;)
Monday
Aug192013
The Commentariat -- Aug. 20, 2013
Josh Rogin of the Daily Beast: "The U.S. government has decided privately to act as if the military takeover of Egypt was a coup, temporarily suspending most forms of military aid, despite deciding not to announce publicly a coup determination one way or the other, according to ... Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT)...." See also today's News Ledes re: Saudi aid to the Egyptian military regime.
Erica Werner of the AP: "The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee is rejecting the idea of giving immigrants in the U.S. illegally a special pathway to citizenship. Republican congressman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia told a town hall meeting in the Shenandoah Valley on Monday that the House must chart its own course on immigration even if it never results in a bill President Barack Obama can sign. He said that he'll do everything he can to ensure the House never takes up the Senate's comprehensive immigration bill, which includes a path to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants in the country illegally."
Billy Kenber & Karla Adam of the Washington Post: "U.S. officials on Monday distanced themselves from the decision of British authorities to detain the Brazilian partner of Glenn Greenwald..., amid questions over the documents officials may have confiscated. White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that U.S. officials had received a 'heads up' that London police would detain David Miranda on Sunday, but he said the U.S. government did not request Miranda's detention, calling it 'a law enforcement action' taken by the British government." ...
... Jonathan Watts of the Guardian: "David Miranda, the partner of the Guardian journalist who broke stories of mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency, has accused Britain of a 'total abuse of power' for interrogating him for almost nine hours at Heathrow under the Terrorism Act. In his first interview since returning to his home in Rio de Janeiro early on Monday, Miranda said the authorities in the UK had pandered to the US in trying to intimidate him and force him to reveal the passwords to his computer and mobile phone. 'They were threatening me all the time and saying I would be put in jail if I didn't co-operate,' said Miranda." ...
... Steve M. of NMMNB: "You have a reasonable suspicion that Miranda has stolen national security secrets? Get a damn warrant. Arrest him in a conventional way. Allow him legal counsel. Act like a country where people actually are free." ...
... ** Bob Cesca of the Daily Banter: "So Miranda, Greenwald's spouse, served as a paid courier to transfer stolen, top secret national security documents from Greenwald to [filmmaker Laura] Poitras, and from Poitras back to Greenwald. That's a huge piece of the puzzle, not to mention a total debunking of any hysterical assertion that Miranda was being harassed and intimidated just because he's Greenwald's spouse. He was, in fact, detained because he was transporting stolen national secrets." Read the whole post. Via Steve M. ...
... Helen Davidson of the Guardian: "Amnesty International has condemned the detention of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald's partner at a London airport as 'unwarranted revenge tactics' based solely on his relationship with Greenwald." ...
... AND "Reporters Without Borders is outraged that US journalist Glen Greenwald's Brazilian partner David Miranda was detained and questioned for nine hours yesterday at London's Heathrow airport under the UK's Terrorism Act, and that his mobile phone, laptop and other computer equipment were all seized." ...
... Revenge Journalism. Pedro Fonseca of Reuters: Glenn Greenwald, "the journalist who first published secrets leaked by fugitive former U.S. intelligence agency contractor Edward Snowden, vowed on Monday to publish more documents and said Britain will 'regret' detaining his partner for nine hours.... 'I will be far more aggressive in my reporting from now. I am going to publish many more documents. I am going to publish things on England, too. I have many documents on England's spy system. I think they will be sorry for what they did,' Greenwald, speaking in Portuguese, told reporters at Rio de Janeiro's airport where he met Miranda upon his return to Brazil." ...
... CW: Let me get this straight. It's "an unwarranted revenge tactic" when the U.K. detains Greenwald's husband who is reputedly carrying stolen classified documents across international borders, but it's A-okay for Greenwald to retaliate by publishing documents that could compromise U.K. security. WTF am I missing here? Revenge is sweet when I do it? It's a travesty when you do it. Sorry, Glennbots, your hero is a punk. (And, yeah, I get that it's helpless little ole Glenn vs. the mighty Queen's secret service.) ...
... CW: Here's another question -- If the Guardian wanted a mole to smuggle in state secrets, couldn't they have hired a less obvious mule than Greenwald's husband? Say, a little old British lady who might have been traveling on holiday to see the Pergamon Altar & visit the Reichstag? Or did they just want another sensational story? ...
... CW: I see Gary Legum of Wonkette shares my skepticism: "Expertly baited trap, Glenn Greenwald, you evil genius you. Way to fall for it, British authorities. Now Glenzilla gets to inject some fresh energy into a story that had been wilting in the August doldrums and The Guardian gets a burst of web traffic. And we get yelled at for being leg-humping Obamabots. Everybody wins!" ...
... AND Joshua Foust, a national security writer, after excoriating the British authorities for the lengthy detention of Miranda, writes, "Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of his decision to help pilfer and distribute the treasured secrets of several governments, to do so openly, with such braggadocio, is not only arrogant it is misguided. This is not a game, especially to the governments being exposed, and casually involving a spouse to take a hit when he won't risk it is a bizarre and troubling decision.... It sounds a lot like [Miranda] is being used by Greenwald and doesn't fully understand the seriousness of what he's wrapped up in." Foust also notes that Miranda wasn't denied a lawyer; rather he was offered one & refused. ...
... Alan Rusbridger, editor-in-chief of the Guardian, defends the paper's tactics & relates intimidating incidents, during one of which Whitehall personnel destroyed some of the Guardian's documents & hard drives:
Miranda's professional status -- much hand-wringing about whether or not he's a proper 'journalist' -- is largely irrelevant in these circumstances. Increasingly, the question about who deserves protection should be less 'is this a journalist?' than 'is the publication of this material in the public interest?'
... Driftglass: "Now that a non-journalist in their employ has apparently been caught couriering stolen, classified national security documents across Europe, the Guardian has quickly moved to redefine the parameters of who gets journalist protection from 'journalist' to 'anybody'.... However, before we officially sign off abolishing the distinct category of 'journalist' altogether..., perhaps we should pause for just a moment to consider how that exciting new professional standard will be received by Rupert Murdoch and his merry band of phone hackers." ...
... Foust again: after providing a short list of over-the-top, fact-free reactions from "professional journalists" to the Miranda detention, "... being on the side of the truth is, apparently, not an option here -- the world is not a series of complex events, but a simplified bifurcation into 'us' and 'them,' and 'them' always must be vilified as your enemy. I expect this sort of manicheanism from Beltway partisan rags, but not from high-brow magazines and ostensibly professional journalists… but that is, apparently, naive of me." ...
... Oh, how could I have missed this? Chris Good of ABC News: "Julian Assange is a 'big admirer' of both Ron and Rand Paul, the Wikileaks founder said during a recent interview -- while calling some of the younger Paul's views 'sometimes simplistic.' ... Assange cited the Pauls' positions on foreign wars, military drafts, taxes, and abortion." (Emphasis added.) ...
... Travis Waldron of Think Progress: Rand "Paul would replace the current progressive tax system with a flat tax rate, effectively providing the wealthiest Americans with a massive tax cut while raising taxes on many middle- and lower-class families.... Paul's plan finds a way to grant the wealthy an even bigger tax cut by also eliminating all taxes on capital gains, dividends, and other investment income."
... Laura Chapin in U.S. News: "Rand Paul is not only anti-choice, he embraces 'personhood,' the far end of the extremist spectrum on opposing reproductive rights.... As a senator, Paul has introduced the Life at Conception Act, which codifies the notion of 'personhood' into federal law. 'Personhood' is a fringe movement that would give full legal and constitutional rights to fertilized eggs under the law. It would outlaw abortion in all cases, even for victims of rape or incest. It would outlaw many forms of hormonal contraception and IUDs, and limit emergency contraception and in vitro fertilization." ...
... CW: Julian Assange is a glib, self-centered ignoramus, who -- when flailing around looking for something to entertain himself -- latched onto the idea of hacking for fun, fame & profit. The results so far -- mixed.
Here's another guy whose insights into policy issues would not be worth reading -- except he is in a position to do more than opine:
It's not up to the courts to invent new minorities that get special protections. -- Justice Antonin Scalia, re: the Court's decisions on gay marriage & federal benefits for same-sex couples ...
... Joe Coscarelli of New York: "But don't even ask about term limits for justices: "Who is drooling on the bench?" Scalia said last night. Don't answer that."
Michael Shear & Peter Eavis of the New York Times: "President Obama urged the nation's top financial regulators on Monday to move faster on new rules for Wall Street, telling them in a private White House meeting that they must work to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis.
Steve Benen: "... a small business owner in Las Vegas who had some straightforward questions for Rep. Joe Heck (R-Nev.): 'Why would you oppose the ACA at every turn?' and 'Why would you oppose something that's helping me now?'" This is a beautiful thing to see. Heck's response is the real "train wreck": he claims, falsely, that Republicans had no opportunity to participate in the crafting of ObamaCare & that if the businessman increases his staff to 50+ employees, he'll be screwed:
Document No. 9. Chris Buckley of the New York Times: "Even as Xi [Jinping, China's leader,] has sought to prepare some reforms to expose China's economy to stronger market forces, he has undertaken a 'mass line' campaign to enforce party authority that goes beyond the party's periodic calls for discipline." "Document No. 9 warns against "'Western constitutional democracy'; ... promoting 'universal values' of human rights, Western-inspired notions of media independence and civic participation, ardently pro-market 'neo-liberalism,' and 'nihilist' criticisms of the party's traumatic past."
Presidential Election 2016
Patricia Murphy of the Daily Beast interviews some of Ted Cruz's Princeton classmates. His freshman year roommate, Craig Mazin, sez, "I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States. Anyone. I would rather pick somebody from the phone book." Some people Murphy interviewed liked Cruz, but "several fellow classmates ... described the young Cruz with words like 'abrasive,' 'intense,' 'strident,' 'crank,' and 'arrogant.' Four independently offered the word 'creepy,' with some pointing to Cruz's habit of donning a paisley bathrobe and walking to the opposite end of their dorm's hallway where the female students lived." ...
... Not Running for Canandian Prime Minister. Todd Gillman of the Dallas Morning News: "Sen. Ted Cruz acknowledged late Monday that he probably has been a lifelong Canadian and vowed to renounce that citizenship now that he realizes he's had it. 'The Dallas Morning News says that I may technically have dual citizenship,' Cruz, a freshman Republican from Texas, said in a statement. 'Assuming that is true, then sure, I will renounce any Canadian citizenship. Nothing against Canada, but I'm an American by birth and as a U.S. senator, I believe I should be only an American.'" ...
... Dan Amira of New York posts a copy of Cruz's official Canadian citizenship renunciation application. Best part: Cruz's reasons for renouncing his citizenship. And, yes, it's possible Amira took some liberties. ...
... Josh Marshall of TPM provides this link to the full form in case you are in need of renouncing your Canadian citizenship. Also, Marshall says it will cost $100. Maybe Ted can take it out of his exploratory committee expense fund. ...
... Aaron Blake: "No, Ted Cruz 'birthers' are not the same as Obama birthers.... Questions about Cruz's eligibility have everything to do with interpretation of the law; the questions about Obama's eligibility had everything to do with a dispute over the underlying facts.... In Cruz's case, nobody is disputing the underlying facts of the case..., but it's not 100 percent clear that that is the same thing as a 'natural born citizen' -- the requirement for becoming president. Most scholars think it's the same thing, and the Congressional Research Service said in 2011 that someone like Cruz 'most likely' qualifies to run for president. But to this point, there is no final word from the courts, because while foreign-born candidates have run -- including George Romney and John McCain -- none of them has actually won and had his eligibility challenged." ...
... John Cole of Balloon Juice: none of these messy facts has stopped CNN from comparing the years of Obama birther hoo-hah to Ted Cruz's one-day story, even though "I've not seen one Democrat make an issue about this other than to snicker and laugh.... Because, you know, Ted Cruz voluntarily releasing his birth certificate and everyone yawning is the same as a sustained multi-year effort to delegitimize President Obama while asserting he is Kenyan and blah blah blah. Also, too, both sides do it." CW: the CNN writers are "professional journalists," the Fates help us.
Al Hunt of Bloomberg News: "Hillary Clinton doesn't want the biopics, either.... Members of the Clinton camp ... worry the TV series are more likely to hurt than help their candidate in the likely event she decides to run. They calculate the Republicans are already, in the words of one pundit, 'working the refs' -- meaning the networks now would have to bend over backward to avoid turning the programs into flattering portraits. And they note the director of the CNN program is Charles Ferguson, who won an Academy Award for 'Inside Job,' a scathing documentary on the Wall Street financial crisis. That film cast blame, in part, on key figures in President Bill Clinton's administration for their roles in the events leading up to the crash."
Local News
CBS News/AP: "City Hall opened as usual Monday but Mayor Bob Filner was nowhere to be found, still out of public view as he tries to survive a recall effort prompted by a cascade of sexual harassment allegations that led the entire City Council and many leading fellow Democrats to call for him to resign.... According to San Diego's 10News, Filner's attorneys were in a mediation session Monday morning with City Attorney Jan Goldsmith and attorney Gloria Allred, who is representing some of the women who claim they were sexually harassed by the mayor. The station reported that the lawyers were negotiating a deal that could lead to Filner's resignation."
News Ledes
Daily Beast: "U.S. officials followed the Internet trail of an al Qaeda courier to learn the details of an electronic conference between more than 20 of the organization's top officials."
New York Times: " Days before he opened fire inside a medical processing building at Fort Hood here in 2009, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sent two e-mails to his Army superiors expressing concern about the actions of some of the soldiers he was evaluating as a military psychiatrist."
Washington Post: "The Muslim Brotherhood vowed Tuesday that it would not take up arms in response to the arrest of the group's spiritual leader, as it reeled from a crackdown that threatens to paralyze Egypt's most prominent Islamist organization." ...
... New York Times: Across Egypt, Christians & their churches have been the targets of Islamist violence. "As Christians were scapegoated for supporting the military ouster of Mr. Morsi, the authorities stood by and watched: in Nazla, as in other places, the army and the police made no attempt to intervene." ...
... Washington Post: "... more than 60 churches ... have been attacked, vandalized and in many cases set aflame across Egypt in a surge of violence against Christians that has followed the bloody Aug. 14 raid by Egyptian security forces on two Islamist protest camps in Cairo. The attacks, most of them in Egypt's Nile Valley, have lent legitimacy to the military-backed government's claims that it is fighting a war against terrorism."
New York: Crime novelist Elmore Leonard has died at the age of 87. Update: the New York Times obituary is here.
New York Times: "Saudi Arabia has emerged as the foremost supporter of Egypt’s military rulers, explicitly backing the violent crackdown on Islamists and using its oil wealth and diplomatic muscle to help defy growing pressure from the West to end the bloodshed in search of a political solution. As Europeans and the United States considered cutting cash aid to Egypt, Saudi Arabia said Monday that it and its allies would make up any reduction -- effectively neutralizing the West's main leverage over Cairo." ...
... Washington Post: "Security forces arrested the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood on Monday night, in an escalating showdown with the influential Islamist movement that has led to the ouster of Egypt's first democratically elected president and some of the bloodiest urban violence in its modern history."
New York Times: "A Pakistani court indicted Pervez Musharraf on Tuesday in connection with the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the first time that a former military leader has faced criminal proceedings in Pakistan."
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"leg-humping Obamabots". I think someone needs to make some Ojama pajamas with that imagine.
I can hope only that this is TRUE! But, truth to tell, I am doubtful.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/19/senator-obama-administration secretly-suspended-military-aid-to-egypt.html
One of these days I will figure out the way to copy accurate links on my new iMac. DUH! Here is (I hope) the correct link:
<http://elink.thedailybeast.com/4e555bd0e018bee76c341cb4145ph.mwn/UhLP3OYQbVDa-QwsDf5f8>
Dead horses, beware. I've been thinking about Akhilleus's analysis (in yesterday's Comments) of Malcolm Gladwell's piece on To Kill a Mockingbird. While Akhilleus makes many good points which I won't contest, his central thesis is a common, but fallacious one: that Atticus Finch was a product of his time; i.e., the 1930s, the period in which the novel is set.
That is not true. As with all literary fiction, the characters in Mockingbird are products of the author's time; in this particular case, the late 1950s, or – as Gladwell claimed – Big Jim Folsom's time. (Folsom, BTW, was born in 1908, which would put him in his late 20s at the time the Mockingbird story takes place, so he is closer in age to the Atticus character than Akhilleus lets on; however, that is neither here nor there.) Just as Arthur Miller's “The Crucible” was not about 17th-century Salem, but about 1950s McCarthyism, so Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird was not about 1930s Alabama, but about the 1950s South. Yes, as Ken Winkes says, we must put Thomas Jefferson in proper perspective, but Jefferson was a real guy who can't reasonably be pulled out of one time & held to the standards of another. A fictional character is quite another matter. Indeed, the central episode in Mockingbird is based on a paradigmatic moment that occurred not in the 1930s but in 1955 – the murder of Emmett Till for ogling a white girl.
To Kill a Mockingbird is, at one level, a coming-of-age story based on Lee's own life, at another level it is a dramatic, popular page-turner, but it is mostly a literary tour of a particularly complicated set of societal codes, codes set in time and place. Breaking any of the codes has consequences, but the severity of the consequences depends upon who you are. Scout is ostracized by the church ladies for not being feminine enough, but social ostracism is the worst consequence of her breaking the code; Boo is locked up for life for breaking the code of “normality”; Tom Robinson (coincidentally, Michelle Obama's birth name) is accused of breaking the white/black code, even tho he did not, & the consequence for him is death.
The jury get this – they are actually upholding the code when they convict Robinson despite the evidence that he is innocent. Tom, BTW, is not a strong character in his own right – he is the typical Faulknerian weak Negro man who must rely on a white man (and even on the white children Scout & her brother at one point) to defend him. Scout's breaking the dress code doesn't get her into much trouble, but breaking the white/black code (she sits in the “colored section” to listen to the trial) nearly gets her killed. Atticus, a lawyer, works in a field that is about nothing but codes, but he breaks a few – first by defending Robinson, then by condoning the breaking of the most important legal and moral code of all – thou shall not kill. Of course Bob Ewell – the “victim” – is a walking (or rather, staggering) code-breaker, so the reader is left with the impression, when Atticus & the sheriff cover up his killing, that two wrongs do make a right. I don't know what Lee's opinion of this is, but it doesn't matter; her character Atticus makes the life-&-death decision to let Boo Radley evade the legal code, though Boo has been a victim of the oppressive social code all his life. Notice, too that people in positions of authority -- white men -- like the sheriff & the town's lawyer are allowed to break even the most basic of codes because they are the enforcers. I think the real meaning here – & of the whole novel – is that the Code of the South is rotten to the core. It doesn't work for anyone. To live a just & honorable life, one must break it time & again. For me, the real power of the novel is not in Atticus's actions but in Lee's complete evisceration of the Southern “Code of Honor.” It doesn't work for anyone -- even for the powerful, because even though they are sanctioned under the terms of the code to break it, they must break it in secret.
One need not agree with Gladwell's final analysis to allow that his attempt to equate Folsom with Finch is wholly justified. Folsom was ten years younger than the Atticus character, but he was 18 years – nearly a generation – older than Lee. Folsom was a man ahead of his time much more than was Atticus. Atticus fully accepted the segregationist code, albeit he did so in the same genteel way that real-life upper-class whites of the time (1930s AND 1950s) did. Atticus's polite racism was – & still is – quite common. Perhaps because upper-class white Southerners usually are part Negro, or at least have part-Negro relatives, the code demanded that they maintain the racist status quo without foaming at the mouth against their kin. To this day, the way a white person treats blacks is an indicator of social class – it's all codified. Jim Folsom broke the code in an extraordinary way. He publicly argued in favor of racial integration. In 1949! Ten years before the relatively conservative Atticus Finch came alive on the page.
Marie
Note on Elmore Leonard's death: His demise, very much unlike potentially un-televised Republican Presidential candidates' debates, is a real loss to the nation.
Asimov (another day-dead horse?) once said the three English prose stylists he most admired were Shakespeare, Mark Twain and P. G. Wodehouse. I would put Leonard in that rare company. Never a clunker, never a word out of place. Like seeing squirrels scamper from limb to limb, his writing makes me smile.
I liken Elmore Leonard's writing to Keith Richards' guitar playing. Never flashy. Never tried to blow you away with complex lines or spectacular technique. But every note was perfect, and served to elevate the popular to high art.
He will be missed.
Elmore Leonard's novels were accessible and smart, two characteristics that are hard to achieve in one swoop. I love "Justified" (FX) based on a couple of his novels and a short story. He also produced the show. Although Raylan Givens is a the main character (Oliphant is easy on the eyes too), in my view, the Boyd Crowder character is the real jewel. Leonard is Americana with intelligence and true heart.
Re: A nother dead poet; Sure as fuck he didn't go to heaven; heaven is a train station with clouds. When you can read the same sentence twice and marvel at how the words surround you; you're reading a poet. Rest in peace; Mr.Leonard; thanks for the ride.