Waiting for the Moon

From The New York Review of Books
Afghanistan: The Betrayal
Garry Wills
December 2, 2009

…….Others I respect have given up on him before now. I can see why. His backtracking on the treatment of torture (and photographs of torture), his hesitations to give up on rendition, on detentions, on military commissions, and on signing statements, are disheartening continuations of George W. Bush’s heritage. But I kept hoping that he was using these concessions to buy leeway for his most important position, for the ground on which his presidential bid was predicated.

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Via: Fondo Libre

From: LIND - William S. Lind on fourth generation warfare and cultural conservatism.

William S. Lind
December 4, 2009

“O=W” is a bumper sticker beginning to show up on liberals’ cars. After the President’s speech Tuesday night at West Point, I suspect it will spread rapidly.

For eight years, conservatives endured the agony of watching President George W. Bush attach the label “conservative” to a host of policies that were anti-conservative: Wilsonian wars, American empire, vast budget and trade deficits, increased entitlements, and the subordination of America’s interests to those of foreign powers. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and liberals are bidden to hold their tongues as President Obama makes Bush’s wars his own. The usual Washington sell-out is in gear.

It should not come as a surprise. America is now a one-party state. The one party is the Establishment party, which is also the war party. Unless you are willing to cheer permanent war for permanent peace, you cannot be a member of the Establishment.

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So what lies behind President Obama’s decision? Domestic political considerations, of course. He has done what politicians always do when faced with difficult choices: he has kicked the can down the road, to a specific date, July, 2011. That is when the President promises we will begin a withdrawal from Afghanistan. The date is meaningless beyond its political meaning, i.e., at that point Obama will again be faced with the same decision he just punted. With a Presidential election looming, he will punt again. Meanwhile, the war’s price, in money and casualties, will have risen, making it even harder to walk away from sunk costs.

The Guardian UK launches an interesting crowd sourcing project.

David Leigh and Ian Griffiths
guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday 1 December 2009

The former prime minister Tony Blair has received millions of pounds through an unusual mixture of commercial, charitable and religious income streams. Since he stepped down from office in 2007, his financial affairs have been described by observers as “Byzantine” and “opaque”. The Guardian is now launching an online competition offering a prize to the person who can shine the brightest light on those financial structures.

I will be following this story.

The New York Review of Books
Volume 56, Number 15 · October 8, 2009

By Garry Wills

George W. Bush left the White House unpopular and disgraced. His successor promised change, and it was clear where change was needed. Illegal acts should cease—torture and indefinite detention, denial of habeas corpus and legal representation, unilateral canceling of treaties, defiance of Congress and the Constitution, nullification of laws by signing statements. Powers attributed to the president by the theory of the unitary executive should not be exercised. Judges who are willing to give the president any power he asks for should not be confirmed.

But the momentum of accumulating powers in the executive is not easily reversed, checked, or even slowed. It was not created by the Bush administration. The whole history of America since World War II caused an inertial transfer of power toward the executive branch. The monopoly on use of nuclear weaponry, the cult of the commander in chief, the worldwide network of military bases to maintain nuclear alert and supremacy, the secret intelligence agencies, the entire national security state, the classification and clearance systems, the expansion of state secrets, the withholding of evidence and information, the permanent emergency that has melded World War II with the cold war and the cold war with the “war on terror”—all these make a vast and intricate structure that may not yield to effort at dismantling it. Sixty-eight straight years of war emergency powers (1941–2009) have made the abnormal normal, and constitutional diminishment the settled order.

By refusing to join the Mine Ban Treaty, Obama shows disregard for international humanitarian law.
Op-Ed LA Times
By Jody Williams
December 1, 2009

Last Tuesday, just before the Thanksgiving holiday, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly revealed that President Obama would follow in President George W. Bush’s footsteps and not sign the international Mine Ban Treaty. Many of us had hoped he would embrace President Clinton’s pledge that the U.S. would join.

Haaretz Exclusive: EU draft document on division of Jerusalem
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent 01/12/2009

The current holder of the rotating European Union presidency, Sweden, has put together a draft document calling for the division of Jerusalem between Israel and a future Palestinian state and implying that the EU would recognize a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood.

Haaretz has obtained a copy of the document (below) that has sparked criticism by Israel, which claims that such a move would further harm the chances of renewing the Mideast peace process.

From The Electronic Freedom Foundation

by Kevin Bankston
This October, Chris Soghoian — computer security researcher, oft-times journalist, and current technical consultant for the FTC’s privacy protection office — attended a closed-door conference called “ISS World”. ISS World — the “ISS” is for “Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception, Criminal Investigations and Intelligence Gathering” — is where law enforcement and intelligence agencies consult with telco representatives and surveillance equipment manufacturers about the state of electronic surveillance technology and practice. Armed with a tape recorder, Soghoian went to the conference looking for information about the scope of the government’s surveillance practices in the US. What Soghoian uncovered, as he reported on his blog this morning, is more shocking and frightening than anyone could have ever expected

A look at the suburbs, the housing crisis, crime, ghettos and Neo Liberal solutions. The long article is sarcastic and a flippant, but is spot on with much of its criticism.

After all, pushing the poor out into the exurbs would solve a lot of problems with one simple action: you’d get rid of the housing surplus (by unloading houses that no one wants anyway onto the government) and privatize valuable public land—and you’d do it all for the “benefit” of the poor and disenfranchised. Now that’s free market efficiency at its best.