Donald Trump and the War on America

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The rest of the world knows what's going on.

Take, for example, Germany, which is now far more of a leader of "the free world" than Trump's American dystopia.

Once upon a time, it was America going to war against German fascism. My, how the roles have reversed. It may not be a war, yet, but Germany is certainly on the side that is fighting American fascism.

Yes, the great threat to America is Kim Jong-trump, the orange-tinted demagogue roaming the White House in his bath robe.

We know what's going on.

Alabama wants to be like Arizona, only worse

By Michael J.W. Stickings

And so Republicans keep up their assault on undocumented immigrants:

Republican Governor Robert Bentley on Thursday signed into law a crackdown on illegal immigration in Alabama that both supporters and critics consider the toughest in the nation.

The measure will require public schools to determine the citizenship status of students -- a provision not included in an Arizona law that has been at the forefront of actions by several states to curb illegal immigration.

Under the Alabama law, police must detain someone they suspect of being in the country illegally if the person cannot produce proper documentation when stopped for any reason.

It also will be a crime to knowingly transport or harbor someone who is in the country illegally.

This isn't just a racist, draconian law to crack down on a specific group of people and deny them the dignity and fair treatment they deserve.

As Little Green Football's Charles Johnson notes, it "explicitly violates the Bill of Rights's provisions against unreasonable search and seizure, by requiring police to arrest anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally if they can’t produce documentation — when stopped for any reason... That's right — in Alabama, you may now end up in jail if you're not carrying your papers, whether or not you've done anything wrong."

I know we're supposed to be civil and all, but can't we call this what it is? It's fascism. Brought to you, as usual, by the Republican Party.

Slow train coming

By Capt. Fogg

One of the most frequently recurring themes echoing inside the bubble of Obamahate culture is that the President, although handily elected, was somehow thrust upon us by mistake and is an unelected tyrant.

It takes a special kind of person to believe that. It takes a special kind of person to attempt to profit by that belief and it takes a special kind of specialness not to be able to smell the boot polish and Cordite when reading about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's plan to take over municipal governments (duly elected) as part of his plan for prosperity through penury.

Forbes' Rick Ungar calls it Financial Martial Law. The Walker plan: 

would empower the governor to insert a financial manager of his choosing into local government with the ability to cancel union contracts, push aside duly elected local government officials and school board members and take control of Wisconsin cities and towns whenever he sees fit to do so.

I have no doubt that's just what the Tea-Shirts would like and little doubt that they will be able to reconcile that with their flimsy facade of Constitutional reverence. 

Such a law would additionally give Walker unchallenged power to end municipal services of which he disapproves, including safety net assistance to those in need.

That's not tyranny, that's not the kind constitution shredding the baggery would love to attribute to the President: at least it's not to the Tea-drunk masses longing to break free of any remaining bonds of civilization.

It'll never happen? It's liberal hyperbole? Think a state government can't simply strip a municipality's elected government of all power by gubernatorial fiat? You say this isn't possible in America? It's already happened in Michigan. Perhaps it's coming soon, to a state near you.

I'll spare you a rant about Fascism and Mussolini, the perils of "special emergency powers" and Orwell's eternal boot heel, I suspect you've read enough 20th-Century history to know what I'm talking about, but I suspect too that the years I have left to me will be years of counting up the mounting victories of barbarism, and the steady descent of our empire. Perhaps it's high time that I got back to studying Chinese.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Postcards from a sad edge

By J. Thomas Duffy

If the Teabaggers think they have it tough, being called names, dissed, and otherwise, not taken seriously, it's a walk-in-the-park compared to others.

At least they are not being murdered for their opposition, for slandering the President, the government



Roger Cohen, in today's NYT Op-Ed page, has a great read - "The Banality of Good";

What was it like? I would ask myself, the years I lived in Berlin. What was it like in the leafy Grunewald neighborhood to watch your Jewish neighbors — lawyers, businessmen, dentists — trooping head bowed to the nearby train station for transport eastward to extinction?

With what measure of fear, denial, calculation, conscience and contempt did neighbors who had proved their Aryan stock to Hitler’s butchers make their accommodations with this Jewish exodus? How good did the schnapps taste and how effectively did it wash down the shame?

How's them apples for an opener?

Cohen quickly elucidates;

Now I know. Thanks to Hans Fallada’s extraordinary “Every Man Dies Alone,” just published in the United States more than 60 years after it first appeared in Germany, I know. What Irène Némirovsky’s “Suite Française” did for wartime France after six decades in obscurity, Fallada does for wartime Berlin. Like all great art, it transports, in this instance to a world where, “The Third Reich kept springing surprises on its antagonists: It was vile beyond all vileness.”

Fallada, born Rudolf Ditzen, wrote his novel in less than a month right after the war and just before his death in 1947 at the age of 53. The Nazi hell he evokes is not so much recalled as rendered, whole and alive. The prose is sinuous and gritty, like the city he describes. Dialogue often veers toward sadistic folly with a barbaric logic that takes the breath away.

"Vile beyond all vileness ..."

I don't know if you can even begin comprehending, processing such a magnitude of evil.

The book is based on the true story of Otto and Elise Hampel, whose postcard campaign — “Hitler’s war is the worker’s death!” — frustrated the Gestapo until the couple’s capture in October 1942 and subsequent beheading. Fallada, a sometime morphine addict who lived in and out of asylums, got hold of the Hampel police files through a friend in late 1945, wrote a journalistic account that year, and then, in a burst of creativity, the novel.

[snip]

The book pulses with the street life of a terrorized city, full of sleaze, suspicion, drunkenness, desperation and murder. It proclaims the bestial sadism of which man is capable and the enormous moral stature of decency. It has something of the horror of Conrad, the madness of Dostoyevsky and the chilling menace of Capote’s “In Cold Blood.”

Yikes!

From Elizabeth Bachner;

If Primo Levi told me to crawl underneath the Brooklyn bridge, naked, and read the graffiti there -- if he were here to suggest that -- I’d be swinging over the side of that bridge right now, even though it’s 30 degrees and the middle of rush hour.

[snip]

So when I heard that Primo Levi had declared Hans Fallada’s long-obscure Every Man Dies Alone to be “the greatest book ever written about German resistance to the Nazis,” I tucked into its 500 pages with a feeling of razor-sharp glee mixed with dread, worried and hopeful that it would make me unable to live in the same way anymore.

[snip]

Himmler planned on the Holocaust being an “unwritten page of glory.” Every unearthed manuscript or reprinted book like Every Man Dies Alone defeats that plan.

Go check out Cohn's entire article, it's a good one.


Bonus Links

Hans Fallada, From Wikipedia

Video of Anne Frank Surfaces on YouTube




(Cross Posted at The Garlic)

Twilight of the Godwins

By Capt. Fogg

I have to credit the rhetorical craftiness of self-anointed conservatives who often get away with dismissing inevitable and even necessary comparisons by invoking Godwin's Law. Yes, it's inevitable that when discussing sudden transitions from civilized societies, the implosion of modern, liberal democratic, constitutional governments into to absolutist and racist tyrannies and the techniques employed, Hitler will come up. It's just as likely that Albert Einstein will come up in discussions of relativity or Tomas de Torquemada in studying the Inquisition. Just try to study the Bush administration and not think of Orwell. Try it, I dare you. Invoking Godwin as though it were more than a humorous observation is simply a tactical diversion and it seems to work by embarrassing the one who brought it up.

Barack Obama is hardly the first President to be accused absurdly of tyranny, fascism or of being a socialist, for that matter. Lincoln's assassin called him a tyrant, both Roosevelts were accused of being socialists long before the current president was born and in my day, anyone who didn't think it worth millions of lives to keep Vietnam from holding free elections was simply a Commie. Remember when Ho Chi Min wanted Humphrey to win so Happy Hubert was a Communist?

Hell, anybody who Joe McCarty didn't like for quoting the Constitution or really any reason at all was carrying that invisible card and his name was on the invisible list. Too bad there wasn't an easily produced "law" telling us that the longer a right wing apologia goes on, the more likely that Stalin or Mao will come up. Too bad there still isn't one, since people likely to make such transcendentally hyperbolic comparisons between the pragmatic, cautious Mr. Obama and absolute tyrants who caused tens of millions of deaths aren't likely to listen to arguments that are factual or too long to fit on a hand lettered cardboard sign. It would be nice to shut them off with Fogg's Law, wouldn't it?

As of late, discussions of the president begin with or are preceded by the rather airborne assumption that he's Mao Zedong, Joe Stalin, Adolph Hitler and Pol Pot rolled into some bearded bin Laden burrito, but then his father was black. Bill Clinton's father was only a white drinker and perhaps a philanderer so one usually had to wait for a sentence or two before the comparisons were dredged up -- and dredged up they always were. Yes, Bill was not only a murderer, not only going to "force health care down our throats" but going to give control of our armed forces to the UN. Bill, who murdered Vince Foster and ran a Coke smuggling operation out of Little Rock was planting nuclear weapons underneath our cities while indulging in Communist free love and of course his socialist tax increase was going to bankrupt our economy within months and destroy capitalism forever!

But no, it was terribly wrong to bring up fascism when his successor made that office the most powerful it had ever been, with the power to override congress and the courts and the Constitution. Terribly wrong when his propaganda machine began to scapegoat real and invented enemies, terribly wrong when he demanded and got special emergency powers by invoking threats that were substantially imaginary if not fraudulent. Smile and say Godwin and we're done.

Obama? Of course he's Communist and Fascist and never mind the contradiction. Of course he's a tyrant for the same reason Lincoln was a tyrant, the same reason Teddy Roosevelt was and FDR and don't you dare bring up Godwin this time!

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Fascist as an epithet, part two

By Boatboy

(This is Part Two of two. For Part One, see here.)

Enter the storyteller and the studio. Clancy's thriller tells of a resurgent Fascist group that steals a nuclear weapon and sets it off in Baltimore, hoping to spark a conflict between the US and Russia from which a resurgent Fascism (centred in Germany and Austria from the plot's implications) could return to prominence. The problem with the film, however, is that none of the attendant horrors of a Fascist society are made clear. The only indicators of the origins of the plot are the accents of the major players. The villains never speak of the overall goals of Fascism: corporatist control of the state, systematic purging of "undesirable" or "racially impure" segments of society, the silencing of all dissent, and an oppressive state mechanism of surveillance and nearly-random arrest and "disappearance" of citizens.

Clancy, in his defense, probably assumes such things are common knowledge and sees no need to delve into any of that. Fascists are monsters out to destroy both East and West and remake both in their twisted image: this should be clear enough from the narrative. Paramount, however, is far more nebulous in its treatment: the bad guys aren't all that distinct from the good ones: Dressler's, Fiore's and even Thorsen's characters aren't all that inhuman, and present remarkably "normal" faces to the world and to the audience, just as Schreiber's assasin Clark seems necessary and Cromwell's president Fowler doesn't seem especially liked or likable. It is easy, in the narrative, to confuse friend with foe, villain with deluded victim, hero with situational ally. Part of this is no doubt deliberate: it speaks to the difficulty in the modern world in identifying threats and makes for effective plot twists. But the net effect is the same as the rhetoric spinning now: simply screaming "Fascist" does not make the target Fascist - there needs to be substance to the charge to make it stick. Sum of All Fears fails to make the charge stick to any of the villains, depending solely on the symbology of the German accent and the swastika to make its points instead of delving into the political philosophy that made that particular combination so frightening.

The problem with Fascism is that even now there are schools of thought that, either through adherence to conviction in "Aryan" supremacy, through denial of the bases for the political philosophy, or through simple ethnic identification, play apologist for Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and the others that spawned that philosophy. The US, little affected by the worst aspects of the Third Reich, has a particularly poor frame of reference in this regard: the horrors were distant and perpetrated almost entirely on foreigners, removing them rather effectively from the consciousness of the US citizenry. Without that awareness or the reminders of those lost, the US lacks the immediacy of the knowledge that Europe sees on a near-daily basis: the bombed buildings preserved as symbols, the camps turned into park-like memorials, the fields of graves, and the plaques mounted on walls listing the names of those who lived there and were murdered by the Reich.

In turn, the US' ethnic diversity and continued immigration of new populations into the country give those who support Fascist thought fertile ground. The same vitriol Hitler aimed at Jews is used against Latinos, South and Southeast Asians - virtually any population perceived as taking jobs, damaging the economy and polluting the assumed ethnic homogeneity of the US population. The inhibitions on such thinking that Europe experiences today are largely absent because of the physical distance and the relative ignorance of the US populace.

Sum of All Fears plays on the fear the US is only now starting to shed. in 2002, when the film was produced, that fear was full-blown, and the film spoke to that. Whether the relative normality of the villains in the piece were intended to describe the facelessness of an unknown assailant, or a deliberate plot point to blur the distinctions between political philosophies, it definitely allows the Fascist to hide in plain sight, appearing as normal - and behaving as normally - as anyone around.

This is what the Conservatists are banking on when they accuse the Obama administration and its supporters of Fascism. The distance between the events of the '30s and '40s, the ethnic identification, and the lack of substance backing up the identification of Fascists with the full scope of that philosophy all enable those making the accusation to do so without having to back it up. The US does not recall the full horror of Nazism: the arrest and disappearance of whole population segments, the concentration camps used to dispose of them, the suppression of free speech – even free thought as Hitler Youth informed on its parents – and the other horrors are in full view of modern Europe every day, but notably absent from the Americas. Without those reminders, the US is left with the education system to teach each generation about the dangers of that philosophy, and after decades of public education policy more interested in basic arithmetic and reading skills than fuzzier subjects like History and Political Science, the knowledge the current US citizen has of that dark chapter in human history is at least questionable. The US understands that Fascism is somehow bad, but without direct exposure or careful study it has no clear understanding of why.

If the Conservatists are truly opposed to Fascism – which after the Bush maladministration is arguable – they may well be ignorant of the worst of its crimes, or that those crimes were a direct consequence of the teachings that spawned it. They are certainly counting on their audience's ignorance of those theories, yielding them the outrage against the bogeyman of the “Fascist” without comprehending the precise nature of the evil implied. Their ability to do so is facilitated both by this ignorance and such clever products as Sum of All Fears that paint their villains with the Fascist brush without bothering to layer on all the colours of that particular mindset or the fine strokes that made Fascism so different – and so horrific – from any other conservative nationalist school of thought.

(Cross-posted from View From The Docks.)

Born in the USA?

By Carl

You know, I was born and raised in a free country, not a socialist, totalitarian state:

WASHINGTON — Having tried without success to unlock frozen credit markets, the Treasury Department is considering taking ownership stakes in many United States banks to try to restore confidence in the financial system, according to government officials.

Treasury officials say the just-passed $700 billion bailout bill gives them the authority to inject cash directly into banks that request it. Such a move would quickly strengthen banks' balance sheets and, officials hope, persuade them to resume lending. In return, the law gives the Treasury the right to take ownership positions in banks, including healthy ones.

Effectively, this gives the US Federal government the right to dictate bank policy, decisions, and effectively makes the US Government a shareholder, directly dependent on the quarterly profit of these firms.

This is not freedom, folks. Banks will be obligated to conform not just to the regulations and laws the US Congress has passed, as overseen (however poorly) by the executive branch, but to the caprices and whims of whatever man sits in oversight, presumably Hank Paulson, Treasury Secretary until January 20, 2009.

And who knows who, beyond that?

Now, that person may make good decisions, possibly. And he may influence better oversight and policy from the bank managers and boards themselves. But he also may make terrible decisions, terrible choices, and that alone makes this a really bad idea. After all, underpinning each and every bank in America, each and every investment bank in America, is the hard-earned money of the American worker. Those are your savings accounts that WaMu leveraged out to lend to mortgagers. Those are your checking accounts that Wachovia invested to earn themselves an extra few pennies in income.

And these were people who were supposed to be experts! Now turn this power over to someone with a political agenda.

Do you see where this might go? Imagine a bank in New York state that has lent money to build an abortion clinic, overseen by a McCain Treasury Secretary shoved down his throat like Sarah Palin was. Or a bank in Arkansas that's been forced by court order to lend money to minority clients for affordable housing, something guaranteed not to give the same return as a commercial property in Little Rock.

Suddenly, the government is not only in a position to dictate policy, but enforce it from inside, with little or no dissent. Imagine if in the 1950s, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a credit card from a bank run by the government, the same government that tacitly allowed the states to determine segregation policies? Do you honestly think they would listen to a lone nutcase? Or would they yank that card, freeze hsi assets, and bring him to "justice"?

It gets worse, folks. Just the other day, there was talk that the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve might step in to buy commercial paper issued by companies like General Motors, or IBM, or Campbell's Soup. Now take those banking scenarios and extend them to buying food, clothing, shelter, or transportation.

And the bad news is capped off with the little notice but plaintive wail of individual states now unable to make good on their own bond issues, unable to make interest payments, unable to provide sufficient collateral for the funds they've borrowed, in danger of default.

Not only are they having trouble making good on these bonds, but they can't even refinance them because the credit markets are effectively closed until the bailout funds are made available, which may take months.

Careful readers of this blog will note that more than two years ago, I predicted the worst economic meltdown this nation, this world, has ever faced.

I underestimated the threat. This will make the Great Depression look like a picnic.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Consumerism is killing us

By Libby Spencer

If you read nothing else today, read Bill Moyers' interview with retired US Army Colonel Andrew J. Bacevich. Bacevich defines what's broken in our government, and our society, with a truly non-partisan slant that spares no one from blame. He notes that we're living on borrowed time, borrowed money and the debt is about to come due. When it does, it won't be pretty.

It's almost impossible to excerpt without doing injustice to that which is left out, but here's a couple of key grafs.

I am expressing in the book, in a sense, what many of us sense, even if many of us don't really want to confront the implications. The Congress, especially with regard to matters related to national security policy, has thrust power and authority to the executive branch. We have created an imperial presidency. The congress no longer is able to articulate a vision of what is the common good. The Congress exists primarily to ensure the reelection of members of Congress.

He goes to explain how this dynamic created a National Security State, which to my mind is a polite way to describe our current police state and also how consumerism has shaped and distorted our foreign policy. But his description of the failure of the Democratic Party to fulfil its mandate of 06, really hits home.

Well, I may be a conservative, but I can assure you that, in November of 2006, I voted for every Democrat I could possibly come close to. And I did because the Democratic Party, speaking with one voice, at that time, said that, "Elect us. Give us power in the Congress, and we will end the Iraq War."

And the American people, at that point, adamantly tired of this war, gave power to the Democrats in Congress. And they absolutely, totally, completely failed to follow through on their commitment. Now, there was a lot of posturing. But, really, the record of the Democratic Congress over the past two years has been - one in which, substantively, all they have done is to appropriate the additional money that enables President Bush to continue that war.

I would also add that they managed to ensure that the mechanisms of the National Security State and its related surveillance society would survive into the next administration, when they expect to take control of it. (If you prefer to watch the interview, rather than read the transcript, you can get the video here).

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)

Reefer madness

By Capt. Fogg

I remember stories of police drug raids being carried out at incorrect addresses going back to the 1960s. It's nothing new. I recall that in one raid, a homeowner was shot and killed by police who came through the front door unannounced and unidentified and of course the police were exonerated because not only has one no civil rights where the fight against marijuana is concerned, the "authorities" have no more restraints on their behavior than any pirates of the Caribbean would impose upon themselves. It is you see, so dangerous that no doctor can prescribe it and nothing is more important than prosecuting people who might have had something to do with it.

That was of course a long time ago and before the Internet, and I can't link to the newspaper reports, but it doesn't matter because the Federal Government in its conviction that the medical establishment is totally ignorant of medical matters continues to ride roughshod over reason, fact, sanity and law in it's lust to eradicate it. Normally when police are caught planting evidence to make a criminal out of someone against whom they have no other evidence, someone goes to jail and it isn't the victim. Not so with marijuana, the Devil's Weed. Some of the older folks may remember when the government tried to bust Patty Hearst using a false flag delivery that was foiled when she refused to accept a package full of dope. The government remembers and it's still in their bag of tricks.

Last week, a SWAT team raided the home of the mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. According to The Baltimore Sun, police disguised as deliverymen had dropped off a package addressed to his wife, and Mayor Cheye Calvo's mother-in-law left the heavy package on the porch. Calvo later brought it inside but didn't open it. Of course, it was a trap and the package held 32 pounds of the Devil's Weed, which justified the armed military invasion of his home. Without showing a warrant, the cops shot his dogs, one while it was running away. He was dragged downstairs in his underwear and tied up and thrown on a floor covered with blood and ripped with bullet holes, as was his mother-in-law. Finding the box still sealed, they simply left, taking it with them. Law? What law, they're the police!

On Thursday last, a medical marijuana dispensary in California was raided (what do doctors know about medicine?) by DEA agents who smashed up the place, blasting open an ATM and taking the money, cutting open a safe, smashing down doors and strewing the property of some residents everywhere during a wild four hour spree. Also on Thursday, an appellate court in San Diego ruled that Federal law does not pre-empt California's medical cannabis law. They don't care - they're the DEA. Cannabis is just too brain-searingly deadly dangerous to worry about the niceties of constitutional law. (What do doctors know about drugs?)

Now for the scary part. Although the L.A. Times article originally contained a photo of a gunslinger in a Blackwater shirt removing boxes of "evidence," the picture was later taken down, but, thanks to the Internet, it's still in circulation, as are the questions: since when does the U.S. government use an army of mercenaries to conduct military action against U.S. citizens within U.S. borders? Who removed the picture, and why?

So take this advice. If you're home at night and a bunch of armed men in black ski masks burst through your door unannounced, just grovel on the floor and don't try to defend yourselves and for heaven's sake, don't complain -- a pot-free America is more important than your life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. It's more important than your freedom or the rule of law and most of all, it's important that the multi-bazillion-dollar anti-drug industry not be tampered with.

(Cross-posted from The Impolitic.)

Chertoff's Iron Curtain

By Capt. Fogg

Something there is that doesn't love a wall, said the poet. I think it's called freedom.

Say you have a nice ranch down near the Rio Grande. The view is fabulous, you use the water for your cattle, you have a little boat to fish with. The deer and the antelope play.

Say you enjoy the San Pedro river, the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area on the Arizona border. You can forget it; it's soon to be blocked by a huge corrugated iron curtain right out of the cold war era because we're all so desperately afraid of Mexicans who don't come in to the country on tourist visas, like most illegal immigrants do.

This isn't a diatribe on any racialist or economic basis for xenophobia or the grave danger of people with expired visas cutting your lawn, it's about big government getting away with unquestionable authority by declaring emergencies. It's about Michael Chertoff's Bush-given ability to overturn court rulings and ignore laws passed by Congress because - well just because the commander guy has commanded it. Our Republican Congress gave him the power to waive any laws he needed to to get this fence built and our Republican courts in all their activist glory have now backed him up today by upholding a lower court's ruling that giving Michael Chertoff authority to write and unwrite laws passed by congress does not violate the separation of powers set forth in the constitution. Michael Cherthoff can be the law and neither we nor our elected representatives can stop him sayeth the Bush Court.

Somehow the people who give us the Fatherland and the Motherland seem awfully similar to the people who changed National Security into Homeland Security.

Many people sincerely doubt that this wall will actually secure our border and protect us from undocumented dishwashers. The history of walls lends them some support, but of course when things get bad enough here, perhaps it will help keep us from fleeing to Mexico.

(Cross-posted from The Impolitic.)

Olbermann: "What else is this but fascism?"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Keith Olbermann at his awesome best -- text here, video here.

Pay attention. It's important. It's about FISA, terrorism, and the fascism of George W. Bush. And here's how it concludes:

As recently ago as 2006, we spoke words like these with trepidation.

The idea that even the most cynical and untrustworthy of politicians in our history, George W. Bush, would use the literal form of terrorism against his own people was dangerous territory. It seemed to tempt fate, to heighten fear.

We will not fear any longer. We will not fear the international terrorists, and we will thwart them. We will not fear the recognition of the manipulation of our yearning for safety, and we will call it what it is: terrorism. We will not fear identifying the vulgar hypocrites in our government, and we will name them. And we will not fear George W. Bush. Nor will we fear because George W. Bush wants us to fear.

Bush, fascism, and the war on democracy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(Following up on posts by Carol and Libby yesterday...)

The headline at the Times says it all:

In Senate, a White House Victory on Eavesdropping

Yes, Bush and his Republican enablers are winning this fight -- and the Democrats, some of them, caving in, selling us out, are playing right along:

A White House plan to broaden the National Security Agency’s wiretapping powers won a key procedural victory in the Senate on Thursday, as backers defeated a more restrictive plan by Senate Democrats that would have imposed more court oversight on government spying.

The vote moves the Bush administration a step closer toward the twin goals it has pursued for months: strengthening the N.S.A.’s ability to eavesdrop without court approval, while securing legal immunity for the phone companies that have helped the agency in its wiretapping operations.

*****

As the Senate opened debate on the security agency issue, it agreed by a convincing vote of 60-to-36 to set aside a bill passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee that would have given a secret intelligence court a greater role in overseeing wiretaps on terrorism and espionage suspects. The defeated measure, while imposing more judicial restrictions, omitted immunity for the phone carriers that aided the agency in its wiretapping operations.

The Senate will instead consider a measure passed by the Senate Intelligence Committee that has the backing of the White House. It would give legal immunity to AT&T and the other phone companies against some 40 lawsuits growing out of their alleged roles in eavesdropping. It would also give the N.S.A. a freer hand to eavesdrop on foreign-based communications without judicial checks.

The White House has agreed to "give members of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees access to internal documents on the N.S.A.’s wiretapping program and the legal foundation for it," and that's a significant concession, but so what? With the Democrats divided and the Republicans backing the White House, as usual, Bush's anti-freedom agenda is moving forward.

And just what is that agenda? It is an agenda to enhance executive authority by removing, or at least restricting, legislative and judicial oversight, an agenda to protect corporations and corporate interests friendly to the White House and to the agenda itself, an agenda to wage the so-called war on terror, a war of Bush's defining, autocratically and without regard for civil liberties, an agenda -- let's be frank about this -- to undermine democracy and the rule of law.

Bush's surveillance bill, the Protect America Act, expires next Friday, a week from today. Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid want a one-month extension so that there can be further debate, but the Republicans have objected to any extension, just as they have objected to Democratic amendments. They want their bill now, a bill that gives Bush wants he wants, extra-legal executive authority and corporate immunity. Besides, the issue isn't about time, or about an extension, or about more debate, but rather about the objectionable content of the legislation. Democrats would cave in a month from now just like they're caving in now.

As usual, Bush is playing the terrorism-is-everywhere fear card: "If Congress does not act quickly, our national security professionals will not be able to count on critical tools they need to protect our nation, and our ability to respond quickly to new threats and circumstances will be weakened." In other words, if he doesn't get what he wants, al Qaeda will get us.

It's the classic strategy of authoritarians and totalitarians everywhere. In using propaganda to stoke public fear, in trumping up or simply manufacturing threats from enemies both at home and abroad, and in protecting corporate friends and interests, Bush is proving once more that he is, in essence, a fascist.

I don't expect Republicans to do anything other than to give Bush what he wants. It may not be wise of me, but I expect more from Democrats, from the party I have long supported, often enthusiastically, sometimes against my better judgement. Unfortunately -- and to our great misfortune -- far too many Democrats either haven't learned a thing or are happy playing along with and even encouraging the undermining of democracy, freedom, and the rule of law.

(See also the Post and Paul Kiel at TPM.)

Blackwater Christmas - not just a dream

By Capt. Fogg

I don't know what the spectators at the Armed Forces Bowl this New Years Eve will think when they see Blackwater mercenaries parachuting into the stadium as they did December 1st during halftime at the Sand Diego State/BYU game. Indeed, what will the Air Force team think when they see that those aren't our guys in the black uniforms? Are they staging an armed takeover or just displaying the awesome power of a private military?

I'm sorry to contradict Reagan the Great, but when someone shows up to help, I prefer that it would be someone from the legitimate government rather than armed representatives from a country without borders, or laws or accountability. I don't think it will be long, for instance, before the Bushists privatize the "War on Drugs" by giving license to companies like Blackwater to do all the things we won't allow the government to do ( like start a war in Columbia or Mexico or pour water up your nose or worse) and make no mistake, Blackwater has the vehicles, the helicopters, the ships and the intelligence division to allow them to accomplish most any mission, foreign or domestic, our next rogue president might consider to be too touchy to approach in a legal fashion.


If the next rogue president should be Mitt Romney, we can be assured that Blackwater head, Cofer Black, his chief adviser on counterterrorism, will have a lot to say about military affairs and military conduct and indeed he already has had. Romney's decision not to comment on torture was made with the advice of Black. Of course I'm sure Cofer Black's private army will be happy to accept more and better no-bid contracts from whichever idiot the American people choose to make things worse.

As Jeremy Scahill writes in The Nation,

"the Government is in the midst of the most radical privatization in history, and companies like Blackwater are becoming ever more deeply embedded in the war apparatus. Until this system is brought down, the world's the limit for Blackwater Worldwide. . ."

And what are the chances that this profitable enterprise will be brought down now that they have moved beyond the borders of brutal occupation and commercial espionage into retail sales of everything from 9mm pistols to baby clothes? Is the future a kind and degree of fascism unimaginable even in the Europe of the 1930's and 40's? Why not? With the country rallying behind thugs and idiots in blue pinstripes, what chance does freedom have?

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Invasion of the Viking Women

By Capt. Fogg

A couple of readers* urged me to blog about this story yesterday, but it's one of those things that is so depressing, so horrifying and so disgusting to someone who once loved the United States that it's really hard to do anything but let you read about it yourself and weep. It seems like we're not only to suspect anyone sounding vaguely Islamic of harboring dreams of invading and conquering or subverting the US, but our new Immigration and Customs Enforcement people are worried about an invasion of Viking Women.

I've talked to Europeans who used to maintain vacation homes in the US and have sold them because of the outrageous harassment they get every time they enter the country, including fingerprinting and examination of financial records. I read recently the story of two English entrepreneurs who wanted to bring some capital and open a business here and essentially were thrown out by ICE with no reason given and I've read about people who because of visa irregularities have been held incommunicado and without charges for years without knowing why.

No, I'm not talking about "enemy combatants" I'm talking about tourists like Eva Ósk Arnardóttir, an Icelandic woman who overstayed her visa in 1995 and went home three weeks late. She's been back without any problems, but this time she's discovered the new America, the America of secret prisons, of jack-booted officers and dungeons where ordinary and harmless people are chained and shackled and interrogated and terrorized and poked and probed and intimidated and held without charges or benefit of legal help.

*My thanks to Crankyboy and Swampcracker

(Cross-posted from The Impolitic.)

Papers please

By Libby Spencer

I just posted on this at Newshoggers, but it's disturbing enough that I want to rewrite it to post it here. Via John Cole's comment section, more proof of the impending police state.

The Transportation Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security are quietly pushing for a set of crazy new rules. All travellers in the U.S. will be required to get government-issued credentials and official clearance before every flight, both within the United States as well as internationally.

And Monday we received a new political action alert from Edward Hasbrouk, The Practical Nomad blogger who's been fighting the plan (and who testified about it at a TSA hearing). "The international Advance Passenger Information System rules were published, as 'final' effective February 19,2008, with no further opportunity for public comment even on the changes from the original proposal."

That's domestic flights too. How much of a stretch is it really from this, to imagine having to surrender your papers to cross the state line in your car? Or even the city limits?

And then there's this expansion of the terrorist watch list. It has 755,000 names on it right now and it's growing by 200,000 a year. Experts say it's inconceivable that there could be that many terrorists. Judging from the number of academians and other respectable critics of the administration who have been denied entry to the country based on that list, I'd say they were right.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)

Rudy the Fascist

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Now he wants all foreigners in the U.S. to carry ID cards. "If you don’t have that card, you get thrown out of the country," he said of the so-called "Safe card" -- for "secure authorised foreign entry."

Civil liberties? Never mind. This is Rudy out to prove his authoritarian bona fides to a party that bows down before authority.

The question is, where would it end? What other cards would be required? Foreigners now, Americans later, everyone with ID cards, with the "proper" documents, some with special cards separating them out from the rest, much like in Europe in the '30s.

Don't think it can't happen.

Lincoln may have called America "the last best hope of earth" -- and that may have been optimistic, and perhaps delusional -- but now, once more, darker forces are at work, and rising, in the land of the free.

And they must be stopped.