Tuesday, 21 April 2009

Cheney misses the point

by Harry Haller at 12:03 pm | Be the first

Former Vice President Dick Cheney piped up in my reading of The New York Times this morning, asking on Fox News that the CIA “declassify reports documenting intelligence gained” from harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects under the Bush administration. “Harsh interrogations” is the Times’ code words for torture.

Some Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, accused the administration of endangering the country by disclosing national secrets. Cheney went on the Fox News Channel to announce that he had asked the C.I.A. to declassify reports documenting the intelligence gained from the interrogations. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former C.I.A. director, has also condemned the release of the memorandums and said the harsh questioning had value.

I have a couple of criticisms here, the first being that Cheney managed to stonewall the release of information requested by the people of the United States (his then-employer) for nearly a decade. My response to his current request? When you release the full transcripts and all documents related to your Energy Task Force, we, the people, will be happy to consider declassifying the CIA records you mentioned. Until then, forget it.

But second, and more importantly, Cheney misses the point. It doesn’t matter that intelligence was obtained through torture. His authorization and the subsequent exercise of torture violated national and international law. His argument is a lot like that of a thief saying, “Yeah, we broke the rules, but we made a lot of money.” Imagine Bernard Madoff using that defense; the state of New York would crucify him.

Dick Cheney condoned and abetted breaking the law. Worse, in a very real sense he reduced American civilization to the methods of its enemy and has left nations around the world asking, “How is the United States any different?” Among the reasons given for the removal of Saddam Hussein and his Baathist government was their use of torture. How can the United States demand that Cuba protect the human rights of its political prisoners when we are violating those of men imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay?

By his own admission, Cheney deserves a long prison term. No wonder he and his cronies are trying to shift the argument away from their felonies to the effectiveness of torture.

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Thursday, 16 April 2009

Allstate CEO calls for regulation

by Harry Haller at 11:53 am | Be the first

This New York Times op-ed caught me completely off guard: Tom Wilson, CEO of Allstate, is calling for federal regulation of insurance companies — and his argument is pretty sound.

Unlike banks or investment houses, insurance companies are not regulated by the federal government. Instead, they are regulated by individual states, which lack the expertise to properly oversee rapid innovation or systemic risks. Business leaders must work with the government to create a new regulatory structure. All companies that create risk for the financial markets need to be in “the pool” of federal regulation, including companies like Allstate. A good start would be for Congress to eliminate the hodgepodge of state regulatory systems by establishing a federal regulator for national insurance companies.

Here’s a regulation that could be used across the board: Let businesses behave as they should, with insurance companies indemnifying loss and banks lending money to qualified applicants at interest, and all making a fair profit — and stop playing keno with investors’ money. Pretty damned simple if you ask me.

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Tuesday, 14 April 2009

Cloned Camel Born in Dubai

by Harry Haller at 1:44 pm | Be the first

The implication of the BBC News story, “‘First camel clone’ born in Dubai” is obvious: Sooner or later, we’re going to clone a human. It’s inevitable. The only question is, “Which society will do it first?”

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Saturday, 11 April 2009

Why Rachel Maddow Is My Hero

by Harry Haller at 12:36 pm | Be the first

This 52-second spot by Rachel Maddow may be the funniest thing I’ve heard all day. Note to anti-gay marriage groups: You might want to be hip before adopting hip lingo.

They call this an old Chinese curse: “May you live in interesting times.” I have no idea about its origins or whether it was, indeed, a curse; but the longer I live the more I wish I did not live in times as interesting as these.

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Wednesday, 8 April 2009

Pashtunwali

by Harry Haller at 6:11 pm | Be the first

Why isn’t the nearly 20-year-old United States Rewards for Justice program working in Pakistan? BBC News security correspondent Frank Gardner sums it up in a single word: “pashtunwali.” Gardner explains, “Anyone caught betraying a fellow Muslim risks finding their family dishonored for generations.”

Consider Osama bin Laden, who has been the subject of numerous “wanted posters.” As Mike Scheuer, a former CIA officer explains, “He’s been in Afghanistan since 9/11. It’s the third poorest place on the planet. We have $200 million of reward money outstanding, including $50 million for Osama and no one has come forward to take a cent. I think we need in the West to grow up a little bit. Everything doesn’t pivot on money.”

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Thursday, 2 April 2009

Karzai Tramples Women’s Rights

by Harry Haller at 4:44 pm | Be the first

During the public relations buildup to the war on Afghanistan (a war I reluctantly supported, by the way) one of the things touted by the Bush administration as a reason to end the Taliban regime was its dismal record on women’s rights. A new government would allow the education and empowerment of women, we were told.

So much for that [expletive deleted].

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Eavesdropping: Lunch Conversation

by Harry Haller at 2:57 pm | Be the first

The Iraq War vet sitting parallel to me across the aisle at lunch was missing his right eye and his right leg just below the knee. He spoke earnestly in a measured voice with his hawkish companion about the need to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, insisting the United States would eventually be morally and fiscally bankrupted by an opponent whose culture it did not understand.

His companion was adamant: “We have to teach the Taliban a lesson,” he insisted. “We cannot allow them to attack Washington D.C.”

I am certain he was talking about the recent threat from Baitullah Mahsud, who claimed responsibility for a school shooting near Lahore and said, “Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world.”

“Then we should be defending Washington,” the vet responded. “Not wasting our energy in Afghanistan. If we extend our mission every time some idiot threatens us, we’ll be there forever.”

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Saturday, 28 March 2009

The Mills of the Gods

by Harry Haller at 4:30 pm | Be the first

For human rights advocates seeking a full investigation into torture under George W. Bush’s administration, hope may come not from U.S. President Barack Obama or Attorney General Eric Holder, but from Baltasar Garzón, the crusading judge who took on Augusto Pinochet in Spain. According to The New York Times, a high-level Spanish court is opening a criminal investigation against six officials of the Bush administration “on whether they violated international law by providing a legalistic framework to justify the use of torture of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.”

The move represents a step toward ascertaining the legal accountability of top Bush administration officials for allegations of torture and mistreatment of prisoners in the campaign against terrorism. But some American experts said that even if warrants were issued their significance could be more symbolic than practical, and that it was a near certainty that the warrants would not lead to arrests if the officials did not leave the United States.

Among those named in the complaint are former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, former Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo, and Douglas J. Feith, the former under secretary of defense for policy.

My hope is Spain will shame the United States into opening its own investigation. As President Obama told the nation, Eric Holder will be the people’s attorney — perhaps we should pressure him to do his job.

If the Bush administration was justified in its actions, we need to know it. If not, those who condoned and enabled torture should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

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Thursday, 26 March 2009

Meghan-omaniacal

by Harry Haller at 10:58 am | Be the first

Nancy Goldstein at Salon’s “Broadsheet” blog pegs it: Whatever the uberwealthy McCains are paying daughter Meghan’s publicist, it isn’t enough:

It’s hard to say how much of the Kool-aid McCain has drunk, or what, exactly, she’s trying to serve her readers. Despite gushing to Rachel Maddow that she “loves to be open” and “loves telling people about my experiences,” her transparency doesn’t go beyond telling her readers that she loves the Republican Party in the same breath that she admits to loving American Apparel tube socks and the song “Phenomena” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The whole experience of reading McCain’s blog or her Twitter page is eerily reminiscent of the segment on advertising that many of us had in our first year of college, in which we learned why the real product is rarely pictured: Because what advertising sells us is the image of the rugged cowboys we’ll be if we smoke the stuff. Similarly, there’s no talk in McCain’s world about the economy, or judicial nominees, or what should be done with John Yoo and other Bush-era figures that may have committed war crimes. Just the implied promise that you can be a young Republican and still have “Live Free or Die” emblazoned on your Twitter page with red, white and blue skulls. And say “badass” just a few lines down from where you say, “God, I love this country!”

I’m beginning to believe there’s good reason God allows despair about the state of the world as one declines into old age. It’s to make the death transition painless. Hippies made it easy for the Class of ‘44. Meghan and the McCain Youth are doing it for Yippies.

Thanks, y’all.

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Wednesday, 25 March 2009

Business as Usual

by Harry Haller at 9:39 am | Be the first

Matt Taibbi’s latest invective for Rolling Stone is entitled “The Big Takeover,” but it might as well be called “Welcome to the American Plutocracy.”

People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they’re not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

The crisis was the coup de grâce: Given virtually free rein over the economy, these same insiders first wrecked the financial world, then cunningly granted themselves nearly unlimited emergency powers to clean up their own mess. And so the gambling-addict leaders of companies like AIG end up not penniless and in jail, but with an Alien-style death grip on the Treasury and the Federal Reserve — “our partners in the government,” as Liddy put it with a shockingly casual matter-of-factness after the most recent bailout.

The only place I disagree with Taibbi is when he insists the public should be more angry than it is. The plutocracy is nothing new. It has been a part of the American system since our founders initially extended voting rights only the landed gentry.

Which is why I feel a measure of shame over my disappointment in the Obama administration’s handling of Wall Street. Why should it surprise me that Timothy Geithner — an insider among financial insiders — was tapped for treasury secretary, or that, for all the rhetoric to the contrary, administration policies still favor the hyperwealthy? After more than fifty years living in the belly of the beast, one might think I couldn’t be fooled by words like “hope” and “change,” but there it is. Chairman Mao was right: Hope and change will only come from the barrel of a gun, and I’m too old, too complacent, and too lazy to advocate armed revolution, Lincoln to the contrary.

Besides, there are no Utopias. Though I might insist that, ideally, good government is the collective means of protecting society’s weakest individuals from being unduly exploited by its strongest, I find in practice it is nothing of the sort. In the case of AIG, for example, government has become the abettor of exploitation.

Sorry, Matt. This isn’t the “big takeover.” It’s simply business as usual.

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