Politics today is little more than money laundering in the trafficking of power and policy

bill moyers, a true national treasure, gives the keynote address at the 40th anniversary gala of public citizen on october 20...



molly ivins was right... bill moyers should have run for president...

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Silencing dissent through fear, intimidation, litigation and potential incarceration

glenn has a lengthy and very important post up today describing the all-out war the obama administration is waging against anyone who dares to raise a voice in opposition to our government, its policies and/or its unconstitutional and often downright criminal behavior...

[F]or anyone who is engaged in meaningful dissent from and challenge to government officials -- the Jim Risens and other real investigative reporters, the Thomas Drakes and other whistleblowers, the WikiLeaks supporters, the Midwest peace activists -- these prosecutions and these ever-expanding surveillance, detention and even assassination powers are inevitably intimidating. Regardless of how those powers are used or even whether they are, they will, as Risen put it, have "a chilling effect" on the exercise of core freedoms. As Risen explained in his Affidavit, even if Brian Ross' story turned out to be false, the mere claim by anonymous officials that the phone records of journalists are being monitored -- combined with threats of prison for their sources and even for reporters who are subpoenaed -- means "the Government further contributed to creating an atmosphere of fear for journalists who publish stories about national security and intelligence issues."

The most odious aspect of this Climate of Fear is that it fundamentally changes how the citizenry thinks of itself and its relationship to the Government. A state can offer all the theoretical guarantees of freedom in the world, but those become meaningless if citizens are afraid to exercise them. In that climate, the Government need not even act to abridge rights; a fearful populace will voluntarily refrain on its own from exercising those rights.

Nobody wants to believe that they have been put in a state of fear, that they are intimidated, so rationalizations are often contrived: I don't perceive any violations of my rights because there's nothing I want to do that I'm not able to do. Inducing a fearful population to refrain from exercising rights -- as it convinces itself no such thing is happening -- is a far more effective, and far more pernicious, means of suppressing freedoms. That's what a Climate of Fear uniquely enables. The vast National Security and Surveillance State has for decades been compiling powers -- and eroding safeguards and checks -- devoted to the strengthening of this climate, and the past two-and-a-half years have seen as rapid and concerted intensification as any other period one can recall. Read Jim Risen's Affidavit if you doubt that.

there are shockingly few activists, journalists and whistleblowers willing to speak out as it is... this kind of blatant oppression is calculated to guarantee even fewer...

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After lobotomizing private sector unions and reducing American workers to slaves, public employees are next on the chopping block

it's the perfect set-up and the nyt is the perfect forum for showcasing it...

now that workers in the private sector have been demoted to being the slaves of our super-rich elites by having any collective power they might have wielded effectively neutralized by corporations, politicians and the judiciary working in tandem (remember bankruptcy as a union-busting technique?), the next logical targets are public employees who have so far been spared the ravages of our capitalist overlords... the beauty part is that support for emasculating public employees and their unions will come from those same private sector workers who will unthinkingly buy the argument that public employees should be required to make the same "sacrifices" they are being "called on" to make...

what an enormous load of grade "a" shit...

State officials from both parties are wrestling with ways to curb the salaries and pensions of government employees, which typically make up a significant percentage of state budgets. On Wednesday, for example, New York’s new Democratic governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, is expected to call for a one-year salary freeze for state workers, a move that would save $200 million to $400 million and challenge labor’s traditional clout in Albany.

But in some cases — mostly in states with Republican governors and Republican statehouse majorities — officials are seeking more far-reaching, structural changes that would weaken the bargaining power and political influence of unions, including private sector ones.

For example, Republican lawmakers in Indiana, Maine, Missouri and seven other states plan to introduce legislation that would bar private sector unions from forcing workers they represent to pay dues or fees, reducing the flow of funds into union treasuries. In Ohio, the new Republican governor, following the precedent of many other states, wants to ban strikes by public school teachers.

Some new governors, most notably Scott Walker of Wisconsin, are even threatening to take away government workers’ right to form unions and bargain contracts.

“We can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots,” Mr. Walker, a Republican, said in a speech. “The bottom line is that we are going to look at every legal means we have to try to put that balance more on the side of taxpayers."

that last paragraph is the vile core of the set-up... is there anyone in our pathetic journalistic elite who can call b.s. on this stinking example of oligarchic manipulation...?

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Why is the U.S. so completely spastic about Wikileaks? [UPDATE & BUMPED]

[UPDATE & BUMPED]

i was sure glenn would have something to say about this development and, naturally, he didn't disappoint (see below)...

for a country that gives huge lip-service to transparency and freedom of the press, the u.s. is obsessed with killing both of them...

U.S. Tries to Build Case for Conspiracy by WikiLeaks

Federal prosecutors, seeking to build a case against the WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange for his role in a huge dissemination of classified government documents, are looking for evidence of any collusion in his early contacts with an Army intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the information.

Justice Department officials are trying to find out whether Mr. Assange encouraged or even helped the analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, to extract classified military and State Department files from a government computer system. If he did so, they believe they could charge him as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them.

Among materials prosecutors are studying is an online chat log in which Private Manning is said to claim that he had been directly communicating with Mr. Assange using an encrypted Internet conferencing service as the soldier was downloading government files. Private Manning is also said to have claimed that Mr. Assange gave him access to a dedicated server for uploading some of them to WikiLeaks.

and speaking of bradley manning, glenn is working to keep his unconscionable 7-month detention in solitary without charge visible...

The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention

Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months -- and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait -- under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture. Interviews with several people directly familiar with the conditions of Manning's detention, ultimately including a Quantico brig official (Lt. Brian Villiard) who confirmed much of what they conveyed, establishes that the accused leaker is subjected to detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries.

[...]

From the beginning of his detention, Manning has been held in intensive solitary confinement. For 23 out of 24 hours every day -- for seven straight months and counting -- he sits completely alone in his cell. Even inside his cell, his activities are heavily restricted; he's barred even from exercising and is under constant surveillance to enforce those restrictions. For reasons that appear completely punitive, he's being denied many of the most basic attributes of civilized imprisonment, including even a pillow or sheets for his bed (he is not and never has been on suicide watch). For the one hour per day when he is freed from this isolation, he is barred from accessing any news or current events programs.

[...]

In sum, Manning has been subjected for many months without pause to inhumane, personality-erasing, soul-destroying, insanity-inducing conditions of isolation similar to those perfected at America's Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado: all without so much as having been convicted of anything. And as is true of many prisoners subjected to warped treatment of this sort, the brig's medical personnel now administer regular doses of anti-depressants to Manning to prevent his brain from snapping from the effects of this isolation.

Just by itself, the type of prolonged solitary confinement to which Manning has been subjected for many months is widely viewed around the world as highly injurious, inhumane, punitive, and arguably even a form of torture. In his widely praised March, 2009 New Yorker article -- entitled "Is Long-Term Solitary Confinement Torture?" -- the surgeon and journalist Atul Gawande assembled expert opinion and personal anecdotes to demonstrate that, as he put it, "all human beings experience isolation as torture." By itself, prolonged solitary confinement routinely destroys a person’s mind and drives them into insanity. A March, 2010 article in The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law explains that "solitary confinement is recognized as difficult to withstand; indeed, psychological stressors such as isolation can be as clinically distressing as physical torture."

For that reason, many Western nations -- and even some non-Western nations notorious for human rights abuses -- refuse to employ prolonged solitary confinement except in the most extreme cases of prisoner violence. "It’s an awful thing, solitary," John McCain wrote of his experience in isolated confinement in Vietnam. “It crushes your spirit." As Gawande documented: "A U.S. military study of almost a hundred and fifty naval aviators returned from imprisonment in Vietnam . . . reported that they found social isolation to be as torturous and agonizing as any physical abuse they suffered."

does this seem to anybody but me like they're doing their damnedest to make a case whether one exists or not...? meanwhile, george bush and dick cheney, who have the blood of multi-thousands of people on their hands thanks to their deceptive and illegal war in iraq, run around scot-free...

[UPDATE]

glenn...

Getting to Assange through Manning

[...]

[C]laiming that WikiLeaks does not merely receive and publish classify information, but rather actively seeks it and helps the leakers, is the DOJ's attempt to distinguish it from "traditional" journalism. As Savage writes, this theory would mean "the government would not have to confront awkward questions about why it is not also prosecuting traditional news organizations or investigative journalists who also disclose information the government says should be kept secret — including The New York Times."

But this distinction is totally illusory. Very rarely do investigative journalists merely act as passive recipients of classified information; secret government programs aren't typically reported because leaks just suddenly show up one day in the email box of a passive reporter. Journalists virtually always take affirmative steps to encourage its dissemination. They try to cajole leakers to turn over documents to verify their claims and consent to their publication. They call other sources to obtain confirmation and elaboration in the form of further leaks and documents.

[...]

[There is no way to prosecute Assange and WikiLeaks without criminalizing journalism because WikiLeaks is engaged in pure journalistic acts: uncovering and publicizing the secret conduct of the world's most powerful factions. It is that conduct -- and not any supposed crime -- which explains why the DOJ is so desperate to prosecute.

it seems to me that criminalizing investigative journalism and opening the door for criminalizing virtually any form of reporting on government activities may indeed be the goal behind the insane push to prosecute julian assange and wikileaks...

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The Kingdom of Survival

a documentary with, among others, joe bageant... sounds interesting...

a bit about the film along with the trailer...

Joe Bageant is featured in a documentary film now in production, titled "The Kingdom of Survival", scheduled for release in November. Others in the film are Noam Chomsky, Mark Mirabello, Ramsey Kanaan, Sasha Lilley, Mike Oehler, Bob Meisenbach, and Will "The Bull" Taylor.

Writer and filmmaker M. A. Littler describes his film as a search for visions that challenge the status quo. "This is an interdisciplinary documentary combining speculative travelogue and investigative journalism in order to trace possible links between survivalism, spirituality, art, radical politics, outlaw culture, alternative media and fringe philosophy," he said.

"Contrary to the popular approach of trying to summon arguments that legitimize a pre-conceived point of view, I sought out contrary opinions ranging from the far left to the far right of the political spectrum, from the spiritual to the strictly secular and from the profound to the profane," Littler said.

"The Kingdom of Survival" circles through themes of utopianism, globalized capitalism, anarchism, intellectual and spiritual self-defense, religion and art in an investigation of physical and psychological survival strategies practiced by groups and individuals in a conflict-ridden and confused post-modern world. The film is a production of Slowboat Films .

-- Ken Smith

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Unless we work to reclaim our own power, there will never be real change

obama notwithstanding...

from brasscheck tv...

Here's where we're at in America...

In order to learn about "We Are Change" - a real news service - we have to depend on a television channel in Russia.

And the Internet.

not that russian media is necessarily free and open with news about russia, but that's not the point... the point is that thank god we have access to SOME source of honest news...

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Another whine from a blog-challenged reporter

check this out...

Blogs: All the noise that fits
The hard-line opinions on weblogs are no substitute for the patient fact-finding of reporters.

By Michael Skube
August 19, 2007

[...]

The blogosphere is the loudest corner of the Internet, noisy with disputation, manifesto-like postings and an unbecoming hatred of enemies real and imagined.

[...]

Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, whose popular blog Daily Kos has been a force among antiwar activists, cautioned bloggers last week "to avoid the right-wing acronym MSM." It implied, after all, that bloggers were on the fringe. To the contrary, he wrote, "we are representatives of the mainstream, and the country is embracing what we're selling."

Moulitsas foresees bloggers becoming the watchdogs that watch the watchdog: "We need to keep the media honest, but as an institution, it's important that they exist and do their job well." The tone is telling: breezy, confident, self-congratulatory. Subtly, it implies bloggers have all the liberties of a traditional journalist but few of the obligations.

[...]

The opinions are occasionally informed, often tiresomely cranky and never in doubt. Skepticism, restraint, a willingness to suspect judgment and to put oneself in the background -- these would not seem to be a blogger's trademarks.

But they are, more often than not, trademarks of the kind of journalism that makes a difference. And if there is anything bloggers want more than an audience, it's knowing they are making a difference in politics. They are, to give them their due, changing what is euphemistically called the national "conversation." But what is the nature of that change? Does it deepen our understanding? Does it broaden our perspective?

[...]

The more important the story, the more incidental our opinions become. Something larger is needed: the patient sifting of fact, the acknowledgment that assertion is not evidence and, as the best writers understand, the depiction of real life. Reasoned argument, as well as top-of-the-head comment on the blogosphere, will follow soon enough, and it should. But what lodges in the memory, and sometimes knifes us in the heart, is the fidelity with which a writer observes and tells. The word has lost its luster, but we once called that reporting.

i rarely choose to post about either the blogosphere or bloggers and i don't very often take a bead on journalists, other than to excerpt what i believe to be their relevant (and, occasionally, outrageous) work... but i can't let this one lie...

my first reaction...? arrogance... my second reaction...? elitism... my third reaction...? ignorance...

i can only speak for myself, but it would be completely impossible for me to be as informed as i am (take a leap of faith with me here) were it not for blogs... yeah, sure, there's opinion galore, sometimes little in the way of fact-checking, plenty of irreverence, strong emotion, harsh invective, vulgar obscenity and occasionally outright slander... there's also a ton of unfiltered perspectives, unsanitized viewpoints and heartfelt stories from and about ordinary people that illuminate what's going on in the country and the world in ways unobtainable elsewhere... over and above that, there's an increasing amount of very good investigative reporting, offering information dug up from sources that reporters on a newspaper or magazine payroll might never have uncovered... none of this is to even mention, of course, that one of the many reasons the blogosphere has exploded is that many of THOSE goddam reporters haven't been doing their job...

but ya know what, and this is what mr. elite reporters-vs.-bloggers skube entirely misses...? 90% of the truly great journalistic reporting that i read, i get pointed to by bloggers... thanks to bloggers, i find that i consistently read sources i didn't even know existed and/or would never have had the time or patience to dig out for myself...

one other thing he misses, and this may be the biggest one of all... reporters are increasingly turning to blogs as a far more direct and complete way to tell their stories, and bloggers are increasingly moving into traditional journalism as a way to reach more readers... mr. whiney-pants skube, firmly stuck in a pre-blogosphere mindset, insists on framing an either-or situation, when, in reality, it's both-and... the blogosphere and its wonderful platform, the internet, is transforming global dialog and truly allowing, for the first time in history, EVERYONE not only to be informed but to take part...

bite me, mr. skube...

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Normalizing the unthinkable

do yourself a favor and go read the transcript, watch the video or listen to the mp3 of this john pilger speech during the Socialism 2007 conference in Chicago...

here's a teaser, thanks to democracy now via co-blogger tobymandrake...

John Pilger - the eminent investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker - is a harsh critic of the corporate media. Pilger began his career in journalism close to half a century ago. He has made over 50 documentaries and is the author of numerous books, his most recent is titled "Freedom Next Time: Resisting the Empire."

[M]edia clichéd language ... is designed to normalize the unthinkable; of the degradation of war, of severed limbs, of maimed children, all of which I've seen. One of my favorite stories about the Cold War concerns a group of Russian journalists who were touring the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by the host for their impressions. "I have to tell you," said the spokesman, "that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV day after day that all the opinions on all the vital issues are the same. To get that result in our country we send journalists to the gulag. We even tear out their fingernails. Here you don't have to do any of that. What is the secret?"

What is the secret? It is a question seldom asked in newsrooms, in media colleges, in journalism journals, and yet the answer to that question is critical to the lives of millions of people. On August 24 last year the New York Times declared this in an editorial: "If we had known then what we know now the invasion if Iraq would have been stopped by a popular outcry." This amazing admission was saying, in effect, that journalists had betrayed the public by not doing their job and by accepting and amplifying and echoing the lies of Bush and his gang, instead of challenging them and exposing them. What the Times didn't say was that had that paper and the rest of the media exposed the lies, up to a million people might be alive today. That's the belief now of a number of senior establishment journalists. Few of them—they've spoken to me about it—few of them will say it in public.

there's plenty more, much of which confirms the complicity of our two political parties' and our media in keeping us from learning the truth...

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"The smug, high-end Washington press corps" are just another sub-group of the elites

i posted a while back on the ethics of ken silverstein's undercover gig to gather information about washington lobbying and public relations firms that appeared in the recent harper's... i opined at the time that it would be completely impossible for silverstein to have gotten the information he was able to obtain by any other means... here silverstein addresses the ethics issue, shares an identical opinion, and offers a few observations on the current state of our esteemed media...

Today ... it's almost impossible to imagine a mainstream media outlet undertaking a major undercover investigation.

[...]

The decline of undercover reporting — and of investigative reporting in general — also reflects, in part, the increasing conservatism and cautiousness of the media, especially the smug, high-end Washington press corps. As reporters have grown more socially prominent during the last several decades, they've become part of the very power structure that they're supposed to be tracking and scrutinizing.

[...]

Yes, undercover reporting should be used sparingly, and there are legitimate arguments to be had about when it is fair or appropriate. But I'm confident my use of it in this case was legitimate. There was a significant public interest involved, particularly given Congress' as-yet-unfulfilled promise to crack down on lobbyists in the aftermath of the Jack Abramoff scandal.

Could I have extracted the same information and insight with more conventional journalistic methods? Impossible.

Based on the number of interview requests I've had, and the steady stream of positive e-mails I've received, I'd wager that the general public is decidedly more supportive of undercover reporting than the Washington media establishment. One person who heard me talking about the story in a TV interview wrote to urge that I never apologize for "misrepresenting yourself to a pack of thugs … especially when misrepresentation is their own stock in trade!"

i, for one, am grateful that someone like silverstein is on the job...

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