Half A World Away

So I suppose I've been failing as a blogger by not even mentioning the monumental events going on in Egypt... I guess a revolution catches us all by surprise. But honestly, I've watched these things before. I think we all have. And these uprisings often have hopeful moments and then? They're squashed. Remember Tianamen Square?

But the story in Egypt is still unfolding, and there is room for hope. The Egyptian Army says it will not use force against the people during tomorrow's March of a Million.

(YouTube video.)

I don't know what to expect from my own government. My hope is that they will support Democracy and stop propping up dictators. Am I asking too much?

Taking Their Government Back

America is speaking out on the House Republicans' new taxpayer-funded web site. And boy, we sure are funny, but I doubt that's what the Republicans were looking for.

"This site was developed as part of an official effort to increase the dialogue between Americans and their Congress. Here, Americans are provided a new platform to share their priorities and ideas for a national policy agenda."

I'm sure the GOP thought they were being cool and innovative, but somebody should have seriously Googled "flaming," "trolling" and "rick rolling" before jumping into this new-fangled Internet thing. If you think I'm making fun of Republicans for being out-of-touch, then you're absolutely right.

A forum? To express our ideas? On this computer thing? Well gollly!

And wouldn't you know it? Give them an open mic, and people start yapping. Here is what the true Americans are saying on their new so-ugly-it-must-be-hip-with-those-myspace-kids platform:

We should make English the official language of the US and stop spending tax dollars on translations for Mexicans! if English is good enough for baby Jesus, it's good enough for Americans.

The United States needs to quit beating around the bush and declare war on the Devil. He has clearly shown to be a great threat to our national security by creating brown people, gays, and Jews. I know he would be no match for our fine service men.

ONLY gays in the military. Think about it.

We should invade China and take our money back.

The USA don't need socialist measures such as 8-hour work days, weekends off, paid vacations, banning child labor, or the minimum wage if we want to stay competitive against giants like India and China.

Look for more of the un-American places to spread our freedom.

No one should be allowed to criticize corporations, period. It's disrespectful and unAmerican.

Over time I have found that American sour cream just isn't sour enough. This is a national disgrace and is holding us back as a country. Soon we'll be nothing but whipped cream liberal candyasses.

We need to eliminate 62 days out of the US Calendar every year. That way we will move through time faster than other countries and we will be able to find out about new technologies first. Plus we can see the future. Don't tell the French.

Why hasn't anyone followed up on Sarah Palin's idea that we should have Death Panels to decide who gets medical care? I read about her Death Panels suggestion and thought it was very constructive and would make most of the recent very expensive health care plan unnecessary. The congress ignoring Sarah Palin's Death Panel idea shows that they were not serious about listening to the American People and their Constructive Ideas.

The government should never give you up, Never let you down, Never run around and desert you. Never make you cry, Never say goodbye, Never tell a lie and hurt you.

Mother Jones has collected a few more stunning examples of this crowd-sourced policy making.

Now, who wants to bet some Republican candidates will actually campaign on a few of the "constructive" ideas listed above? Who wants to bet that the GOP will completely ignore any good suggestions that don't already fit their established agenda?

And who wants to bet that if the Founding Fathers could see us now, they'd pat themselves on the back for shunning direct democracy?

Torturing Democracy

"I have become an old man here. Death in this situation is better than being alive and staying here without hope." — Detainee #232

Those are the words of an unnamed Guantanamo detainee. The torture of prisoners in U.S. custody is documented in a new film Torturing Democracy (viewable online).

With exclusive interviews and little-known archival footage, the documentary traces how the secret U.S. military training program – “Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape” or SERE – became the basis for many of the harshest interrogation methods employed first by the CIA and subsequently by interrogators at Guantanamo and in Iraq. The tactics designed to “inoculate“ elite American troops mirror tactics used by “a totalitarian, evil nation with complete disregard for human rights and the Geneva Conventions,” according to Malcolm Nance, the former SERE master trainer for the U.S. Navy.

One of the most shocking memos -- more shocking than the infamous Yoo "torture memo" -- is the recently released JTF GTMO "SERE" Interrogation Standard Operating Procedure. This most disturbing document describes our government's cold standards on how to abuse prisoners including bureaucratic details on degradation, physical debilitation, isolation and monopolization of perception, and demonstrated omnipotence tactics.

The accused have faced many hopeless years of these tactics. It wasn't until June 2008 that the Supreme Court ruled that the detainees have the right to appeal to U.S. civilian courts to challenge their indefinite imprisonment without charges.

How are these trials going? The unsurprising answer is not so fairly. The surprising news, however, is who is blowing the whistle:

Darrel J. Vandeveld was in despair. The hard-nosed lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, a self-described conformist praised by his superiors for his bravery in Iraq, had lost faith in the Guantanamo Bay war crimes tribunals in which he was a prosecutor.

That's the prosecutor speaking out, and he is at least the fourth Guantanamo Bay prosecutor to resign under protest. His claims are explosive:

In a declaration and subsequent testimony, he said the U.S. government was not providing defense lawyers with the evidence it had against their clients, including exculpatory information -- material considered helpful to the defense.

Saying that the accused enemy combatants were more likely to be wrongly convicted without that evidence, Vandeveld testified that he went from being a "true believer to someone who felt truly deceived" by the tribunals. The system in place at the U.S. military facility in Cuba, he wrote in his declaration, was so dysfunctional that it deprived "the accused of basic due process and subject[ed] the well-intentioned prosecutor to claims of ethical misconduct."

I applaud anybody who stands up to the Bush administration, but there remains a bitter irony. The good guys leave, and the ones without a conscience keep on running the country.

Military-Industrial Complex

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Those were the noble goals stated by Dwight D. Eisenhower in his famous 1961 speech on the Military-Industrial Complex. I think it's important to revisit history to understand what is happening now. What was new to the American experience 47 years ago is widely accepted and rarely questioned today:

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Thanks to the Internet, we can easily track the costs. So far this month, 255 publicly-reported defense contracts have totaled $40,916,778,410. The total so far this year is $164,176,189,156. And don't foolishly believe that these contracts are all being awarded to American companies. Bahrain Maritime and Merchantile International is being awarded a maximum $2,801,334,120 contract for supply and distribution of food and non-food products.

Of course the money spent is the easy part to measure, but our liberties and our democratic process have also been sacrificed. See my posts on domestic spying, habeas corpus, airport security, proxy wars, terrorist watch list, politicalization of the DoJ, and the cavalier attitude towards war with Iran...

And on this last topic of Iran, maybe we are finally coming to our senses. A recent RAND Research Brief presents the evidence that terrorism groups are rarely defeated by military might:

By analyzing a comprehensive roster of terrorist groups that existed worldwide between 1968 and 2006, the authors found that most groups ended because of operations carried out by local police or intelligence agencies or because they negotiated a settlement with their governments. Military force was rarely the primary reason a terrorist group ended, and few groups within this time frame achieved victory.

In another positive development, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is starting to sound a little bit like Eisenhower. Yesterday, Gates renewed his call for more spending on U.S. diplomacy and international aid, saying the U.S. government risks “creeping militarization” of its foreign policy by focusing its resources on the Pentagon.

So that's what we're calling it now? Creeping militarization? I suppose I don't mind the new wording. Just uttering the phrase "military-industrial complex" makes me feel like a radical tie-dyed hippie.

Ambush Reporting

Hidden cameras, one way mirrors, catching criminals in the act -- these were the original tactics of ambush reporting pioneered by 60 Minutes. A new generation of reporters and infotainment channels have redefined the ambush interview. I prefer to call the new style "bullying" because it has nothing to do with reporting, journalism, or integrity.

I've written about one Fox News ambush boy before. His name is Porter Barry. I've also written about a journalist who I really respect. His name is Bill Moyers. Let's see what happens when the two meet at the National Conference for Media Reform:



It's no surprise that Moyer's intelligence, composure, and wit beat Barry's obnoxious, repetitive talking points, but the highlight of the argument is when, at about 2 minutes into part 2, Moyers asks this key question: "Is Rupert Murdoch responsible to the American people?"

I say of course he is responsible. Murdoch is the major shareholder, chairman and managing director of News Corporation. News Corporation owns many newspapers, magazines, studios and television channels around the world. And the man has been accused of violating editorial independence and destroying once respectable newspapers with his tabloid style sensationalism. That's not my idea of free press.

Bill Moyers once said "There is no more important struggle for American democracy than ensuring a diverse, independent and free media. Free Press is at the heart of that struggle.”

But I would like to hear Porter Barry's opinion, so I hope he does go on Moyer's show next week to offer his insight on the media's responsibility to the American people. I'm sure it will be fascinating.