stages."
ReplyDeleteIt is generally forgotten that Franklin Roosevelt rejected the recommendation of his sainted Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall to invade Europe in 1942-which would have been a fiasco.
Harry Truman was widely vilified for-wisely-recalling the great Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to widen the Korean War by attacking China
My bet is that the individual advocating a more brutal prosecution of the war has never served. H/She falls into the category of those who make decisions with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions-or bury the results.
My advice to anyone advocating that is to go to Iraq with as many people as they can get to follow them and "DO" as they advocate.
Ha! Have you ever noticed how these know-it-all snarks are really pretty ignorant? I guess it takes a lot of energy to work up all that snarkiness.
ReplyDeleteSo, Mr. "duh", it is blogger's fault after all, and a simple instructive comment such as anon made identifies the problem accurately and explains how to get around it.
Thank you, anon.
Futurepundit, I certainly hope you are going to be writing more on this blog.
I find your posts fascinating and I only have one quibble.
The phrase "pointless war" is somewhat jarring. It may indeed be pointless but that's a rather dispassionate adjective to use about an enterprise which has caused over 100,000 lives to be lost and has led to so much human misery.
To the quaker:
What do you call a person who believes this is going on, but does not believe in it as in wanting it to go on?
Secret elites control the government and banks. The government plans repression to enforce elite rule or global collectivism. The armed militias are one submovement from this sector.
Ha! Have you ever noticed how these know-it-all snarks are really pretty ignorant? I guess it takes a lot of energy to work up all that snarkiness.
ReplyDeleteSo, Mr. "duh", it is blogger's fault after all, and a simple instructive comment such as anon made identifies the problem accurately and explains how to get around it.
Thank you, anon.
Futurepundit, I certainly hope you are going to be writing more on this blog.
I find your posts fascinating and I only have one quibble.
The phrase "pointless war" is somewhat jarring. It may indeed be pointless but that's a rather dispassionate adjective to use about an enterprise which has caused over 100,000 lives to be lost and has led to so much human misery.
To the quaker:
What do you call a person who believes this is going on, but does not believe in it as in wanting it to go on?
Secret elites control the government and banks. The government plans repression to enforce elite rule or global collectivism. The armed militias are one submovement from this sector.
And Google is vindictive too. See how they doubleposted my last comment:)
ReplyDeleteBart said:
ReplyDelete"You cannot classify criminal activity."
I'm glad you agree Bart that you cannot classify criminal activity. Bush's approval of the NSA program violated the law. He not only admitted vilolating the law but said that he will continue to do so.
"Abu Ghraib
This was the only proper leak in your list which did not result in illegal damage to the war effort."
Didn't result in damage to the war effort? The actions at Abu Ghraib have given anyone we ever fight the invitation to torture our soldiers if they are caught. If nothing else we have lost the moral high ground with Renditions, Guantanamo, and Abu Ghraib.
As for the NYT article, it never exposed means and methods, only the fact that we were monitoring Al Qaida.
Which:
1.Would be incredibly stupid of Al Qaida to believe that they were not being monitored. Especially since Bush had revealed to them in an earlier speech that we could monitor their satellite phone communications.
2.WE know Bush knew about the article a year in advance, and yet, if it did disclose means and methods he did nothing to stop the publication of the article which makes him as guilty as the reporters and the NYT.
"For one thing, many innocent journalists and innocent people are sitting in jails rotting because of them while you are happily sitting at your computer."
ReplyDeleteOne has to wonder what EWO would have Google do.
It wasn't Google who helped admit China to the WTO. Nor was it Google who year after year voted to give China MFN trading status with the U.S., even after Tianamen Square and thousands of other human rights violations. And it wasn't Google that has encouraged U.S. companies to do business in China with special tax breaks and other incentives for doing so.
And last, it isn't Google who decides whether or not they will obey the laws of the countries they operate in. It is the Government of any country that make their own laws, and that same Government that decides who will be prosecuted for disobeying those laws to include Google if they operate there.
Mabe EWO would prefer that the owners of Google were in jail in China for violating their laws.
One has to wonder what EWO would have Google do.
ReplyDeletePut principle above profit and do not operate in any country where their involvement there leads to the abuse of human beings.
Next question.
Invisible Control Ready
ReplyDeleteWhen all trails lead to one source, it must be recognized that something is there. From an excellent article on this subject, below are quotes from known people of perhaps less than desirable scruples:
Benjamin Disraeli, first Prime Minister of England stated in 1844: "The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes."
Winston Churchill stated to the London press in 1922: "From the days of Sparticus Wieshophf, Karl Marx, Trotski, Belacoon, Rosa Luxenberg, and Ema Goldman, this world conspiracy has been steadily growing. This conspiracy played a definite recognizable role in the tragedy of the French revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century. And now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their head and have become the undisputed masters of that enormous empire."
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter: "The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes."
John F. Hylan, Mayor of New York, 1918-1925: "The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation."
President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a letter dated November 21, 1933: "The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson."
U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, Republican candidate for President, 1964, in his book "With no Apologies" states: "The Trilateral Commission is the international....[It] is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power - POLITICAL, MONETARY, INTELLECTUAL, and ECCLESIASTICAL."
Robert Kennedy, former U.S. Attorney General: "All of us will ultimately be judged on the effort we have contributed to building a New World Order."
One should ask why such an exposed situation is not more widely recognized. A clue can be taken from above: The BBLs control the mainstream media. Apparently they choose to remain invisible in the background. From there they wield ultimate control without being bothered by the scum of us common people doing all the work and paying all THEIR bills. In fact, they refer to us as "goyim", which literally translates to "human cattle". It occurred to me recently that the BBLs are nothing more than an elite Mafia operating in back of the more visible Mafia. This would explain their merciless enforcement procedures. A recent article seemed to place David Rockefeller as the head of that inhuman pack. Quoting from a different source, we learn more about Rockefeller's objectives, and also about certain media that have supported him rather than us "goyim":
David Rockefeller, founder of the aforementioned Trilateral Commission, in an address to a meeting of that organization in June of 1991: "We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination [read that "democracy"] practiced in past centuries."
That same article continues with an outright admission of a controlled media that prevents reporters from writing the truth.
John Swinton, former Chief of Staff of the most powerful and prestigious newspaper on earth, The New York Times, when asked to give a toast to the "free press" at the New York Press Club stated: "There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
EWO foolishly wrote:
ReplyDeleteHa! Have you ever noticed how these know-it-all snarks are really pretty ignorant? I guess it takes a lot of energy to work up all that snarkiness.
So, Mr. "duh", it is blogger's fault after all, and a simple instructive comment such as anon made identifies the problem accurately and explains how to get around it.
Once again I say “Duh” and I really mean it. If it’s blogger’s fault, then why could I post the link at 4;24 and any of Justin’s links that I want to but you can’t? And I’m ignorant?
The other anon doesn’t know what he’s talking about because the link provided does not end in a forward slash but a number – which means you can link to them.
Now I’ll type this real slow so you can get it: under “Archives” to the right are Justin’s articles with links that you can copy and past into a “link” format.
So if you’ll stop screaming at blogger and Google and making a fool out of yourself, you’ll be able to link to Justin’s articles just like I did - and it has nothing to do with a forward slash.
If I’m ignorant, why could I link to it and you couldn’t? Duh.
Jesus Christ get a clue already. The government and media are wholly owned subsidiaries of corporate America. The peons who recive the daily talking points are paid for by their corporate masters to tow the company line. The media is simply the official propaganda arm of theis most hostile corporate takeover, while the government has been filled with incompetent pinheaded lackeys whose job it is to enact legislation written in boardrooms.
ReplyDeleteThis country has become a full-blown Plutocracy of which the mass media is an essential part. Journalists have been replaced by PR and advertising people.
Stop excpecting the "media" to bail us out -- it was bought up after corporate America's previously failed attempt to take over the country during Nixon's administration. The war is being fought to fatten corporate pockets while America's work force is being reduced to menial service labor, underpaid, no benefits and living like slaves.
Welcome to the New World Order.
bart said:
ReplyDelete"The WP article concerns how Justice and FISA segregated cases where the defendant was identified by the NSA program from the rest of the warrants being sought."
-----------------------
Bart, do you understand the difference between a suspect and a felon?
A suspect is someone who, with probable cause, is investigated for possible criminal charges. A felon is someone who has already been investigated, charged, tried, and convicted of a crime. Do you understand the difference?
When you say "at least 10 al Qaeda members" were monitored each year with the Program, you're already assuming that the people monitored (whom the President has already admitted are American citizens) have been investigated, tried, and convicted of being members of the al Qaeda terrorist group and/or engaging in terrorist acts.
But you're wrong. The WP article mentioned how in fewer than 10 cases each year, suspects investigated by the Program merit further investigation through FISA warrants. The article made no mention of "at least 10 arrests/convictions of members of al Qaeda."
The distinction is real and significant. An American citizen is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and no American can nor should be smeared as a "member of al Qaeda" unless he/she has been charged, tried, and convicted. Anything less than that, and you've got nothing more than a silly witch hunt.
Speaking of witch hunts, do you understand that being investigated by the Bush Administration does not necessarily make one a terrorist? Do you understand that just because President Bush says these people are terrorists, doesn't make it true?
Glenn,
ReplyDeleteI've said it before, and I'll say it again: It's nice that you put "updated" at the top of your posts, but it would be even better if you also put a NUMBER there, indicating how many updates there are. It's negligible extra work for you, negligible screen real estate taken, and extremely informative for the blog-followers.
After demanding that Durbin pledge in advance not to even entertain the idea of impeaching Bush and Durbin refused, Wallace expressed his outrage: “Are you saying Senator, that you would consider the impeachment of a Commander-in-Chief in time of war."
ReplyDeleteThe reply I wish Durbin had made:
"Who are you talking about Chris? Richard Nixon or George Bush?"
Eyes WIde Open said...
ReplyDeleteOne has to wonder what EWO would have Google do.
Put principle above profit and do not operate in any country where their involvement there leads to the abuse of human beings.
Next question.
And just what do you think you do when you buy all those Chinese products you have in your home? Including components of the computer that you use to post on this board with.
You support China and all of their policies.
You might want to ask Sara Nelson to update your domain name to add the .com which is missing right now. I posted a comment there but it doesn't show up.
ReplyDeleteRW screeds complaing the CIA is too "liberal":
ReplyDeleteToo often the agency [i.e., The Company or the CIA] has performed that job miserably, the greatest example being its gargantuan miscalculations about the Soviet Union.
The CIA's blunders included over-estimating the "missile gap" of the '50s-'60s, and not predicting the rotting and the fall of the Soviet Union. Then there's the Iraq debacle (albeit more level-headed folks in the agency were raising red flags, but they were shushed up). Hardly the mark of a "too liberal" CIA.....
This is just another example of the RW blaming their own failures on those damned "lib'ruls" and complaining that the true conservatism will be the saviour of us all. Gawd (or FSM) help us all...
Cheers,
HWSNBN exhibits the usual cluelessness:
ReplyDeleteAs you should know as an attorney, it is a felony to leak grand jury testimony to protect the privacy of the witnesses testifying without benefit of counsel and often not knowing what questions are going to be asked.
Contrary to their self aggrandizement, the First Amendment does not provide the press with special immunity to violate the law...
Ummm, so tell us, Mr. DePalma: Who in the press was on the grand jury (or in the prosecutor's office)? Hmmmm???
Care to retract your idiocy here?
Doubt it.
Just a FYI, not exactly clear who leaked the info. If it was the witnesses or someone associated with them, no harm, no foul (unlike, say, the Starr Chamber leaks ... say, were you screaming about those "felonies" at the time, Mr. DePalma?)
Cheers,