Tag: The New York Times

Categories
Barack Obama Law Politics The Bush Legacy The Opinionsphere

The Games Obama Plays

[digg-reddit-me]Thesis: Obama is a systematic thinker – and given some of his clearly expressed views on the presidency – he may be setting up a situation where the other branches of government will be able to definitively limit the powers of the presidency. This is preferable to the president voluntarily renouncing powers – as it places the responsibility for checking the executive branch on the system rather than on the chief executive himself.

The Rest: In his inaugural address, Barack Obama seemed to clearly repudiate the Bush administration’s lawless approach to the War on Terror with this oft-quoted line:

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.

In this, and in many other instances, Obama made clear that he would restore the Rule of Law – and that he considered himself, as president, to be subject to the law. This may seem to be a fundamental and basic understanding for any chief executive in a liberal democracy, but for the last eight years, the Bush administration advanced arguments and pursued policies as if it were not subject to the law.

Every time the Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration, Congress passed a law to restrain the executive branch in some way,some quasi-independent parts of the executive branch opposed him –  it was always uncertain what Bush would do – whether he would simply ignore the attempts to check his power; whether he would declare the checks unconstitutional and then ignore them; whether he would secretly ignore them and prosecute anyone who informed authorities that he was breaking the law; or whether he would attempt to force Congress to pass a legislative justification for his actions. In fact, Bush at one time of another did all three of these. Obama has made clear that he not only respects the Rule of Law but considers checks and balances on the presidency to be part of the democratic process set out by the Constitution. Obama is mindful of the chief executive’s role is in this system – and that, as Gregory Craig, White House Counsel explained:

[Obama] is also mindful as president of the United States not to do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency.

Combine this statement with Obama’s decisions regarding rendition, the state secrets privilege, and investigating abuses of the Bush administration – and many civil libertarians and critical observers of the Bush administration from Glenn Greenwald to Andrew Sullivan to Charlie Savage are preparing to be disappointed.

Let’s take a step back for a moment and postulate that Obama holds these three relatively uncontroversial and related positions that he has articulated on numerous occasions:

  1. He believes the president is subject to the law and is committed to upholding the Rule of Law.
  2. He believes that correct processes should be followed and that, “Each branch of government is balanced by powers in the other two coequal branches.”
  3. At the same time, he has little desire to use his political capital and energy prosecuting Bush administration officials.

Obama articulated these three sentiments in a response to a question by Sam Stein of the Huffington Post at his February 9, 2009 press conference:

My view is also that nobody is above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen; but that generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.

Dahlia Lithwick, another chronicler and critic of the Bush administration’s legal abuses, interpreted Obama’s statements and actions this way:

…by keeping the worst of the Bush administration’s secrets hidden, the Obama Justice Department can defer awkward questions about prosecuting the wrongdoers. In his press conference Monday night, Obama repeated his mantra that “nobody is above the law and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, people should be prosecuted just like ordinary citizens. But generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.” The principle once again is that Obama is for prosecuting Bush administration lawbreaking only when proof of such lawbreaking bonks him on the head. All the more reason to keep it out of sight, then.

But to me, this sounds like an invitation to push him to do what is right – as FDR said to numerous audiences who came to ask him to pay attention to their issue (and here I paraphrase):

I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it

Supporting this, aside from Obama’s many statements on these matters, are the public opinions of many of those he appointed to key positions in the Justice Department, including the attorney general:

Our government authorized the use of torture, approved of secret electronic surveillance against American citizens, secretly detained American citizens without due process of law, denied the writ of habeas corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants and authorized the use of procedures that violate both international law and the United States Constitution…. We owe the American people a reckoning. [my emhpasis]

Here is where the speculation really starts though – and only time will determine if these guesses are correct. Obama, as president, does not believe it is his role to give up executive power. For one, by doing so, he is antagonizing certain elements of the executive branch that he needs to bring to his side – in the state secrets case, for example, the CIA.

Secondly, by voluntarily renouncing a power, he is in some sense affirming the inherence of this power. Bush believed he had the power to say an entire subject matter was a state secret and thus have an entire lawsuit revoked; if Obama claimed he didn’t have this power, and the Courts then ruled he didn’t, the Court would not be “checking” the president so much as deferring to the new president’s view of his own powers. However, if Obama maintains he has this power – and the Court rules that he does not – it does provide a check. If Congress passes a law restraining the president’s use of this power, it will again provide a check. Each of these scenarios provides a firmer check on presidential power than does Obama’s giving up of these powers. It places the responsibility for checking executive powers not on the President, but within the system, where it should be.

Third, Obama has a number of crises to deal with right now and realizes that there are significant elements who feel strongly about these balance-of-powers issues. What he wants then – is for those groups that are passionate about these issues to prepare the public and to force him to act on them. This way, he can preserve his political capital – and by merely responding to issues forced upon him can avoid charges of looking like he is merely out for retribution.

If this is Obama’s thinking, then we can expect him to not oppose efforts to reign in his powers too strongly – and to accept those limits once they have been legitimated by the Courts or the Congress. If this isn’t Obama’s thinking, we can still attempt to force him to act but the outcome will be less certain.

Categories
Economics Financial Crisis Foreign Policy Great Britain Pakistan Politics Russia

An Age of Upheaval? – Instability, Legitimacy, and the Economic Crisis

[digg-reddit-me]

[Source, page 19 of the “Global Employment Trends 2009” [pdf report by the United Nations International Labor Organization.]

Niall Ferguson, writing for Foreign Policy with foreboding sees the current economic crisis as the final element needed for “an age of upheaval”:

Economic volatility, plus ethnic disintegration, plus an empire in decline: That combination is about the most lethal in geopolitics. We now have all three. The age of upheaval starts now.

Certainly, around the world, the economic crisis is causing instability – as the legitimacy of many governments around the world is called into question. The constitutional legitimacy of most governments, the bargain they have made with their people, is based on a growing economy that provides for the people’s needs, and increasingly, also provides individual economic opportunity. While this “deal” was often discussed with regards to authoritarian capitalist systems such as China’s, it is also true of governments in democratic capitalist systems. Thus it makes sense that this economic crisis is a serious threat to the stability of nations throughout the world.

If, as the chart above suggests, the worst is yet to come, the current unrest is but a preview. Already though, this crisis has provoked significant concerns and serious riots. Nelson D. Schwartz described the worldwide destabilizing effects of this crisis in his New York Times piece entitled “Job Losses Pose a Threat to Stability Worldwide.” Schwartz saw the crisis as potentially more destabilizing for countries in the former Soviet bloc:

Many newer workers, especially those in countries that moved from communism to capitalism in the 1990s, have known only boom times since then. For them, the shift is especially jarring, a main reason for the violence that exploded recently in countries like Latvia, a former Soviet republic.

Meanwhile, Niall Ferguson described how the crisis is undermining one of the key stabilizing elements in Pakistan, it’s middle class:

Pakistan’s small but politically powerful middle class has been slammed by the collapse of the country’s stock market. Meanwhile, a rising proportion of the country’s huge population of young men are staring unemployment in the face. It is not a recipe for political stability.

Patrick Hosking in The Times of London predicts that Great Britain will be hit by social unrest as well, though it certainly is not as vulnerable to collapse as Pakistan which is simultaneously fighting a civil war:

[I]t may already be too late to prevent social unrest, especially in Britain, which is tipped to be one of the worst-hit countries economically.

The spectacle of bankers continuing to award themselves bonuses while taking taxpayer support is feeding an extraordinary public rage and a fierce sense of injustice. With 40,000 people losing their jobs each month, it is a recipe for trouble, come the traditional rioting months of the summer.

Despite the fact that we have yet to come to the “traditional rioting months of the summer,” there have been large riots in Latvia, Bulgaria, Iceland, Greece, ((Greece’s riots were of course triggered by a police shooting, but it is hard to imagine they would be as intense without the instability caused by the financial crisis.)) and Russia. Russia has proven to be especially vulnerable – and as Arkady Ostrovsky of Foreign Policy explained, “The Kremlin is acutely aware that civil unrest in Russia could trigger the country’s disintegration.” He describes Putin, however, as the best of bad options:

Putin’s social contract has been based on co-opting Russia’s elites, bribing the population, and repressing the disobedient. A mixture of nationalistic rhetoric, rising incomes, and pride in Russia’s resurgence won public support. Until now, money has been Putin’s most powerful weapon. Rising incomes and a strong ruble (due to high commodity prices) have enabled Russians to enjoy imported food, holidays abroad, and foreign cars and technology. But even if the lives of ordinary people have not improved dramatically (49 percent say they have enough money for basic needs but struggle to buy much else), Russians at least felt that they had stopped sliding backward. Now things are looking bleak again…

But the chances of a liberal renaissance as a result of Putin’s social contract unraveling are highly unlikely. There is nothing more misleading than to portray Russia as a liberal-minded society suppressed by a nasty bunch of former KGB agents. The uncomfortable truth is, as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed boss of the Yukos oil company destroyed by the Kremlin, put it: Putin “is more liberal and more democratic than 70 percent of the population.” And unlike late Soviet leaders who inspired the contempt of the population, Putin even now remains authentically popular. ((A side note: Ostrovsky also describes “Putin’s most damaging and possibly longest-lasting legacy…that he has played to Russia’s worst instincts. Rather than develop a sense of pride in Russia’s victory over the Soviet Union in 1991, Putin has fostered feelings of past humiliation and defeat, and subsequently a longing for retribution.”))

What this seems to add up to – short of some economic miracle – is an increasingly unstable world – as long as this economic crisis lasts. At the same time, the trend towards the decentralization of power from the United States to corporations, individuals, non-governmental organizations, and other nations – the trend from unipolarity to nonpolarity, as Richard Haas describes it – could potentially make this problem harder to solve. Regardless, it seems certain that this crisis will reshape international politics – and that America’s power to effect the shape of what is to come is significant though limited.

Categories
Foreign Policy Iran National Security Pakistan

Afpak & Iran

I’ve highlighted a bunch of different articles in the past week about the upcoming challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan with Iran as a potential complicating factor. Here’s my attempt to cram all of these highlights into one post…

Jodi Kantor in the New York Times on Richard Holbrooke and Afpak:

For now, Holbrooke is both raising expectations and lowering them. He is talking about Afpak – Washington shorthand for his assignment – as his last and toughest mission. But along with the rest of Obama’s foreign-policy staff, he is also trying to redefine success in the region, shifting away from former President George W. Bush’s grand, transformative goals and toward something more achievable. 

Fareed Zakaria has some ideas on what at least one of these less exalted goals should be:

In May 2006 a unit of American soldiers in Afghanistan’s Uruzgan valley were engulfed in a ferocious fire fight with the Taliban. Only after six hours, and supporting airstrikes, could they extricate themselves from the valley. But what was most revealing about the battle was the fact that many local farmers spontaneously joined in, rushing home to get their weapons. Asked later why they’d done so, the villagers claimed they didn’t support the Taliban’s ideological agenda, nor were they particularly hostile toward the Americans. But this battle was the most momentous thing that had happened in their valley for years. If as virile young men they had stood by and just watched, they would have been dishonored in their communities. And, of course, if they were going to fight, they could not fight alongside the foreigners.

In describing this battle, the Australian counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen coins a term, “accidental guerilla,” to describe the villagers. They had no grand transnational agenda, no dreams of global jihad. If anything, those young men were defending their local ways and customs from encroachment from outside. But a global terrorist group—with local ties—can find ways to turn these villagers into allies of a kind. And foreign forces, if they are not very careful, can easily turn them into enemies.

Reduced to its simplest level, the goal of American policy in Afghanistan should be to stop creating accidental guerrillas. It should make those villagers see U.S. forces as acting in their interests. That would mark a fundamental turnaround.

Another major problems is – as Tom Ricks quotes Abu Muquwama to explain – that:

It’s tough to fight a war in Afghanistan when the opposing team decides to fight the war in Pakistan

At the same time, Pakistan seems to be dragging it’s feet with regards to destroying the forces it considered – until recently – it’s proxies in it’s struggle with India for regional power, the Taliban. This creates a nagging feeling of suspicion among Pakistan’s allies, as Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti explained in the New York Times:

In recent years, there have been some significant successes in the hunt for Taliban leaders. Pakistani operatives tracked Mullah Dadullah, a senior aide to Mullah Omar, as he crossed the Afghan border in May 2007, and he was later killed by American and Afghan troops.

Yet most of the arrests in Pakistan have coincided with visits by senior American officials.

The arrest of Mullah Obeidullah, the former Taliban defense minister, in Quetta in February 2007 coincided with the visit of Vice President Dick Cheney to Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is unclear whether Mullah Obeidullah is still in Pakistani custody or was secretly released as part of a prisoner exchange to free Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, who was kidnapped last February and released three months later.

Schmitt and Mazzetti clearly convey the suspicion among top American officials that Pakistan’s wars against its terrorists are mainly a public relations effort to pacify America. Pakistan’s reluctance to fully accept America as an ally (believing we will again retreat from the region after we are done with Afghanistan one way or another, as we did after the Soviet Union was defeated there) is not our only challenge in the region. Parag Khanna of Foreign Policy describes how Afpak is also the center of maneuvering by other nations:

China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran are also becoming increasingly important – not as neighbors of the chaos, like Pakistan, but meddlers in it. The United States is already failing to grasp not only the details of other powers’ maneuverings in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the extent to which these dealings could eclipse even the most brilliant U.S. shuttle diplomacy by Holbrooke.

He describes how China has become Afghanistan’s largest investor, how Saudi Arabia continues to funnel enormous amounts of money to fund religious extremism in the region, including Wahabbi mosques, and how Iran is taking steps to provide energy for what they anticipate will be shortages in Afpak and India. Khanna – seeing this pipelines and other relations between Iran, India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan as inevitable as all partners stand to benefit – suggests America get out in front and support the pipeline. Better to build it ourselves than having it built without us.

Building roads and controlling their usage has for centuries been the foundation of spreading Silk Road influence, as well as the key to success in the 19th-century Great Game. Today’s struggle for control follows similar rules.

This Great Game – a term historically used to describe the strategic competition for influence in the region, especially when it involves great intrigues and turnabouts –  would seem to require us to neutralize or flip Iran into an ally. Roger Cohen of the New York Times makes the case:

Iran’s political constellation includes those who have given past support to terrorist organizations. But axis-of-evil myopia has led U.S. policy makers to underestimate the social, psychological and political forces for pragmatism, compromise and stability. Iran has not waged a war of aggression for a very long time.

Tehran shares many American interests, including a democratic Iraq, because that will be a Shiite-governed Iraq, and a unified Iraq stable enough to ensure access to holy cities like Najaf.

It opposes Taliban redux in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda’s Sunni fanaticism. Its democracy is flawed but by Middle East standards vibrant. Both words in its self-description — Islamic Republic — count.

Categories
Politics The Opinionsphere

A Useful Bullying

[Bill Gates] is now trying to do to malaria, AIDS, polio and lethal childhood diarrhea what he did to Netscape, and he just may succeed.

Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times perfectly capturing the dual images of Bill Gates the bullying businessman and Bill Gates the philanthropist.

Categories
Criticism Election 2008 Law McCain Politics The Opinionsphere

Looking Through Iseman’s Complaint Against The New York Times

[digg-reddit-me]Yesterday, Vicki Iseman – the lobbyist whose attentions may have had an undue influence on Senator McCain – filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Richmond Division against The New York Times Company, Bill Keller (editor of the Times), Dean Baqet (the Times‘s Washington editor), and the reporters over the allegedly defamatory story published in the Times on February 21, 2008. I’ve posted her complaint (PDF)  for your full perusal.

There are a few assertions in the piece which are questionable. One is that lobbyists have no personal relationships with the people they are lobbying:

The defamatory statements, express and implied, that Ms. Iseman exploited an alleged personal or social relationship with Senator McCain to seek favorable outcomes or improper influence on behalf of clients, are entirely false…Ms. Iseman’s relationship with Senator McCain was not different in kind from the cordial yet professional relationship that hundreds of lobbyists have with hundreds of members of Congress. [¶ 24]

Yet the job of a lobbyist does consist of using personal and social relationships with people of influence to push an agenda. The ISEA for one believes so – as it describes several tips on how to lobby successfully:

The most effective member-lobbyists are those who have developed a personal relationship with their legislators.

Jeff Kros, a legislative director in Arizona, describes why lobbying works in another how-to guide for lobbying:

Personal relationships take the anonymity out of the process.

Kurt Wise writing a scholarly piece analyzing the effect of interpersonal relationships on lobbying efforts suggests that many lobbyists consider these relationships to be “essential” to their success. It is precisely this fact – that to lobby means to use personal relationships and social skills to push an agenda – that has led an informal synonym of lobbyist to be “corporate whore.”

Iseman’s attorneys would be making a more truthful argument if they explained that if Iseman used her personal relationship to push her clients’ agenda, then that isn’t news – as such whoring is the essence of lobbying. The Complaint virtually acknowledges this in ¶27 as it almost concedes that most of the facts cited in the news article are actually true:

Setting aside the heavy emphasis on the allegedly inappropriate romantic relationship between Ms. Iseman and Senator McCain, the article contained no reporting that was new or newly newsworthy.

As the Complaint lists no complaints of the previous coverage – and in fact cites approvingly some of the coverage – it would seem that Iseman isn’t disputing these accounts of how she wooed McCain on behalf of her clients. The legal argument here is that – no one wants to see how politics is played, how influence is wielded, how sausages are made – but that doesn’t make any of the three newsworthy. It may be unsavory to describe all the perks McCain and other influentials are given by lobbyists – but it’s unfair to portray that as a news story, because it’s so common. I think this is one of the stronger points Iseman can make – but as it is demeaning to her profession, she wisely refrains from doing so.

If this piece seems a bit snarkier than usual, then it may be that I’m bitter at the numerous barbs directed against bloggers in the Complaint. For one, the Complaint calls Matt Drudge, the tabloid purveyor of right-wing trash and master of the political universe, a “blogger” and his website The Drudge Report, an “on-line blog” – despite the fact that neither meets any of the basic definitions of either word. Then in ¶42, the Complaint turns poetic – and implicitly defames all bloggers – with this passage:

As days and weeks went by, and the cruel gossip, whispers, blogs, rumors, confrontations, and innuendo about her continued, her despondency over the publication of the article and its impact on her life grew.

There are two issues of law at stake here aside from the basic facts which don’t seem as if they will be substantially disputed:

  • whether or not Vicki Iseman will be considered a private or public individual for the purposes of imposing a standard for defamation;
    (A public individual has a much higher standard to meet when alleging defamation; the public individual must prove “actual malice” on the part of the publisher of the controversial statement.)
  • whether a defense of the truth of every individual statement can hold up against what Iseman considers “defamation by insinuation” and “defamation by lack of complete context.”

Public versus Private

Iseman maintains that she must be considered a private rather than a public person as she “never sought to enter the arena of general public debate” (¶48). Of course, Iseman was attempting to influence the general public debate using her private relationships with public officials, making her actions of considerable interest to the public at large. But even further, it is my opinion that all people who are paid to consort with public officials – prostitutes, hookers, whores, lobbyists, and escorts –  should be considered public figures to the extent of their relationship with the public figure.This applies doubly to those who with “private” debate and use of their personal relationships attempt to affect the public debate rather than just serve as a “companion.” In other words, if Ashley Dupree‘s and Monica Lewinsky’s “companionship” with public figures can be mentioned in a news story, so can Vicki Iseman’s undisputed companionship. We can even call them “voluntary, limited-purpose public figures.”

Defamation by Insinuation

Iseman attempts to charge the Times with defamation based on “what was intentionally suggested and implied “between the lines” (¶16) of the news story. The Complaint later explains that the Times should be held responsible for “how the article was in fact received and understood by readers” (¶18). It strikes me that this is an incredibly slippery slope. The facts cited in the Times article aren’t substantially disputed in the Complaint – only the impression the article left on readers. As the Complaint tries to nail down a defamatory comment from the Times, you can see Iseman stretching, as in this example from ¶20:

The article then engaged in the classic phrasing of gossip and innuendo that two people are having an inappropriate romantic relationship, with the passage: “But in 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking,  “Why is she always around?” [my emphasis]

Notice that in explaining this specific, the Complaint tries to sidestep the issue it supposedly is trying to prove. While I’ll grant Iseman that the facts cited by the Times piece do suggest she was in an inappropriate romantic relationship with Senator McCain, that’s not the point she’s trying to make with this. Instead, she suggests that the Times is using “classic phrasing of gossip and innuendo” suggesting that they are using some form of commonly understood coded language to convey a clear meaning.  This neatly sidesteps the issue of whether or not the facts reported by the Times are true and tries to assert they are instead a form of code. The problem is that this isn’t a “classic phrasing” of any sort – and seems determined by the facts as understood by the Times reporters. The reporters may have been wrong in what they were implying, but I would think the truth of their statements should be a defense. If the Times reported there was smoke, and strongly insinuated there was a fire, but never stated so – and there was smoke – I don’t think they can be fairly faulted.

All this being said, Courts have recognized defamation by insinuation as a cause of action – although the focus in the jurisprudence has been what a passage was intended to convey rather than how it was “in fact received and understood by readers” as this Complaint discusses. As discussed in White v. Fraternal Order of Police:

[I]f a communication, viewed in its entire context, merely conveys materially true facts from which a defamatory inference can reasonably be drawn, the libel is not established. But if the communication, by the particular manner or language in which the true facts are conveyed, supplies additional, affirmative evidence suggesting that the defendant intends or endorses the defamatory inference, the communication will be deemed capable of bearing that meaning.

Iseman’s Complaint fails to make this argument, focusing instead on how it was received.

Defamation by Lack of Complete Context

The Complaint also argues that even if Iseman is considered a public figure, the Times was “deliberately and recklessly misleading” indicating “actual malice,” thus meeting the much higher standard of defamation required for a public figure, or a voluntary, limited-purpose public figure. Iseman alleges here that the Times demonstrates actual malice because it failed to place “the statements of the principal source for the article” “in truthful context” (¶44.) This seems to be a higher bar than defamation by insinuation – which considered unstated implications to be actual defamation. In ¶44, the Complaint alleges that a failure to provide an appropriate context for factual statements also consists of defamation. Under this standard, the McCain ad which deceptively uses video of Obama mocking the idea that he is “The One” without contextualizing it to demonstrate Obama’s intent could be considered defamation as well.

Using this extraordinarily high bar, Iseman states that even printing her denial of the unstated allegations didn’t negate entirely the impression readers might have based on the facts reported:

The article did print the fact that Ms. Iseman and Senator McCain had denied any romantic relationship or other inappropriate conduct. These denials, which most readers would understand as “obligatory,” and therefore precisely what Ms. Iseman and Senator McCain would be expected to say, did not negate the defamatory meanings that otherwise pervaded the article…(¶26)

Which again leads this Complaint to be blaming the Times for actions entirely out of it’s control.

Conclusion

Altogether, the Complaint is troubling in how it attempts to hold the Times to an unreasonable standard. If the Complaint’s legal arguments were accepted by a Court, it would have a substantially chilling effect on freedom of the press and free speech. If some magazine or newspaper reported that the President had signed off on a memorandum changing the definition of torture, and American military and paramilitary personnel subsequently tortured prisoners – this could be understood to imply that the President had responsibility for the torture, opening up the reporters and media sources to a possible defamation lawsuit.  But the Courts have enough established precedents in this area that I’m not worried yet. Clay Calvert, interviewed by The Wall Street Journal Law Blog, suggests that the case is unlikely to get to a jury and will probably be settled.

NB – I should give a shout-out to Matt Yglesias for what I think is his first time being cited in a Complaint in Federal Court (¶32) for this blog entry. Congrats Matt!

Also, I’m not trying to defend the Times story here. I tend to agree with Yglesias’s follow-ups to his original post cited in the Complaint. But I think the theme of the Times piece – the insight into McCain’s character that it revealed – stands up:

Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.

Continue reading “Looking Through Iseman’s Complaint Against The New York Times”
Categories
History Humor

The Best Minds of a Generation, Naked, and Destroyed by Madness

[digg-reddit-me]Scott Shane in The New York Times describes this little known story now available as part of the freshly indexed archive of Kissinger telephone calls:

In April 1971, Mr. Kissinger accepted a call from the beat poet Allen Ginsberg, who hoped to arrange a meeting between top Nixon administration officials and antiwar activists.

“Perhaps you don’t know how to get out of the war,” Ginsberg ventured.

Mr. Kissinger said he was open to a meeting. “I like to do this,” he said, “not just for the enlightenment of the people I talk to, but to at least give me a feel of what concerned people think.”

Then Ginsberg upped the ante. “It would be even more useful if we could do it naked on television,” he said.

Mr. Kissinger’s reply is transcribed simply as “Laughter.”

[Picture courtesy of Linda Bisset licensed under Creative Commons.]

Categories
National Security Politics The War on Terrorism

How the War on Drugs Is Making America Less Safe From Terrorism (cont.)

Yesterday’s post on the conflicts between the Drug War and the War on Terror seems more timely today – as the New York Times has a prominent article by Thom Shanker on the Afghan narcotics trade and Esquire has an article by John H. Richardson claiming that sources in the Obama transition team are suggesting that marijuana be decriminalized and the Drug War ended by Obama’s second term.

From Richardson’s article:

Marsha Rosenbaum, the former head of the San Francisco office of the Drug Policy Alliance, who quit last year to become a fundraiser for Obama…remains confident that those recommendations would call for an end to the drug war. “Once everything settles down in the second term, we have a shot at seeing some real reform.”

From Shanker’s:

[A] number of NATO members have in broad terms described their reluctance publicly, including Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain. Their leaders have cited domestic policies that make counternarcotics a law enforcement matter — not a job for their militaries — and expressed concern that domestic lawsuits could be filed if their soldiers carried out attacks to kill noncombatants, even if the victims were involved in the drug industry in Afghanistan.

End the Drug War. Focus on stopping terrorism. It’s the only sane choice.

Categories
The Opinionsphere

Bleeping William Kristol

William Kristol in The New York Times (my comments in red):

[C]onsider this exchange with Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday”:

WALLACE: Did you really tell Senator Leahy, bleep yourself? (I wonder if Wallace really said “bleep” or if his question was bleeped.)

CHENEY: I did.

WALLACE: Any qualms, or second thoughts, or embarrassment? (Really – this is what you’re asking him if he has had second thoughts about – not torture? not his pushing of domestic wiretapping so radical it almost forced the entire top levels of law enforcement to resign in protest before Bush intervened? this?)

CHENEY: No, I thought he merited it at the time. (Laughter.) And we’ve since, I think, patched over that wound and we’re civil to one another now.

No spin. No doubletalk. (I’ll grant Kristol this. This exchange seems franks, even if Cheney was known as someone who could manipulate and spin with the best of them – just ask Dick Armey who still regrets that Cheney convinced him to support the Iraq war.) A cogent defense of his action — and one that shows a well-considered sense of justice. (“I thought he merited it.”) (WTF? How does this exchange demonstrate that Cheney has a “well-considered sense of justice” – because he thought that guy deserved it? Please! Kids use that as their justification – and now Kristol is trying to make Cheney’s “I thought he deserved to be told to fuck himsel” into some koan-like mastery of justice! This is worse than spin by Kristol – it’s just plain silly.) Indeed, if justice is seeking to give each his due, one might say that Dick Cheney aspires to being a just man. And a thoughtful one, because he knows that justice is sometimes too harsh, and should be tempered by civility. (This whole conversation is about how Cheney told Patrick Leahy to “Go fuck himself” on the floor of the Senate. I can accept that Cheney might think Leahy deserved it. But to say that it proves Cheney aspires to be a just man? And a thoughtful one??!? And that justice must be tempered by civility. It’s like Kristol is talking about an entirely different incident and the facts are mere props that sometimes get in the way. Kristol’s editor shouldn’t publish this bullshit. He should tell him to – in the words of our Vice President – go fuck himself. Because Kristol deserves it.)

Categories
Economics

Siemens

Siri Schubert and T. Christian Miller in The New York Times:

Before 1999, bribes were deductible as business expenses under the German tax code, and paying off a foreign official was not a criminal offense.

Is it any wonder then that less than ten years later, Siemens still used bribery as a part of it’s business. A fascinating article – tracing how bribery became the cornerstone of Siemens businesses in the post-World War II period as it faced stigma and a decimated home country and fell technologically behind American companies. Bribery was how it stayed around.

Categories
Economics Financial Crisis

The Proper Proportion of the Finance Sector to the Real Economy

Paul Krugman:

In recent years the finance sector accounted for 8 percent of America’s G.D.P., up from less than 5 percent a generation earlier.

This data point taken in isolation seems to suggest an idea I’ve been toying with for a few months now – perhaps there is a correct proportion of the financial sector to the real economy. This might not be original – and it seems related to the initial explanation of the Great Depression as a misdistribution of purchasing power due to income inequality. But I think the distinction is important – as my knowledge of history suggests that increasing inequality and a booming financial sector often precede serious economic crises.