The view from Venice, Fla.

365: The beach in Venice, Fla. Beautiful weather there over the weekend. The pier in the distance was connected to Sharkey's, the beachside megabar of Venice.

At the game

365: Boston vs. Baltimore. Pediatric Brain Tumor Awareness: Today's blatantly obvious 'good cause.'

'Casino Jack' in DC

365: I know this picture sucks, but it was a dark theater and I didn't want to use the flash from two rows back. From left, WaPo's Jonathan Capehart, 'Casino Jack' director Alex Gibney, former congressman -- the only one that was indicted for dealings with Jack Abramoff -- Bob Ney (R-Ohio) and former staffer for both Ney and Abramoff Neil Volz at E St. Theater.

It was the first public showing in DC of 'Casino Jack', the new documentary on the story of uber-lobbyist Abramoff's rise and fall. We saw the director's cut, so this version was bit exhaustive and very detailed. That was fine with me. It was a bit hacky and cheesy at times in its use of footage of 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' to punctuate some kind of loss of innocence Abramoff supposedly symbolizes (Washington was corrupted and corrosive long before, and long after, that movie, so let's stop pretending and telling ourselves lies). Though that doesn't take away from the on-key editing and expansive research into Abramoff's (and associates') deceit and decadence.

Big week at Gitmo

The first military commissions trial under Barack Obama is set to begin tomorrow at Guantanamo Bay. The case of Canadian Omar Khadr, the alleged murderer of an American solider by grenade in Afghanistan eight years ago, will showcase how truly different Obama's changes to these tribunals are compared to those during George W. Bush's presidency.

Spencer Ackerman with what's at issue:

Khadr, a teenager when initially detained, has been held for nearly half his life at a facility that the Obama administration has pledged to close. He will be tried in a legal venue that Obama rejected as a Senator and embraced, in reformed fashion, as president. What happens this week at Guantanamo will determine whether Obama’s pledge that the new, revised military commissions can deliver internationally-recognized justice is meaningful: the pre-trial hearing in Khadr’s case will provide the first in-depth examination of whether Khadr’s treatment in U.S. custody amounts to torture; will determine whether prosecutors can use evidence against him acquired under abusive, coercive circumstances that civilian courts would never allow; and whether additional statements made by Khadr in subsequent and less-coercive circumstances are fair game or inextricable from his overall abuse.

The 15-year-old was in Afghanistan with his father, a supposed al Qaeda financier, when he we detained for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed an American. In the process, Khadr was shot twice. Evidence suggests that he was buried under rubble at the time of the American soldier's death.

Many have questioned why the Obama administration would pick this case, one of a child soldier who has been tortured, to be the first commissions exercise under Obama.

Carol Rosenberg of The Miami Herald (a Gitmo reporter extraordinaire) quotes former war court defense lawyer David Frakt today:

"They're starting off their very first prosecution of the Obama administration with a child soldier, a Westerner no less, and going into excruciating detail for two weeks of torture and mistreatment that he suffered,'' Frakt said. ``It's kind of the dream scenario for opponents of military commissions.''

Khadr claims he was at times beaten, left shackled so long in interrogation he urinated on himself and was subjected to solitary confinement and sleep deprivation -- claims that other detainees have also made through the years.

For a legal rundown of what's wrong in this case, read Daphne Eviatar of Human Rights First:

Equally fundamental is that the military commissions were created to try war crimes. But even if Khadr were guilty of the acts charged - murder, attempted murder, conspiracy, and aiding the enemy - those aren't really war crimes. At least, they weren't war crimes until Congress declared them to be in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 -- four years after Khadr allegedly committed them. So to try Khadr for war crimes now is a violation of the Ex Post Facto clause of the U.S. Constitution, Khadr's lawyers point out. (Khadr could, of course, be tried in a civilian court for the crimes of murder and conspiracy.)

Khadr's case, then, underscores many of the fundamental problems with the military commission system - that it has no rules, little experience, almost no precedent and barely any law to guide it.

So why did the Obama administration decide to make the case of Omar Khadr its first trial in a military commission?

If the administration is hoping to showcase the strength of its military and the president's tough stance on terrorism, this probably wasn't the best way to do it.

How this case is handled will have deep ramifications going forward with the many detainee trials in queue now. And it will interesting to see how America and the media react to another remembrance of the scores of evidence of torture inflicted upon this teenager, guilty or not, and other detainees.

ADAPT protest for patients' rights

365: Protesters block off the road just off Conn. Ave., in front of the Hilton. ADAPT was advocating passage of the Community Choice Act, which would give more rights to disabled patients in choosing where and how they're cared for.




See more of my protest photos.

My Lai on PBS

I watched the PBS series American Experience: My Lai. Wow. I've had quite the pair of films today.

The New York Times wrote of the Barak Goodman documentary:

The film employs the usual archival images and talking heads, as well as audio recordings from the court martial of Lt. William L. Calley Jr., who was convicted of ordering the killings. But Mr. Goodman has gone well beyond that, persuading soldiers from Charlie Company, some of whom had never spoken publicly about the events of March 16, 1968, to sit for interviews.

They appear to be more interested in seeking understanding than in expressing remorse. “The people of that village were Viet Cong or Viet Cong sympathizers,” says Kenneth Hodges, a squad leader. “Maybe some see it differently. That’s the way I see it.” Often, though, their words and their eyes seem to be telling different stories.

The first half of My Lai is deeply haunting.

M.I.A.'s "Born Free"

M.I.A.'s amazing video "Born Free" has been pulled from YouTube for its either too graphic or too "controversial" material. M.I.A.'s website then directed viewers to Vimeo. The violent Romain Gavras-directed work is nine razor-sharp minutes long. The narrative quite sinisterly weaves America's War on Terror/Gitmo and immigration policy and suspicion of the "other." It's allegory. And it's powerful.

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Will the peasant mentality reign?

Matt Taibbi has a particularly piercing column in The Guardian today on the ramifications of the government's treatment of Goldman Sachs and the corrosive, backwards ideas inspired by Ayn Rand's brand of selfishness.

Will Goldman Sachs prove greed is God?


People have to understand this Randian mindset is now ingrained in the American character. You have to live here to see it. There's a hatred toward "moochers" and "parasites" – the Tea Party movement, which is mainly a bunch of pissed off suburban white people whining about minorities consuming social services, describes the battle as being between "water-carriers" and "water-drinkers". And regulation of any kind is deeply resisted, even after a disaster as sweeping as the 2008 crash.

This debate is going to be crystallised in the Goldman case. Much of America is going to reflexively insist that Goldman's only crime was being smarter and better at making money than IKB and ABN-Amro, and that the intrusive, meddling government (in the American narrative, always the bad guy!) should get off Goldman's Armani-clad back. Another side is going to argue that Goldman winning this case would be a rebuke to the whole idea of civilisation – which, after all, is really just a collective decision by all of us not to screw each other over even when we can. It's an important moment in the history of modern global capitalism: whether or not to move forward into a world of greed without limits.

It's time to reject the "vampire squid."

The Fox News empire

It's sad when it's left to comedians to discern fact from fiction amid the money-hungry, ethically-devoid wasteland that is the mainstream media (especially cable news) in America. The New York Times documents The Daily Show's hounding of Fox News, the propagandist noise machine for the Right masquerading as a news channel.

In many of the segments, Mr. Stewart questions Fox’s journalistic practices. He noted that Fox had hired former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska to be a political analyst in a January segment he called “News of the Weird.” But he wasn’t laughing when he asserted that Fox is “functioning as her de-facto rapid response media arm, and they’re paying her for the privilege of doing it.”

In February he noted that Fox News had stopped showing President Obama’s widely praised meeting with Republican leaders while CNN and MSNBC had carried it start to finish. Mimicking a Fox anchor, Mr. Stewart said, “We’re gonna cut away because” — humorous pause — “this is against the narrative that we present.”

Fox is alternate-reality news and a living, breathing example of the merging of a party with a news outlet. What does it say when they are the number-one rated news channel in America?

Devo Live 1980

In 2005, Devo released a CD/DVD of the M-80 Concert they did in 1980 at the Phoenix Theatre, in Petaluma.

The beginning of the DVD begins with Star Wars-like language scrolling off into the abyss, top to bottom. The message is a political, social statement of poignancy and conviction. And one of keen humor and satirical heft.

August 17, 1980. Planet Earth, the United States of America.

It was a dark time. The American President, Ronald Reagan, a former actor in motion picture entertainment, presided over the land. His oil-rich federation and fundamentalist Christian supporters sought to return the population to past times and practices that defied logic and would heap sorrow upon the masses.

But on this night in 1980 a revolutionary band of self-proclaimed "spudboys" who made strange new sounds and sang strange new words would make their presence known in a city by the water. The five young men traveled thousands of miles from an industrial wasteland known as Akron, Ohio, their collective place of birth. They had struggled against all odds to survive in a culture driven by fear and prevail in a ruthless business powered by sharks. They called themselves Devo, for they believed that de-evolution, not evolution, was the guiding force of humankind's future.

On this night in 1980, Devo had no idea that history would prove their cautionary vision to be so frighteningly correct. Now, 25 years later, the reign of President Reagan seems in retrospect like a ray of sunshine compared to the present day rule of Emperor "W" and his fellow fundamentalist enemies around the world.

De-evolution is real.

Like a sickle.

Bassist Gerry Casale, one of the founding members of the band's concept of de-evolutionary performance artists, wrote on the back cover:

This lone artifact offers indisputable evidence that in 1980 Devo had reached a turning point. We were no longer just art monsters, we were mainstream performers too.

Certainly a jab at the record industry's attitude toward Devo. This is a band that relied on being able to document the present's absurdity and predict the future's ominous fate. This quote touches on a sort of validity Casale is taking credit for in the year 2005. In Devo's latest resurgence in past year or two, I've been amused by the number of times the band members, especially Casale, remind everyone of what they said and how they were fucking right. But they always take that credit with a bemused smirk, as if they aren't surprised by any of the many troubling aspects of current day America. Thankfully, they've returned to continue mocking society's de-evolutionary behavior.

The Bedwetter

365: Sarah Silverman at the 18th and L Border's, talking about her new book, The Bedwetter.

Adventures in hubris

Dick Cheney has endorsed Marco Rubio in the Florida Senate race over Florida governor Charlie Crist, now deemed an insufficient conservative in today's Republican witch-hunt climate.

Now read Cheney's statement in support of Rubio. Think about what he's saying. This man, who irrevocably altered America in ways too numerous to name at this point in the day, has the unbridled, runaway ego to say the following.

“Our country is at a crossroads facing threats from abroad and attempts from within to restructure the very foundation of our freedoms. America requires leaders to face down these challenges who are confident in who they are and what they stand for. Leaders who know that public service is about something bigger than climbing the political ladder and amassing greater political power…

“We can trust Marco to stand up to the Obama agenda that threatens our freedom, and promote clear conservative alternatives…Charlie Crist has shown time and again that he cannot be trusted in Washington to take on the Obama agenda because on issue after issue he actually supports that agenda. Lately it seems Charlie Crist cannot be trusted even to remain a Republican. I strongly urge him to either stay in the Republican Primary or drop out of the race.”

“Our country is at a crossroads facing threats from abroad and attempts from within to restructure the very foundation of our freedoms." Fear, paranoia, denial, self-loathing, it's par for the course for Dick.

"Public service is about something bigger than ... amassing greater political power." Laughable. This is the man that drove an unprecedented level of executive power.

And he says don't trust those that aren't one of chosen. Sounds like McCarthyism. What vicious dirtbag.

Who's naming the streets in Ashburn, Va.?

365: Could it be ... murder?

The battle for Kandahar

Get ready for a tough, bloody summer in Kandahar.

NYT:

The Taliban gunned down the deputy mayor of Kandahar, perhaps the city’s most effective and admired public official, late on Monday, demonstrating their ability to kill almost anyone in a region where security continues to worsen ahead of a planned summer offensive.

And in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, a NATO convoy shot to death four unarmed civilians in a vehicle, including a police officer and 12-year-old student, according to local Afghan officials. But without offering proof, NATO described the dead as two insurgents and their “associates” — a disagreement that could prompt another dispute with the Afghan government over civilian casualties.


Kandahar was the power center of the Taliban before the United States-led invasion in 2001, and attempts to secure the surrounding province from Taliban guerrillas and institute new governance programs this summer could be crucial to the fate of the eight-and-a-half-year occupation. With only weeks to go before the offensive, the Taliban have been stepping up violence in the city with a series of assassinations and attacks on American and Western contractors, political officials and religious leaders.

Kucinich, one of the few liberals to speak up on assassinations of US citizens

Jeremy Scahill reports on Dennis Kucinich's view of the approved search to assassinate American-Yemeni citizen Anwar al-Awlaki.

Kucinich told The Nation he has sent several letters to the Obama administration raising questions about the potential unconstitutionality of the policy, as well as possible violations of international law, but has received no response. "With all the smart people that are in that administration, they've got to know the risks that they're taking here with violations of law," he says.

[...]

He added: "The assassination policies vitiate the presumption of innocence and the government then becomes the investigator, policeman, prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner all in one. That raises the greatest questions with respect to our constitution and our democratic way of life."

Kucinich says the case of al-Awlaki is an attempt to make "a short-cut around the Constitution," saying, "Short-cuts often belie the deep and underlying questions around which nations rise and fall. We are really putting our nation in jeopardy by pursuing this kind of policy."

Scahill says that his attempts to reach Sen. Russ Feingold and Rep. Jan Schakowsky, two usually tough liberals that have re-election campaigns to think about in 2010, went unanswered. Amid this silence of the "progressives" in Congress, I give Kucinich credit for saying something, anything substantive in way of a rebuke of the president's actions. But it's really a shame that it's come to this. Where is the Democratic leadership? They are getting rolled by Obama and they don't mind at all. They've got cover to get reelected if Obama is still semi-popular. Why should they expend their energy on pushing him from the left? If America likes him, that's better for our preservation, they think.

But back to the thoughts on Awlaki, Kucinich said, "We are really putting our nation in jeopardy by pursuing this kind of policy." He referenced the intelligentsia that must know what kind of Pandora's Box they're opening. It's not just those big, bad Bush-Cheney deadenders anymore. It's also the sellouts (though that term could be disputed) in the Obama White House. They have dutifully continued the lawlessness of their predecessors.

Our little Iraq is all grown up and torturing on its own

Freedom is on the march.

LA Times:

Hundreds of Sunni men disappeared for months into a secret Baghdad prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's military office, where many were routinely tortured until the country's Human Rights Ministry gained access to the facility, Iraqi officials say.

The men were detained by the Iraqi army in October in sweeps targeting Sunni groups in Nineveh province, a stronghold of the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militants in the north. The provincial governor alleged at the time that ordinary citizens had been detained as well, often without a warrant.

[...]

Commanders initially resisted efforts to inspect the prison but relented and allowed visits by two teams of inspectors, including Human Rights Minister Wijdan Salim. Inspectors said they found that the 431 prisoners had been subjected to appalling conditions and quoted prisoners as saying that one of them, a former colonel in President Saddam Hussein's army, had died in January as a result of torture.

"More than 100 were tortured. There were a lot of marks on their bodies," said an Iraqi official familiar with the inspections. "They beat people, they used electricity. They suffocated them with plastic bags, and different methods."

[...]

Maliki vowed to shut down the prison and ordered the arrest of the officers working there after Salim presented him with a report this month. Since then, 75 detainees have been freed and an additional 275 transferred to regular jails, Iraqi officials said. Maliki said in an interview that he had been unaware of the abuses. He said the prisoners had been sent to Baghdad because of concerns about corruption in Mosul.

"The prime minister cannot be responsible for all the behavior of his soldiers and staff," said Salim, praising Maliki's willingness to root out abuses. Salim, a Chaldean Christian, ran for parliament in last month's elections on Maliki's Shiite-dominated list.

Maliki defended his use of special prisons and an elite military force that answers only to him; his supporters say he has had no choice because of Iraq's precarious security situation. Maliki told The Times that he was committed to stamping out torture -- which he blamed on his enemies.

"Our reforms continue, and we have the Human Rights Ministry to monitor this," he said. "We will hold accountable anybody who was proven involved in such acts."

Reading the whole story, I had to laugh at the eerie symmetry in which the torture, denial and cover-up mirror America's own treatment of Iraqis (at Abu Ghraib) and other detainees. Too bad the U.S. has no moral authority to legitimately condemn these actions.

This is your legacy Dick Cheney.

Drones and assassinations: Our legacy in the war on terror

Richard Wright makes some important points on Predator drone strikes in Pakistan -- void of the Pakistani government's full support or authorization -- and the order to assassinate Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen now in Yemen implicated in inciting the Fort Hood shooter and the Underwear bomber.

If Harold Koh — the state department lawyer assigned the job of justifying Obama’s strategy — carries the day, America will be telling the world that it’s O.K. to lob missiles into countries that haven’t attacked you, as long as you think a terrorist may live there. Do we really want to send that message to, for example, Russia and China, both of which have terrorism problems? Or India or Pakistan?

And are we sure we want to say that, actually, due process of law isn’t really guaranteed all American citizens so long as there’s a war on terrorism — which, remember, is a war that may continue for eternity?

(For more background, Koh gave a speech recently defending many of the national security policies the Obama administration adopted from the Bushies. Adam Serwer gave a detailed breakdown of Koh's points on drones and assassinations.)

Sandy Levinson asks, What if it were Bush?

It is widely known that Obama has ordered more drone strikes in his year in office than George W. Bush did in his entire administration. One can only wonder what the response of the left would be if it were Bush (and, say, John Yoo) engaging in (and defending) the actions that seem central to the Obama Administration's policy in Pakistan (and Yemen and....). The most ominous part of Wright's column is an argument that the policy is very likely to be counterproductive, for a number of reasons he goes into. So there may be a "negative trifecta," i.e., a policy that raises serious moral and legal questions and is counterproductive to boot.

But more to the point, Is this what we want America to be? How can we realistically disallow other powerful countries from conducting similar activities -- especially in the case of drones -- without completely losing all credibility (if we haven't lost enough already)?

And I'm not really sure why I'm even asking because I know why: Where are all the Bush haters that complained about these very same procedures? There are MORE drone strikes mowing down civilians and vague, unverified "suspects" now and Bush never targeted an American citizen for DEATH. Where are the liberals, progressives, civil libertarians and others on the Left now?

Dawn Johnsen's bow out: Inevitable

Glenn Greenwald laments the death of Dawn Johnsen's nomination to be head of the Office of Legal Counsel. As for reasons to the breakdown with Johnsen, Greenwald points out the contradictions of Obama's past and present positions on executive power.

I don't know the real story behind what happened here -- I had an email exchange with Johnsen this afternoon but she was only willing to provide me her official, pro forma, wholly uninformative statement -- but here's what I do know: virtually everything that Dawn Johnsen said about executive power, secrecy, the rule of law and accountability for past crimes made her an excellent fit for what Candidate Obama said he would do, but an awful fit for what President Obama has done.

[...]

What Johnsen insists must not be done reads like a manual of what Barack Obama ended up doing and continues to do -- from supporting retroactive immunity to terminate FISA litigations to endless assertions of "state secrecy" in order to block courts from adjudicating Bush crimes to suppressing torture photos on the ground that "opennees will empower terrorists" to the overarching Obama dictate that we "simply move on." Could she have described any more perfectly what Obama would end up doing when she wrote, in March, 2008, what the next President "must not do"?

The legal opinions of Dawn Johnsen and Barack Obama diverged a loooooong time ago.

Nuclear overlords: You are the key to a more appealing tomorrow for all of us.

365: DC's finest gather to "talk shop" outside the Convention Center, the lock-downed site of tomorrow's Nuclear Security Summit.

And speaking of nuclear paranoia, take the Devo song study.

The Great Karl Rove-Chelsea Handler Rivalry

Everyone's favorite talking pile of mashed potatoes Karl Rove made it into today's New York Times profile of comedienne Chelsea Handler:

Signing copies of her book for about 300 fans who had waited around after her first show in Seattle, she muses on the fact that “Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang” had come out the same week as Karl Rove’s memoir. And that it was her R-rated book — topics include third-grade masturbation and black Cabbage Patch Kids — and not one from the former Bush adviser that hit No. 1.

“I picture Karl Rove sitting there in his underwear, staring at that list,” Ms. Handler says. “I’m sure he was thinking, ‘Who the hell is Chelsea Handler?’ ”

But Karl Rove aside, I didn't know much about Handler -- other than that she had written a book or two and had a show on E!, or some such -- until I read some recent reviews of her show in Slate and Salon. The Slate piece (unflatteringly titled The drunken-slattern shtick of Chelsea Handler) described her as thus:

Here's the vibe: Imagine Handler hungoverish at the 10-items-or-less counter at Safeway, swinging her basket of goods—a home pregnancy test, a Boston cream pie, a handle of designer booze—up to the conveyor belt. She snatches a glossy tabloid from the rack for a greedy eyeful of hot-pink messes. Sniping aloud at the tackiness within with vulgarity in kind, she rolls her eyes so hard that she gags as she slaps enough magazines on the conveyor belt so that now she's buying 12 items. She swipes her platinum card with a contemptuous gesture.

[...]

Those who would yawn at her act as a played-out "trangressive" role-playing might turn to the second page of Handler's current best-seller, Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang, with its compound sentence on the author's preadolescent addiction to her intimate anatomy: "I wasn't prepared for what kind of ride this little magic muffin was going to take me on, but I reminded myself that we never choose who we fall in love with, and I had no choice when my little hot pocket in a pita took over my life for the good part of the third and fourth grades." While any healthy man will squirm in contemplating this image, the more discerning of them will acknowledge the craft in the way the sentence pivots from puerile snack-time metaphor-making to a lilting bittersweet statement and back again.

Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams was a little more assured of Handler's shortcomings in her critique, titled The unfunny business of Chelsea Handler:

I speak on behalf of slutty, Belvedere-imbibing women from New Jersey when I say: I want to like Handler. But every time I hear how outraaageous she is, I wonder what I'm missing. This is a woman who delicately refers to the female anatomy as a "Pikachu" and defecation as "shadoobie," so excuse me if I'm not seeing the transgressiveness. On her talk show, "Chelsea Lately," she never seems like a loose cannon, ready to do something crazy at any moment. Instead, she's as stiff and rote as any other late-night host. She just gets bleeped more often. It also doesn't help her badass rep that she spent four years dating Ted Harbert, who, in addition to being filthy rich and 20 years her senior, is also the president and CEO of Comcast -- which owns "Chelsea Lately." The heart wants what it wants and all that, but therein lies the paradox that is Chelsea Handler: She's built a career on being the crazy chick with a taste for vodka and hookups, but what could be more conventional than a pretty girl dating the boss?

[...]

The sad truth is that, outside of her "I love to drink! Look at my ass!" comfort zone, Handler has remarkably little to say. But, hey, if college taught us anything, it's that a girl can go far on "I love to drink! Look at my ass!" Like, say, the New York Times bestseller list. Hey, Chelsea Handler is pretty and she seems nice enough and, wow, she's daring enough to opine that Jon Gosselin is "disgusting." She'll be around forever and bury us all. In that sense, I suppose, Handler is a groundbreaker. Like Dane Cook or Jeff Dunham of any number of high-profile, low-wit stars, she's proven that a woman in comedy can be just as lame as any man.

I have not seen her outside of a few clips on ads for her show. So it's hard for me to judge. But it sounds like Handler's act, like Rove's, is probably not as novel and everlasting as it seems to be at first glance.