Anarchoblogs

• Last month AOL News ran an anecdotal Data-less Trend Story about city governments in small towns firing the city government police force in order to cope with budget crunches.^[1] I’d like to know what the actual data here is; typically, cash-strapped city governments react by cutting everything except police and jails. If governments’ financing crises are finally leading them to reduce the number of police patrolling city streets, that’s surprisingly good news. Most of the towns mentioned are very small towns — with populations ranging from about 700 to 4,500. The outlier, Maywood, California, has about 30,000 people living in the town (with a whopping 4 murders in 2008! twice the national average!). Apparently part of the reason they fired the police department was because a lot of the city government’s $450,000 budget deficit, and its trouble securing insurance, came from lawsuits, many involving the police. Government employees and hangers-on are going nuts about all of this. After the vote in Maywood, ex-City Treasurer Lizeth Sandoval told the city council You single-handedly destroyed the city, by which she means that they outsourced the city government. (You won’t find any burned-out buildings, torn-up streets, or dead bodies; the places and people in the city of Maywood, California are still right where they were, going on as happily as they were before; the only things destroyed were the government jobs of tax-eaters like City Treasurer Lizeth Sandoval.) Jim Pasco, national executive director of the Fraternal Order of Pigs, said that decisions to fire local police were penny wise and pound foolish, because sheriff’s departments and state police will be spread thin patrolling larger areas, and no amount is too much to spend on city cops, because The absolute threshold responsibility of a government at any level is to ensure the safety of its citizens.

• For example, consider local hero Officer Bryan Yant, liar and killer for the Las Vegas Metro police department, who by making up lies to obtain fraudulent search warrants and by violently breaking into citizens’ homes late at night, where he ensures the safety of Las Vegas’s citizens by kicking down doors and shooting unarmed black men with his AR-15 assault rifle, based on furtive motions and a glimmer or something shiny that nobody but Officer Bryan Yant ever saw, and which is plainly contradicted by forensic evidence related to the angle of the shot. Local government in Las Vegas has fulfilled is threshold responsibility by once again^[2] ensuring the safety of Officer Bryan Yant from any legal consequences for shooting innocent, unarmed men in the head during a hyperviolent raid to investigate a completely nonviolent, victimless crime, all of it based on demonstrable falsehoods and mistaken identity — oops! my bad! All of which should free Officer Bryan Yant up for a fourth Internal Investigation, in which his government colleagues will once again either exonerate him or let him off without any criminal penalties, for lying and fabricating fictitious search and arrest warrants in at least one other drug investigation involving another hyperviolent late night home raid. The polite term in local media for Officer Bryan Yant’s work ensuring the safety of Las Vegas citizens is sloppy. A better term would be fraudulent and lethally violent. How much safer does it make you feel that this lying, killing 4-time winner is still a fully-paid member of the Las Vegas Metro police force?

• Meanwhile, in El Reno, Oklahoma, government police officers are ensuring the safety of El Reno citizens by forcing their way into an 86-year-old bed-ridden grandmother’s home on a wellness check, and then, if she should object to 10 armed strangers busting into her house, by stepping on her oxygen hose and torturing her with electrical shocks in her own bed, until she passes out from the pain. El Reno Police Chief Ken Brown justified this use of extreme violence against an elderly woman who could not possibly have physically harmed anybody more than a couple feet away from her on the grounds that she was holding a kitchen knife, and she told officers She was in control of her life. Thus, Police were forced [sic!] to use a Taser on the woman until she could be forced into a hospital psychoprison — not because she was actually charged with any crime, of course, but so that she could be cured of her deranged and dangerous belief that she was in control of her own life.

• Meanwhile, in New York, New York, Officer Patrick Pogan, a government police officer working for the New York city government, ensured the safety of New York citizens by body-slamming an unarmed bicyclist to the ground for trying to avoid hitting him, and then lying about it in his police reports, where he claimed that his victim was trying to ram into him, rather than swerving around him. His government colleague Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Maxwell Wiley, in turn, fulfilled his threshold obligation by ensuring that this lying violent thug would face absolutely no criminal consequences whatsoever for the crimes that he had been convicted of.

• Also, in New York, New York, government cop Detective Louis J. Eppolito ensured the safety of New York citizens by taking a second job as an informant and hit-man for the Luchese crime family. He took a special interest in ensuring the safety of Brian Gibbs by framing him for murder — among other things, making up fictional witness statements, threatening witnesses in order to get testimony against Gibbs, withholding evidence that would have proven Gibbs’s evidence, and torturing Gibbs himself until he extracted a false confession. Brian Gibbs lost 19 years of his life locked in prison. The New York Police Department spent years fulfilling its threshold obligation to keep Detective Louis J. Eppolito safe from any consequences for his violent crimes, even though — years before he tortured and framed Brian Gibbs — they had direct evidence that he was working for the Mafia (including having his fingerprints on police reports he had handed off to a fellow gangster). The Incident was, of course, Internally Investigated, and Detective Eppolito was let off without even facing any administrative disciplinary actions. Which freed him up to go on murdering and imprisoning innocent people for the mob. The city government in New York still officially maintains that Brian Gibbs is guilty of murder. However, they’ve decided to sign a $9,900,000 settlement; dedicated public servants that they are, they will send the bill to innocent New York City taxpayers who had nothing to do with the crimes committed against Brian Gibbs.

• Meanwhile, in Sebastian County, Arkansas, government drug investigators are ensuring the safety of citizens by staging heavily armed, late-night raids on citizens’ houses, where they threaten the lives of everyone in the house, including sleeping babies — without bothering to check the address on the mailbox to see whether they are actually even forcing their way into the right house. (Oops! My bad!) Then, after releasing their innocent victims from the shackles they had forced them into, the cops they went down the street to the right house, where they broke into somebody else’s home, threatened three other innocent people’s lives, and forced them into cages at gunpoint, for the completely nonviolent offense of having marijuana.

• Meanwhile, in Universal City, Texas, government police are ensuring the safety of citizens by surrounding innocent women and children in their cars, pointing guns at them and screaming at them to put their hands up, and then forcing their way into the car before they realize — oops! our bad! — that they had the wrong car and the wrong people, and were threatening the lives of a black woman with three children who had nothing to do with the white man they were trying to ambush. Since government police never face any consequences whatsoever for their fuck-ups, no matter how high-stakes, violent, reckless, traumatic or dangerous to the safety of innocent citizens, the police department is waving it off as an unfortunate coincidence. They refer to the use of such high-stakes, violent tactics in uncertain situations, with incomplete information, to terrify and overwhelm innocent women and children, as doing our jobs, and publicly state that We would not change what we did. Of course they wouldn’t; who’s going to make them?

• Meanwhile, in Tavares, Florida, government police are ensuring the safety of citizens by interrogating and then arresting Latina women who are not suspected of any crime, for not giving her name fast enough or producing identification papers on demand. The government police officer told his victim that she had to provide ID because he needed to put her name in a database. When she said she needed to go to the car to get it, the cop arrested her for resisting arrest and had her locked in a jail cell for 5 hours.

• Meanwhile, in Hamilton, Ontario, government police are ensuring the safety of citizens by staging hyperviolent drug raids, forcing their way into apartments at gunpoint, forcing the citizens in them to the floor, then slamming their faces into the floor and kicking them when they try to explain that the cops have the wrong address. Po Lo Hay’s safety was ensured so good and hard that he ended up with stitches above his eye, a bloody nose, welts, and a broken rib.

• Meanwhile, in Bridgewater, England, government police are ensuring the safety of citizens by threatening them with electrical torture devices and then accidentally hitting them with a 50,000 volt electric shock to their genitals, in the course of an unnecessary traffic stop intended to investigate whether or not they were committing the completely nonviolent offense of driving without government-mandated corporate car insurance. For accidentally inflicting the worst pain that this innocent man has ever been subjected to in his life, government cops are offering an Oops! Our bad!

I sure am glad that government cops are out there to ensure our safety, and local governments are there to extract tax dollars to force us all, on threat of prison, to pay for this threshold obligation. If government cops weren’t there to harass, threaten, torture, frame, jail or kill innocent citizens, all with complete legal impunity so long as they can shout an Oops! My bad! that some fellow cop or other government employee will believe, who would keep us all safe?

1. ^[1] When city governments fire police forces, county sheriffs or state police forces generally take over the busting of heads and jailing of suspects. But the shift does mean that patrol cops are fewer and farther between, and local taxpayers are much less likely to get soaked with local tax increases to pay for salaries or benefits packages. ↩
2. ^[2] Yant has gunned down three people during his police career — killing two of them, including Trevon Cole — and has been exonerated by the police department and the Clark County government’s coroner’s inquest. ↩

NewsOne recently published an interview with an anonymous Black cop on the NYPD, where they asked him for his thoughts on police brutality and racism in the wake of a string of high-profile stories about overkill shootings, grown-ass male cops appropriately punching 17 year old black girls in the face over suspected jaywalking, etc. The fact that the cop being interviewed happens to be Black ends up contributing basically nothing to the interview — so, hey, it turns out that Black police think and act like police, and they generally defend their colleagues and their own professional interest in being able to inflict violence with impunity. But the interview is interesting for a few things: a really amazing display of cognitive dissonance; an amazing exercise in unintended irony; and one of the few times you’ll see a cop actually come out and just say it in public.

First, the cognitive dissonance. When NewsOne asked him about race relations at the NYPD, Officer Anonymous says his gang brothers like to tell racist jokes to their colleagues, and discriminate against people based on their appearance, taking signs of urban Black culture as being (in and of themselves) evidence that somebody ought to be treated like a criminal, up to and sometimes including targeting, harassing and arresting people over how they look:

Officer: […] If anything, the only thing I could comment on is that some officers believe there is a certain ‘look’ that most perpetrators have and that tends to be those who follow the trends of urban Hip Hop culture. That would consist of cornrows, saggin jeans, earrings, fitted caps, etc.

So, if a cop fits this mold in his civilian clothes, they often joke ‘you look like a perp.’ I believe some of them try to mask it behind a few smiles, but they really believe that. Though, many do fit this ‘profile’, at least in the communities I’ve worked in, it’s still an unfair generalization.

Newsone: Have you seen officers unfairly target individuals who look like this?

Officer: As I said earlier, though its wrong and not right as law enforcement, I have seen that type of behavior and at times [it’s] led to arrests.

Then he says he’s never encountered any racism from his superiors or fellow officers:

Newsone: Have you ever encountered any racism from your superiors or fellow officers?

Officer: I have not.

Elsewhere in the interview, he’s asked about the recent 46-shot overkill police shooting in Harlem, where NYPD cops lit up Angel Alvarez at a late-night part — hitting him 21 times, killing Luis Soto (the main they were supposedly intervening to save) with 6 gunshots, and hitting 3 bystanders, and one of their fellow cops, in the process. (This is, of course, the same city government police force that lit up Sean Bell (50 shots, killing an unarmed man) and Amadou Diallo (41 shots, killing an unarmed immigrant who was holding a wallet so that he could show the cops his ID). Officer Anonymous wants us to go easy on the Gangsters in Blue, and wait until Official Sources tell us what to believe about what happened.

Newsone: What about the recent event in Harlem where a cop shot a man 21 times?

Officer: A lot of the facts haven’t come out yet. Many in the department are mad because the media is so quick to paint us as the bad guys. I suggest people wait until all the facts come out.

Newsone: But you can understand the rush to judgment in a city like New York where Louima, Diallo, and Sean Bell occurred?

Officer: I do understand that, but think about all the other incidents where people jumped the gun and were wrong about us.

Gosh, that’s tough.

It must be so hard for the police, what with how people get the situation wrong, and jump the gun.

Further down, NewsOne asks Officer Anonymous about the NYPD’s standing policy of subjecting random people of color to unreasonable searches and seizures. It’s not often that a police statist will come out and just lay certain things on the line; but here we go. Emphasis mine.

Newsone: What do you think of the NYPD’s stop and frisk policy?

Officer: The stop and frisk policy is an important tool in helping the department curb serious offenses.

Newsone: I disagree. It is a violation of our civil rights.

Officer: It is, but at the same time, crime would have never gone down in the Giuliani era to now if it weren’t for these small measures.

Officer Anonymous goes on to say Sometimes you have to do things that may not be approved by the public to make everyone safer. By which he means that police should roam the streets with unchecked power to stop and search anyone they damn well please — for no reason at all — in open contempt of the civil rights of their victims. The same racist-ass, hyperviolent, power-tripping, domineering, twitchy police who have proven themselves more than willing to beat up anyone who questions their actions, to torture those who won’t comply with their arbitrary bellowed orders, to open fire into a crowd at late-night parties, and to light up unarmed men with dozens of shots during routine stops. Does that make you feel safer on the streets of New York City?

In which Richard Falkenrath — proud perambulator of the Beltway revolving door and purveyor of advice for state-security police throughout the U.S.^[1] — explains why he, and law enforcement investigators and intelligence officers in the U.S. — admire, and even envy the political environment in the United Arab Emirates, whose oligarchy of petty tyrants and absolute monarchs recently banned BlackBerry mobile phones, because Research in Motion won’t alter their specs to suit the Emirs’ desire to break into BlackBerry customers’ phones and secretly snoop on what they are saying.

Monitoring electronic communications in real time and retrieving stored electronic data are the most important counterterrorism techniques available to governments today. Electronic surveillance is particularly vital in combating global terrorism, where the stakes are highest, but it is a part of virtually all investigations of serious transnational threats….

The United Arab Emirates is in no way unique in wanting a back door into the telecommunications services used inside its borders to allow officials to eavesdrop on users. In the United States, telecommunications providers are generally required to provide a mechanism for such access by the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and related regulations issued by the Federal Communications Commission. … The F.C.C. is not, however, a national security agency: it is an independent, bipartisan commission whose members serve fixed terms. The commission interprets a variety of statutes and balances many different interests, including the business success of telecommunications providers and the convenience of consumers, and its rulings are subject to legal challenge in the courts.

As a result, there remain a number of telecommunication methods that federal agencies cannot readily penetrate. Given the way the F.C.C. operates, the prospect of it taking a swift, decisive action to make these services accessible to the government is almost inconceivable. Hence the envy some American intelligence officials felt about the Emirates’ decision.

Research in Motion is learning a lesson that other companies have learned before […] no provider of information services is exempt from the power of the state.

No doubt.

Anyway, as Jacob Sullum comments on this paean to political will and unconstrained executive power:

Yes, dictators sure are good at avoiding legal barriers to surveillance. They are also never stymied because governmental intrusion into ostensibly private communications offends liberal sensibilities, as Falkenrath dismissively describes civil libertarian concerns about snooping in the name of national security. Here are some other obstacles the UAE avoids, according to the State Department’s most recent report on the country’s human rights record: elections, representative government, an independent judiciary, governmental transparency, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and freedom of religion. The State Department adds that there were unverified reports of torture during the year, that security forces sometimes employed flogging as judicially sanctioned punishment, that arbitrary and incommunicado detention remained a problem, and that legal and societal discrimination against women and noncitizens [who represent 80 percent of the population] was pervasive.

Neverthless, says Falkenrath, the Emirates acted understandably and appropriately in banning BlackBerries. The lesson of this episode, according to Falkenrath: Governments should not be timid about using their full powers to ensure that their law enforcement and intelligence agencies are able to keep their citizens safe. Some governments, of course, have fuller powers than others, which makes their citizens (and noncitizen residents) extra safe.

It takes a certain kind of mindset to crow about the will and ability to bulldoze right over many different interests, among them the business success of telecommunications providers, the convenience of consumers, and the possibility of legal challenge in the courts, if any of them threaten to get in the way of secret government, executive power, and the overriding interests of State security — to portray unaccountable tyrannies as if they are acting carefully and responsibly in the interests of their citizens, precisely to the extent they exercise their political tyranny unaccountably to obliterate barriers to surveilling and arresting those very citizens. The mindset is no less tawdry and mean for being so common among the most powerful, influential, and well-connected people on earth. And given that this attitude is as common as it is among law enforcement investigators and intelligence officers, the very last thing that us citizens ought to be feeling is safe.

See also GT 2008-02-15: Tyranny means never having to say you’re sorry on another bit of power=envy directed at the arbitrary and unaccountable ruling class of the U.A.E.

1. ^[1] Falkenrath is a former flunky for Bush’s Department of Homeland Security; now he’s working as a flunky for Michael Chertoff’s state-security consulting firm, and writing New York Times Op-Ed pieces on behalf of the professional interests of his state-security police colleagues. ↩

News and views from around the web posted to the Wonderland Wire:

• “Where is the Justice?” | Human Rights Watch 16 August 2010
• ‘Settlement freeze biggest obstacle to direct talks’ | Haaretz 16 August 2010
• IDF soldier posts images of blindfold Palestinians on Facebook, from ‘best time of my life’ | Haaretz 16 August 2010
• In India’s Jammu and Kashmir state, rocks are weapon of choice | LA Times 16 August 2010
• Afghanistan says finds 1.8 billion barrel oilfield | Reuters 16 August 2010
• The Death Toll Does Not Lie — Afghanistan Is Obama’s War – Robert Naiman | HuffPo 16 August 2010
• Economists See Increased Chance Of Double-Dip Recession | HuffPo 16 August 2010
• White House says Afghan deadline ‘non-negotiable’ | AFP 16 August 2010
• Former US commander in Afghanistan to teach at Yale | AFP 16 August 2010
• Fed says loan standards eased | Reuters 16 August 2010
• Soldiers with PTSD dismissed, told they have ‘personality disorder’ | AP 16 August 2010
• China overtakes Japan as world’s second-largest economy | The Guardian 16 August 2010
• Taliban call for joint inquiry into civilian Afghan deaths considered | The Guardian 16 August 2010
• US contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq | The Guardian 16 August 2010
• Universal Jurisdiction to Hold Israel Accountable – Stephen Lendman | MWC 16 August 2010
• Singer on trial for ‘spreading HIV’ | MWC News 16 August 2010
• Gates Looking at His Own 2011 Departure – At War Blog | NY Times 16 August 2010
• Security Firms Asked to Disband in Afghanistan | AP 16 August 2010
• Labor Leaders Arrested Over Bangladesh Protests | NY Times 16 August 2010
• News Analysis: Another Round in Same-Sex Marriage Case | NY Times 16 August 2010
• U.S., S. Korea launch joint military exercises amid threats from N. Korea | WaPo 16 August 2010
• Gen. David Petraeus says Afghanistan war strategy ‘fundamentally sound’ – Rajiv Chandrasekaran | WaPo 16 August 2010
• Now We’re Just Negotiating The Price – Jeffrey Lewis | ArmsControlWonk 16 August 2010
• What If Washington…? – Tom Engelhardt | Antiwar.com 16 August 2010
• The Hammer and the Scalpel by Justin Raimondo | Antiwar.com 16 August 2010
• Gen. Petraeus Cautions Against ‘Rapid Pullout’ in Afghanistan | Antiwar.com 16 August 2010
• Iran Opposition: Sanctions Helping Ahmadinejad | Antiwar.com 16 August 2010
• Arab Nations Lobby for Western Support to Revive Nuclear-Free Mideast Proposal | Antiwar.com 16 August 2010
• “Montgomery’s New Civil Rights Struggle”: Racially Charged Eminent Domain Abuse – Hit & Run | Reason Magazine 16 August 2010
• Against (Socratic) Method 16 August 2010
• Riz Khan – India’s growing aspirations 16 August 2010
• British troops in Afghanistan: ‘It just seems pointless … ‘ 16 August 2010
• Islamophobia: New Anti-Communism? 16 August 2010
• AP & NYT Refuse To Publish WH Photo Of Obamas Swimming In “The Gulf” 16 August 2010
• Banned From U.S. For Opposing Iraq War! Adam Habib Interview 16 August 2010
• Banks to benefit most from White House program to help fight foreclosures | The Hill 16 August 2010
• Talk of War Crimes as Polish Troops Blow Up Afghan Home ‘for Fun’ | Antiwar.com 16 August 2010

Filed under: Daily Briefing Tagged: Adam Habib, Af-Pak War, Afghanistan, Afghanistan motherlode, Bangladesh, banking, China, civil liberties, double-dip recession, Federal Reserve, gay marriage, Hamid Karzai, home foreclosures, human rights, Human Rights Watch, IDF, India, Islam, Islamophobia, Jammu and Kashmir, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, labor unions, law, oil, Pakistan, Poland, private military contractors, Prop 8, PTSD, Riz Khan, Robert Gates, Robert Naiman, Stanley McChrystal, Stephen Lendman, Taliban, UJ, UK, universal jurisdiction, Uzbeks, war crimes, workers rights

News and views from around the web posted to the Wonderland Wire:

• Poisoning of Gaza water puts population at risk | PCHR 11 August 2010
• 49% of Americans support repealing birthright citizenship: CNN poll | Raw Story 11 August 2010
• U.S. Military to Press for Slower Afghan Drawdown | NY Times 11 August 2010
• Of 2,000 civil liberties complaints, Justice Dept. investigates one – Jeff Stein | WaPo 11 August 2010
• U.S. failed to plan for Guantanamo convicts: judge | Reuters 11 August 2010
• Czechs say they may trade North Korea’s debt for aphrodisiac | AFP 11 August 2010
• Japan debt safer than U.S. debt: China economist | Reuters 11 August 2010
• US dollar falls to a 15-year low against the yen | AP 11 August 2010
• \Iraq ‘needs US military support until 2020′ | AFP 11 August 2010
• HUD Offers Interest-Free Loans for Borrowers Facing Foreclosure | BusinessWeek 11 August 2010
• Blackwater guards indicted for murder | Raw Story 11 August 2010
• Huge ice island could pose threat to oil, shipping | AP 11 August 2010
• U.N. appeals for $459 million for flooded Pakistan | Reuters 11 August 2010
• WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange Could Face Criminal Charges from U.S. Allies – Philip Shenon | The Daily Beast 11 August 2010
• America Is ‘Bankrupt Mickey Mouse Economy’: CIO | CNBC 11 August 2010
• Iran sanctions ‘strengthening Ahmadinejad’ – Karroubi | The Guardian 11 August 2010
• U.S. Economy: Trade Gap Jumped by Record $7.9 Billion in June | BusinessWeek 11 August 2010
• Fed Reverses Exit Plan With $2 Trillion Holding Floor | BusinessWeek 11 August 2010
• Is the Right to Strike Coming to China? | BusinessWeek 11 August 2010
• News Analysis: U.S. and Iraqi Interests May Work Against Pullout – Tim Arango | NY Times 11 August 2010
• Analysis Looks at Effect of Letting Tax Cuts Lapse for Rich | NY Times 11 August 2010
• Solar Projects Envisioned on Dry California Farmland | NY Times 11 August 2010
• Activists on Mavi Marmara Fired First, Israeli Military Chief Says | NY Times 11 August 2010
• State Dept. faces skyrocketing costs as it prepares to expand role in Iraq | WaPo 11 August 2010
• ‘US will not give armed drones to Pak’ | The Times of India 11 August 2010
• Indian prime minister calls for end to Kashmir violence | BBC News 11 August 2010
• In Mission With Afghan Police, Issues of Trust | NY Times 11 August 2010
• The Weak Case for War with Iran – Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett | Foreign Policy 11 August 2010
• The Permanent War System Rolls On – Gareth Porter | Antiwar.com 11 August 2010
• COIN Thinking on a Larger Scale Might Work – Ivan Eland | Antiwar.com 11 August 2010
• IDF troops beat up Haaretz reporter | Ynet 11 August 2010
• Omar Khadr, never given a chance 11 August 2010
• Israel’s Gaza blockade: Millions of dollars worth of aid piles up in warehouses | CS Monitor 11 August 2010
• Dictatorship, War and the Federal Reserve (Video) | Little Alex in Wonderland 11 August 2010
• Khadr Show-’Trial’ Blacked Out of NY Times, So Obamaphiles Won’t Care (Video) | Little Alex in Wonderland 11 August 2010
• Colombia opens door for talks with FARC rebels | WaPo 11 August 2010
• US announces 20 million dollars more in aid for Pakistan | AFP 11 August 2010
• Focus U.S.A.: Will Israel really attack Iran within a year? | Haaretz 11 August 2010
• Iran, Lebanon aid: Iran says it will make up for the cutoff of U.S. aid | LA Times 11 August 2010
• Colombia, Venezuela to restore diplomatic ties | AP 11 August 2010
• U.S. House Sends $26 Billion State Aid Bill to Obama | BusinessWeek 11 August 2010
• SAfrica’s ANC party wants tribunal for journalists | AP 10 August 2010

Filed under: Daily Briefing Tagged: 14th Amendment, Afghanistan, Ahmadinejad, ANC, ANP, Blackwater, Bush tax cuts, Calfornia, China, civil liberties, climate change, COIN, Colombia, counterinsurgency, Czech Republic, DPRK, economic crisis, FARC, fascism, Federal Reserve, fiat money, Flynt Leverett, free press, Freedom Flotilla, Gareth Porter, Gaza, Gaza blockade, global warming, Greenland, Guantanamo Bay, Hillary Mann Leverett, home foreclosures, HUD, humanitarian aid, IDF, illegal immigration, imperialism, India, Iran, Iraq, Iraq War, Israel, Ivan Eland, Japan, Jeff Stein, Jeffrey Goldberg, journalism, Justice Department, Kashmir, labor unions, Lebanon, Lew Rockwell, Manmohan Singh, Mavi Marmara, Mehdi Karroubi, national debt, North Korea, Obama Administration, Omar Khadr, Pakistan, PCHR, private military contractors, right to strike, Ron Paul, solar energy, South Africa, State Department, Tim Arango, trade deficit, US citizenship, USD, Venezuela, War, War on Terror, West Bank, yen

The first military commission of a detainee renditioned to the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay under the Obama Administration opened Tuesday. Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, was kidnapped eight years ago in Afghanistan at the age of 15 by the U.S. military, threatened with rape in detention at the U.S. air base at Bagram, transferred to Guantánamo where he was tortured until he confessed that he threw a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier. Monday evening, Texas A&M at Qatar associate professor Todd Kent noted that it will likely not be a political issue for the Adminsitration because the mainstream media is downplaying it, though criminal justice is a large part of the president’s avatar, at Al Jazeera English’s “Inside Story”—which focused on the coming so-called ‘trial’ (23:41):

Tuesday, the military judge ruled the defendant’s statement obtained by torture would be admissible in the military commission.

10 Aug 2010 | AJE

The first trial of a Guantanamo detainee under the Obama administration is about to get under way.

The cases will focus on two men facing terrorism charges.

One has already pleaded guilty: The 50-year old Sudanese national, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi, could be sentenced as early as Monday.

He is accused of acting as an accountant and supply chief for Al Qaeda and as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.

The other is a 23-year-old Canadian national. Omar Khadr, was 15 years old when he was arrested, and he says he was tortured and threatened with rape.

He has been in American custody since 2002, having been captured in Afghanistan.

He is accused of perpetrating war crimes against the U.S., having allegedly detonated a hand grenade that killed a US soldier.

Barack Obama, the U.S. president, had promised to close the detention center that has been the object of international condemnation, but he has faced congressional opposition on transferring the detainees to the U.S.

What is the legality of the so-called military commissions? And who is really calling the shots here—the president or the Pentagon?

“Inside Story”, with presenter Teymoor Nabili, discusses with Asim Qureshi, the executive director of the Cageprisoners organisation, Sunny Hundal, the editor of PickledPolitics.com and a writer for the Guardian newspaper, Todd Kent, an assistant professor of political science at Texas A&M, University at Qatar.

Filed under: International Affairs, National News, Political Science Tagged: Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, al-Qaida, Asim Qureshi, Bagram Air Base, Bush Administration, civil liberties, criminal justice, electoral politics, fascism, Geneva Conventions, Guantanamo Bay, human rights, Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi, international law, law, libertarian, mainstream media, military commissions, MSM, Newspeak, NY Times, Obama, Obama Administration, Omar Khadr, Osama bin Laden, rendition, Sunny Hundal, Teymoor Nabili, Todd Kent, torture, US, War, War on Terror

News and views from around the web posted to the Wonderland Wire:

• India protests “discriminatory” U.S. border bill | Reuters 10 August 2010
• Mexicans, US question drug legalization proposal | AFP 10 August 2010
• Gates plans to slash ‘top-heavy’ Pentagon hierarchy | AFP 10 August 2010
• Rights Groups Release Documents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agency FOIA Lawsuit | Center for Constitutional Rights 10 August 2010
• Compensation for Bombing Victims: The Price of an Afghan Life | SPIEGEL ONLINE 10 August 2010
• Teen captive’s confessions can air at Guantánamo trial – Carol Rosenberg | MiamiHerald.com 10 August 2010
• MIDEAST: Homeless Take On Israeli Forces – Mel Frykberg | IPS 10 August 2010
• Guantanamo jury can consider Canadian’s age | Reuters 10 August 2010
• Iran Retaliates Against Sanctions: To Drop All Trade In “Filthy” Euro, Dollar | zero hedge 10 August 2010
• Afghanistan civilian casualties: year by year, month by month. Visualised data | The Guardian 10 August 2010
• Fed to Keep Level of Asset Holdings to Boost Economy | BusinessWeek 10 August 2010
• Rights Groups Join Call for WikiLeaks to Censor Afghan Files – At War Blog | NY Times 10 August 2010
• Anti-War Teacher Scorned for Daring to Dissent | Arm your Mind for Liberty 10 August 2010
• BP Not Denying, Just Not Paying Nearly 40,000 Oil Spill Claims | HuffPo 10 August 2010
• 17 Nations Beat or Equal All-Time Heat Records This Summer | TreeHugger 10 August 2010
• Collecting DNA at Arrest: A Bad Idea Justified by a Bad Prosecution – Edwin Yohnka | HuffPo 10 August 2010
• Chicago Sales Tax Highest In America; Tied With Los Angeles | HuffPo 10 August 2010
• Father, Son Charged In Marijuana-Growing Operation (PHOTOS) | HuffPo 10 August 2010
• How Not to Address the Uganda Bombings – Maria Burnett and Leslie Lefkow | HuffPo 10 August 2010
• Israel Cannot be Both Jewish and Democratic – Ahmed Moor | HuffPo 10 August 2010
• Iran Digging Mass Graves For U.S. Troops If They Attack | AP 10 August 2010
• Afghanistan Civilian Casualties, Injuries Rising Sharply | AP 10 August 2010
• Curfew reimposed in Indian Kashmir | AFP 9 August 2010
• Taliban execute pregnant woman in Afghanistan | AFP 9 August 2010
• Taliban dismiss Time cover as ‘desperate propaganda’ | AFP 9 August 2010

Filed under: Daily Briefing Tagged: ACLU, Af-Pak War, Afghanistan, Ahmed Moor, AMISOM, BP, Carol Rosenberg, CCR, Chicago, civil liberties, civilian casualties, climate, climate change, criminal justice, democracy, DNA, drug war, EUR, euro, Federal Reserve, George Donnelly, global warming, Gulf oil spill, ICE, India, Iran, Israel, Kashmir, Leslie Lefkow, Los Angeles, Maria Burnett, marijuana, Mel Frykberg, Mexico, Netanyahu, Omar Khadr, protectionism, Robert Gates, sales tax, Sharia Law, Somalia, Taliban, Uganda, USD, war spending, Wikileaks, Zionism

News and views from around the web posted to the Wonderland Wire:

• Are House Republicans trying to drag the US into the next war in the Middle East? – Jamal Abdi | The Middle East Channel 29 July 2010
• BUSTED: Obama’s New Budget Chief Got A $900K Bonus From Citigroup After It Got A Bailout – Joe Weisenthal | Business Insider 29 July 2010
• Ron Paul on the Fair Sentencing Act | C4L 29 July 2010
• Greek police fire tear gas at striking truckers | The Guardian 29 July 2010
• Court orders Japan government to pay over U.S. base noise | Reuters 29 July 2010
• Philippines to get U.S. precision missiles: document | Reuters 29 July 2010
• Biden says no plans to nation-build in Afghanistan | Reuters 29 July 2010
• Poll: Pakistanis less worried about extremists | AP 29 July 2010
• Why a young Israeli woman spies on Israeli settlements in West Bank | CS Monitor 29 July 2010
• Israel speeds up West Bank barrier construction following court injunction | Haaretz 29 July 2010
• Militants kill 23 security forces across Iraq | AP 29 July 2010
• Kuwait gets $650 mln in Iraqi reparation: UN | AFP 29 July 2010
• White House pushes for warrantless access to Internet records | Raw Story 29 July 2010
• House lawmakers, citing corruption, may block $4 billion in aid to Afghanistan | LA Times 29 July 2010
• US: Drills sent ‘clear message’ to NKorea | AP29 July 2010
• AP IMPACT: Before the CIA, there was the Pond 29 July 2010
• 1st US execution of woman since 2005 set for Sept. | AP 29 July 2010
• BP Details $30 Billion Plan to Pay for Gulf Spill | NY Times 29 July 2010
• Delta’s Black Fishermen Seeking Cleanup Work and Clinging to Hope | NY Times 29 July 2010
• Congress Moves to Narrow Sentencing Disparities for Crack and Powdered Cocaine | NY Times 29 July 2010
• New Militant Alliance Threatens One of Somalia’s Few Safe Spots | NY Times 29 July 2010
• Congress Is Rethinking Its Ban on Internet Gambling | NY Times 29 July 2010
• U.S. Military Scrutinizes Leaks for Risks to Afghans | NY Times 29 July 2010
• Document Reveals Military Was Concerned About Gulf War Vets’ Exposure to Depleted Uranium – Mike Ludwig | Truthout 29 July 2010
• Video: Ethnic cleansing in the Israeli Negev | The Guardian 29 July 2010
• Beltway liberalism in 24 words – Charles Davis | false dichotomy 29 July 2010
• Federal judge blocks key parts of Arizona immigration law SB 1070 | WaPo 29 July 2010
• The ruling and the bill | WaPo 29 July 2010
• Pakistan Pushes Draconian New Terror Bill | Antiwar.com 29 July 2010
• Watered-Down ‘Regurgitated Pulitzer Campaign’ Called ‘Top Secret America’ and ‘Blowback’ in Somalia (mp3) | Little Alex in Wonderland 28 July 2010
• Oakland gives final OK to large-scale pot farms | AP 28 July 2010
• House approves $37 billion war-funding bill | WaPo 28 July 2010
• WikiLeaked ‘Afghanistan War Logs’ Include U.S. Military Whitewashing War Crimes | Little Alex in Wonderland 27 July 2010
• Finkelstein: I don’t want victory over Israel 27 July 2010
• Democrats Split on War Spending Bill – At War Blog | NYTimes.com 27 July 2010
• Blix: Intelligence on Iraq was poor | AJ English 27 July 2010
• Africa readies troops for Somalia; US funds effort | AP 27 July 2010
• Afghans and NATO at odds over civilian deaths report | Reuters 27 July 2010
• Lockheed and L-3 top estimates but outlooks vary | Reuters 27 July 2010
• Barge crashes into oil well in Gulf of Mexico, new oil leak reported | AFP 27 July 2010
• Oil spills into Calhoun County creek that leads to Kalamazoo River | MLive.com 27 July 2010
• Underground city found in western Iran | Press TV 27 July 2010
• U.S. Cities, Counties are Poised to Cut 500,000 Jobs | BusinessWeek 27 July 2010
• UK soldier: Jail better than Afghan war | Press TV 27 July 2010
• That Dismal War In Afghanistan? Here’s How It Costs Compared To America’s 11 Other Wars | Business Insider 27 July 2010

Filed under: Daily Briefing Tagged: Af-Pak War, Afghan War Diary, Afghanistan, Afghanistan War Logs, AFRICOM, Al Shabaab, AMISOM, austerity measures, BP, Bush Administration, Charles Davis, Citigroup, civil liberties, crack cocaine, Death Penalty, Democrats, DPRK, drug war, ethnic cleansing, Greece, Gulf of Mexico, Gulf oil spill, Gulf War, Hans Blix, internet gambling, Iran, Iraq War, Israel, Jamal Abdi, Japan, Jeremy Scahill, Joe Biden, Kuwait, L-3, limited liability, Lockheed MArtin, marijuana, Matt Yglesias, medical marijuana, NATO, Norman Finkelstein, North Korea, Oakland, Obama Administration, Pakistan, Peter Orszag, privacy rights, Ron Paul, SB1070, Scott Horton, Somalia, South Korea, unemployment, US, US Congress, War on Terror, war spending, West Bank, Wikileaks

Julian Assange, Daniel Ellsburg and Nic Robertson discussed “The Afghanistan War Logs” leak, Monday evening.

Part One (7:16):

Part Two (5:33):

Part Three (5:23):

The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, discussed the whistleblowing site’s most recent leak of over 90,000 U.S. military records on “Larry King Live” at CNN, Monday evening.

Sunday evening, The New York Times (NYT), the London Guardian and German weekly Der Spiegel revealed WikiLeaks granted them access to the documents spanning from 2004-09. It is being called the largest leak since Daniel Ellsburg leaked the Pentagon Papers, which exposed U.S. government secrets of its war in Vietnam.

Mr. Assange, earlier today, said the leak exposes “evidence of war crimes” committed by the U.S.-led coalition under the Bush and Obama Administrations. Mr. Ellsburg later joined the broadcast in support of WikiLeaks.

Nic Robertson, senior correspondent at CNN International, referenced an intelligence source saying the leak is “old bad news in a new bad time”—mainly of Pakistan intelligence puppeteering the Afghan militant resistance networks. Later in the episode, Mr. Ellsburg remained to participate in a panel discussion with former NATO Europe Supreme Allied Commander and retired U.S. General Wesley Clark, former military intelligence officer and fellow whistleblower Anthony Shaffer and Rolling Stone contributing editor Michael Hastings—whose recent exposé of the counterinsurgency doctrine in Afghanistan displayed its only foreseeable result as “perpetual war“.

In response to the common red herring question as to WikiLeaks’ being ‘allowed’ to leak documents, Mr. Assange responded to a reporter at an afternoon London press conference:

Well, it’s a matter about whether the coercive power of the state should be used to stop people sharing information, who have no direct connection to the source of the information. You can’t use the coercive power of the state to stop people spreading rumors, to stop people discussing political life, and sophisticated U.S. jurisprudence understands that. And that is why you have things like the First Amendment, which takes the press outside the legislative process, because in the end it is the communication of knowledge which regulates the legislature, which creates the Constitution.

Earlier in the day at Democracy Now!, Rick Rowley—an independent journalist with Big Noise Films who just returned from a trip to Afghanistan, embedded with a division in the extended Marja Surge—summarized the progression of Washington’s mission toward a secret war of extrajudicial assassinations, night raids and mass kidnapping:

Well, I mean, what these documents show—prove—is that the U.S. military has been whitewashing the war in Afghanistan for years and that most of the media has been along for the ride. They’ve systematically covered up civilian casualties. They’ve covered up the successful attacks by the Taliban and their significance. And they’ve covered up the violent criminality of the security forces that we’ve created there, security forces that are preying on Afghan civilians. I mean, the picture that emerges from these documents is, on the one hand, of an insurgency that is resilient and adapting and that is winning the war on the ground, and, on the other hand, of an Afghan state that we’ve constructed there that looks less like a government and looks more like a patchwork of warlords and criminal gangs that’s extorting the local population and that has become more hated in many parts of the country than the Taliban who they replaced.

A third interesting thing that these documents do is they put flesh on a process that we’ve been tracking, along with reporters like Jeremy Scahill, for some time, of a transition to what some people call a special forces war, an entirely covert and classified war that’s conducted with drone strikes and midnight raids and targeted assassinations, where everything is classified, there are no media embeds, and there’s very little accountability. I mean, I think that is the trajectory that this war is taking right now.

Now, the White House has responded. They haven’t denied anything here. They haven’t even denied the conclusions that people are drawing about how terrible the war has been there. Their response has been that this is old news, we knew about this a long time ago, and that, in fact, Obama’s war, Obama’s surge, the new war that began in December 2009, has changed everything. Well, I came back from Afghanistan ten days ago. And while I was embedded with the Marines in Marja and elsewhere in the country, I can tell you that this picture matches perfectly with what’s going on on the ground there right now. In Marja, which was supposed to be the poster child of this new campaign, Marja—you know, it’s a small farming community where two Marine divisions were sent in to try to prove that this war was still winnable. Those two Marine divisions have been pinned down for months. We were there at the beginning of an operation called Operation Cobra that was sending in reinforcements, a couple extra Marine companies, to try to, you know, push out their security perimeter. But it’s the—Obama’s surge has completely derailed. They haven’t brought security to Marjah. They have one to three kilometers of security around their forward operating bases.

And the biggest disaster is that the government that they were—that they’ve brought in and tried to stand up, the famous government in a box that was going to roll out right after the Marines cleared the ground, has disappeared. The officials refused to deploy from Kabul and disappeared. Only the mayor comes in, Mayor Haji Zahir, who’s brought in by helicopter by the Marines and, like, set down in the middle of shuras and meetings that they set up and then bundled back into a helicopter and flown out. And this guy, Haji Zahir, he’s an expat who lived in Germany for years and spent five years in jail for attempted murder in Germany. I mean, that’s the caliber of people who we’ve brought in to make the leaders of this new—of the Afghanistan that we’re building. I mean, it is an abject failure, as far as a nation-building operation on the ground. And, you know, whether you’re talking about the last ten years of the war or 2010, I mean, the picture doesn’t change.

Gareth Porter, investigative journalist at Inter Press Services and scholar on geopolitics, highlighted the confirmation of Pak intel’s role in the insurgency as “the most politically salient issue”.

As for general rundowns of media and White House reaction, the NYT’s “At War” blog, Greg Mitchell at his Nation blog and Andrew Sullivan at his Atlantic blog put together solid rundowns, if one is so compelled, but beware—as there’s plenty of premature hyperbole yelled around.

Filed under: Af-Pak War, National News, Political Science Tagged: Af-Pak War, Afghanistan, anarchism, Andrew Sullivan, Anthony Shaffer, anti-Statism, Bill of Rights, Bush Administration, CIA, civil liberties, Constitution, covert ops, Daniel Ellsburg, embed journalists, First Amendment, free press, free speech, Gareth Porter, Germany, Greg Mitchell, Haji Zahir, IED's, ISAF, Jeremy Scahill, journalism, Julian Assange, Kandahar Surge, Larry King, libertarian, liberty, Marja Surge, media, Michael Hastings, NATO, NY Times, Obama Adminsitration, Operation Cobra, Rick Rowley, SOF, Special Operations Forces, Task Force 373, UK, Wesley Clark

WaPo’s “Top Secret America” investigation is crafted to form Orwellian conclusions. The political and intellectual classes are biting the bait to reel us in.

“Top Secret America“, a special investigation by Dana Priest and William Arkin at The Washington Post (WaPo), highlights the “concentration of top-secret government organizations and the companies that do work for them” that includes over 850,000 people with top secret clearance—over a quarter-million in the ‘private sector’—and an annual $10bn National Security Agency regime within the $75bn Big Brother black hole.

The reaction from Capitol Hill and the mainstream media is strikingly uniform: that the problem is the cumbersome inefficiency of the Big Brother regime, not that Big Brother is watching us.

Today’s addition to the report highlights the extention of the National Surveillance State without limits to ‘Main Street’. “In some parts of the cluster, they occupy entire neighborhoods. In others, they make up mile-long business parks connected to the [National Security Agency] campus by a private roadway guarded by forbidding yellow ‘Warning’ signs,” Ms. Priest and Mr. Arkin reported, adding later: “Six of the 10 richest counties in the United States, according to Census Bureau data, are in these clusters.”

The investigation has identified 45 governmental organizations with 1,271 sub-units and 1,931 non-governmental corporations “engaged in top-secret work for the government”—categorized in 23 types of spying, datamining and execution.

The narrative that has become of this investigation hasn’t scratched the surface of privacy rights, free speech or the moral authority of government to criminalize every human being. The National Surveillance State shifts the burden of proof from the State to the citizen. The very nature of “this behemoth” is immoral, let alone unconstitutional.

David Ignatius at the WaPo is the one who calls this system a “behemoth”, but his criticism—like most—is against the size, the cost, the inefficiency. The danger of this dominating the narrative is that it quickly monopolizes the narrative—and it has. “The paradox here is that a smaller, better-controlled intelligence community will actually make the country safer than the unmanaged sprawl we have now,” he wrote yesterday.

He notes that “this complex features many of the old Cold War giants” and goes on to list the beneficiaries within the military-industrial complex, but supports the government turning these corporations into welfare queens, though he adds: “The war on terrorism has been a magnet for spending, just as the Cold War was.”

Mr. Ignatius is taking this report and criticizing, not the Big Brother violations, but that it’s “bloated” and calls for it to be “leaner and meaner”.

What these line-pushers are hiding is that the smaller these programs become, the more centralized the data collection becomes and the less likely whistleblowers come out to shed light on the rights abuses of Washington. By definition, there will simply be less people capable of whistleblowing, less with access to evidence of abuses and in reality the “bloated” government bureaucracy is outsourced to corporations replacing the people with technology. Technology incapable of identifying when it’s undeniable that government has gone too far. Technology without a weighed conscience.

The paradox is that a “leaner and meaner” spying complex, this investigation at the WaPo would’ve hit so many brick walls that it wouldn’t exist. The functions would remain the same; just deeper in darkness.

The 1,931 corporations will just dwindle down to the “Cold War giants” monopolizing the contracts and threatening employees with losing their jobs if they violate confidentiality.

What’s missing from the overall discussion is that this places the so-called ‘progressives’ is a spot with shit in their faces. They can’t strike the root of the Big Brother conundrum without conceding it as the inevitable lovechild of big government and mass consent, as Justin Raimondo wrote at AntiWar.com:

Government programs have many more lives than the mere nine attributed to cats: efforts to kill them off or even trim them down meet with defeat a great deal of the time. This hardiness is rooted in their very existence, which automatically creates a made-to-order political constituency. Once a government program is created, a pressure group—consisting of the economic beneficiaries of the program—inevitably arises which lobbies to extend and expand it. This applies in spades to those “private” companies whose sole “customer” is the U.S. government, and it is one of the chief energizing factors behind the exponential growth of “Top Secret America.” It is also the classical libertarian explanation for the growth of Big Government, not only in America but everywhere the State exists.

The core mainstream defense for the State is blown away by this reality that delegitimizes the loyalists even more, as Mr. Raimondo added:

Conservatives who question the utility of multiple layers of bureaucracy, and even cite Hayek, usually fail to apply the same principle to the realm of national security, where they’re all for what they would otherwise denounce as “big government.” Yet the general principles governing economic science are equally applicable to all the realms of human action, including intelligence-gathering and the defense of the nation. Indeed, it is precisely here, where failure to understand those principles can lead to mass death, that they must be applied most stringently.

To be more precise, a middle class family paying a couple hundred dollars within the same federal health care program as politicians is a socialist welfare program where we’re supposed to fear that it means Stalin gives us our next prostate exam or pap smear; but some corporation that creates nothing but the resources and manpower to destroy lives and liberty being handed billions every year become untouchable issues.

In The General Idea of the Revolution (1851), Pierre-Joseph Proudhon aptly reasoned:

To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue.

Filed under: International Affairs, National News, Political Science Tagged: anarchism, anti-Statism, Bush Administration, civil liberties, Cold War, corporatism, Dana Priest, David Ignatius, fascism, Justin Raimondo, libertarian, liberty, military industrial complex, National Surveillance State, Newspeak, Obama Administration, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, privacy rights, Top Secret America, US, War on Terror, Washington Post, William Arkin