;)
Saturday
Jun292013
The Commentariat -- June 30, 2013
Michael Shear & Rick Lyman of the New York Times: "... President Obama abandoned his hope for a visit [with Nelson Mandela] and instead on Saturday used every stop [in South Africa] to talk in emotional and sweeping terms about what Mr. Mandela meant to the world, and to him."
Enough Already. Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog: "Attorneys for the parties who sought to defend Proposition 8 in federal court have filed an emergency motion in the Supreme Court seeking to block same-sex marriages from proceeding in California. The filing (via Jess Bravin) is available here." ...
... "The Real John Roberts Emerges." Linda Greenhouse: "In its sweeping disregard of history, precedent and constitutional text, the chief justice's 5-to-4 opinion in the voting rights case was startling for its naked activism, but no one watching the court over the past few years could have been surprised by the outcome.... Clearly, he doesn't trust Congress.... But oddly for someone who earned his early stripes in the Justice Department and White House Counsel's Office, he doesn't like the executive branch any better.... What's left? The Supreme Court." ...
... New York Times Editors: "The most fundamental change Congress could make would be a law declaring a universal right to vote that could not be infringed by any level of government. The Voting Rights Act was aimed at combating discrimination 'on account of race or color,' which was the urgent problem of the time. Discrimination has now broadened to encompass more groups of different kinds, and it is time for a broader law, especially given the Supreme Court's clear intent to dismantle all racial protections." CW: oh yeah? Watch the Tenthers on the Court find universal voting rights unconstitutional. ...
... Lincoln Caplan of the New York Times: "Elena Kagan..., the first Supreme Court justice appointed in almost 40 years who wasn't a judge before she arrived at the court..., is achieving a goal that other justices say they strive for and yet seldom attain: writing readable judicial opinions that non-lawyers can understand.... What puts her in a class by herself is her combination of down-to-earth writing and the ingredients essential to influential opinions: conceptual insight, penetrating legal analysis and argumentative verve.... Before she joined the court in 2010, the dominance of the five conservatives was bolstered by their aggressiveness and sometimes arrogance at oral arguments and in opinions. Their bravado and occasional bullying haven't abated much, but she is an effective counterweight." ...
... Just the fact that he talks about black people voting as an entitlement, that is so much more racist than anything Paula Deen ever said. -- Bill Maher on Antonin Scalia
New York Times Editors: "Wendy Davis's filibuster is a reminder of the need for engagement by elected officials and voters to prevent further restrictions that trample on the rights and health of women. With so many damaging restrictions already on the books, though, much also depends on the courts to do their job and insist on respect for existing constitutional protections. That includes the Supreme Court...."
David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "Edward Snowden is 'marooned in Russia' without a valid U.S. passport, [Julian Assange,] the leader of the WikiLeaks organization said Sunday morning on ABC's 'This Week With George Stephanopoulos.'" ...
... Joe's on the Case. William Neuman of the New York Times: "President Rafael Correa of Ecuador said Saturday that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had asked him in a telephone call not to grant asylum to Edward J. Snowden.... Mr. Correa, speaking on his weekly television broadcast, said that the two had a 'cordial' conversation on Friday initiated by Mr. Biden, but said he could not decide on Mr. Snowden's request until he entered Ecuador." ...
... Poornima Gupta of Reuters: "Former National Security Agency director Mike McConnell, who now works for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, said people employed to sift through classified government data should not have solo access to the information. McConnell, a Booz Allen vice chairman, was making one of his first public comments since former U.S. spy agency contractor and Booz Allen employee Edward Snowden revealed the agency's top-secret monitoring of phone and internet data. Speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Friday, McConnell said he supports a proposal made by NSA chief General Keith Alexander." CW: so I guess this safeguard hasn't been obvious for, oh, the last half-century. ...
... Laura Poitras, et al., in Der Spiegel: "Information obtained by Spiegel shows that America's National Security Agency (NSA) not only conducted online surveillance of European citizens, but also appears to have specifically targeted buildings housing European Union institutions. The information appears in secret documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden that Spiegel has in part seen. A 'top secret' 2010 document describes how the secret service attacked the EU's diplomatic representation in Washington. The document suggests that in addition to installing bugs in the building in downtown Washington, DC, the EU representation's computer network was also infiltrated. In this way, the Americans were able to access discussions in EU rooms as well as emails and internal documents on computers."
... Komrade Snowden. Ellen Barry of the New York Times: "While Edward J. Snowden has remained mysteriously hidden from sight during his visit to Russia this week, Russian television has been making him a hero.... Since Mr. Snowden landed in Moscow on Sunday, the likelihood that he will remain in Russia has steadily crept up.... The chance that Russia will turn him in [to the U.S.] has all but vanished, as evidenced by Thursday's television programs, which were almost certainly produced under Kremlin orders and have a powerful effect on public opinion. Officials here have signaled an openness to granting him political asylum, and each passing day would seem to narrow Mr. Snowden's options, giving the United States time to negotiate with Ecuador and Venezuela, other countries that may grant him asylum." ...
... Ian Phillips of the AP: "... I deliberately got myself sequestered in the hopes of finding Edward Snowden at Moscow's main airport. The experience leaves me feeling that if the NSA leaker is indeed in the transit zone of the airport, as President Vladimir Putin claims, he may already have a taste of what it's like to be in prison.... But no sign of Snowden." ...
... Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog: "It's ironic if [Snowden] refused to return to the U.S. because he didn't want to face Bradley Manning's fate and is now effectively a prisoner somewhere in Putin's sphere of interest." ...
... Edith Lederer of the AP: "U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice dismissed claims that Edward Snowden's highly classified leaks have weakened the Obama presidency and damaged U.S. foreign policy, insisting that the United States will remain 'the most influential, powerful and important country in the world.'" CW: how does Rice know this? Why, because the NSA has been reading the correspondence & listening in on the phone calls of world leaders, & they're not actually all that ticked off. ...
... Really? "Germans Loved Obama. Now We Don't Trust Him. Malte Spitz, of Germany's Green Party, in a New York Times op-ed: "During Mr. Obama's presidency, no American political debate has received as much attention in Germany as the N.S.A. Prism program. People are beginning to second-guess the belief that digital communication stays private. It changes both our perception of communication and our trust in Mr. Obama." CW P.S. Our European allies also will be right pleased to read the new Der Spiegel story above.
... Glenn Greenwald's speech to the Socialism Conference in Chicago, video & transcript courtesy of Kevin Gosztola of Firedoglake. The part about Bill Keller is exceptional. ...
... Edward Epstein, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, asks who helped Ed Snowden steal classified documents. Epstein implies Glenn Greenwald & others might have done so, since they began communicating with Snowden prior to his taking the Booz Allen job, which Snowden says he sought & took only so he could get access to the data. ...
To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime? -- David Gregory, to Glenn Greenwald, last week ...
... If It's Sunday, It's "Meet the Press." On the subject of accusing Greenwald, without evidence, BTW, of aiding & abetting Snowden, Frank Rich asks -- & implicitly answers -- the question, "Is David Gregory a journalist?" CW: Given the obvious answer, here's my question: "Is NBC violating truth-in-advertising standards by calling The Dancing Dave Show "Meet the Press?" Think about it. No actual reporters appear on the show -- uh, unless it's to accuse them of committing the crime of journalism. Their paid "journalists" run to Mary Matelin, Peggy Noonan & Carly Fiorina.
Brendan Farrington of the AP: "A group of atheists unveiled a monument to their nonbelief in God on Saturday to sit alongside a granite slab that lists the Ten Commandments in front of the Bradford County, [Florida,] courthouse. As a small group of protesters blasted Christian country music and waved 'Honk for Jesus' signs, the atheists celebrated what they believe is the first atheist monument allowed on government property in the United States."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding the ouster of Egypt's president, Mohamed Morsi, poured into the streets of the capital and cities across the country Sunday, while tens of thousands of his Islamist allies gathered with makeshift clubs, helmets and shields vowing to defend the presidential palace."
Jerusalem Post: "Any future agreement with the Palestinians will be brought to the country in the form of a referendum, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said at the outset of the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, just hours after finishing a six-hour late-night meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry.... Generally promises of a referendum are made to neutralize a political crisis by assuring ministers opposed that they need not bolt the government over the issue because the public will ultimately decide." ...
... Reuters: "U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry ended a marathon round of shuttle diplomacy between Israelis and Palestinians on Sunday without an agreement on restarting peace talks."
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Reader Comments (5)
Here's the part of David Halberstan's 2005 Columbia Journalism School speech that Greenwald is referring to:
"Probably the moment I am proudest of in my career is this: By the fall of 1963, I was one of a small group of reporters in Saigon – we had enraged Washington and Saigon by filing pessimistic dispatches on the war. In particular, my young colleague, Neil Sheehan, and I were considered the enemy. The president of the United States, JFK, had already asked the publisher to pull me. On[that] day that fall, there was a major battle in the Delta (the Americans were not yet in a full combat role; they were in an advising and support role). MACV – the American military command – tried to keep out all reporters so they could control the information. Neil and I spent the day pushing hard to get there – calling everyone, including Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and General Paul Harkins. With no luck, of course."
"In those days, the military had a daily late afternoon briefing given by a major or a Captain, called the Five O’clock Follies, because of the generally low value of the information."
"On this particular day, the briefing was different, given not by a Major but by a Major General, Dick Stilwell, the smoothest young general in Saigon. It was in a different room and every general and every bird Colonel in the country was there. Picture if you will [a] rather small room, about the size of a classroom, with about 10 or 12 reporters there in the center of the room. And in the back, and outside, some 40 military officers, all of them big time brass. It was clearly an attempt to intimidate us. General Stilwell tried to take the intimidation a step further. He began by saying that Neil and I had bothered General Harkins and Ambassador Lodge and other VIPs, and we were not to do it again. Period."
"And I stood up, my heart beating wildly – and told him that we were not his corporals or privates, that we worked for The New York Times and UP and AP and Newsweek, not for the Department of Defense. I said that we knew that 30 American helicopters and perhaps 150 American soldiers had gone into battle, and the American people had a right to know what happened. I went on to say that we would continue to press to go on missions and call Ambassador Lodge and General Harkins, but he could, if he chose, write to our editors telling them that we were being too aggressive, and were pushing much too hard to go into battle. That was certainly his right."
And now the sentence that Glenn takes to heart:
"So: Never let them intimidate you. Never. If someone tries, do me a favor and work just a little harder on your story. Do two or three more interviews. Make your story a little better."
I think it's admirable that Halberstan is one of Glenn's mentors, but David earned his reputation in the trenches– the civil right's struggles and Vietnam specifically while Greenwald, in this case, is outing someone else's "stuff." As far as I know Greenwald hasn't had to dodge any bullets or bombs in foreign places or had groups of race baiters fling ugly epithets at him in those states below the Mason-Dixon line. And yes, the Keller reference is interesting but we are left wondering how true and how often.
One more thing about this closed state within an open state that journalism wants to open wide and let the good times fly. During the Eisenhower run when the CIA conducted a secret coup in Guatemala involving the American United Fruit Co., the NYT's had been used and the public was ignorant of the true nation of the whole matter. Arthur Hays Sulzberger, not at all happy about the way his paper had been used confronted Allen Dulles, then head of the CIA. It was an important moment, a warning to the paper's top executives about the potential difference between the agenda of the secret government and that of serious journalists.
Oh, and now finally we know how Bob Woodward got all that information he cites in all those books of his. You know the parts, the ones where only two people in the room who don't reveal their conversation to Bob, but somehow Bob knows what went down. We thought maybe Bob hid under desks or closets, but now we know the answer––BUGS! It seems all those bloody Washington DC buildings are bugged along with European Union Institutions. Time to meet in underground garages and use sign language in meetings. Meanwhile the west is burning up and the heat is on.
@PD Pepe: thanks for transcribing the Halberstam excerpt. It was thrilling reading. Of course the reporters would have loved it if Stilwell had complained they were too aggressive. Their next paychecks would probably have been $5 fatter.
Marie
According to the WaPo story you just linked, Snowden's father, Lonnie Snowden, had stated that he felt that WikiLeaks was exploiting his son. Assange "assured" him that was not the case. If I were Lonnie, I wouldn't trust Assange. His specialty is getting what he wants, and leaving the conduit to fend for themselves.
@Barbarossa: leaking classified information & "rescuing" the leaker are transactional, so there's something in it for everybody. This doesn't necessarily means that the actors are bad guys, but it does mean that everyone involved has skin in the game: Snowden gets back at the U.S. for whatever it is that pissed him off, then -- in an unusual turn for a leaker -- he also gets his 27 minutes of fame, which includes a chance for him to portray himself as an upstanding hero, & now, perhaps escaping U.S. law enforcement; Greenwald, et al., get their scoops, plus Greenwald gets to advance his political agenda; Assange, sidelined by the Swedish malarkey, gets back in the news, where he too wants to be.
These are the lead characters, but of course there are others -- Obama, Putin, Correa, Merkel, etc. -- who have bigger fish to fry.
So, yeah, Lonnie Snowden is right, but the truth is that everybody is exploiting everybody. At this point, the father appears to be the only player who has a relatively "pure" motive: he wants to save a son who clearly has given him a lot of trouble, at least back to the years Ed was goofing off in high school.
As with most transactions, it's hard to locate the hero in these shenanigans.
Marie