Soldz WBIX Radio Interview: Does Torture Work?
My March 22, 2008 interview on the WBIX show Talking Things Through with Bob Stolzberg & Bill Pike is now online for listening: Does Torture Work?
Add comment April 27th, 2008
Posts filed under 'Media'
Thomas Frank: Obama’s touch of class
Thomas Frank, of What’s the Matter With Kansas fame, on the Obama comments and what’s the matter with America. [From the Wall Street Journal, where Frank will soon have a weekly column.]:
Obama’s Touch of Class
By Thomas Frank
Allow me to introduce myself. According to the general clucking of the national punditry, my 2004 book – “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” – is supposed to have persuaded Barack Obama to describe the yeomanry of Pennsylvania as “bitter” people who “cling to guns or religion or . . . anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Mr. Obama’s offense is so grave that the custodians of our national consensus have elevated it to gatehood: “Bittergate.”
In truth, I have no way of knowing whether some passage of mine inspired Mr. Obama’s tactless assertion that the hard-done-by clutch guns and irrationally oppose free-trade deals. In point of fact, I oppose many of those trade deals myself.
But I know one thing with absolute certainty. The media flurry kicked up by Mr. Obama’s gaffe powerfully confirms an argument I actually did make: That as they return again to the culture war, what the soldiers on all sides are doing is talking about class without actually addressing the economic basis of the subject.
Consider, for example, the one fateful charge that the punditry and the other candidates have fastened upon Mr. Obama – “elitism.” No one means by this term that Mr. Obama is a wealthy person (he wasn’t until last year), or even that he is an ally of the wealthy (although he might be that). What they mean is that he has committed a crime of attitude, and revealed his disdain for the common folk.
It is a stereotype you have heard many times before: Besotted with latte-fueled arrogance, the liberal looks down on average people, confident that he is a superior being. He scoffs at religion because he finds it to be a form of false consciousness. He believes in regulation because he thinks he knows better than the market.
“Elitism” is thus a crime not of society’s actual elite, but of its intellectuals. Mr. Obama has “a dash of Harvard disease,” proclaims the Weekly Standard. Mr. Obama reminds columnist George Will of Adlai Stevenson, rolled together with the sinister historian Richard Hofstadter and the diabolical economist J.K. Galbraith, contemptuous eggheads all. Mr. Obama strikes Bill Kristol as some kind of “supercilious” Marxist. Mr. Obama reminds Maureen Dowd of an . . . anthropologist.
Ah, but Hillary Clinton: Here’s a woman who drinks shots of Crown Royal, a luxury brand that at least one confused pundit believes to be another name for Old Prole Rotgut Rye. And when the former first lady talks about her marksmanship as a youth, who cares about the cool hundred million she and her husband have mysteriously piled up since he left office? Or her years of loyal service to Sam Walton, that crusher of small towns and enemy of workers’ organizations? And who really cares about Sam Walton’s own sins, when these are our standards? Didn’t he have a funky Southern accent of some kind? Surely such a mellifluous drawl cancels any possibility of elitism.
It is by this familiar maneuver that the people who have designed and supported the policies that have brought the class divide back to America – the people who have actually, really transformed our society from an egalitarian into an elitist one – perfume themselves with the essence of honest toil, like a cologne distilled from the sweat of laid-off workers. Likewise do their retainers in the wider world – the conservative politicians and the pundits who lovingly curate all this phony authenticity – become jes’ folks, the most populist fellows of them all.
But suppose we read on, and we find the news item about the hedge fund managers who made $2 billion and $3 billion last year, or the story about the vaporizing of our home equity. Suppose we become a little . . . bitter about this. What do our pundits and politicians tell us then?
That there is no place for such sentiment in the Party of the People. That “bitterness” is an ugly and inadmissible emotion. That “divisiveness” is a thing to be shunned at all costs.
Conservatism, on the other hand, has no problem with bitterness; as the champion strategist Howard Phillips said almost three decades ago, the movement’s job is to “organize discontent.” And organize they have. They have welcomed it, they have flattered it, they have invited it in with millions of treason-screaming direct-mail letters, they have given it a nice warm home on angry radio shows situated up and down the AM dial. There is not only bitterness out there; there is a bitterness industry.
Consider the shower of right-wing love that descended in February on small-town newspaper columnist Gary Hubbell, who penned this year’s great eulogy of the “angry white man,” the “man’s man” who “works hard,” who “knows that his wife is more emotional than rational,” and who also, happily, knows how to “change his own oil and build things.”
This stock character, unchanged since his star turns in the culture-war battles of the last few decades, is said to be as furious as ever, and still blaming the same villains for his problems: namely intellectuals, in the guise of “judges who have never worked an honest day in their lives.” But what he really wants is a chance to vote against Hillary Clinton, and “make sure she gets beaten like a drum.” I guess our angry toiler didn’t yet know about the Crown Royal.
If Barack Obama or anyone else really cares to know what I think, I will simplify it all down to this. The landmark political fact of our time is the replacement of our middle-class republic by a plutocracy. If some candidate has a scheme to reverse this trend, they’ve got my vote, whether they prefer Courvoisier or beer bongs spiked with cough syrup. I don’t care whether they enjoy my books, or would rather have every scrap of paper bearing my writing loaded into a C-47 and dumped into Lake Michigan. If it will help restore the land of relative equality I was born in, I’ll fly the plane myself.
Mr. Frank is the author of “The Wrecking Crew,” forthcoming from Metropolitan Books.
Add comment April 21st, 2008
Media military “analysis” more akin to psyops manipulation
The New York Times today published its blockbuster analysis of the Pentagon psyops program to manipulate public discourse on the Iraq war and related matters by creating a cadre of retired military officers pretending to be independent military analysts on TV. Since these analysts were lobbyists helping their clients get military contracts, they were dependent on close ties in the Pentagon. They understood that independent analysis could threaten their access.
Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants….
The administration has demonstrated that there is a price for sustained criticism, many analysts said. “You’ll lose all access,” Dr. McCausland said.
They acted in close collaboration with the Pentagon, echoing talking points and helping the military develop strategies to manipulate the media.
Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”
Though many analysts are paid network consultants, making $500 to $1,000 per appearance, in Pentagon meetings they sometimes spoke as if they were operating behind enemy lines, interviews and transcripts show. Some offered the Pentagon tips on how to outmaneuver the networks.
This was a systematic program designed in the early days of the administration:
From the start, interviews show, the White House took a keen interest in which analysts had been identified by the Pentagon, requesting lists of potential recruits, and suggesting names. Ms. Clarke’s team wrote summaries describing their backgrounds, business affiliations and where they stood on the war.
“Rumsfeld ultimately cleared off on all invitees,” said Mr. Krueger, who left the Pentagon in 2004. (Through a spokesman, Mr. Rumsfeld declined to comment for this article.)
Over time, the Pentagon recruited more than 75 retired officers, although some participated only briefly or sporadically. The largest contingent was affiliated with Fox News, followed by NBC and CNN, the other networks with 24-hour cable outlets. But analysts from CBS and ABC were included, too. Some recruits, though not on any network payroll, were influential in other ways — either because they were sought out by radio hosts, or because they often published op-ed articles or were quoted in magazines, Web sites and newspapers. At least nine of them have written op-ed articles for The Times.
[One had to read the article very carefully to come across this admission that that the Times was itself manipulated. Of course, they already had Judith Miller and Michael Gordon, who could be counted upon to publish administration propaganda on the front page, pretending to be news.]
Not only did these “analysts” help sell the bogus rationale for war, they sold the idea that the US was “winning,” even when they knew the opposite was the case. In September2003 a number of these analysts were taken on a trip to see the “progress” in Iraq. But actually they got a hint of how bad things were going.
Uncomfortable facts had bubbled up during the trip. One briefer, for example, mentioned that the Army was resorting to packing inadequately armored Humvees with sandbags and Kevlar blankets. Descriptions of the Iraqi security forces were withering. “They can’t shoot, but then again, they don’t,” one officer told them, according to one participant’s notes.
“I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south,” General Vallely, one of the Fox analysts on the trip, recalled in an interview with The Times.
The Pentagon, though, need not have worried.
“You can’t believe the progress,” General Vallely told Alan Colmes of Fox News upon his return. He predicted the insurgency would be “down to a few numbers” within months.
“We could not be more excited, more pleased,” Mr. Cowan told Greta Van Susteren of Fox News. There was barely a word about armor shortages or corrupt Iraqi security forces. And on the key strategic question of the moment — whether to send more troops — the analysts were unanimous.
“I am so much against adding more troops,” General Shepperd said on CNN.
The trip was a huge success in manipulating American public opinion.
Inside the Pentagon and at the White House, the trip was viewed as a masterpiece in the management of perceptions, not least because it gave fuel to complaints that “mainstream” journalists were ignoring the good news in Iraq.
“We’re hitting a home run on this trip,” a senior Pentagon official wrote in an e-mail message to Richard B. Myers and Peter Pace, then chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In true American fashion, these “analysts” gor expanded business access as a reward for lying.
Charles T. Nash, a Fox military analyst and retired Navy captain, is a consultant who helps small companies break into the military market. Suddenly, he had entree to a host of senior military leaders, many of whom he had never met. It was, he said, like being embedded with the Pentagon leadership. “You start to recognize what’s most important to them,” he said, adding, “There’s nothing like seeing stuff firsthand.”
Some Pentagon officials said they were well aware that some analysts viewed their special access as a business advantage. “Of course we realized that,” Mr. Krueger said. “We weren’t naïve about that.”
They also understood the financial relationship between the networks and their analysts. Many analysts were being paid by the “hit,” the number of times they appeared on TV. The more an analyst could boast of fresh inside information from high-level Pentagon “sources,” the more hits he could expect. The more hits, the greater his potential influence in the military marketplace, where several analysts prominently advertised their network roles.
“They have taken lobbying and the search for contracts to a far higher level,” Mr. Krueger said. “This has been highly honed….”
Like several other analysts, Mr. Eads said he had at times held his tongue on television for fear that “some four-star could call up and say, ‘Kill that contract.’ ” For example, he believed Pentagon officials misled the analysts about the progress of Iraq’s security forces. “I know a snow job when I see one,” he said. He did not share this on TV.
“Human nature,” he explained, though he noted other instances when he was critical.
These “analysts” found their work so valued that other branches of the government started to utilize them.
Other branches of the administration also began to make use of the analysts. Mr. Gonzales, then the attorney general, met with them soon after news leaked that the government was wiretapping terrorism suspects in the United States without warrants, Pentagon records show. When David H. Petraeus was appointed the commanding general in Iraq in January 2007, one of his early acts was to meet with the analysts.
Finally, the article shows that the networks, while often aware that these “analysts” had potential conflics of interest, did absolutely nothing to learn if these conflicts were influencing their analysis. Of course, they never dreamed of identifying and hiring truly independent “analysts.” CNN was the best network in at least having some policies and procedures in place.
CNN requires its military analysts to disclose in writing all outside sources of income. But like the other networks, it does not provide its military analysts with the kind of written, specific ethical guidelines it gives its full-time employees for avoiding real or apparent conflicts of interest.
Yet even where controls exist, they have sometimes proven porous.
CNN, for example, said it was unaware for nearly three years that one of its main military analysts, General Marks, was deeply involved in the business of seeking government contracts, including contracts related to Iraq.
General Marks was hired by CNN in 2004, about the time he took a management position at McNeil Technologies, where his job was to pursue military and intelligence contracts. As required, General Marks disclosed that he received income from McNeil Technologies. But the disclosure form did not require him to describe what his job entailed, and CNN acknowledges it failed to do additional vetting.
“We did not ask Mr. Marks the follow-up questions we should have,” CNN said in a written statement.
In an interview, General Marks said it was no secret at CNN that his job at McNeil Technologies was about winning contracts. “I mean, that’s what McNeil does,” he said.
We get a sense here of the highly refined propaganda machine that has targeted us over the last seven years. Unfortunately, it has now set a standard to which future administrations will undoubtedly strive, unless we stop them. Clearly such a program is a substantial danger — as is the media conglomeration which makes this program so easy — to the democracy that remains in our country.
[Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher has a A Guide to 'NYT' Scoop on Pentagon's Media Propaganda. In another piece he shows Pentagon's Media Manipulation on War Extended to Newspapers. ]
Add comment April 20th, 2008
NPR finds anthropogenic climate change denier “cute”
On Friday, as I drove into work, I heard a ridiculous NPR piece on 15 year old Kristen Byrnes, who has a web site claiming to disprove anthopogenic global warming. While Byrnes seems like an energetic, feisty girl who one roots for in he long run, the piece presented no evidence that she actually knew anything about science or that her views should be taken seriously. When someone makes claims that thousands of scientists, as well as Al Gore are full of crap, surely the media has an obligation to make some effort to evaluate heir arguments before giving them five minutes of exposure to millions of listeners. But NPR increasingly view substance as anathema to the entertainment function of its “news” shows.
In addition to the NPR listeners, Byrnes herself should be upset at being so condescended to by NPR. The fact that a 15 y.o. girl pontificates on climate science is “cute” was the message. I once was a prodigy (in math) and am aware of how irritating the condescension by the media and other adults can be. I hated it when adults would ask about my work, only to ignore what I said and smile at how “cute” it was that a 14 year old thought he had something interesting to say.
Deltoid links to a number of sites providing commentary on the piece and critique of Byrnes’ claims.
1 comment April 20th, 2008
NYT Editorial: The torture sessions
The New York Times news section has essentially ignored last week’s blockbuster report from ABC News that CIA torture was micromanaged by top administration officials out of the White House, and that President Bush was aware of this. After all, news not originating with Times reporters simply does not exist. But today the Times contains an editorial, aptly titled The Torture Sessions, on the implications of the story and calling for an investigation aimed at revealing the truth about Bush administration crimes.
The Times emphasizes the central importance that this administration assigned to its torture policy:
These officials did not have the time or the foresight to plan for the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq or the tenacity to complete the hunt for Osama bin Laden. But they managed to squeeze in dozens of meetings in the White House Situation Room to organize and give legal cover to prisoner abuse, including brutal methods that civilized nations consider to be torture.
They call for accountability but are sanguine as to its chances:
At this point it seems that getting answers will have to wait, at least, for a new Congress and a new president. Ideally, there would be both truth and accountability. At the very minimum the public needs the full truth.
They also counter the inevitable arguments that past abuses should be forgotten as we all look forward to the bright new future:
Some will call this a backward-looking distraction, but only by fully understanding what Mr. Bush has done over eight years to distort the rule of law and violate civil liberties and human rights can Americans ever hope to repair the damage and ensure it does not happen again.
Here is the complete editorial:
The Torture Sessions
Ever since Americans learned that American soldiers and intelligence agents were torturing prisoners, there has been a disturbing question: How high up did the decision go to ignore United States law, international treaties, the Geneva Conventions and basic morality?
The answer, we have learned recently, is that — with President Bush’s clear knowledge and support — some of the very highest officials in the land not only approved the abuse of prisoners, but participated in the detailed planning of harsh interrogations and helped to create a legal structure to shield from justice those who followed the orders.
We have long known that the Justice Department tortured the law to give its Orwellian blessing to torturing people, and that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a list of ways to abuse prisoners. But recent accounts by ABC News and The Associated Press said that all of the president’s top national security advisers at the time participated in creating the interrogation policy: Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Rumsfeld; Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser; Colin Powell, the secretary of state; John Ashcroft, the attorney general; and George Tenet, the director of central intelligence.
These officials did not have the time or the foresight to plan for the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq or the tenacity to complete the hunt for Osama bin Laden. But they managed to squeeze in dozens of meetings in the White House Situation Room to organize and give legal cover to prisoner abuse, including brutal methods that civilized nations consider to be torture.
Mr. Bush told ABC News this month that he knew of these meetings and approved of the result.
Those who have followed the story of the administration’s policies on prisoners may not be shocked. We have read the memos from the Justice Department redefining torture, claiming that Mr. Bush did not have to follow the law, and offering a blueprint for avoiding criminal liability for abusing prisoners.
The amount of time and energy devoted to this furtive exercise at the very highest levels of the government reminded us how little Americans know, in fact, about the ways Mr. Bush and his team undermined, subverted and broke the law in the name of saving the American way of life.
We have questions to ask, in particular, about the involvement of Ms. Rice, who has managed to escape blame for the catastrophic decisions made while she was Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, and Mr. Powell, a career Army officer who should know that torture has little value as an interrogation method and puts captured Americans at much greater risk. Did they raise objections or warn of the disastrous effect on America’s standing in the world? Did anyone?
Mr. Bush has sidestepped or quashed every attempt to uncover the breadth and depth of his sordid actions. Congress is likely to endorse a cover-up of the extent of the illegal wiretapping he authorized after 9/11, and we are still waiting, with diminishing hopes, for a long-promised report on what the Bush team really knew before the Iraq invasion about those absent weapons of mass destruction — as opposed to what it proclaimed.
At this point it seems that getting answers will have to wait, at least, for a new Congress and a new president. Ideally, there would be both truth and accountability. At the very minimum the public needs the full truth.
Some will call this a backward-looking distraction, but only by fully understanding what Mr. Bush has done over eight years to distort the rule of law and violate civil liberties and human rights can Americans ever hope to repair the damage and ensure it does not happen again.
Add comment April 20th, 2008
The Pennsylvania Democratic debate in 1 minute
23/6 has boiled down Wednesday’s debate to one minute, without leaving anything out:
Add comment April 19th, 2008
Hillary’s “3 A.M. ad” Girl Doesn’t Approve of that Message
Bush III fear-based campaign picked the wrong girl:
Add comment March 21st, 2008
Wikileaks victory! Bank drops suit
AFP reports that Wikileaks has experienced total victory. Bank Julius Baer has dropped its lawsuit against Wikileaks.org:
Swiss bank drops Wikileaks’ lawsuit
Bank Julius Baer Quits Legal Pursuit of Renegade Web SiteSwiss bank has dropped its lawsuit against Web site Wikileaks.org for posting sensitive customer data.
Lawyers for Bank Julius Baer filed court papers Wednesday in San Francisco that officially ended the case.
The lawsuit sought to prevent the renegade Web site from posting secret documents the bank alleged were stolen by a disgruntled ex-employee.
A federal judge initially ordered the site shuttered. After criticism from free speech advocates and others, he ruled last week that Wikileaks could reopen and could post the documents until the lawsuit was resolved.
A look at the Wikileaks site shows that the number of new documents has grown tremendously since the lawsuit. Thanks Bank Julius Baer! Publicity money can’t buy. Let the leaks continue!
Add comment March 5th, 2008
Update on Wikileaks censorship. Costly mistake for bank?
On Monday I wrote about the unprecedented attempt by Bank Julius Baer to censor the Wikileaks.org web site by having a San Francisco judge issue a restraining order telling the web site’s domain name registrar to stop Wikileak.org from pointing to its actual IP address, 88.80.13.160. This was the first known instance of a court shutting down an entire web site. One Kafkaesque feature of this omnibus order is that the court order and other materials were ordered to be emailed to Wikileaks. But with the domain name Wikileaks.org abolished, no mail sent to them could get to anyone.
Two days after my article, the New York Times finally covered the Wikileaks censorship effort and concluded:
Judge White’s order disabling the entire site “is clearly not constitutional,” said David Ardia, the director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard Law School. “There is no justification under the First Amendment for shutting down an entire Web site.”
The narrower order, forbidding the dissemination of the disputed documents, is a more classic prior restraint on publication. Such orders are disfavored under the First Amendment and almost never survive appellate scrutiny.
Since the controversy broke Monday, this censorship has become a major topic in the news and on the web. after all, the shutting down of an entire web site threatens all citizens who use or rely upon the web for disseminating and obtaining a diversity of otherwise unobtainable information. A new blog site, http://wikileak.org/, has been created:
to discuss the ethical and technical issues surrounding the WikiLeakS.org project, which claims to be developing an “uncensorable” version of WikiPedia, for “mass document leaking” and whistleblowing.
While I have no direct knowledge of who is behind this new site , I assume it is tongue-in-cheek when it goes on to state:
This blog is not yet affiliated with the secretive and media manipulative WikiLeakS.org project, but the issues for discussion remain important, regardless of whether or not WikiLeakS.org ever overcomes its technical, legal, ethical and funding problems.
At this point they have a detailed analysis of the second restraining order against Wikileaks in which they argue that it is so broad that it may actually ban virtually all internet activity by the bank, Bank Julius Baer, that brought the suit! Read it and see for yourself.
The order was issued, allegedly because Wikileaks had obtained bank documents that, according to Wikileaks:
“allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.”
Wikileaks has made a discovery potentially shedding light upon the bank’s motives in the case. Bank Julius Baer was about to launch a $1 billion IPO, and that the press attention and increased regulatory scrutiny flowing from it may well scuttle this deal. After all, it’s hard to launch an IPO when there are suggestions in the press and the blogosphere that your profts may be due to money laundering. It may turn out that this restraining order was an act of self destruction by Bank Julius Baer with few parallels. As a Wikileaks press release explains [not being a profesional journalist, I can actually quote their press release instead of paraphrasing and pretending I did the reporting myself]:
Wikileaks has discovered Bank Julius Baer was preparing to take their US operation public via an a billion dollar IPO. They filed the prospectus with the SEC on Feb 12, a mere three days before convincing Federal court Judge Jeffery White to order total censorship of the transparency site.
“We are an asset management company that provides investment management services to institutional and mutual fund clients. We are best known for our International Equity strategies, which represented 92% of our assets under management as of September 30, 2007.” They were going to call the business “Artio” (ticker symbol ART, to be listed on the NYSE). Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch were to underwrite the IPO according to Bloomberg.
So the last thing they needed was to be the subject of a New York Times story and all over the world press, associated with money laundering. Now the deal goes under a microscope. Their underwriters have to take a second look and the SEC may have questions. Julius Baer will probably have to file a “material event” 8-K report with the SEC. Newspaper and magazine reporters will be looking at Baer. The question will be raised that the rather high returns Baer reports may be achieved via money laundering.
All this is happening in a down market, in which it is hard to do an IPO and in which investors are very sensitive to unexpected risk. The whole deal may evaporate, or be repriced downward.
Attempting to censor Wikileaks was a very, very expensive mistake for Baer.
Meanwhile, the struggle against this censorship and prior restraint has suddenly become a central front in the battle to preserve freedom of speech for those without the millions to pay for it. We should all stand prepared to assist in any ways requested.
And remember that, while Wikileaks.org no longer points to it, Wikileaks still exists. Just past its IP address , 88.80.13.160, into your web browser, or go to http://www.wikileaks.cx/, or any of dozens of other cover names. Let the leaks continue!
2 comments February 20th, 2008