The NSA Ate My Rights

There is a drip, drip, drip, of facts. I know there are still those who defend the NSA program, and continue to attack Snowden. I wonder about them. What will it take for Americans to understand that in the wake of 9-11, we have traded in many of our personal liberties?

Obama has suggested that Americans need to endure a bit of inconvenience in order to maintain our security and that the dialogue among Americans on the program is both necessary and important. Even so, he has denounced American awareness of the program through Snowden, Greenwald, The Guardian, The Washington Post and other media outlets. But member of his own administration, up to and including the president have given misleading and incomplete answers as to the extent of the program. Some have gone so far as to suggest that the White House and/ or The NSA ought to be held in Contempt of Congress and that release of documents ought to be forced through subpoena. That would be interesting, but the sad truth is that Congress with few exceptions has shown no interest or capacity for oversight. Like most Americans the prevailing attitude in Congress has been to bury their head in the sand while  the NSA tramples the Constitution and our Civil Rights.

Whatever has been released through courageous reporting, particularly based on the efforts of Greenwald and Snowden, is only a fraction of what is knowable.

This is so much worse than what we have been led to believe. For those that disagree, taken the basic facts of the case, I would like to know what the alternative argument would be.

Following is a partial list of what has been reported. Again none of this would have come out without Snowden and Greenwald:

“The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.”
--The Guardian, June-2013

“The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.”

--The Guardian, June-2013

“The Obama administration for more than two years permitted the National Security Agency to continue collecting vast amounts of records detailing the email and internet usage of Americans…”

--The Guardian, June-2013

“The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document…”

Washington Post, June-2013

Despite Government assurances that the programs are critical to and used solely in the case of National Security Investigations, the information has been shared at least with the DEA and potentially other investigative agencies, who are now attempting to cover the source of the information since this is a prohibited activity:

 “A day after we learned of a draining turf battle between the NSA and other law enforcement agencies over bulk surveillance data, it now appears that those same agencies are working together to cover up when those data get shared. The Drug Enforcement Administration has been the recipient of multiple tips from the NSA. DEA officials in a highly secret office called the Special Operations Division are assigned to handle these incoming tips, according to Reuters. Tips from the NSA are added to a DEA database that includes 'intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records.' This is problematic because it appears to break down the barrier between foreign counterterrorism investigations and ordinary domestic criminal investigations. Because the SOD’s work is classified, DEA cases that began as NSA leads can’t be seen to have originated from a NSA source. So what does the DEA do? It makes up the story of how the agency really came to the case in a process known as 'parallel construction.'"

--Washington Post, August-2013

Multiple media outlets have reported that the NSA has also shared the data with it’s counterpart in the UK. Though we are told that the surveillance generally does not target specific communications which are protected, the sharing of the information with both the DEA and UK Intelligence agencies suggests that that is a misleading picture.

In subsequent reporting the tech firms in an effort to protect their brands have asked for permission to publish the number and nature of the requests they have received from the Federal Government.  

“The largest Internet companies in the United States have joined forces with top civil liberties groups to call on the White House and Congress to increase the transparency surrounding the government’s controversial National Security Agency surveillance programs. Apple, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft and Twitter are among the tech giants that have signed a letter to the feds, asking for the right to disclose more information about national security data requests. Notably absent are the nation’s largest phone companies, including AT&T and Verizon Wireless, which have remained silent about their participation in the government’s snooping program.”

--Time Magazine July-2013

President Obama has repeatedly referred to the fact that members of Congress were briefed and that the program comes under the broad review of the FISA court. However…

“Ten of the court’s 11 judges — all assigned by Chief Justice Roberts — were appointed to the bench by Republican presidents; six once worked for the federal government. Since the chief justice began making assignments in 2005, 86 percent of his choices have been Republican appointees, and 50 percent have been former executive branch officials.”

--NY Times, July 2013

As far as Congress goes, there are layers of questions regarding the levels of statutory oversight.

“NSA Director Keith B. Alexander claim[s] that the Intelligence Committees didn’t find any NSA wrongdoing may be technically true. But that’s only because Congress appears to not have been fully briefed on the NSA’s compliance record. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) reportedly did not receive a copy of the 2012 NSA audit released by Gellman until The Post asked her staff about it. Upon seeing the audit, a statement from her staff said that the committee “can and should do more to independently verify that NSA’s operations are appropriate, and its reports of compliance incidents are accurate.”

--Washington Post Aug, 2013

 It appears even possible that some member of Congress chose to keep details of the program away from the prying eyes of other members of Congress.

 “A letter drafted by the Obama administration specifically to inform Congress of the government’s mass collection of Americans’ telephone communications data was withheld from lawmakers by leaders of the House Intelligence Committee in the months before a key vote affecting the future of the program.

"The February 2011 document was declassified last month and has been cited repeatedly by administration officials and legislative leaders as evidence that the surveillance program had been properly examined by Congress as part of an aggressive system of checks and balances.

"A cover letter to the House and Senate intelligence committees that was sent with the document asked the leaders of each panel to share the written material with all members of Congress.

"Ronald Weich, who was an assistant attorney general at the time, wrote that making the material available to Congress would be an 'effective way to inform the legislative debate about reauthorization' of the provision of the Patriot Act that served as the legal basis for the phone surveillance. A similar document was available to all members of Congress in 2009, prior to a 2010 reauthorization vote.

"But the House Intelligence Committee opted against making the 2011 document widely available. Instead, the committee invited all 435 House members to attend classified briefings where the program was discussed — briefings that critics say were vague and uninformative.”

--Washington Post, Aug-2013

So in the end what we get is a massive government surveillance program overseen by a FISA court, packed with Ex-Executive Branch employees, mostly Republican, and with scattered Congressional oversight.

I understand the political imperative of Obama’s speech and his statement that “The programs are secret in the sense that they are classified. They are not secret, in that every member of Congress has been briefed. These are programs that have been authored by large bipartisan majorities repeatedly since 2006. Your duly elected representatives have consistently been informed."

Let’s just say that was misleading at best.

He talked about FISA court review: “This program, by the way, is fully overseen not just by Congress but by the FISA Court, a court specially put together to evaluate classified programs to make sure that the executive branch, or government generally, is not abusing them and that they’re — it’s being out consistent with the Constitution and rule of law.”

Well, can we now at least admit that those that challenge these “protections” as mere words may have a point? Under what other circumstances would the President not have mentioned the Republican imbalance on a court pack court reviewing his administration's decisions or programs?

 Is it any wonder that a lack of transparency has led to violations of the laws that created the program, or more broadly Constitutional protections of free speech and association and against illegal search and seizure?

 
“’We’re a human-run agency operating in a complex environment with a number of different regulatory regimes, so at times we find ourselves on the wrong side of the line,' a senior NSA official said in an interview, speaking with White House permission on the condition of anonymity.’”
--Washington Post, Aug-2013

 The entire program in my view becomes exponentially more dangerous when one considers it in the context of other surveillance  conducted by the Federal Government of those pursuing their Constitutionally protected First Amendment Rights, the Occupy Movement.

 “On May 20, 2013, The Center for Media and Democracy 
released the results of a year-long investigation: "Dissent or Terror:
 How the Nation's Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership With 
Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.”
The report, a distillation of thousands of pages of records obtained
 from counter terrorism/law enforcement agencies, details how
state/regional "fusion center" personnel monitored the Occupy Wall
 Street movement over the course of 2011 and 2012.”

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Government_Surveillance_of_Occupy_Movement

Step right up, get your red hot Constitutional Rights here. Act soon, supplies are going fast...

I Am Malcom X

I have been reading Manning Marable’s gorgeous biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. This was no accident. I am back to a lengthy car commute and audio books definitely help pass the time. Perhaps more fundamentally, throughout the Zimmerman trial liberal pundits drove me to near shoe throwing distraction as they refused to acknowledge how poorly the trial was going for the prosecution. I am very much with the juror that said that based on Florida law she had to acquit, but she still felt George Zimmerman got away with murder. Brother Malcom didn’t have much use for white liberals. I’m pretty much sick of them at the moment myself, even though I am one. On the conservative side, a series of missteps by the media, the prosecutors, and the police gave white race hustlers a wide berth to complain bitterly of unequal treatment for poor Hispanic George Zimmerman. The undertow of “See, we’re not racist. We’re defending the Hispanic guy!” was stultifying. I’m pretty sick of all of them. 

So it was more than the re-ignition of my hour-each-way commute that drew me to Marable’s book. I have enormous respect for Malcom X. Marable paints a far more complex, and in way mays more troubling, picture of the Black Muslim leader than either Haley’s biography, or Spike Lee’s movie, but it is so much more a human portrait. He suggests that the Malcom the hustler, then known as Detroit Red, was perhaps less a gangster than he wanted to let on, but the commitment to Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam (NOI) was at least as deep, if not deeper, than we had previously known.

Yet what emerges is a powerful human soul searching for an honest understanding of the world around him and the ways that he could act to change it for the better. Marable tells the many stories of the times when Malcom X dipped his toe in the cool waters of integration and community. The minister debated Bayard Rustin, at least three times.  In the exchanges he often bitterly ridiculed the entire civil rights movement. Labeling civil rights leaders—people many people, myself included, consider giants of American history-- as Uncle Toms was a well-worn tactic in Malcom X’s rhetorical tool-bag. But in a sign of the complicated milieu in which Malcom X operated and the subtle ways his mind worked, years later A. Phillip Randolph, the African American leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, named Malcom to a collation he formed to address racial concerns in Harlem, their shared home. It is a measure seriousness with which Malcom approached the goals that Randolph espoused that he took the work seriously and work cooperatively.

Randolph and Rustin are founding fathers of the non-violent, integrationist civil rights movement. They   worked together for decades before the March on Washington, where Dr. King gave his “I have a dream” speech. The two men had primary roles in organizing the March. Biographies of both King and Rustin suggest that Rustin, who was gay, steered King towards non-violence. Attacking these men alienated Malcom from the mainstream civil rights groups operating at the time. It’s a shame because there was lot of truth buried beneath some of that bitterness.

Malcom X rose twice, in two distinctly separate circumstances, to break loose of chains that bound him to lesser versions of himself. This story of redemption, woven inextricably into America’s DNA, is of course the majestic story of the life of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Malcom X. Marable’s book shows, brilliantly, that the story is many shades different than what little most of us already know. Both the Autobiography, co-authored with Alex Haley, and the Spike Lee Movie suggests sudden stops and transformations, the first after prison and then the second after his Hajj to Mecca. What we see in this new telling is that Malcom’s entire life was a hajj, a pilgrimage in search of, and for, reason. Malcom travels frequently between the world and ideas of hot militant pan-African nationalism and cooler, more conciliatory coalition building with moderate civil rights leaders. Long before the transformative trip to Mecca Malcom already knew that political change could only come through a blend of the hot and the cold. He also came to see the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, as a deeply flawed ultimately conservative leader, who was leading his people down a dead end path.  

Malcom X appears as both a better man then we previously knew, but also a more deeply flawed individual. Yet, I can only aspire to the kind of courage he found to rise above his limitations, especially in breaking with the NOI when he had to break with the ideology that literally saved his life. It is the reason, even today, I admire Malcom X , so much. I was reminded in reading of the many facets of Malcom X’s public persona. He was a separatist militant, and political savant, and the minister for a flock scattered over dozens of temples across the country. He drew from the poor and working class, many of whom were isolated.   His life resonated because the minister’s central theology, and that of NOI religious practice, was based on the ability for those following the Messenger, as Elijah Muhammad was called, to completely transform their lives. The spiritual house built by Malcom X and the NOI resulted in lifting tens of thousands from the desperation of crime and drugs.

Beyond the black supremacist dogma which was real, piercing, and in some cases stunningly off track, the core of his political argument was that integration was doomed to failure because white society would never cede their supremacist authority over blacks. Though Marable indicates Malcom X had far more, and much earlier alliances, with integrationist civil rights leaders, he makes clear that Malcom X neither trusted or particularly believed the Southern integrationist civil rights leaders or their white Northern liberal partners. He was highly critical and deeply skeptical of the black middle class’s commitment or intention to reach out to the mass of poor and working class blacks with which he had the greatest affinity. Until his split with the Nation, Malcom suspected the motives of all parties except the NOI. Ironically, it was members of the Nation that would arrange for this death, albeit under the watchful eye of the FBI.

The Muslim religious profile is not for me, and other areas of the program are of course problematic. But this last the critique of a society which may or may not move towards complete equality between the races, and within which he perceived the real potential for powerful interests to  coopt societal forces struggling to achieve real and lasting change, this Malcom is still worthy of examination. Marble does a wonderful job of that.   

Beyond the personal reformation the Nation offered, Malcom X’s political solutions were threadbare, and during much of his time in the NOI nearly cartoonish. Often they were naïve. However, as he predicted, a disturbing core of poverty and want, isolation and fear, if allowed, would fester and metastasize. Ironically, Dr. King, particularly at the end of his life was making similar arguments.

Malcom X was right about too much. He openly challenged the suggestion that an integrationist strategy would ever free what were then 20 million Negroes, in the shackles of poverty, both in the deep south and in northern ghettos. He was deeply critical of his own community for acceding to the poverty which engulfed them, and the ills that came with it: Drugs and alcoholism, prostitution, violence and desperation. He was happy neither with whites, who were even then saying, “enough already” and blacks who he felt were weak in the face white devil out to destroy them. It remains to be seen when or how America will resolve its problems with race and poverty.

Today there are 36 million African Americans. Roughly one in two finish high school in four years, compared to four in five whites. 20% get college degrees, compared to 1/3 of whites. Almost the same number of young black kids that finish college are either in prison, jail, on probation, or parole. Much of the explosion in the criminal justice population of young black men came about as a result of the War on Drugs, which was followed closely by the commercialization and development of a for-profit prison system. Only recently have drug laws initiated decades ago, including the Rockefeller laws here in NY come under new scrutiny, and in some states, repeal. In the 80’s and 90’s drug penalties diverged sharply between the white man’s drug, cocaine, and the black man’s drug, crack. This exacerbated the problem. Even though criminal justice experts and politicians knew for decades that treatment was far cheaper and more effective than prison, politicians not wanting to appear soft on crime basically sentenced a couple generations of young black men to prison. It didn’t hurt that many states started to experiment with criminal justice privatization which created profit incentives for some if prison populations increased. The results of these racially tinged, morally repugnant, policies is now held up as exhibit “A” in the criticism of the black community as a whole.

Recently conservative pundit, Bill O’Reilly, a fine race hustler in his own right, garnered a lot of press for noting that 70% of black children are born out of wedlock. He seemed to blame this statistic, along with rap music, for the violence and poverty in black communities. In addition to the usual parade of disgruntled yahoos that make up his audience, some liberals and moderate whites applauded, including a friend of mine, who I love like a brother.

The US and most Western countries have seen a rise in out of wedlock births across all demographic groups to the point now that roughly one in two American children are born to single parents. Until recently almost all gay parents with children led households as unmarried couples. So, following O’Reilly’s thesis would it not be likely that there was an overall increase in violence across all demographic groups? As the protectors of gun makers have noted repeatedly since Newtown, violence of all kinds has dropped precipitously since the mid 80’s. This is the period when out of wedlock births grew from roughly one in three to its current level of one in two.

Several factors are converging and changing the dynamics of our society not all of them are leading to breakdowns in civility. Western societies are changing at a rapid rate. Teen births are declining, college admissions are increasing, and the age of child rearing is advancing. In the last ten years the rate of teen pregnancies has dropped the most among African American women, who are attending college at rates that rival whites. Between 2006 and 2009 the number of African American women attending college grew from 1.5 million to nearly 1.9 million.

Surveys since 1970 have shown women of all races having children at a later and later age. This is true for African Americans as well as whites, and reflects the availability of sex education in schools, birth control, and abortion, in other words women’s control of their bodies as well as their dramatic presence in the workforce which lies at the core of much of conservative bloviating While O’Reilly hustled his white audience with a single statistic, much of the core of his real anger is that his world is changing, not only in terms of race, but in terms of the relationship between men and women in our society. As he himself said, “The white establishment is now the minority”. He could have added.” The power of women is growing too.”

Conservatives who tsk, tsk the plague of violence in Chicago, and in essence blame the community, refuse to acknowledge the endless marches for peace and pleas to “Put Down your guns” organized within the community. O’Reilly knows these people are out there. He could publicize their stories, bring light to the struggle, but that would not draw the ratings of an inflamed white audience. Since the country largely abandoned the requirement for our shared pressure on our commonweal, liberals have often been all to glad to take up the charge. They anger easily at the charge of a welfare grandma from Milwaukee pulling down checks from seven different accounts. Yet they show little outrage for the $700 billion shoveled into the banks after the melt down on Wall Street. I won’t deny there are those that express outrage at both sides of the graft equation, but they are few and far between, and at least in my experience the bitter anger is almost always directed more squarely on the welfare cheat grandma than the Wall Street banker with the fancy suit and the good lawyers. Class is just a huge part of the issue now. This is something Malcom X addressed with some regularity as did Dr. King.

There is no question but that grinding poverty, the availability of cheap handguns, and out of wedlock births are a viral combination. Federal funds which support positive community based alternatives and which keep foolish, rambunctious, teenage boys occupied have been cut. This is no disparagement. I have one of those. His mother and I scheme every day how to keep him busy and out of trouble. 

The real challenge is the nihilism at the core of so many African American boys and men. While two  million African American women are attending college, only one million African American men do so. When one looks at the difference in college enrollment for black women and black men, you are left with the impression that black women may have in some way given up on their men. This is not dissimilar to what we see in the country as a whole. In a large chunk of the community school is uncool. Compounding the injury, many of the schools serving the African American community are not particularly good. Here again class is a major challenge. Studies have shown that income is an even better indicator of scholastic performance than race and/ or language. This is perhaps a reason demagoguery on race is so appealing. So long as poor whites are fighting with poor blacks, which is essentially the sociological equation in which much of the South remains hopelessly stuck, no one asks questions about the rich.

The wild young men in black communities, these would have been Malcom’s men, and I can’t help but feel that he was more than a little right. Other than to point at and criticize our society has very little use for these kids. Large parts of the black Bourgeoisie has moved on, also has Malcom predicted. Three rungs up the ladder they seldom look back. A sizable chunk of whites grew tired of the movement decades ago. Richard Nixon may have designed a cynical “Sothern Strategy” to take advantage of white impatience with the movement and its increasingly militancy, but he did not invent the attitudes, he merely exploited them. Political attachment of anti-poverty programs to the struggle for Civil Rights and easily stoked racial animosity, essentially wore down white support for those programs. The golden age did not last long. Massive progress was made in raising people from poverty throughout the 1950’s and especially the 1960’s, but Vietnam dried up some of the pools of funding people just stopped giving a shit about poor people. In the last presidential campaign neither candidates spoke of the problems the poor, or proposed any solutions monetary or otherwise to fix them. Instead we were treated to the silly season of 9-9-9, self-deportation, and vaccinations that cause mental retardation.

Malcom X  preached that integrationists underestimated the guile and strength of the opponents of racial equality. There is no more racist statement that can be made in America today than to deny the problem of racism, but you hear it every day. In state after state Republican politicians have discovered the scourge of voter fraud.  The solution for the non-existent problem just happens to make it harder for minorities, young and poor people to vote. It is not for me to say the intent of these laws is racist. Courts in Texas have already found that to be so. Surely similar conditions exist elsewhere. Police brutality and racial profiling remain as burning an issue today as they were in Malcom X’s Harlem. Just yesterday I saw for the first time the stunning footage which forms the basis for the new movie, Fruitvale Station. The movie is a fictionalized retelling of the death of a young man in Oakland. He was already restrained when he was shot at point blank range, by a police officer who was later found guilty of manslaughter the mildest available charge. The case took place in 2008, and the imagery is shocking. Dozens of people filmed the incident on their cell phone.

I join with those that lament the amount of print and hot air that has been exhausted on the Zimmerman case while a Holocaust was continuing in Chicago, but I part ways when we discuss both causes and solutions and when we minimize these deaths.  

The criticism of rap is so haggard it’s a wonder the horse even gets around the track anymore. The President reminded us once again that he is in fact the first African American President last week with his deeply emotional comments about the Zimmerman case and his own experiences as a young man. Obama may like rap, and O’Reilly’s comments were certainly a good way for him to demagogue his white audience. But c’mon already. O’Reilly is a culturally out of touch demagogue, but I know many of those now applauding his statement grew up when I did. Has everyone forgotten? Conservatives of one ilk or another have been blaming rock & roll, R & B, and “race” music, back in the day, for the decline of everything in this country for 100 years. People used to talk in similar ways about the Rolling Stones. What? Sympathy for the Devil is a gospel song?  Jackson Browne, famously sang Cocaine on the live record, Running on Empty. That’s OK? “We can share the women we can share the wine”, I guess that’s not misogynist? White liberal children of the 60’s pontificating on the evils of rap really are laughable. Obama likes rap in the same way that I do, I think. It’s got a beat and you can dance to it is still good enough for me, and the President I suspect. His Al Green work notwithstanding, The President is a little lame. Gansta’ he ain’t. I saw when they had Carol King in the Whitehouse. Watching him clapping his hands and swaying to and fro, mouthing the words, was a hipster embarrassment.

I do not profess to know how to solve these problems, particularly of nihilistic young black men and boys, but I believe people in these communities know the way out. There are literally thousands of community activists working to stop gun violence and stabilize poor families in communities across the country. There are too many easily accessible guns for sure, but eliminating every single weapon within a 1,000 mile radius of our major American cities will not in and of itself, improve schools, provide better communities, or adequate supplies of food and healthcare. Most importantly they will not build families.

Brother Malcom preached the gospel of self-transformation. He would say, “The white devil won’t lift a finger to help you so you’ll need to take care of yourself.” Many whites of good intention sacrificed an awful lot to help advance the cause of justice for African Americans. Malcom was wrong about that. That said every black kid that adopts that creed will be placing himself ahead of every gang banger in his neighborhood. We all have a duty to help our brothers and sisters, but the less we wait for that, maybe the better off some of us will be. Many people, both black and white, just gave up too easily. The best many people can muster is a tsk, tsk. The first thing most of us could do would be to tone down the criticism and judgmental finger wagging, and dial up the love for our brothers and sisters with the certain knowledge that our life improves, both spiritually and communally, when the lives of those on the South Side of Chicago do.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LW7tJ6T5Tk

"I am Malcom X" Montage from the Spike Lee Movie

 

 

American Influence In Egypt

The American view that our involvement or activities are critical or even valuable in shaping events in Egypt is foolish. America’s influence is limited to the direct threat, included in Obama’s statement yesterday to withdraw all or a portion of the $1.5 billion in aid America provides Egypt each year, more than 80% of which is military.

American dollars flow to Egypt as a result of treaty obligations enshrined in the 1979 Camp David Peace Accord with Israel. The same accords support over $3 billion in military aid to Israel each year, making the two countries, alongside Pakistan, the largest recipients of US foreign support. The Egyptian aid can be withdrawn if certain conditions are met, but Camp David has led to 30 years of peace between Egypt and Israel and any sane American political leader would remove the support at his or her peril and that of our national interest.

A year ago conservatives were sure that the election of the Brotherhood candidate in Egypt proved the flaw in supporting the democratic aspirations during the Arab  Spring in predominately Muslim countries. Many felt, and said so loudly, that the President should have weighed in and perpetuated the dictatorship of the hated Mubarak, and so-called "moderate" dictators across the region.

Despite the obvious foolishness of America putting its finger on the side of the scale opposite tens of millions of Egyptians, the common wisdom was that the hated Mubarak would have been better than the Islamist Brotherhood and their front man, Morsi. It seems American conservatives underestimated the power of the liberal alliance in Egypt, as well as the Egyptian people themselves. In doing so they overestimated American power (again), somehow replacing the illegitimate certainty of their wisdom for that of the Egyptian people.

Look, they said, Obama managed to remove one of America's most reliable Arab allies, and what did we get? Morsi and the Brotherhood. Republicans, supporting trans-vaginal ultrasounds and all manner of male intrusion into the lives of women in this country, rallied for the infringed rights of women in Egypt under Brotherhood rule. 

Many conservatives and a few liberals made a  completely American calculation for a moronically American equation which apparently included Israel, the US, and Egypt, but actually left out the Egyptian people. 

Then, this week, secular forces allied to remove Morsi. It was reported that 30 million people poured into Tahir square this week to support the peaceful protests, an impressive turnout for a population of just over 80 million. Morsi is out. 

For those so eager to blame Obama for the loss of Egypt to Islamists, we would do well to remember that in 2011 Obama only released a statement fully in support of the aspirations for democracy the day after Paramilitary forces on horse and camelback charged crowds of peaceful protesters with sticks and swords. Against a deteriorating backdrop of increasing lawlessness, when Mubarak spoke the next day in fairly vague terms about transition, only at that point, February 10, 2011, did Obama call for “a credible, concrete and unequivocal path toward genuine democracy”.

 
For conservatives this was Obama throwing our ally under the bus. While most honest observers knew that only a Tiananmen type military assault, likely fronted by tanks, with all the attendant casualties, would restore some level of order in Egypt, conservatives still felt the President did not go far enough in supporting the hated Mubarak.  American Conservatives making this argument ignored the obvious fact that the Egyptian military almost certainly would not have obeyed orders to massacre peaceful protesters. This may be called real-politic but it is a morally indefensible position. Those that advocated on that side two years ago have no credibility today.

The first Egyptian revolution was the result of a coalition of Islamist Brotherhood leaders and urban secularists, both deeply oppressed by Mubarak and sick of it. Based on long term Brotherhood organizational strength, Morsi won the election that followed with 51% of the vote, and then proceeded to do everything possible to narrow his collation to his base, something less than 50% of the Egyptian population. After 20 years of dictatorship, Morsi's approach was a prescription for political failure.

During the Brotherhood's period of leadership, both sides viewed the Obama administration with suspicion. Morsi's supporters feel Obama did not adequately support their legitimacy as the first democratically elected Egyptian President. Meanwhile, Americans stood at least publicly silent as Brotherhood security forces in ways both large and small imposed their will on the people. Women were attacked on the streets of Cairo for not wearing the Hijab. Egyptian secularists quickly grew enraged at the US for continuing to support the undemocratic activities of the freely elected President.

During the second revolution the Obama Administration was even quieter, at least publically, than they were in the first revolution. The statement following Morsi's overthrow, far from applauding the result, challenged the military means and warned against mass arrests which the administration must have known were already underway.

Despite Obama’s statement, Morsi's removal is absolutely in our best interest. It breaks the cycle of democratic Islamists which have largely been the result of the Arab Spring. It interrupts Egyptian government support for lawless, militant, activity taking place in the Sinai buffer with Egypt. Most importantly these events provides an essentially liberal, secular path forward, achieved by non-violent means. We can only hope that both the non-violent tactics and the results embolden similar forces in Turkey, Tunisia, perhaps in the long term Syria, and across the Arab world.

A second revolution coming so close on the heels of the first  shows that the Egyptian people will not so easily be led into another couple decades of repression. I would only wish that Americans could consider how great that is, what a wonderful non-violent victory this is, especially so because we had so little to do with it. Egyptian liberals and secularists have seen the limits of American will and power and took their fate into their own hands. I think they see America and Americans much more clearly then we see ourselves. While lasers and fireworks dart through the sky above Tahir Square, once again talking heads and both the American left and right debate the role of US involvement. So patriarchal are we in our views that we simply cannot imagine that the Egyptian people had their own point of view, saw the first anniversary of the hated Morsi’s election as their opportunity, and acted upon it. Secularists, we can hope have learned a few lessons, perhaps the most important that the US government cannot and will not intervene to support or save them.

Now that the Brotherhood has been sidelined there are two centers of power in Egypt. The first is the Egyptian military, which even now acts in its own elitist interest. The second is the crowds in Tahir, fueled by social media, grievance, and the sure knowledge of their power in bringing down two separate governments in a two and a half year period. America is only tangentially part of the equation.

Who Cares About Edward Snowden

The events of the past few weeks revealed far more about Americans and our society than any actual insight to the actions of our government. The media is now obsessed with the Snowden Identity movie franchise in which a man on the run hopscotches international capitals. How one responds to the disclosures is sort of a Rorschach test as to your tolerance of government intrusion into your life. Predictably, the right which sees a government boogeyman around every corner has gone batshit. Glenn Beck, always the voice of measured reason, said, “I’m telling you, America, if we don’t stop this right now, we will be remembered as the most evil nation in history of the world. We will dwarf what Germany did. This is the way totalitarian states are created.” There is no mountain of hyperbolic bullsh** that man cannot climb.

Meanwhile, on the left or what passes for it these days, there has been a chorus of media and governmental officials condemning Snowden in the loudest terms. Mika Brzezinski has gone beyond criticism of Snowden, who she’s determined was “not a whistlebower”, but who she says is a “weasel”,  and attacked the reporter, the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, who she feels was “too close” to the story to address it honestly or fairly. David Gregory also went after Snowden on what Mark Levin calls, Meet the Depressed. The Wall Street Journal goes further suggesting that Snowden and Greenwald were working in collaboration to “steal government secrets”. Odd that the Washington Post which printed the exact story, some say with even greater detail, has escaped the scrutiny that has found Greenwald. Is it easier in this context to attack a British based paper than one populated by people the talking heads one meets at dinner parties? As so often happens media attention as drifted from the core of the story, massive government surveillance of communications between law abiding citizens in whatever form, to the far more dramatic and immeasurably less important pissing contest between journalists.

As with the Wikileaks case we are told, breathlessly, that American lives will be lost as a result of this breach.  Small problem there, the BBC quoted a Pentagon official in December 2010 as saying that months after the Wikileaks dump that resulted in Bradley Manning being held, naked, in solitary confinement “The US military still had no evidence that people had died or been harmed because of information gleaned from Wikileaks documents.” Just months earlier, in July 2010, Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff was quoted as saying “[Assange] can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier…"

I’m not sure but with summer coming on and the hammock or fishing pole calling my sense is the American public has already checked out. They damn sure have lost interest in the IRS case, where poor Darryl Issa soldiers on in moronic isolation. But we may do well to pay attention to the NSA stories for a few more weeks. Just last week while the Supreme Court was emancipating gays into the freedom of who does what chores around the house, the court also decided that Americans could not challenge the rulings of FISA courts. As the Washington Post editorializes today, “The act permits surveillance without having to show that the target is suspected of anything.” Continuing the Post piece went on to say that, ”The Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiffs’ claims could not be heard because they could not show that they had actually been subjected to the surveillance. The catch: The surveillance is conducted in secret, so no one can be certain that he or she is subject to it.”

The administration has made two claims about these NSA programs. The first, that either dozens or hundreds of plots have been broken up as a result of the programs, can’t be proven. The second, that American Citizens have not been targeted or accidentally swept up in unconstitutional dragnets, cannot be determined even in a court of law.  

This is some of what we do know. A massive data base of virtually all email and telephone communication has been created by US government agencies. While the government claims that actual communications have not been monitored, we are told the machinery is only in place to highlight areas where specific communications would be targeted. Law abiding citizens can relax, I suppose. You didn’t need that right against unlawful search and seizure anyhow. You were just planning a barbecue.

When communications take place between a US citizen and a foreign national, or anyone suspected by the US government, the American citizen has no specific or automatic right against unreasonable search and seizure. Whoops… Go further we have learned that Americans believed to be planning terrorist plots may not enjoy the same constitutional protections as the rest of us, so that unravels the thread a bit more. Suspicion has travelled rapidly from those suspected of terrorism to these reporting the news, so that in two cases that we know of, the AP and a reporter Fox News, actual communications were hacked, monitored, and recorded.

There is rather large security apparatus in place now. It may have been created under Bush, or it may have been initiated earlier, but it exists and it can be taken down from the shelf as needed or desired in any case. The circumstances of which might be unpredictable and since the programs are opaque, potentially illegitimate. According to the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) the movements of Non-Violent Occupy protestors were monitored by the FBI, The Department of Homeland Security, and private security interests representing the NY Stock Exchange and several Wall Street financial firms.  It is fair to ask what part of that apparatus was turned against the Occupy Protesters.

As serious as the NSA disclosures here, the suggestion that government agencies are performing similar surveillance, in consultation with large business interests, is several degrees more chilling. While the Supreme Court was insulating the NSA from scrutiny this week it also ruled in another case that further restricted the reach and development of class action lawsuits. Taken on balance the Supreme Court has equated speech with money in the Citizen’s United Case, and then further protected those moneyed interests with a series of rulings restricting class action status. Now the government comes along as a partner to business interests. There was a time Tea Party activists would have raised concerns about big business coalitions with government, especially in the context of a growing security state. But no more….

Whatever circumstances created the impetus for the development of NSA programs it is now clear that they have been perpetuated over 12 years, almost certainly longer, and two presidencies. Since 9-11 the Department of Homeland Security has spent close to a trillion dollars. One example of the spread of those dollars beyond these incredible costly and complex programs was the military and security presence which was marshaled in such short order after the Boston bombings on the streets of Watertown. The sad state of things is that men and women in similar gear have confronted Wal-Mart workers protesting for better wages, environmental concerns, and the formation of unions in Illinois, California, and elsewhere. Americans, assured that the security apparatus is there to stop bad guys, seem to tune out when it is massed to meet occupy protesters or union activists in pursuit of democratic goals through the use of free speech or the right to assembly.

In addition to the DHS budget the US has spent nearly a trillion In Iraq, and about the same in the Afghanistan/ Pakistan theatre. The colossus of nearly four trillion dollars in spending is a living testament to the seemingly secure notion that the #1 priority of the US government is defending its citizens.

Yet, while Snowden sits in a terminal in Russia, the subject of international press attention, something like 600 Americans a week are being killed each week by gun violence. While the nation is transfixed by the Zimmerman case, about half the six hundred lost lives will be African Americans killed by other African Americans. An obscene number will be children, not Newtown Kids of course, but 6, 7, 8 and 9 years olds nonetheless. While Senators argue about assault weapons and high capacity magazines, the overwhelming majority of gun deaths are murder or suicide by cheap, easily obtained, pistols.

While China and India make massive investments in infrastructure and education, America remains mired in a dead-end conversation about deficits. In 2012 about 60% of those that took the ACT college entrance test showed insufficient knowledge in at least two of the four basic subjects, English, math  science, and reading. More than a quarter were not prepared in at least two of the four subjects. Yet, that same country has the creativity and financial resources, the intelligence and technology, to monitor for National Security purposes every call, and every email which is initiated or ends in the US.

We can harness the algorithms to show which of those making a call or sending an email is dangerous. Yet we could not save Chastity Turner, shot in the neck while washing her dogs on her front porch in Chicago. While we obsess about deficits, 17 million school age children do not have enough food in their stomach so that they can learn every day. Charities do heroic work in filling the gap, but the SNAP program which provides about $1.50 a meal per person is called wasteful and worse, a vote seeking bribe.

Republicans argue that Democrats rule over a donor state of the needy. Kill the programs that feed the poor and house the homeless they argue. Some of them, they point out rightly, have been in existence for decades and poverty hovers at levels unchanged since the end of the Great Society push in the 60’s. Conservatives say that what America needs is jobs not handouts. While we can agree with that we might ask why abortion gets so much more of their attention, or if they have any employment solutions that extend beyond tax cuts for the super wealthy.

Recently a Republican Congressman released a list of all the great stuff you can get for the week using your SNAP (food stamp) benefits. He listed everything from soda, to Honeycombs cereal, to canned beans. Nowhere included was fresh meat like chicken, fish of any kind, or fresh vegetables. Almost everything was processed which basically equates to too much sugar and salt, too many calories, and obesity. But in fairness neither party has shown sustained commitment to the problems, concerns, or life and death struggles of the poor. Anti-terrorism is far sexier and easier to run on.  It’s certainly easier to raise money from military contractors, then people in Bed-Stuy or the South Side of Chicago.

Personally, I don’t care much about Snowden. I sympathize with those who ask how a 29 year old got access to so much information. But let’s be honest, when you grow the apparatus this quickly to this size and scope, and create so much profit incentive for private firms and individuals to participate, this is what’s going to happen. I see Snowden as neither a hero nor a villain. I am deeply uneasy about his certain knowledge of what was best for all of us. But the paramilitary presence lined up against the Wal-Mart protestors is no cause for patriotic joy either. We can debate the NSA programs, but I would greatly prefer more dialogue about those hungry and poor, sick and deprived, among us.

When I was a young man I was literally schooled about issues in the gay community as a witness to the discreet and awful silence about the AIDs epidemic which was literally killing people I knew. Then President Ronald Reagan only broke his language boycott of the words HIV and AIDs to argue against education.  He hoped, I think, that his silence would make the problem go away, but as the ACTUP community noted again and again: Silence=Death. When the Supreme Court ruled favorably on Gay Marriage this past week, I thought back to the friends I knew then. Marriage would have been a dream for Eddie and a couple guys I knew named Joey. They would have been happy to be alive. So it is in this spirit that I can ignore the international intrigue surrounding Edward Snowden and ask simply, while all that sh*** was happening, and all that friggin’ money was being spent, how many lives could we have saved?

http://faithnmagic.blogspot.com/2013/01/uncivil-liberties.html

Trayvon's Burden of Proof

The State has the burden of proof. George Zimmerman need not prove he acted in self-defense, though that is his defense team’s narrative. It’s ironic how Narrative has replaced “Zimmerman’s story”, but as each day goes on, what passes for a fact in this case becomes more and more distorted. So perhaps it is only natural that the basics of a defendant’s story, is replaced by the more Orwellian word “narrative”. The state must prove that Zimmerman murdered Trayvon. So far prosecution witnesses have done a great deal to support the defense narrative that a fight ensued in which Zimmerman felt threatened. So he shot the kid.

When the dispatcher said "We don't need you to do that", many of us felt Zimmerman was being advised to stay away, yet he still followed Trayvon out of some misplaced sense of justice or heroism or self-importance. A fight ensued.  What confuses people, I think, is that most of us feel the fight should have never taken place. If Zimmerman had just stayed in his car and waited for the police none of this would have happened. It looks increasingly clear that is not a legal fact which will impact the eventual acquittal or conviction of Zimmerman.  

The clarity of the dispatcher's “we don’t need you to do that” statement is in dispute now. That Zimmerman ignored that instruction, or took other questions to mean it was OK to follow Trayvon, the entirety of the conversation Zimmerman had with the dispatcher, leaves in my mind reasonable doubt as to what the dispatcher expected him to do.  

But the bottom line is that Zimmerman did follow, and serving as a judge, jury and executioner of one he initiated the death penalty against a boy whom he believed was committing a property crime. While I despise Zimmerman I have little doubt the law allows for that. A confrontation took place. It's pretty clear that Zimmerman took some blows. The laws in Florida are such that even if you initiate a fight for no good reason, if you are getting your ass whipped, you can shoot your opponent. 

Of course Trayvon had the right to defend himself also. But Zimmerman did not die, Trayvon did. When one considers race in this case we can only wonder what would have happened to Trayvon if Zimmerman died at his hand. We are expected to believe that the state is a neutral observer of the fight with its only role being to determine whether the person that died responded with the framework of self-defense. Just to make things more opaque, the silenced Trayvon has the burden of proof as to what happened.

I am reminded of that old George Carlin joke, "I ran the kid over in the driveway, God's will." The State of Florida though its laws would have us believe that the events that led to this fight including  one of the participants was armed while the other was carrying an iced tea and a bag  of candy are all ancillary facts. Bottom line there was a fight and the outcome? God’s will.

It is a f***ed up law, but it is similar to other laws across the country. Race, and to be more specific, racial bias, is a contributing factor in the creation and application of the laws. Race amplifies the debate on food stamps, drug tests for welfare recipients, voter ID Laws, and America’s drug policies.  These policies are designed to create and/ or act on the impression that sinister darkies are getting away with something or out to do harm to civilized white people.

In these past years we have seen both how far we have come and how far we need to go. The election of the first African American President did not disprove the hateful legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, far from it. The Supreme Court seemed to take up one side of that logic of this week when it ruled that the Voting Rights battle was decided. Show’s over, you can all go home now…

The press did a horrible job of reporting the facts of the case.  Media coverage has shown the limits of the liberal critique. A more radical analysis might have drawn into question the foundation of Stand Your Ground and Conceal Carry Laws, but whatever the final verdict, those laws will not be altered. This entire saga took place against the backdrop of Newtown and the ensuing failure to move any federal gun legislation. The results in Washington and increasingly it appears in this trial will clearly indicate the political balance of power is to maintain the status quo.

There was a media storm to show Zimmerman’s guilt within the guidelines of the laws and the power structure in Florida. When the Police refused to move initially, thousands took to the streets to seek justice. Demonstrations were animated by the fact that we were told that Zimmerman called Trayvon a “coon” and that other malicious slurs were invoked.  Not true. The dispatcher’s phone call was edited in a way to suggest that Zimmerman was emphasizing that Trayvon was black, rather than responding to a question about his race.  The facts of the fight and Zimmerman’s injuries were either missed or distorted in the press coverage. I was swept up in it. Almost every new revelation led to my sense of outrage.

I wrote three pieces back then. The first based on the very initial press reports and Charles M. Blow’s first New York Times column was factually accurate and appropriately outraged. The second repeated many of the distorted media reports that led many of us to convict Zimmerman and led to the outraged demonstrations.  The third addressed Geraldo Rivera’s heartbreaking suggestions that young men of color should not wear hoodies. As I look back now I am OK with the first piece and embarrassed by the second. But the third piece is maybe the most important.

Many of the elements of the story were distorted through the funhouse mirror of so called liberal media bias.  Some of what we heard was true, some was not, but none of it, including what I believe will be Zimmerman’s eventual acquittal will challenge the status quo for the essentially liberal power structure. We liberals are too often satisfied with platitudes about progress. We long to be reassured that the better angels of our spirit are alive and active, even if the reality is they are dancing on the head of a pin.

Stand Your Ground, Conceal Carry, are not under any threat, but a young man wearing a hoodie through a mixed race neighborhood on a rainy night, he better watch out. I guess I always knew that finding justice for Trayvon would be tough. Like many I hoped that a conviction would be at least a symbolic victory, which while important is no substitute for real justice. We seek justice for Trayvon, but real justice will come when laws, amplified by racial bias, like Stand Your Ground and Conceal Carry in Florida and elsewhere are overturned. Because of these laws Zimmerman had his power and he used it. If acquitted he may want to live elsewhere, but the sad truth is that his bias will have been actualized and his right to carry a gun into a church, or a movie theatre will probably be reinstated.

We may have elected our first black President but we have so, so far to go.

A Real Criminal Conspiracy: Military Sexual Assault

This past week we have witnessed near breathless coverage of what every Republican in Washington apparently hopes will be an impeachable offense, the supposed cover-up of the events in Benghazi. Some have gone so far as to suggest that the Obama administration refused to allow a military response to the attacks while there was still time to save people so any suggestions that terrorists were involved or directly responsible could be avoided. There is little doubt that political operatives, both at the White House and the State Department, were part of the process of constructing the final memo which would form the foundation of the talking points that Susan Rice used in the talking points on the Sunday shows.

I do think it’s possible, if not likely, that election year concerns colored some of what Rice said on those Sunday shows. It’s a shame. The truth has been buried under a cloud of partisan hooliganism. Obama has been a major disappointment in terms of bringing transparency to the operations of the federal government. Whistle blowers have been punished, repeatedly, and that is apparently the case here with career diplomats being brow beaten into silence.

It’s all sort of ugly, but impeachable? Hardly. Rush Limbaugh said it best yesterday. Benghazi, he explained, is all about Hillary. He went so far as to say, and peripherally the President. He was actually talking about the Democratic defense of the administration during the hearings on the Hill, but he was no doubt speaking for his party as well. Benghazi won’t go away. Of course, the Republican attacks, which make the administration’s actions out to be the crime of the century are hypocritical. While we can agree that political machinations may have affected the public relations response, spinning that into a yarn that suggests that brave people were left to die out of the same political consideration is obscene. Despite the certain knowledge that a series of embassy attacks during the Bush administration received little or no coverage, Obama and Clinton can blame themselves for the ongoing circus. There is plenty of red meat for critics to chew on and Issa and the other Republican truthers have not yet finished feeding on the carcass.

We can only hope that at some time in the very near future the House, the Senate, and indeed the Obama Administration, wake up to the real crime story exploding over at the Pentagon. 

New York is a fine city of eight million people. It has been my home for more than 30 years and I do not bring this point up except to identify the scope of the sexual assault crisis in the military: In 2010 there were 1,000 rapes in New York.  That equates to about twelve sexual assaults for every 100,000 people. Sexual assault is a heinous crime and that is a horrific record. As of April the NYPD is predicting that 2013 will end with just 500 rapes, a 50% reduction since 2010.

By way of contrast the Pentagon reported just a few days ago, at the height of Benghazi hysteria, that there were 3,374 sexual assaults among an active military population of 1.5 million in 2012. That equates to roughly 225 per 100,000, or a problem in the military that is at minimum 18 times that of the civilian population in New York. 

The FBI changed the definition for rape in 2011 to include many forms of sexual assault besides the traditionally assumed, pardon the expression, crime of penetration, most people typically assume. The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) was amended along the same lines in 2006 a few years before the FBI revisions. In both the military and civilian justice system the crime of rape now includes all forms of sexual assault. Before these provisions were modified, it was widely believed that that the narrow definition previously used was leading to substantial underreporting of sex crimes.

3374 sexual assaults among a population of 1.5 million is bad enough,  but the Pentagon report goes further and estimates that the actual amount of sexual assaults  is closer to 26,000, meaning that potentially only about one in eight victims in the military steps forward to file criminal charges. 26,000 assaults would equal more than 1,800 per 100,000 which is a full-fledged epidemic and indicates a stunning state of lawlessness. Again the rate in New York is 12 per 100,000.

The Pentagon report stated that roughly 80% of the sexual assaults were against women. There are only 200,000 active duty women in the military. This makes the chances of a women being assaulted in the military in any given year about one in ten, and a young woman signing up for a three year term of service would have nearly a one in three chance of being assaulted during her term of duty.

Some ascribe the lack of reporting to the toughness of the women in the military. Never wanting to let a controversy pass where he does not exhibit his extreme moronic stupidity, Donald Trump tweeted “26,000 unreported sexual assaults in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?” “F**kface Von Clownstick” apparently didn’t get the memo about it being the 21^st century and all. That said he nailed the scope of the criminal injustice-- 238 convictions for 26,000 crimes.

Trump and others though have not been short in expressing their outrage over Benghazi. Where is the Conservative/ Republican outrage over the shame of a military that tolerates such staggering numbers of sexual assaults of dedicated women, and a surprising number of men? When combined with the scandal of the VA claims processing, much of the “Support the Troops” rhetoric looks like a monstrous pile of shit excavated and leveled off for the benefit of an ill-informed partisan electorate trained to consume and regurgitate whatever propaganda is pushed their way.  In 2003 “Support The Troops” meant putting a yellow ribbon on a nearby tree, or a flag decal on your car. How many times I’ve thought of John Prine’s classic over these last ten years.

“Oh but your flag decal won't get you

  Into Heaven any more.
  They're already overcrowded
  From your dirty little wars”

In 2013 “Support The Troops” requires major remedies at the VA and a complete overhaul of the military justice approach to sexual assault. So far, what are we hearing? Benghazi, cover-up, Watergate, and oh yeah, on the real issues that affect real service men and women, crickets. Better to print some more flag decals.

If anything the underreporting in the military is almost certainly more extreme than in the civilian population. Sexual assault  victims are required to file their complaint through the chain of command in their unit. The adjudication of sexual assault often comes down to he-said she-said and the military cherishes unit cohesion above almost everything else.  Mix in career concerns and the indifference, or in too many cases actual complicity, of commanding officers, and underreporting is a crisis, which dramatically expands the scope of the crimes.  The plain fact is the Pentagon cannot be trusted to accurately report the scope of the problem. When assaults are reported and adjudicated by Military courts, commanders can and do overturn the decisions of Military courts.

There have been repeated stories that those responsible for prosecuting these crimes and protecting the women that come forward are a big part of the problem, generally reflecting the lack of seriousness throughout the military command. Earlier this week a trial date was set for the head of the Air Force sex assault response unit who is himself charged with sexual assault. Just a few weeks earlier another Air Force Commander, this time a General, overruled and tossed out a military court jury’s decision against a Lt. Colonel found guilty of sexual assault. The General, Craig Franklin, had actually had his name put forward for promotion before the weight of scandal over these past weeks made that move impossible. At least for now. Who knows what’ll happen when the heat dies down, but I can guess…

In 2012, there were 349 military suicides. 95% of the suicides among military personnel are men, but then again more than 85% of totally active duty personnel are men too. Considering the extreme incidence of sexual assault active duty military personnel, both men and women, but especially women, endure, I would be curious to know if rape was a determining factor in any of these suicides.

Whatever the numbers the problem has reached such epic proportions such that even a 50% reduction in the incidence of rape in the military would still be considered failure on any decent, civilized, scale of humanity. John McCain has spoken honorably about the need for action. Beyond that, a very vocal female contingent in the Senate and a handful of very liberal men have been pressing the case. There has been far less outrage and far less coverage in the press for this case then Benghazi. Too many in Congress have remained silent.

It is easy to point to the hypocrisy over Benghazi vis-à-vis the atrocity of an unnecessary war in Iraq, but the immediacy of the rape crisis in the military is much more immediate and much more direct. Democrats who criticize the dishonest partisanship of the Issa committee are on solid ground, but it starts to feel after all these months of rancor like a battle for hill that has little value. Both sides slash and burn to promote an agenda for an election which is three years away, defending a woman who I am quite sure will be more than capable of defending herself. Meanwhile 200,000 women in the military are under assault. Who will defend them? Who will stand for their honor? Is the bravery of 26,000 victims of sexual assault not measurable when compared against the courage of four slain Americans in Benghazi?

What father in his right mind would encourage his daughter to join the military and risk the gauntlet of sexual predators being harbored there? Where is justice?

Continued May-11, 2013
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/09/fox-ignores-benghazi-witness-testimony-proving/193981

As I said yesterday I believe the administration is going to twist in the wind for a while longer for the ways that the handled the attack, and especially the misleading information put out by Susan Rice on the Sunday shows. This is all a rather inane side show designed to hobble the President-- for what little that's worth at this point-- and to damage Sec Clinton. Clinton can stand up for herself and the gnats will slowly go away, only to rise slowly in 2015 and 2016.

HOWEVER, the Repubs are using the administrations political maneuvers to press another case, one not born out by the facts at all, not one little bit. They are pressing the case that the Pres was so interested in framing the attack as anything that would not indicate it was originated by terrorists, that he let people di...e rather than send in any level of military support. If true that would be a heinous crime. What they are saying is that the President let people die for the furtherance of his political career. They are taking the natural confusion which arises from the Susan Rice talking points, which is real and a fair topic for conversation and accusing the President of abandoning his post which is an outrageous lie.

Once again this is not for the general audience. The vast right wing conspiracy machine has long ago quit talking to America. Hannity, Levin, Limbaugh and the rest are really only interested in talking to themselves and their white angry acolytes. The goal is not dialogue it is the promotion of hatred for the President, the BLACK President, the one with the middle name Hussein. The white audience sees the country turning many colors. Their anger is fueled by the deterioration of the their political omnipotence. Radio right fuels that, and uses that so a handful of guys can get really rich.

I have so many issues with this President from drones, to gitmo, to lax enforcement and regulation of financial institutions. The President has done nothing to address the money machine that has so corrupted our political process. He has been weak on climate change. Politically he has often been less than adept, though its still unclear whether there was ever a chance that he could be a transformative leader, like, say Johnson.

That said, my disappointment has always and continually been leavened by the sure knowledge that the often virulently racist opposition this President has seen has a singular goal which has had nothing to do with the betterment of the country.

I am a reader of history. I have worked through biographies of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Johnson, Bobby and Jack Kennedy, Clinton and Nixon. I am not naïve enough to believe that the democratic process here was ever pretty. It has often been ugly, petty, and deeply, ugly personal. So I guess, I could not be the one to say "How did we get here?"

But that would still lead me to ask as Bob Dylan once said, "Alright, I've had enough, what else can you show me?"