Below are the 19 most recent journal entries recorded in jp_pondside's LiveJournal:

Sunday, December 18th, 2005
8:36 am	High crimes and misdemeanors The short version: In ordering the NSA to spy secretly on Americans, George Bush has overturned United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18, which prohibits domestic spying by NSA; violated the federal act which created the FISA court to oversee covert domestic investigations; and trampled upon the Fourth Amendment guarantee against warrantless searches. The President of the United States has admitted on national radio that he has violated the laws of the nation and abrogated the U.S. Constitution, that he has no remorse for his actions and intends to continue to hold the Constitution in contempt, and that he believes himself to be above the law and not answerable to any institution or human being alive. I don't like George Bush as any reader of this journal will know, but this goes so far beyond mere disagreement with his policies and ethics. This would be recognized as tyranny by the Founders of this country; it defies a principle established in Anglo-American jurisprudence since the Magna Carta. As does the use of torture, by the way, and the suspension of habeas corpus. But if Abu Ghraib was not enough to move you, if the imprisonment of American citizens without charges does not seem to be your problem, perhaps the spectre of Orwellian surveillance of American citizens at the whim of a man who considers himself above the law will give you a chill. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read the original article in the New York Times. You'll note that the Times knew about this a year ago, and withheld the story at the request of the Administration, which itself is a shameful act indicating how low the "free" press in American has sunk. (See this for more NYT analysis.) If you don't want to register to read that article, try this later one on MSNBC. If you want a primer on Constitutional principles, try this at Steve Gilliard's blog. If you want to know why the Prez thinks this is ok, read this. And if you think something ought to be done about it, read this. It cannot stand, or historians will look back on this moment at the pivot point where the American republic and its experiment in democracy crumpled. Ironic that it was no foreign enemy, but fear and complacency that did us in. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 17th, 2005
9:42 am	Treason-gate A great article by John Aravosis at Americablog: If a senior White House staffer had intentionally outed an American spy during World War II, he'd have been shot. We're at war, George Bush keeps reminding us. We cannot continue with business as usual. A pre-9/11 mentality is deadly. Putting the lives of our troops at risk is treason. Then why is the White House and the Republican party engaged in a concerted campaign to make treason acceptable during a time of war? Read the rest here I've always had this thing about treason -- it is something I just don't understand. I understand disagreeing vehemently with your government, I understand owing loyalty to a higher power (religious or moral principles) which might be in conflict with your other loyalties, I even understand rebellion -- but I do not understand selling out your country for personal gain, whether money or power. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 31st, 2005
8:36 pm	an interesting development... "I think that the government has successfully proved that any service member has reasonable cause to believe that the wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq were illegal." -- Lt. Cmdr. Robert Klant, presiding at Pablo Paredes' court-martial Read the article. (Comment on this)
8:25 am	what you can do about torture This dKos diary by Susan Hu describes how on-line geeks can do something about one of the worst outrages being perpetrated in the name of the American people -- the unconstitutional and immoral use of torture. I know that I have felt fairly helpless to do anything about it, and am eager to have something concrete and feasible for me to do. You'll need a strong stomach, but it is better than doing nothing. Susan Hu is one of those courageous amateur investigative reporters spawned by the political blog world and one of the pioneers of "Open Source Journalism." She needs your help. She has obtained 4,000 pages of FBI Guantanamo and US Army papers released through FOIA and needs volunteers to help plow through them and figure out what is in them and what they mean. The project itself is described in more detail here . Typical of the stuff that the volunteers are uncovering is this dKos diary, describing how DOD personnel impersonated FBI agents. Knowlege is power, and bringing evil out into the light is a crucial first step to defeating it... (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 24th, 2005
2:29 pm	Gagged but not dead (yet) Who is Sibel Edmonds? You've probably never heard of her. Sibel Edmonds: A former translator for the FBI with top-secret security clearance who was hired shortly after Sept. 11 to translate intelligence gathered over the previous year related to the 9/11 attacks. She says the FBI had information that an attack using airplanes was being planned before Sept. 11. She provided information to the Senate Judiciary Committe and the 911 Commission, including information about how she was asked to 're-translate' and 'adjust' intercepted from before 9/11. She was fired for providing this testimony and she sued the DOJ as a whistleblower. She has had her case thrown out of court (twice) because her accusations, the evidence, and the reasons for the DOJ's behavior are all State Secrets. She was not even allowed to be present in the courtroom. You can read this article, published in London, which contains facts that you cannot publish in the United States because every about her has been declared to be a State Secret -- things like her place of birth, her age, how many languages she speaks, etc. And this article has more, on her suit against DOJ, an utterly Kafka-esque proceeding. She may be the most gagged person in the USA right now -- she, her life, her work, and her accusations have been put in the memory hole. Luckily, that is harder to do now with the internets. Here are her own words, published just this week. Don't forget Sibel Edmonds. Ask your congress-critter to find out more. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 23rd, 2005
4:41 pm	destruction of the US military I am reminded that I decided to post political issues to this journal. It's hard to know which of the many pending apocalyptic disasters to focus on. But our topic of the day is how under the leadership of Rumsfeld, a military which took 20 years to rebuild after the disaster of Vietnam has been hollowed out in only 5 years... Read this NYT editorial by Bob Herbert. The astounding short term thinking of this administration is not to be believed. And these are the guys waving the patriotism flag like a weapon... (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, February 25th, 2005
2:13 pm	all part of one great reich... well, the US has decided that it owns Canada. From the Globe and Mail: Ottawa — Prime Minister Paul Martin said yesterday that Canada has to be involved in any U.S. decision to shoot down an enemy missile in Canadian airspace, but the American ambassador said the country had given up its right to be involved in any such decision. Paul Cellucci, the U.S. ambassador, made the remarks just after Mr. Martin officially announced Canada would not join the controversial missile-defence shield. “We will deploy,” Mr. Cellucci said. “We will defend North America. “We simply cannot understand why Canada would in effect give up its sovereignty, its seat at the table, to decide what to do about a missile that might be coming towards Canada.” </blockquote (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, February 18th, 2005
12:54 pm	Gannongate So the Jeff Gannon/JD Guckert story gets more and more interesting. It's impossible to keep track of all the news breaking around this. But this latest tidbit is very intriguing: A news producer for a major network just told me that Gannon told the producer the US was going to attack Iraq four hours before President Bush announced it to the nation. According to the producer, Gannon specifically told them that in four hours the president was going to be making a speech to the nation announcing that the US was bombing Iraq. The producer told me they were surprised that Gannon, working with such a small news outfit, could have access to such information, but "what did you know, he was right," the producer said today. The producer went on to say that Gannon often had correct scoops on major stories, including information about Mary Mapes and the Dan Rather BUSH/AWOL scandal that this news outlet got from Gannon before any had the information publicly. More to be found on Americablog In my dreams, this goes right back to Our Dear Leader. Wouldn't that be fun... For those living in a cave, Jeff Gannon is a pseudonym for JD Guckert, a fake journalist for a fake news agency who had access to the White House press pool for years under a false name, lobbing softball questions at GW, while legitimate journalists are denied them. He's a right winger associated with GOPUSA.com, a Republican organization, and typical of the hypocrisy of that ilk, owns and operates several websites with names like hotmilitarystuds.com. When not pretending to be a journalist, rents himself out as a gay "escort." All while promoted "moral values" of course, and writing sleaze articles promising that John Kerry would be the "first Gay President." He was exposed by bloggers investigating the Valerie Plame case. It appears one of his many "scoops" on the real media was supposedly a White House memo revealing her identity as a CIA agent. A memo no one else has ever seen. More to come, no doubt. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, February 4th, 2005
12:24 pm	The Birth Tax (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 7th, 2004
10:38 am	Reality-based report from the Pentagon So there are some reality-based people at the Pentagon, and they've released a report on the struggle for "hearts and minds" in the WoT that explains that our actions in the Middle East have almost totally backfired. A few stats and quotes: Data from Zogby International in July 2004, for example, show that the U.S. is viewed unfavorably by overwhelming majorities in Egypt (98 percent), Saudi Arabia (94 percent), Morocco (88 percent), and Jordan (78 percent). In a State Department (INR) survey of editorials and op-eds in 72 countries, 82.5% of commentaries were negative, 17.5% positive. Negative attitudes and the conditions that create them are the underlying sources of threats to America's national security and reduced ability to leverage diplomatic opportunities. Terrorism, thin coalitions, harmful effects on business, restrictions on travel, declines in cross border tourism and education flows, and damaging consequences for other elements of U.S. soft power are tactical manifestations of a pervasive atmosphere of hostility. But that's not all. Not only have we made ourselves unpopular, we've given legitimacy to extremist groups who now enjoy much wider support since we have done such a great job of living down to their expectations: American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies. Muslims do not "hate our freedom," but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states. Thus when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy. Moreover, saying that "freedom is the future of the Middle East" is seen as patronizing, suggesting that Arabs are like the enslaved peoples of the old Communist World -- but Muslims do not feel this way: they feel oppressed, but not enslaved. Furthermore, in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering. U.S. actions appear in contrast to be motivated by ulterior motives, and deliberately controlled in order to best serve American national interests at the expense of truly Muslim selfdetermination. Therefore, the dramatic narrative since 9/11 has essentially borne out the entire radical Islamist bill of particulars. American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. Fighting groups portray themselves as the true defenders of an Ummah (the entire Muslim community) invaded and under attack -- to broad public support. What was a marginal network is now an Ummah-wide movement of fighting groups. Not only has there been a proliferation of "terrorist" groups: the unifying context of a shared cause creates a sense of affiliation across the many cultural and sectarian boundaries that divide Islam. So our beacon of democracy in Iraq is beaming nothing but dirty radiation. Not a surprise to anybody living on this planet, but amazing to hear coming from the Pentagon. (Comment on this)
10:31 am	Freedom in Fallujah In keeping with the "Freedom is Slavery" and "War is Peace" nature of the current American regime, it would appear that plans for the new, democratic Fallujah are proceding apace. You may have seen this in the Globe yesterday: The US military is drawing up plans to keep insurgents from regaining control of this battle-scarred city, but returning residents may find that the measures make Fallujah look more like a police state than the democracy they have been promised. Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned. One idea that has stirred debate among Marine officers would require all men to work, for pay, in military-style battalions. Depending on their skills, they would be assigned jobs in construction, waterworks, or rubble-clearing platoons. No wonder that they "hate us for our freedoms." There are more excerpts at Daily Kos, and a temporary link to the whole article at the Globe. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 10th, 2004
5:21 pm	Terrorist Strategy 101 As Pericles makes clear here, George Bush is Osama's best friend. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 9th, 2004
10:13 am	Kristallnacht It is the 66th anniversay of kristallnacht. Of course, it comes every year, and it always falls after election day. But this year it feels more portentious. The unholy alliance between the Christian Taliban and the Republican Party sways the gullible by misdirecting people's fears, of which there are plenty in a sagging economy, onto demonized 'others.' We know who those Others are this time around. Every thinking person must ask themselves every now and again, 'what would I have done if I lived in Germany in 1938?' It's not just a rhetorical question. You may get a chance to find out the answer. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 8th, 2004
1:55 pm	the options in Iraq This is an excellent essay by William Polk. I have been thinking intensely about how best to handle Iraq. Not that anyone is asking me, but it seems important to find the right course of action and then advocate for it. There are 3 choices, and he lists them: The first option has been called "staying the course." In practice that means continued fighting. France “stayed the course” in Algeria in the 1950s as America did in Vietnam in the 1960s and as the Israelis are now doing in occupied Palestine. It has never worked anywhere. In Algeria, the French employed over three times as many troops, nearly half a million, to fight roughly the same number of insurgents as America is now fighting in Iraq. They lost. America had half a million soldiers in Vietnam and gave up. After forty years of warfare against the Palestinians, the Israelis have achieved neither peace nor security. Wars of national “self-determination,” to use President Woodrow Wilson’s evocative phrase, can last for generations or even centuries. Britain tried to beat down (or even exterminate) the Irish for nearly 900 years, from shortly after the Eleventh century Norman invasion until 1921; the French fought the Algerians from 1831 until 1962; both Imperial and Communist Russia have been fighting the Chechens since about 1731. Putin’s Russia is still at it. There was no light at the end of those “tunnels.” I've read enough history to know that he is right. And the result is brutalization on all sides, a culture that accepts and condones torture, where war crimes work their way into existence inch-by-inch down the slippery slope. The second option is "Vietnamization." I give you the evacuation of Saigon. Enough said. Option Three should be obvious. Sooner or later, we will have to get out. It can be with some dignity, or it can be after we have slaughtered thousands of civilians to 'save' them from insurgents and "created a desolation and called it peace," to paraphrase Tacitus. Pope's essay offers some hope on how this could be done well. I think I am beginning to move towards a "get out and get out now" as the only reasonable stance on the war. Of course it won't happen that way, but one must have a starting position. As Polk says: Time is a wasting asset; the longer the choice is put off, the harder it will be to make (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, November 5th, 2004
2:42 pm	we are all Israelis now... A very interesting editorial from Professor Mark Levine, at UC Irvine. (and trying out assorted icons...) (Comment on this)
8:44 am	rage and reminiscence Yesterday was a very rage-filled day. I surprised myself, and it spilled over into everything I did -- cursing the stupid drivers in the rainy dark, being impatient with the dim-witted checkout clerk, frightening L with my fury over little things like tangled phone cords and bumped heads. I am not of an intrinsically choleric disposition, I find it just too strenuous. And it's contagious, and spreads a little unpleasantness wherever it goes. If any of my friends are browsing, I've locked away the post with my moment of primal scream therapy. I appreciate everyone's patience. At the same time, I am aware that the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the excluded, the reformer is never allowed to be angry. Blacks will alienate friendly white people if they vent their anger at a racist system, feminists have always been warned not to be strident, desperate young men with no future are admonished to emulate Gandhi rather than throw rocks at tanks. Because god forbid that injustice should make you angry. Nevertheless, I have to find a balance point so that I don't choke on it. I find myself thinking back over my past political life. I am old enough to remember where I was when JFK was shot. I don't remember the 1960s as a tie-dyed paradise, but as a time of conflict and polarization, where every decent leader could expect to be assassinated. I remember Kent State and the feeling that They were finally shooting at Us, and that the revolution would begin in earnest. It seemed impossible that America, or the world, could ever be the same. Cue Bob Dylan's "The times they are a-changing" for background music... And yet the Weather Underground became soccer moms and draft card burners went into advertising. The Revolution fizzled and we were all assimilated. We elected Nixon. Twice. That henchmen breaking into an opponent's offices and lying about it could force a president out of office seems the sign of an innocent age, given the crimes of succeeding administrations. We elected Reagan. Twice. The genial face and vacant mind in front of the assault on generations of social progress, a tax give-away to rich corporations that would boggle the mind if you did the math, and a record deficit racked up chasing the cold war. Yet what is arguably the most moral president in our history, Jimmy Carter, barely survived one term. Progressives got tired. I did. Taking care of your family trumps everything else, and it should. But there's an entire generation out there, born after us, that has bought the idea that government does not have any obligation for the welfare of its people. So here we are. I've seen many depressing elections. I've marched on Washington a few times. Why does this one fill me with such panic? Why is it worse than 1972? It feels like even more is at stake than in any of those past elections. Does war in the Middle East always bring forebodings of Armageddon? Before 2004 I didn't have the right to marry, why does the assault on it seem so evil? I remember a time before abortion was legal. I'm never going to need one, why should I get a cold fear about going back there? I'm too old to find myself a POW on a battlefield, why should the Geneva Convention matter to me? And yeah, my daughter-in-law's best friend's husband was held in federal prison without charges for months because he's Moroccan, but I'm not, so why should I feel sick about it? It feels like irrational fundamentalist forces are on the march all around the world, trying to roll back 500 years of reason, science, and human liberation. I like to play in the past for fun, but I don't want to live there. (13 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 4th, 2004
3:02 pm	the purple land A very interesting map, showing the popular vote by state at Boing Boing.: And another very interesting perspective, by county, how that purple was achieved at USA today: (gray areas indicate counties without 100% vote tally at the time of the map). And here's another very interesting breakdown showing the urban/rural divide: courtesy of moeman (Comment on this)
10:17 am	reaping what you sow... On the way to work today I found myself musing on the subject of getting what you asked for.... more than half the American public seems to feel that paying 2-3 dead soldiers per day in not too high a price for Bush's vainglorious war. Well. Let's see how they like the draft that is coming. The Imperium can't support its ambitions to take down Iraq and Syria without more troops. We don't have hordes of barbarians that we can enlist to do the fighting for us in return for loot and citzenship, so we have to people our armies with American citizens. We don't have enough of them to win the war in Iraq, let alone all the other places that the neo-Praetorians have on the hit list. All those security moms may feel differently when they become gold star moms. But heck, their kids in body bags is better than having homosexuals mowing the lawn together across the street. I wish them joy of it. The rich people aren't worried, they can get their kids of out it, look at the President, eh? Reservists and National Guardsmen are effectively a back-door draft. They're generally older people with lives. With stop-loss, they can't get out when their hitch is up. If and when they are allowed to make the decision, many of them won't be re-upping. Their familes are suffering too much stress, and they don't get the benefits or support that the regular forces do. How long will they be forced to stay in? The old Roman enlistment was 25 years. How does the average 40 year old feel about endless military service with no way out? Will they mutiny eventually? Will the government be forced to face some reality and let them go? But, half their familes apparently don't care. Well, enjoy it when Dad's real job is gone, and he's 50 and disabled and has no meaningful pension and the kids have no health care, and mom decides to look for a better provider. I was hoping there might be a way out for Iraq. I knew Kerry could not perform a miracle, and now that we're mired down there, we are stuck to some extent. But at least he would have dealt with the situation with integrity, honesty towards the American people and the world, and he wouldn't have condoned torture and human rights violations. And he believes in treaties and the rule of law. But that hope is gone now, and the administration has made every possible wrong move from day one. I could make a long list: failing to institute martial law when they conquered Baghdad, failing to secure the borders against foreign terrorists, failing to control the munitions stockpiles, the insanity of "de-Baathification", bringing in exile stooges to institute a kleptocracy "government", failing to fund any meaningful reconstruction so that people could have hope of jobs and an investment in the future of their own country... Iraq is a failed state and I can see nothing but a descent into civil war. At some point the Kurds will say that they've had it and they are declaring their autonomy, and the fight for Kirkuk will begin. The Shi'a are the ones with the biggest investment in a working country, because in a democracy they would be the majority. The Sunnis won't let that happen. And nutjobs like al-Sadr benefit from all our mistakes, and the hopelessness of young men and the rage of impotence in the face of domination. Bush is Osama's best recruiting agent. And how we'll hold that down after the invasion of Iran I cannot say. But it will surely mean higher oil prices, due to so much instability in the second richest oil-producing area. The energy companies will still get rich, never fear, but maybe Joe Sixpack who knows GW will protect him from faggots on his block will get disturbed when the gas for his pickup is $3/gal. Maybe. We'll have to suck up to Russia, as they drift towards dictatorship -- dealing with the possibility of a Yukos type meltdown will seem worth the risk when the alternative is beheading. Oh, yeah, and we'll have to dig up that Alaskan wilderness. I mean, it's not even all that picturesque, is it? What difference will some oil wells make? And burn coal, yup lots of coal. Strip those mountains down, burn that coal in the midwest and send that pollution to the Northeast. A good trick on them, let them breathe the sulfuric acid for voting blue. The poor saps already working two jobs to make ends meet will find themselves pushed further and further down the scale. Less and less in the way of health care. And your social security will be privatized, so it will be your own responsibility to live when you're too old to work extra shifts. That's the ownership society for you. If you can't pay for your kidney transplant, well, hell, you just didn't work hard enough. And if your 13 year old gets knocked up, well, hell, that's your problem too. Sorry about the extra mouth to feed, but illegitimate kids don't get food stamps. Sorry the gal went to Mexico and died of septic abortion. But better that than... immorality!! We've got VALUES! nothing to eat, but you can go meditate on the big Ten Commandments down at the courthouse. Don't mind if we search your house while you're out. Yes, the American public is going to get what it asked for. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 3rd, 2004
3:11 pm	Going forward How to go forward from here? I'm numb, like so many others today. Once the shock and numbness wear off, it is important to turn grief into activism. I believe strongly in the potential of the internet to invigorate democracy, to increase the vital flow of information, truth, debate, discourse that is vital to a free society. It can, and has, created a progressive political community in the last two years, and this is only the beginning. I believe that it will be a necessary lifeline in the dark times to come. Herewith a number of important links whereby to keep connected and built the progressive infrastructure of the future: Daily Kos - I don't know what I would do without it. Juan Cole - the place to go for the most truth and insightful analysis on Irag and the Middle East that you are likely to find. It's only going to get more important as time goes by. Media Transparency - a free and accountable media is critical to democracy. The biggest triumph of the right wing has been to warp the media discourse, to peddle lies as truth and faith as reality. Keep an eye on it here. Commonweal - pays to understand your enemy. Josh Marshall - always worth reading. MyDD - Kos's blogfather (2 Comments |Comment on this)