Whether the U.S. manages to broker a peace with the Taliban or not, one legacy of the war on terror remains—the prison at Guantanamo Bay (also called Gitmo). At its height, this symbol of Bush administration power held 600 people. And as miserable as the infrastructure reportedly is down there, its commander, Navy Rear Admiral John Ring, says he could fit 200 more people if given an increase in the same number of soldiers. He'd rather have an influx of money, however.
So there were once 600 prisoners. Now there are only 40. Forty people being watched over by 1,700 soldiers. Forty people who have been held in limbo for going on two decades now. Some of them, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are clearly mass murderers who should still have their trial (and if he ever does, the torture he suffered will be a terrific coup for his defense). Others linger in prison, not charged, not freed, and generally making a mockery of the whole American concept of a speedy trial. The spooky thing is how comfortable the country became with letting people stay in prison without trial.
You might recall that President Obama made a campaign promise to close Gitmo. His efforts petered out once people realized criminal trials of the remaining detainees would take place in the continental U.S. And in fact, the public—particularly the Republican public—has long been opposed to shutting the place down and letting detainees face trial. Obama clearly had little interest in using his political capital on forcing the issue. Now, President Trump heartily supports the prison, and the most recent omnibus spending bill involved a heaping $115 million just for permanent troop barracks (plus more than $85 million in other costs).
Under Trump, neoconservatives are beloved allies, and worrying about Gitmo is so early aughts. But it's still there. In fact, the U.S. appears to be taking the idea of sending a fresh crop of 50 or so accused ISIS fighters (out of nearly 1,000) there, particularly if the American withdrawal from Syria actually goes through.
The military preference is to send suspects back to their country of origin, and have them be prosecuted there. However, that obviously doesn't always work out in a war not fought against nation states. Plus, dependable warmongers of today, including Sens. Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio want to add some fresh ISIS blood to Gitmo. This is in spite of the potential for the whole thing to backfire on hawks. A 2017 Heritage Foundation study cautioned that ISIS prisoners would have a particularly strong case against being held there, thanks to the legality of the war against them being itself on shaky—or at least unchallenged—ground. Whether ISIS fighters end up in Gitmo or not, Trump is not likely to be worrying about whether the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force legalizes the war against ISIS. However, the current plan is that Guantanamo Bay will continue operating for the next two and a half decades. It seems unlikely that most or even many prisoners will get a trial during that time.
If the problem of indefinite detainment doesn't strike your fancy, or you're just used to it by this point, there's always the fact that Gitmo is appallingly expensive. In 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union reported that the prison costs $454 million to operate every year. In 2013, that amounted to $11 million for every prisoner. Since it opened, the prison has cost taxpayers nearly $5 billion.
Another strange-to-comprehend cost is the looming fact of Gitmo's population aging. According to NBC, detainees' "average age is 46, and one is now 71." As expensive as the prison is for taxpayers, the reality is that government-funded elderly prisoner care is always going to come at an insane cost. The secretive Camp 7, home of the most 15 most valuable prisoners, is reportedly in the worst kind of shape, and is cracking and sinking. Congress has doled out money for a medical center for detainees, and for various resources to keep troops moderately well-fed and clothed. However, they refuse to approve funds for new facilities for detainees. Unsurprisingly, most of the more than $350 million Congress has set aside for Gitmo is for the benefit of the base, not the actual prison.
For those who believe Gitmo to be a humanitarian and civil liberties horror, it's difficult to know what to support. Inhumane conditions are not acceptable, but the absurdly bloated costs are also wildly unnecessary.
Congress could give Gitmo the $69 million Ring says they need to make a cheaper, more sustainable prison. Or they could withhold it and let these unsympathetic rogues age and suffer indefinitely. But we don't need to waffle, Obama-style, because Trump has declared Gitmo an "enduring mission" that will last long after his presidency. This is another legacy of the war on terror that we can't rid ourselves of, or even begin to imagine that such a thing is possible.
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]]>Last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Rep. Adam Smith (D–Wash.) introduced the No First Use Act, designed to prevent the U.S. from using nuclear weapons in a first strike without congressional approval. What should be the lowest possible standard of sanity—that the Oval Office shouldn't be able to drop the big one without any oversight—has been introduced before, but it didn't make progress.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D–Calif.), whose similar Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017 stagnated, but was re-introduced last week as well, makes no secret of the fact that Donald Trump makes him particularly nervous here, but the broader idea of not letting any president have the uncontested power to start global thermonuclear war is something libertarians and Ted should share.
The Federation of American Scientists suggests that the United States has about 6,500 nuclear weapons and Russia has around 6,800. Will Saetren, a specialist in nuclear security at the public-private nonprofit CRDF Global, suggests the American number is closer to 9,000. Whatever the correct number is, it's slated to increase: The Trump administration is putting a new weapon into production. The new project, dubbed the W76-2, marks a reversal of the last 40 years of concerted removal, control, and destruction of nuclear weapons since the U.S. arsenal peaked with about 31,000 nukes in the late 1960s.
According to NPR, the W76-2 is a 5- to 7-kiloton version of the W76-1, an approximately 100-kiloton weapon. It's a low-yield weapon, but it's still a nuclear weapon, and the use of terms like "low-yield" and "tactical" obfuscate the reality that it's still a nuke, and that once one weapon is used, others will follow. In his Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, Daniel Ellsberg recalls learning during the Eisenhower years that there was no U.S. plan to attack only the USSR: China was part of the deal by default, as if leveling just one country was too subtle. Furthermore, as Ellsberg told Reason, governments hate to rule anything out, no matter how apocalyptic. "I don't think any president has ever said to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 'Nuclear first use by me, by the US, is off the table'….so that's never been our policy." Today's precise plans for nuclear war are secret, thought reportedly quite loose, but the world contains a suicidal level of these weapons. Gambling on a new low yield arms race staying contained is a bizarre risk to t take.
Why the W76-2? The main argument for it is that Russia is doing it so we have to too, to keep up and therefore prevent actual use. The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review reports that Russia has embraced "tactical" nukes in order to ward off NATO. The U.S. will respond in kind by putting the W76-2 on submarines, starting in October.
The latter prospect horrifies Saetren, who notes that once a nuclear sub fires a missile, even a smaller one, its stealth is now gone and any further payload is endangered.
Technology is flawed, Saetren notes, and one "problem with nuclear weapons is that it has to be perfect." And they aren't perfect; accidents happen. In 1961, a B-52 carrying two hydrogen bombs broke up over Goldsboro, North Carolina. One bomb's chute deployed, and on the other four of the five safety mechanisms shorted out—"and the one that worked," Saetren says, "was the technical equivalent of a light switch." Another near-miss followed only months later.
It's just "dumb luck and statistics," he concludes, that have kept the world from turning into a revival movie house showing of Threads. Well, that and men like Vasili Arkhipov and Stanislav Petrov, who refused to authorize nuclear strikes in the face of what appeared to be (and in the former case was) a real threat.
Donald Trump's fans and foes both tend to think of him as a radical break with the past, but there are important ways that he's like every other president of the last few decades. One is that no matter how much he occasionally says he wouldn't want to use nukes, he's determined to preserve his privilege to use them without restriction.
In other ways, he's now going backwards. Casually placing small nukes on submarines does nothing but create more chances for a deadly accident—or a choice that cannot be taken back.
The post The U.S. Needs New Nukes? Really? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Last weekend, the U.S. military killed what they reported as 52 militants from Somalia's al-Shabab. Taking its current form in 2006, the group started crossing borders for their violence in 2012 after allying themselves with al-Qaida. Their most recent attack took place on January 15 in Kenya––gun- and explosives-wielding men killed 22 people at a hotel. Their most successful was a bomb that killed a staggering 500 people in Mogadishu in October 2017.
The U.S. has been in Somalia since 2003, and currently has about 500 troops on the ground. A drone strike killed al-Shabab's leader in 2014; however, Trump has increased airstrikes against the group along with his attacks in Afghanistan and Syria.
Somalia might bring up strong associations with Black Hawk Down and the mess of Mogadishu in 1993, but it's a conflict generally lost among more prominent debates about the legality of U.S. presence in Syria, or whether 18 years in Afghanistan might just be long enough.
President Donald Trump's regime has loosened restrictions on airstrikes, and Trump has subsequently been looser with his use of bombs. That meant a supposed removal of an alleged rule of "near-certainty" that no civilians would be killed in an attack before the US proceeded (most likely barring ones on proper battlefields like Afghanistan and Iraq), and letting military leaders especially in Afghanistan, make decisions on the ground without White House oversight. However, with the constant domestic distractions sucking up even more attention, and his abrupt threats to end wars, Trump's reputation as an actual warmonger––or at least someone happy to keep the war on terror running as briskly as ever––is underrated. Not since Obama's first years in office (who, if you can recall, was big on continuing to fight in Afghanistan) has the U.S. dropped so many bombs on Afghanistan––10,000 in the last two years, including the most powerful non-nuclear bomb.
There's nothing ambiguous about the terribleness of al-Shabab. However, experts at the Council of Foreign Relations and the Center for Strategic and International Studies attribute their more aggressive rebirth to Ethiopia's 2006 invasion of the country, which raised the terrorist group's numbers from hundreds to what is now reportedly nearing 7,000. The Somali government and the UN Security Council-backed African Union Mission in Africa have been fighting al-Shabab since 2007. Fighting them is an understandable goal, but these recent acts of violence smell like blowback and could be a teachable moment if anyone wanted to learn.
Trump's desire to kill the families of terrorists, which, if done deliberately, would likely be a violation of the Geneva Convention, was memorable, but still doesn't have the reputation of a bomb-dropping kind of guy. In part because he likes to keep enemies guessing, but also because of policy in-fighting and indecision.
Realistically, however, Barack Obama's inclination toward tying his own hands in his final years in office came after he became notorious for pioneering a drone assassination program that he refused to admit existed for years. By the time he was a lame duck, and therefore suddenly aware that someone else was going to take the reins of death soon, he decided to take control over drone strikes away from the intelligence agencies and the Pentagon. He also issued a 2016 executive order to try and catalog civilian death from drones.
Not only were Obama's lame duck attacks to clean up his own mess generally infuriating––since he set the world's precedent for drone warfare and all––but the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies under Obama were not exactly trustworthy in their civilian casualty counting skills either.
Officially, any male of military age killed in a strike counted as a terrorist until proven otherwise. Males who survive an attack are assumed to be terrorist sympathizers. Fundamentally, there has never been a reason to trust that the U.S. will tell––or even knows, or wants to know––how many civilians it kills. Yes, terrorists and locals have an incentive to claim excessive death tolls, but equally, estimates offered by the U.S. government, such as nearly 1,000 innocent people killed in three years of fighting the Islamic State (IS), will be extremely low. The nonprofit Airwars, which tracks deaths in Libya, Syria, and Iraq, frequently estimates five to six times greater numbers of civilian deaths than official U.S. accounts suggest.
Perhaps all 52 militants killed in Somalia were as bad as could be, and nobody innocent suffered. Maybe that's true, but there's hardly enough evidence to prove that the U.S. will treat gatherings of people, or cars moving towards an area deemed suspicious, or even people's homes as legitimate targets.
But again, why is the U.S. involved at all? Our military is in 170 countries around the world including 20 African countries such as Uganda, Niger, and Djibouti. Blame Trump, blame Obama, blame Bush, but that kind of presence appears to be a permanent effect of the war on terror. (Call Bill Clinton's dabbling a prequel.)
Ending wars require hard decisions and will always involve imperfect timing––it's apparently easier to continue a war than to end one. Besides, Lockheed Martin has half a billion dollars to make. We're stuck, and it's costing people's lives––sometimes soldiers, sometimes terrorists, and sometimes just terrorized civilians.
The post What We Don't Know About U.S. Airstrikes in Somalia and Everywhere Else appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The long life of the Afghan war makes it hard to remember how popular it was when it began. As the fighting began, 80 percent of America supported it. Nobody in Congress except Rep. Barbara Lee (D–Calif.) was prescient enough to vote against the Authorization for Use of Military Force and its open-ended-enough-to-attack-a-dozen-more-countries wording. Not until 2014 did a majority of Americans begin to regret that the war ever started.
Now some polls suggest it's nearly as unpopular as the wildly unpopular ill-fated war in Iraq.
This week YouGov and the Charles Koch Institute (full disclosure: I was a journalism fellow at the institute last year) released a poll that suggests widespread support for President Donald Trump's stated goal of drawing down the troops in Afghanistan and withdrawing entirely from Syria. According to the survey, 51 percent of Americans generally approve of removing all troops from Afghanistan "within a year." A majority 46 percent don't think the U.S. knows what its goal is in Afghanistan, and 40 percent don't think the war there has a purpose vital to national security. Somewhat dismayingly, at least for those few of us who care about Congress' constitutional role in making war, respondents were more likely to back an Afghanistan withdrawal if the question was phrased as a presidential decision, with "strong" or "somewhat" support for an exit leaping to 51 percent.
And what about Syria? Here public opinion seems to waver with what goal the question highlights. "When asked if they agreed with the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from the Syrian civil war, 41 percent of respondents supported withdrawal and 32 percent opposed it," the pollsters report. "When asked if they agreed with the decision to withdraw U.S. troops from the fight with ISIS, 38 percent of respondents still supported withdrawal." Americans are, reasonably, more frightened of ISIS than of Bashar al-Assad. Still, the general feeling over the conflict is tepid confusion.
That's not surprising, given just how confused U.S. policy in Syria is in itself. In December, recall, Trump declared that the troops in Syria would be coming home ASAP. After poking around in Turkey, National Security Adviser John Bolton suggested that at least some troops would stay in Syria after all, though it wasn't clear how many. Meanwhile, the Pentagon appears at least to be pulling out some excess military junk of an unspecified nature. Overall, no one seems to know what the hell is going on.
In that spirit, the most darkly perfect data point in the poll may be that 27 percent of people believe America's 17 years of war in Afghanistan have been "neither successful or unsuccessful."
The post Americans OK With Leaving Syria and Afghanistan appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Is it good news that "the CEOs of four of the nation's five biggest defense contractors—Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and the defense arm of Boeing—are now women"?
On Wednesday, Politico published an article called "How women took over the military-industrial complex." Though "military-industrial complex" always feels like a pejorative term, David Brown's piece strikes a positive note; it's written in that delicately faux-neutral fashion that presumes the institutions in question are swell, and that ladies in them sweller still. From helping to perpetuate a Yemen famine to spying on everyone, these ladies don't need no man, unless that man is military-aged and is underneath a Hellfire missile.
The recent midterms boasted a smorgasbord of diversity firsts. You don't have to be very old to remember when the idea of an openly gay governor would seem surprising. And yeah, straight white men dominating every other sexuality, gender, race, and creed isn't the answer to any good question. But the Hillary Clinton–ready logic of Wow, a WOMAN now runs the National Nuclear Security Administration feels, at best, like some serious wheel-spinning. And yet here we have women solemnly giving their lean-in tips on being in charge of a world-threatening nuclear arsenal.
When it comes to questions of institutional sexism, the Politico piece runs the gamut from A (Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson saying "We are the protectors; that's what the military does. We serve to protect the rest of you, and that's a very natural place for a woman to be") to B (National Nuclear Security Administration head Lisa Gordon-Hagerty assuring the author that it's not important when she's "the only woman in the room"). Both sentiments betray both the author's and his subjects' deeply conventional thinking about their gender and their place in the world and whether blowing up bits of it is a good idea.
It doesn't need saying that women who head Boeing or Lockheed Martin are not women who spend time questioning whether the U.S. should have a presence in 177 countries, or asking if the Department of Defense needs $686 billion for FY 2019. But weirdly, the idea that girls running the military would improve things has supporters beyond the Beyoncé-empowerment wing of feminism. No less than scholars Francis Fukuyama and Steven Pinker have argued that women could make the world a more peaceful place, and in Pinker's case, that they already have. Fukuyama more boldly suggested, "A truly matriarchal world, then, would be less prone to conflict and more conciliatory and cooperative than the one we inhabit now."
And perhaps he's right. Perhaps the ladies of Lockheed Martin and the rest will cooperate themselves into billion-dollar Pentagon deals for many years to come. Lockheed CEO Marillyn Hewson assures Politico that she intends to bring more women aboard, and hopes to keep this brave new world of Pentagon women as more than a diversity blip. True equality, however, might evade us until women have to register for the draft, just like men. Then we can all kill equally.
The post Good News, Ladies! The Military-Industrial Complex Is Ours Now! appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>On March 16, 1968, American soldiers from Charlie Company were angry about Viet Cong booby traps, frustrated by recent casualties, and still shaken by the Tet Offensive. They took these resentments out on the residents of two hamlets, slaughtering around 500 unarmed women, children, and elderly people in what is known today as the My Lai massacre.
Whether Capt. Ernest Medina directly ordered his men to kill civilians is doubtful, but he certainly let it happen for hours without intervention. This was no short firefight: It was an extended series of rapes and murders. About half the soldiers participated; about half stood aside and refused to actively participate. But hardly anyone tried to help the victims.
The exceptions—the morsels of humanity—were three men in a helicopter: Hugh Thompson, 25; Lawrence Coburn, 18; and Glenn Andreotta, 20. Given their aerial view of things, the crew was baffled by the number of bodies they were seeing. None of the dead appeared to be armed, or to be even males of soldier age. Twice the crew landed, marked injured civilians for aid, and returned to find them dead. Colburn said later that Medina was the one who killed a woman they had attempted to help.
All this enraged Thompson, the pilot, though by all accounts gunner Colburn and crew chief Andreotta were in full, horrified agreement that something was going wrong. As Thompson said in the 1989 British documentary Four Hours in My Lai, they "started seeing a lot of bodies—it didn't add up, you know, how many people were getting killed and wounded, and we weren't receiving any fire." Thompson radioed back to base there there was "a whole lot of unnecessary killing going on."
Thompson landed and confronted Lt. William Calley, who was busy eliminating civilians. Calley basically told Thompson to mind his own business. Meanwhile, Sgt. David Mitchell made sure nobody was still moving in the irrigation ditch chosen to be the grave of some 70 civilians. Stunned at the nonstop killing, which he later said reminded him of the Nazis, Thompson yelled: "You ain't heard the last of this!"
Some time later, the crew saw several Vietnamese being chased toward a bunker. That was the moment that Thompson chose a side, risking court martial or worse. He landed his helicopter between the soldiers and the civilians, and he told his men to shoot if the soldiers fired on Thompson or on the Vietnamese. They said they would.
Thompson successfully convinced the civilians to come out, and then he demanded help over the radio, convincing two nearby pilots to come to his aid. With aid from a nearby gunship more used to taking out Vietnamese than taking them out of harm's way, around a dozen civilians were removed from the wrath of Charlie Company. Not quite done, the three men took off to search for any more signs of movement.
Andreotta, with only a month left to live himself, saw something. He climbed into the slaughterhouse that had been an irrigation ditch and came out with a child. The crew hand-delivered them to a hospital, Thompson thinking of his own child at home all the while.
When Thompson returned to base he reported to Lt. Col. Frank Barker, who told the forces to stop the slaughter. Trent Angers, author of The Forgotten Hero of My Lai: The Hugh Thompson Story, says he has "no doubt that Hugh Thompson saved thousands of lives in Vietnam" by kicking up a fuss that halted Taskforce Barker, a plan to cleanse the entirety of the surrounding hamlets. Nobody was overtly saying "kill civilians," but like Medina that day they appeared ready to pacify the population however they could.
After a cover-up failed and the real story came out, the Army was prepared to prosecute the perpetrators. Thompson spent a year as the prosecution's best witness, all the while being browbeaten by powerful men. No less than President Richard Nixon appears to have urged his aide H.R. Haldeman to "discredit one witness" in the My Lai prosecution. Angers argues that Nixon went after Thompson personally.
It wasn't just Nixon. Congressmen, notably F. Edward Hébert (D-La.) and House Armed Service Chairman Mendel Rivers (D-S.C.) joined in the attack According to the chief My Lai prosecutor, Col. William Eckhardt, Hébert and Rivers wanted "to sabotage" the trials. A substantial majority of Americans opposed a life sentence for Lt. Calley, even many of those who agreed his actions were wrong. Calley became a twisted sort of folk hero while Thompson had his loyalty to his country questioned. Many of Thompson's fellow soldiers treated him like a leper.
On top of that, much evidence of the massacre was classified and could not be introduced in court. As a result, the first case—against Sgt. David Mitchell—was dismissed. Others collapsed. Everyone either said they were following orders or swore that they had ordered no such thing.
Eckhardt says he considers any accountability, even having a trial at all, a victory. Medina pled innocent (enough), other higher-ups were dead, still more were already out of the Army and its jurisdiction. Out of 14 people tried, only Calley was convicted, and he only got three years' house arrest—a pitiful punishment for at least 20 murders. "You know, you can blame Richard Nixon, you can do all sorts of things, but it was the country that demanded it," Eckhardt says.
Thompson ended up shutting up about the whole thing for 20 years, while still dutifully flying helicopters for the Army and counseling veterans. Neither he nor Colburn appear to have ever expressed regret or even doubt about their intervention, but it was a long time before they were rewarded for it. Nor were the perps given much punishment.
Thompson and Colburn got some justice eventually. But it wasn't the military or the public who demanded it. After seeing Four Hours in My Lai, a Clemson professor named David Egan was struck by the urge to find out if this soft-spoken Southern man shedding tears onscreen had ever been officially rewarded for putting humanity before country. Thompson had in fact been given and discarded a medal that flat-out lied about what happened at My Lai. Egan thought the man deserved a real one, and he spent the next several years bothering anyone important who would listen about Thompson.
Angers' book details much of the hand-wringing and foot-dragging that took place before Thompson was given the Soldier's Medal. When the medal was dangled in front of him, Thompson demanded that Colburn and Andreotta (posthumously) get one as well, and that the ceremony not be tucked away somewhere quiet. Eckhardt, Angers, and Colburn's widow Lisa all describe the 1998 ceremony at the Vietnam memorial as moving, and as a sort of release.
In the following years, Lawrence Colburn and Hugh Thompson returned to Vietnam several times and were bombarded with letters, praise, and media attention. Lisa Colburn tells Reason that her husband often mentioned the little boy Andreotta had taken from the ditch, wondering how he had fared. The boy, Do Ba, did not have an easy life, and the rest of his family all died at My Lai. But on a 1999 trip to Vietnam, a Quaker group reunited Colburn and Do Ba as a surprise. Lisa recalls that as they drove around on a bus, "Do Ba took Larry's hand, and he held onto [it] the entire day…he wouldn't let go, he held his hand the entire time."
The effects of the men's actions radiated further. Both men were honored to be asked to lecture on military ethics later in life. Says Eckhardt: "You know what the military teaches about My Lai right now?…It says basically, follow Thompson."
Calley and Medina are still alive; the three men who resisted their violent fever are not. But 50 years on, remember these exceptional human beings who did the right thing when they were outnumbered, even if no people in this story got what they deserve. "Most stories, from Greek mythology on, have a hero and a villain," says Eckhardt. "And we know which one's which in this story. And I think we need to concentrate on the hero."
The post Three Heroes at My Lai appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>When he last spoke with Reason in 1973, Daniel Ellsberg was on trial for leaking the Pentagon Papers. The Harvard-educated military analyst at the RAND Corporation had long wrestled with many of the moral quandaries of war, but was a consummate Washington insider up until the moment he decided to release a classified Department of Defense study of the Vietnam War, with its damning proof that President Lyndon Johnson had misled Congress and the public about the conflict.
While it looked like Ellsberg might spend the rest of his life behind bars, he was saved—ironically—by Richard Nixon's paranoid dealings, which included sending goons to break into Ellsberg's former psychiatrist's office and allegedly plotting to have him killed.
If the original leaking plan had gone Ellsberg's way, he suspects he might be in prison still. As he relates in his new book, Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (Bloomsbury), along with the now-familiar thousands of pages on Vietnam, he had unprecedented civilian access to nuclear planning documents in the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. He swiped and copied them as well. Unfortunately, Ellsberg gave the nuclear documents to his brother, who buried them for safekeeping until the Pentagon Papers trial was over. A hurricane collapsed the hill where they were hidden, and they were lost to history. Ellsberg has had 45 years to wonder what would have happened if they hadn't been, and more than 60 years to be unnerved by the recklessness, poor planning, and misinformation rampant in an area of policy with the highest possible stakes.
Today, Ellsberg is the 86-year-old elder statesmen of whistleblowing. He calls Edward Snowden "a hero of mine." In return, Snowden has said he was following in Ellsberg's footsteps when he leaked his own cache of secret government documents in 2013.
Reason spoke with Ellsberg by phone in October about his new book, his belief that nobody needs more nuclear weapons than Kim Jong Un has, and why the Cold War's apocalyptic threats still hang over us.
Reason: Do you still get people calling you a traitor, and do you anticipate getting more of that on Twitter, now that you have a presence there?
Daniel Ellsberg: For decades I used to say that being called "traitor" is something you never get used to. But the truth is, for humans, you get used to anything. After 40 years, it doesn't get a big rise out of me anymore.
It did very much at first. As a person whose identification was patriotism in a very conventional way—after all, I did go into the Marines, and I volunteered to go to Vietnam—the idea of being called traitor was very, very painful. But even at the beginning, I felt that people who would use that term didn't understand our country very well, or our Constitution.
In many other countries, you work for a führer, to use the German word: a leader. And the leader is the government. You can't criticize the administration without being regarded as treasonous. That's one of the reasons that a revolution was fought over here, a war of independence.
In my case, the loyalty was to the Constitution and to the country rather than to the administration. Every officer in all the armed services and every member of the Congress and every official in the executive branch all take the same oath. The president's is a little bit different, but everybody else has the same one, and it's not to a leader, and it's not to secrecy. It's to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I had been violating that oath, I would say, when I knew that a president was violating the Constitution and waging war under false pretenses. In the end, I felt that the right thing to do, definitely, was to tell the Congress and the public what was being done in their name. That certainly seemed to me like being a better patriot than I had been.
When you last spoke to Reason more than 40 years ago, you said you were a former Cold War Democrat who was "in transition" and "very influenced by the people who are radical pacifists and anarchists." I'm curious about how you would describe your politics since then.
I was influenced really by nonviolent activists in the Gandhian tradition and the Martin Luther King tradition. Giving the Pentagon Papers was a radical action. It involved truth telling and risk to myself. I expected to go to prison for life.
I still want to live up to that tradition. But I never became a total pacifist. I don't agree with those of my friends who are critical of all wars. The truth is, though, that there hasn't been one since the Second World War that I could really recognize on our part as having been justified or worthwhile. So I remain very much anti-imperial and very skeptical of intervention.
I found it interesting that you use World War II as an example of a justified war. In your recent book, there's some mention of your dislike of the tactics the Allies used.
Well, look, to say that I thought the war was just and even necessary against Hitler does not mean that I would endorse our tactics. I thought that the firebombing of Germany toward the later stages, and the entire bombing of Japan, which consisted of trying to kill as many Japanese civilians as possible, was a clear-cut war crime from beginning to end. Indeed, if you're really to take the idea of war crimes seriously, no question, it should have been prosecuted.
I don't think you can understand the nuclear age and how it came to be if you don't know the history of World War II. Most people don't know—they bought the government line that our effort was only to hit military targets in a narrow sense, and that other people were being hit only by accident, in what we now call collateral damage. That was a flat-out lie from '42 on. They were imitating the Nazi tactics in the blitz. That departed entirely from the notion of "just practice" in war, as opposed to "just cause." Unfortunately, that precedent worked itself out in the worst possible way. The legitimation [of using nuclear weapons] really came before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which in turn simply reflected what our Air Force had been doing for the previous year.
By the way, are you asking these questions from the point of view of a total pacifist?
I'm OK with self-defense, but I think it's hard to find a justified war even if you think some conflicts within that war were justified.
The occasional somewhat violent uprising is successful, but it's very few. That's why I'm much more committed to the idea of nonviolent resistance efforts of various kinds. But in the case of [justified tactics during] World War II, I would point to the British actions in the Battle of Britain. The dogfights in the air, but also anti-aircraft [attacks] against bombers. I not only see that as justified—or as some pacifists will say, "I don't condemn that"—I think they were doing the right thing. They did prevent the invasion of Britain. And I don't think that nonviolent tactics against those bomber planes would have been as effective at all.
I agree. But there are people who slide from that into "and therefore every Allied tactic was justified because they had to win, and they did win, and therefore they had to do all that in order to win."
Yeah. But that's based just on an assumption. It doesn't bear up to real historical analysis of what exactly happened and whether it was necessary or not. Sure, people will say that at the time they thought the bombing of cities was not only effective but necessary. But that turned out to be untrue. There remains no justification, and that was fairly clear as the war was going on. It had to be kept from the public in both Britain and America because the leaders knew that it did not stand up morally.
"In the end, I felt that the right thing to do, definitely, was to tell the Congress and the public what was being done in their name."
The Russians were fighting under Stalin for a terrible regime, and many of them knew it—but they were fighting against Nazi invaders. A pacifist friend of mine recently said, "Look, they lost 20 million people. What could be worse than that?" A fair question, except that if one was to look into the German plans you'd see that what they had in mind was depopulating Russia to the point of killing by starvation 30–40 million people.
So even under the terrible conditions of the Russian front, they were fighting for their lives, and I think justifiably.
Let's talk about your new book. Could you sum up the bizarre circumstances by which you lost the other papers?
I decided in 1969 when I started copying the Pentagon Papers that, since I'm doing this, I should really put out information far more significant than the information on Vietnam, and that was the dangers for human existence that we have been building up and which the Russians have been imitating now for some years.
I copied everything in my top-secret safe, much of which dealt with nuclear matters. Not operational details, but the fact that we were contemplating first use and first strike—disarming attacks on the Soviet Union—and this resulted in a very dangerous situation, especially because the Russians were doing the same.
I was influenced by the example of draft resisters like Randy Kehler, who were on their way to prison for nonviolent resistance to the draft. I concluded that if that was the right thing for these young men to do, I could and should do that also, by telling the truth. I saw Randy Kehler just before he was due to go to prison in San Francisco, and I told him what I was doing at that very moment in the way of copying. He thought it wasn't important to put out the Pentagon Papers, because enough about Vietnam had come out already. What was really new and important was the nuclear material. I said, "Well, I agree with him on the importance, but Vietnam is where the bombs are falling right now, and I want to do what I can to shorten that war by informing people what was being done in their name." My plan really was to go through my trial—maybe a couple of trials, for distribution as well as copying—and then put out the nuclear papers.
That didn't happen because I gave them to my brother who, to shorten the story, hid them in a town dump, and a hurricane actually came through and disturbed the trash field that he'd buried them in, including moving the stove that he'd used to mark the location. It's just impossible to find the box containing the nuclear papers anymore.
That would almost certainly have put me in prison to this day, and nevertheless I regretted very much that I didn't have the chance to do that. It's been kind of a cloud over my life for the last 40 years, but I'm dispelling that cloud now by telling the substance of what was in those documents. A number of them have been declassified in the intervening decades by Freedom of Information Act requests—enough to at least, I think, show that what I'm saying in general is verifiable. I'm just hoping I'll have something of the effect in awakening people to these dangers that I could have had earlier.
What is the biggest misconception the public has about nuclear war?
People are worried about North Korea for good reason. North Korea is a nuclear state against which our president is threatening military action, and that military action would very likely escalate. Even if we didn't begin it, to attack North Korea has a very great risk of getting a nuclear response, which would lead to nuclear use by us for sure, and it just possibly could start with nuclear use by us. Everything is on the table, as [President Donald Trump] says—and as you know, I quote nearly every president as having used those words.
Here's the thing I think that people don't understand: Trump, crazy as he looks compared to others, is simply following tradition in terms of nuclear threats. I don't think any president has ever said to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Nuclear first use by the U.S. is out of the question."
In that sense, when Trump shows a willingness to contemplate initiating nuclear war, either in a limited way or in an all-out way, that's not new with him. Hillary Clinton said the same. Bill Clinton. Every president.
[The second thing is that nuclear war would have] a far greater death toll than people think. Our Joint Chiefs [in 1961 were preparing for] a war that would have resulted in over a billion deaths out of 3 billion people in the world. But that was mistaken even at the time. I didn't know and the Joint Chiefs didn't know and the president didn't know [about the disastrous effects of] the smoke from the cities that they proposed to burn simultaneously by nuclear weapons.
With nuclear weapons, the big change is not so much to the fire in one city. You can with incendiaries kill 100,000 people in a night. That's more than were actually killed immediately in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. But as we developed hundreds and later thousands of nuclear weapons, you could do that essentially to hundreds or thousands of cities at the same time, causing firestorms in each of those cities.
Such a fire over a large enough area simultaneously will cause very strong updrafts. The cold air—the oxygen from the outside—like a bellows can blow the smoke from all of this into the stratosphere. And in the stratosphere, the smoke doesn't rain out, and moreover, we've learned that when it goes that high, it subsequently gets warmed by the sun and goes even higher, to a level that surrounds the globe and prevents sunlight. Not altogether, but as much as 70 percent of the sunlight. More than enough to cause winter conditions of below-freezing temperatures, at night especially, in the summer. What they call "nuclear winter."
That in turn causes a famine, because it destroys harvests worldwide. A war between U.S. and Russia would destroy harvests for about a decade, and a year of that is enough to kill nearly everyone. Even though perhaps 1 percent of humans would survive—and that's a lot of people now, 70 million people—other animals would not. They can't adapt the way humans can, and nearly all other large species would go totally extinct. We'd be left with a world of microbes. So we're talking about something that can be fairly called "doomsday."
Our weapons are mainly designed for fast pre-emption, that is to say, striking first. That's been crazy for over half a century. Each side has enough warheads at sea that can't be destroyed in a pre-emptive attack to cause nuclear winter. And even if you didn't know about nuclear winter, they're enough to destroy hundreds of millions of people. The idea that it's beneficial or optimal to strike first rather than second has been a hoax and a delusion since the mid-'60s at least.
So why has this doomsday scenario not happened?
Partly because the enmity between the leaderships of the two sides in the Cold War was not as aggressive as we claimed. If they had been as Hitler-like as we claimed the Russians were, we wouldn't be here, period.
But it's so easy for humans to find reasons for doing terribly reckless things. Self-serving reasons: private interest, staying in office, making money, being powerful within an alliance. They're all real reasons, but from the point of view of the survival of humanity, they don't remotely justify the risks that are being taken. In other words, we've got a reasoning animal here—humans—who in collective form are capable of doing things that threaten our survival enormously. We built up this doomsday machine based on false premises. The missile gap, and that the Russians were Hitler and were trying to invade us. Even looking at evidence, which sounds good, is not a very strong protection, because as we're seeing, the people who deny climate change look at evidence. They're just able to interpret it in a way that conforms to their chosen beliefs.
In short, we need more than reason to get out of the predicament we're in, and it's not clear whether humans will rise to that. If catastrophe occurs, it will be not entirely as a result of impulse. It could be the implementation of preparations that have been made over decades.
You note as a metaphor that using a gun doesn't necessarily mean firing it. It can mean brandishing it.
Right. The arguments for the arms race are remarkably like those of the [National Rifle Association]. "It's not the weapons, it's the people," and "You have to have them for defense," and so forth. I think that a case can be made for deterrence, for having some weapons. A case that is not by any means entirely foolish. But let's look at the tyrannical, ruthless regime of Kim Jong Un. I haven't seen any evidence that he really wants to expand, but he is determined to stay in power. He believes that his likelihood of staying in power would be greater if he had a weapon to threaten the U.S. with. Is he wrong?
Probably not.
His process of trying to get that weapon may lead to his being attacked, so that process is dangerous. But on the other side of it, as he says every day, "I need those weapons." If he were to stop entirely, the chance that he would go the way of [former Libyan leader Moammar] Gadhafi is definitely higher.
By the way, that doesn't give him a reason for having a doomsday machine. There is no good reason for having the capability to kill a billion people. Prior to Trump, how many weapons would it take to deter a [U.S.] president from a major attack? How many of our cities would have to be threatened?
God, I don't know.
A lot of people would say that a reliable prospect for destroying one U.S. city would be a quite strong deterrent. You might think, "Well, you'd need more than one weapon to have that reliability, 'cause we would destroy some [of their missiles before they hit us]." But do you need a thousand weapons? I would say not. Herb York, who was the first director of Livermore Laboratory, one of the two nuclear design laboratories along with Los Alamos—he asked himself, "How many weapons do you need to deter a rational leader from attacking you?" He said, "One to 10, and less than a hundred—but closer to one than a hundred." That seems quite reasonable, I would say. That's what North Korea has at the moment.
Kim Jong Un "doesn't have an ICBM that can reach an American city with a fission weapon. But he does have boats, and that's all it takes to bring the warheads that he has to Long Beach or to San Francisco Harbor."
The others all have more. There was a point at which there were 70,000 nuclear weapons, most of them thermonuclear. Not 10, not 20, not 100. Seventy thousand. Now, that was all done for reasons. Nobody did that absentmindedly. It was argued, it was budgeted, it was planned, it was produced, it was developed over years.
We have a president at the moment who wants the total denuclearization of North Korea. Well, that would be good. Is it going to happen? No. Why not? Because Kim is not going to give up his nuclear weapons. He believes—correctly, I would have to say—that his chance of surviving to an old age would be much less if he gave them up. So that's a non-achievable goal.
How about a lesser goal? Freezing his nuclear weapons program. No more testing, no H-bombs, and no ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles]. I'm for that. Is it going to be achieved by military attack? You can destroy the regime with a military attack, but you'll lose probably several million allies in the process and quite possibly an American city. [Kim] doesn't have an ICBM that can reach an American city with a fission weapon. But he does have boats, and that's all it takes to bring the warheads that he has to Long Beach or to San Francisco Harbor. I think he's probably prepared to do that, and we seem to have a president who I can't say is thoroughly deterred by that prospect. [Trump] does act in a number of ways as if he's one of those rogue heads of state we hear about who can't be deterred.
It's hard to contemplate the scale of nuclear destruction that our stockpile is capable of, and that may be part of the problem.
I want to see the doomsday machines dismantled, and that means not just the U.S. and Russia, but all systems that can cause nuclear famine. That means reductions by Britain, France, China, Israel, all of 'em. Would I like to see North Korea get rid of all its weapons? Yes. Absolutely. But they're not going to. On the other hand, would I like to see 'em stop where they are now? Yes. That is achievable by negotiation. It means concessions on our part like ending the state of war between the U.S. and North Korea. Having a peace treaty, in short.
Does North Korea want that?
North Korea's been asking for that for many, many years. But to get a freeze, we have to stop threatening the assassination of Kim Jong Un. You say, "Well, Kim Jong Un is a very bad guy." That's true. He's murderous. He's a tyrant. I'm [also] not in favor of military action to change the regimes of Saudi Arabia or Egypt or China, all of whom have tyrannical regimes. I would give up our imperial pretensions.
Do you ever imagine what would have happened if you hadn't decided to leak the papers? If you could have done anything to mitigate the harms caused by Vietnam or our nuclear policy if you had stayed in the corridors of power?
[When I worked for the government] I was attempting to make things more reasonable, both on nuclear matters and on Vietnam. I was totally unsuccessful. Just as many cities would have been hit after my efforts as before, even though the plans I wrote called for withholding cities [from nuclear attacks]. They weren't going to do that. They changed the names of the targets from being cities to being military targets, so-called, within the cities—industries, transportation hubs, command-and-control centers, air defense. The cities would have burned. The same amount of smoke would have gone up. Working as an insider without Congress and the public ever knowing what we really planned to do, it had no effect.
[Former Secretary of State] Colin Powell, to move ahead here, knew that attacking Iraq was a very bad idea, but I'm sure he told his wife, "If I get out, I leave the president alone with hawks like Richard Perle and Dick Cheney, so I've gotta be in there." A voice of reason. Well, plausible enough. But to no good effect at all. He was against torture; he couldn't stop it.
Actually, it was others who did reveal it. Did the leaking eliminate it? No. But it greatly reduced the amount of torture we conducted. So whistleblowing has had some effect.
What do you hope your legacy will be?
I would like others to believe that they have the power—and the obligation, really—as patriots, as human beings, to reveal what they themselves know are unjustified dangers to human existence. And not simply, for reasons of career and promises to superiors, to conceal dangers of that nature. In other words, to be truth tellers.
The post Unplugging the Doomsday Machine appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Nick Maandag's self-published comic book The Libertarian starts humorously enough. The cocky libertarian narrator stretches the truth a bit in order to hook up with a beautiful, feminist, vegan socialist he meets doing yoga in the park. Hilarity (naturally) ensues. Things quickly get tiresome, though. The cocksure libertarian kicks over a newspaper box when headlines report a minimum wage increase. The lefty gal goes to boring rallies and has a friend named Guevara who looks exactly like Marx, and is as long-winded too.
Unfortunately, Maandag has little to offer beyond these basic caricatures. The unpleasant people in The Libertarian don't do justice to the serious, high-stakes political views they represent. Sure, politics can make a dinner date awkward, but libertarianism—and even socialist leftist veganism—deserves subtler shades of gray than Maandag's comic offers. —Lucy Steigerwald
The post The Politics of Dating appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Anarchy is already here, and it works great. Or so the Yale anthropologist and political scientist James C. Scott suggests in Two Cheers for Anarchism, a slight but engaging book that mostly relays life lessons on how choice and freedom make the world better in just about every sphere you can imagine. But before Scott gets down to describing the practical effects of a little anarchy on schools, roads, speeches, playgrounds, and politics, he has to disappoint the purists.
Scott, the author of Seeing Like a State and The Art of Not Being Governed, doesn't want to burn the mother down and raise the black flag. He likes the idea of "cooperation without hierarchy or state rule," and he writes that in the 5,000-odd years that governments have existed, "only in the last two centuries or so has even the possibility arisen that states might occasionally enlarge the realm of human freedom." But he believes the actual elimination of the state would be impossible, impractical, and perhaps even unwanted. Economic inequality and the exploitation of the powerless by the powerful make "a cruel sham" of the notion of an entirely stateless freedom, Scott writes, so "we are unfortunately stuck with Leviathan." He points to the 101st Airborne's role in integrating Little Rock schools to refute the notion that a state can never be used to protect individuals.
In most of his discussions of the modern world, though, Scott sounds like an anarchist again. He detests public schooling, for example: not just in this post–No Child Left Behind, standardized test–heavy era (and not just in Jim Crow Little Rock), but in general. Public schools, he writes, were developed to create good, hard-working citizens "whose loyalty to the nation will trump regional and local identities of language, ethnicity, and religion." Furthermore, "it starts out fundamentally on the wrong foot as a compulsory institution, with all the alienation that this duress implies, especially as children grow older." Scott isn't interested in telling that alienated student to work hard and embrace the social contract. And he certainly isn't advocating more government spending. He seems simply to object to the institution altogether.
Scott suggests a little anarchy would be good for the roads as well. He cites experiments in removing red lights, which started in the Netherlands in 1999 and have spread throughout Europe since then. Under the system we're used to, he points out, people depend on signs or traffic lights, not their own judgment, for guidance on when it is safe to turn or stop. With a spare, signless, somewhat intimidating roundabout, on the other hand, people pay more attention to what they're doing and the number of accidents comes down.
Scott's thoughts on economics are hampered by the fact that he isn't entirely clear on what libertarians believe. (He thinks the logical end of a purely free market is that a parent can sell a child because it's "a personal choice.") And yet he displays frequent libertarian sympathies, particularly in his opposition to various arrogant institutions, interlopers, and do-gooders. Jane Jacobs, a biting critic of urban planning, is mentioned with high praise, as is her seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Scott might not use the phrases "spontaneous order" or "central planning," but his book is filled with tributes to the former and critiques of the latter. Again and again he argues that in what appears to be chaos—be it an unplanned city or a garden that follows its own botanical logic—there is a vernacular order that outside forces rarely understand.
This dichotomy between the vernacular and the imposed also infuses Scott's thoughts on the meanings of monuments. Consider his comparison between the bombastic, patriotic Iwo Jima flag-raising memorial and the solemn, reflective (literally and figuratively) memorial to the Vietnam War. The former tells the story for you, and it exalts the war in question. The latter is a chronological list of the dead, one that neither praises nor denounces their sacrifice but demonstrates the vastness of the loss. Of course, Scott notes, "A truly cosmopolitan monument to the war would list all Vietnamese civilian and military war dead, together with Americans in the order in which they had fallen." Indeed, to memorialize the war dead at all, even so quietly, is to make a statement of some kind.
Unfortunately, whenever Scott discusses the actual political process, he sounds less radical. He makes excellent critiques of the lack of real choice between two nearly identical political parties. But his chapter "In Defense of Politics" portrays politics itself as another good that should be accessed by the masses, as opposed to seeing it as the trigger for a fundamentally coercive state. Scott waves away worries that a pure democracy could be oppressive, suffering from that familiar radical left hope—seen in Occupy Wall Street camps and other protest movements long before that—that simply "having a public dialogue" in "the public sphere" about, say, education will somehow resolve the myriad issues it brings up (money, politics, religion, etc.) to everyone's satisfaction.
All the same, what Scott presents in Two Cheers for Anarchism may be of far more use than any Free Stater manifesto. He may not be a soldier for pro-market libertarianism, but Scott's eye for spontaneous order in action demonstrates that anarchy is all around us: that it's no abstract philosophy but an essential part of all our lives.
The post Practical Anarchy appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>On February 21, four masked Russian women walked into Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior Church and sang-shouted a song called "Punk Prayer." The lyrics include "Saint Maria, drive Putin away!" and "Holy shit, Lord's shit." The performance by the feminist punk collective Pussy Riot lasted under a minute, but a few weeks later Yekaterina Samutsevich, Maria Alyokhina, and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova were charged with "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred." The women claimed they were protesting the Orthodox Church's coziness with the state, which did little to endear them to their fellow citizens.
But to people outside conservative Russia, Pussy Riot quickly became a cause célèbre, winning backing from such famed musicians as Paul McCartney and Madonna. In the months before their summer trial, solidarity protesters in bright balaclavas popped up from Iceland to D.C. Even Russian president Vladimir Putin bowed to international pressure enough to say he didn't think the women "should be judged so harshly for this."
On August 17, three members of Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in prison. Meanwhile, Russian protesters who backed the women face much more daunting prison terms—in one case, up to 10 years for "mass disorder" and alleged assault on a police officer—without international attention and celebrity endorsements.
The post Putin vs. Punk appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Even if there wasn't a whole bunch of reasons why immigration policy needed to be fixed already, courtesy of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) blog, here's another one. All the necessarily elements of government horror are here; mistreatment of the mentally ill, a Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare, and seriously, this is a perfect example of how someone being treated this badly, even if he had been "guilty" of the victimless crime of immigration, means that something is seriously wrong, policy-wise.
Mark Lyttle, an American citizen with mental disabilities who was wrongfully detained and deported to Mexico and forced to live on the streets and in prisons for months, settled his case against the federal government this week.
Lyttle will receive $175,000 for the suffering he endured after being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who deported him despite ample evidence that he was a U.S. citizen. The settlement comes after a federal district court in Georgia ruled in Lyttle's favor in March, holding that the bulk of his claims against the federal defendants should not be dismissed.
The origin of the brush with law and order:
Lyttle's entanglement with immigration authorities began when he was about to be released from a North Carolina jail where he was serving a short sentence for inappropriately touching a worker's backside in a halfway house that serves individuals with mental disorders. Despite having ample evidence that Lyttle was a U.S. citizen – including his social security number, the names of his parents, his sworn statements that he was born in the United States and criminal record checks – officials from the North Carolina Department of Correction referred him to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as an undocumented immigrant whose country of birth was Mexico.
The best part? Lyttle, who suffers from bipolar disorder, is not Mexican in the slightest, and doesn't even speak Spanish. He had never been to Mexico in his life until he was deported there after being held by ICE for 51 days. There, according to ACLU, he was forced to sign a statement admitting he was an illegal immigrant. He was also forced to defend himself without a lawyer.
Once deported, Lyttle spent 125 days in the streets and shelters of Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua, without a passport or anything to identify him as an American citizen. An American embassy employee in Guatemala eventually helped him, and he returned home, though:
Even then, ICE officials at the Atlanta airport detained him for six days and attempted to remove him again. Only after the assistance of his family and a lawyer was Lyttle released and the case against him terminated.
$175,000 seems pretty small after that, but good on the ACLU for suing. This is not the first time American citizens have been caught up in immigration snafus, and it probably won't be the last.
The post Mentally Ill American Citizen Deported to Mexico in 2008 Gets $175K for His Troubles appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Editor's Note: Due to several transcription errors, this post has been heavily edited. The previous quotes from Tangerine Bolen, which she objected to, have been replaced by quotes Bolen provided over email.
With 500-some pages of text, the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) covers a lot more than just section 1021(b), but the majority of the debates over the bill involve the very reason the four letters N-D-A-A have become shorthand for fears of government power finally crossing a Rubicon. Whether or not that's really true, the caginess of the government with respect to whom it can indefinitely detain [pdf] is disturbing and demands a clarification that is not being offered.
Section 1021(b) reads that someone who can be indefinitely detained is:
A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.
The government says the controversial bit of the NDAA is nothing new, but seven plaintiffs, including Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, dissident writer Noam Chomsky, and journalist Chris Hedges, sued in January, arguing that they were under threat. Hedges in particular argued that his First Amendment rights are violated by the NDAA since he has interviewed numerous members of Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but now fears doing so.
Another plaintiff in Hedges v. Obama is activist Jennifer "Tangerine" Bolen, founder of the pro-whistleblower group RevolutionTruth.org. She worries that her organization's support of WikiLeaks and imprisoned soldier and accused leaker Bradley Manning might also make her or her allies applicable for detainment under the NDAA.
Section 1021(a) of the bill repeats the government's power to go after perpetrators (and those who harbored them, etc.) of the September 11th attacks (put in writing in the joint Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) resolution) but 1021(b) does read an awful lot like it's expanding powers, even if the actual text of the NDAA and Obama administration officials claim it isn't changing anything. (For a good overview of the NDAA up until now, go check out this Young Americans for Liberty blog post.)
Bolen believes part of the subtext to these arguments is that the government wants an excuse to go after Julian Assange and Wikileaks. "They don't want to go after The New York Times," she says, "They're willing to cherry-pick who they apply indefinite detention to." But once they can get to Assange, this power will "cascade downward" and then people like Bolen or Hedges could be under threat as well.
The government's initial argument was that the powers granted in provision 1021(b) were exactly the same as those granted by the AUMF. Yet, argues Bolen, if the AUMF and the NDAA are the same, why is the government so desperate to stop this lawsuit? Why did they appeal less than 24 hours after Judge Katherine Forrest's permanent block of indefinite detainment on September 13? Why do they claim that block could cause "irreparable harm" to the United States? Well, no harm done for the moment. On Tuesday afternoon, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, and a three-judge panel stayed Forrest's block until a final decision is reached in December. Until then, or until this hits the Supreme Court, indefinite detainment is back on.
The key point about the NDAA, says Bolen, is that it's a retroactive "CYA" — cover your ass. "We believe that the AUMF detention powers were over-broadly applied — subsequently sweeping up innocent people —and definitely people who had nothing to do with 9/11, or are members of Al Qaida or the Taliban — which is the definition of those powers."
In their Tuesday ruling, the Second Circuit judges wrote [pdf] that it was in "the public interest" to grant the government appeal a stay. Part of their reasoning was that the government finally clarified that the plaintiffs had no reason to fear detainment, meaning that they had no standing to sue in the first place.
When the government initially refused to offer assurances that the plaintiffs could not be detained back in March, this made Judge Forrest more sympathetic to the question of whether the seven individuals indeed had standing to sue. Later, in August, seeing that Forrest was indeed going to block indefinite detainment, the government did try to offer assurances that journalists who were independent were under no threat by offering a clarifying brief. This, according to Bolen brought up a lot of questions still for the judge. Bolen says Forrest asked, "Are YouTube videos independent? Are you going to form a panel to decide who is independent?" Forrest was still not satisfied, and in her 112-page ruling she expressed incredulity over the government's failure to make its case. [Correction: updated language to reflect better accuracy in the timeline of the case.]
The wording in the government's response brief just does not satisfy any of the plaintiffs and opens up more questions over whether the government may actually be considering keeping an eye on journalists who are not seen as "independent."
Bolen, for her part, thinks that the case will make it to the Supreme Court. But it's up to her and her fellow-plaintiffs to try to change public opinion to make sure NDAA gets thrown out.
"Obama is likely in a position whereby he feels he cannot suddenly deny himself powers on which two administrations have come to rely. He cannot afford a terror attack on his watch, and he is likely convinced he has no choice here. I think he believes that is the case and that he is stuck in a position of political realism that this country does not understand. That does not excuse his willingness to erode civil liberties and undermine human rights just like Bush did — I expected, and expect, him to do better."
The post The NDAA Retroactively "Ass Covers" Some of the More Broadly-Applied Gitmo Detainments Says Lawsuit Plaintiff [Updated/Clarified] appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Tonight Reason staffers will entertain you (hopefully while you play along with the official drinking game!) as we tweet the first head-to-head debate between two fans of big government; former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) and incumbent President Barack Obama (D). In honor of that debate — to be divided into six sections, half on the economy, the others on the role of government, governing, and health care — let us turn to a poll (posted earlier by Reason 24/7) released on Wednesday that reports for the first time since CNN started asking, a majority of Americans would like government to do less, and they would also prefer that it didn't promote any particular set of moral values.
The CNN/ORC International poll reported:
"The number of Americans who say that the government should promote traditional values has fallen to an all-time low, a finding that might benefit many Democrats," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
According to the survey, just four in 10 registered voters believe the government should promote traditional values, down from 53% in 2010 and 57% in 2008.
"Between 1993, when CNN began asking that question, and last year, a majority of respondents have always said that the government should promote traditional values. Now, for the first time, more than half say the government should not favor any particular set of values," adds Holland.
But the poll also indicates the belief that the government is doing too much is also near historically high levels.
Six in 10 say the government is doing too much that should be left to individuals and businesses. That finding could favor Republicans.
(Republicans still favor government doing things like cracking down on pornography, but then, a majority of people are opposed to porn, according to Gallup.)
Of course, people are assuming that Obama is gonna win this thing, both the debate and the presidency, so the poll is maybe not the sure sign of a Republican win. (The CNN poll also predicted that Obama would win all the debates, but that GOP Veep nominee Congressman Paul Ryan would win that debate over VP Joe Biden; no surprise there).
The poll also confirms that the debate set-up makes sense in heavily favoring economic concerns. People are indeed more worried about the economy than other issue, even other serious ones such as foreign policy. (They're also much more worried it than, say, old videos of old Obama speeches, as Nick Gillespie noted earlier.)
Said the poll:
Nearly half of registered voters questioned say the economy is the most important issue facing the country today—not surprising when nearly three quarters say the economy is in poor shape.
The economy is followed at a great distance by the federal budget deficit (15%), health care (12%), and education (10%).
"You have to get way down the list before any foreign policy issues appear, and fewer than one in 20 pick Afghanistan or terrorism as the number-one issue," says Holland.
So, yes, people are once again professing to lean libertarian in that they want less government and for the government they have to be less moralizing. This results are similar to what the Reason-Rupe poll found in September:
Please tell me which comes closer to your own opinion…The less government the better [or] 49% There are more things government should be doing 48%
Please tell me which comes closer to your own opinion… We need a strong government to handle today's complex economic problems [or] 49% People would be better able to handle today's problems within a free market with less government involvement. 49%
Some people think the government(should promote traditional values in our society. Others think the government should not favor any particular set of values. Which comes closer to your own view? Government should promote traditional values 42% Government should not favor any particular set of values 55%
But someone is going to win in November, even if you don't vote (because, it doesn't count, as Katherine Mangu-Ward noted in our November print issue) and that someone is going to, most assuredly, keep government big and, be it the drug war, or pornography, or the continued existence of the Defense of Marriage Act, that President will in some way keep the government of "traditional values" alive.
The post CNN Poll Shows Majority of Americans Want Government to Do Less, Promote Fewer "Traditional" Values appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>On Friday, an August letter endorsed by 80 House Democrats, backed by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (CA), that urged the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to classify gay couples — Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) be damned — as immediate family and consider when making decisions about immigration finally got its answer. As Reason 24/7 reported earlier today Big Sister DHS Director Janet Napolitano said yes, and an official order will go out that having a gay spouse is the same as having a heterosexual one in terms of weighing whether or not someone should be deported.
One of the qualities that undocumented workers looking to stay should have, in order to be "low priority" for resources being put toward deportation, under Immigration and Customs Enforcement's June, 2011 directive, is indeed family or community ties, so this may do some good and help keep couples together. Other factors to consider under the prosecutorial discretion memo are immigrants' age of entry into the United States (under 16) and obviously not having ever committed a violent or serious crime.
DHS had previously verbally promised to treat gay couples the same, but the Democrats, particularly Pelosi, were looking for something more substantial than that.
After Napolitano's announcement that the instructions will be formally written out, Richael B. Tiven, director of the activist group Immigration Equality said:
"This is a huge step forward,Until now, LGBT families and their lawyers had nothing to rely on but an oral promise that prosecutorial discretion would include all families. Today, DHS has responded to Congress and made that promise real."
In the meantime, a new Supreme Court session just begun, the justices will mostly likely eventually hear the challenges to DOMA raised by several different parties, including activist group Immigration Equality. Immigration Equality's suit was filed in April in New York Discrict Court on the behalf of five gay, international couples who were unable to sponsor their spouses for green cards. Blesch v. Holder, as in Attorney General Eric, who is named along with Napolitano and other government officials, argues that Section 3 of DOMA is a violation of the 14th Amendment's equal protection. The Obama administration promised to stop defending DOMA back in 2011, but the law has continued to plague some couples.
And for immigrant activists worried about a sudden Romney upset, at the very least it seems he promised in a Monday Denver Post interview not to mess with Obama June executive order which gives a two-year stop-gap for deportations of young folks who didn't choose to illegally immigrate. Romney says his administration's immigration policy would be official long before those two years were up anyway.
The post It's Official: Gay Couples Same as Straight Couples When Weighing Immigration Deportation appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Yep. We don't just need to worry over drones killing Pakistani folks, or spying 24/7, making the U.S. into a dystopia where the shards of the Fourth Amendment are ground into dust. No, let's remember that we should also worry about the near-future where drones achieve sentience and, presumably, kill us all. Or, maybe not quite so bad as that, but this piece by J. Michael Cole at The Diplomat Magazine, make it clear that it's not just screaming Luddites who might have a problem with the eventual evolution of our favorite assassination machines. Yes, this future is almost here, to the delight of the Pentagon:
The U.S. military (and presumably others) have been making steady progress developing drones that operate with little, if any, human oversight. For the time being, developers in the U.S. military insist that when it comes to lethal operations, the new generation of drones will remain under human supervision. Nevertheless, unmanned vehicles will no longer be the "dumb" drones in use today; instead, they will have the ability to "reason" and will be far more autonomous, with humans acting more as supervisors than controllers.
Scientists and military officers are already envisaging scenarios in which a manned combat platform is accompanied by a number of "sentient" drones conducting tasks ranging from radar jamming to target acquisition and damage assessment, with humans retaining the prerogative of launching bombs and missiles.
It's only a matter of time, however, before the defense industry starts arguing that autonomous drones should be given the "right" to use deadly force without human intervention. In fact, Ronald Arkin of Georgia Tech contends that such an evolution is inevitable. In his view, sentient drones could act more ethically and humanely, without their judgment being clouded by human emotion (though he concedes that unmanned systems will never be perfectly ethical). Arkin is not alone in thinking that "automated killing" has a future, if the guidelines established in the U.S. Air Force's Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047 are any indication.
In an age where printers and copy machines continue to jam, the idea that drones could start making life-and-death decisions should be cause for concern. Once that door is opened, the risk that we are on a slippery ethical slope with potentially devastating results seems all too real. One need not envision the nightmares scenario of an out-of-control Skynet from Terminator movie fame to see where things could go wrong.
Read the rest here.
Later in the piece, Cole mentions Gulf War One's "video game" look on television that was criticized as the time as a cold, sterile way to do the very serious task of killing. Drones, where the decision-makers don't even need to be in the same country, are the next several steps beyond that. But decision-making drones, who decide that a strike is necessary no matter what the cost-benefit or new information or, whoops. that was hospital, well, that may be the Rubicon to try and not cross.
But of course these ethical and technological freak-outs are too late. Back in January, the LA Times explored these fears and questions, describing the workings of the already-built X-47B . The 60 foot drone has no pilot (though it's flight path can be overwritten and it has a remote controler of sorts, if needed) and strongly resembles a UFO for maximum creep-factor. As the article notes, another, less panicky problem with autonomous drones is just who is accountable for any mistakes that could occur when there isn't even a human pilot. Is it the programer's fault? The military commander's? Maybe more to the point, since accountability for war is a much rarer thing, who will be to blame if there are domestic drone accidents, crimes, spying, etc. Notes the Times:
The drone is slated to first land on a carrier by 2013, relying on pinpoint GPS coordinates and advanced avionics. The carrier's computers digitally transmit the carrier's speed, cross-winds and other data to the drone as it approaches from miles away.
The X-47B will not only land itself, but will also know what kind of weapons it is carrying, when and where it needs to refuel with an aerial tanker, and whether there's a nearby threat, said Carl Johnson, Northrop's X-47B program manager. "It will do its own math and decide what it should do next."
In July, Wired's Spencer Ackerman wrote that the drone doesn't yet carry anything:
And since the X-47B isn't strapped with any weapons or cameras — yet — the Navy hasn't figured out exactly how the human being who will decide when to use its deadly force fits into the drone's autonomous operations. "We're in the crawl-walk-run stage of autonomous systems," Engdahl says. But underneath the bulbous, beak-like nose cone — what you might call the jowls of the drone, there's a second set of doors behind the landing gear. That's the payload bay, where the drone can carry two 2,000-pound bombs.
I guess it's time to mention the occasional really cool perk to this new technology, say, being able to get shots of beautiful Pakistan mountain ranges that are much more dangerous and difficult to film by helicopter.
The post Something New to Worry About: Murderous, Autonomous Drones appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Pretend you're an Alabama reporter; how might you report on a massive, county-wide early morning drug and weapons round-up, a year and half in the making? And say that raid resulted in 36 arrested and involved 150 officers from:
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Drug Enforcement Administration; U.S. Marshals; Central Alabama Drug Task Force; Alabama Department of Corrections; Autauga, Elmore, Chilton, Montgomery Sheriffs' Offices; police departments from Prattville, Montgomery, Andalusia, Millbrook; and Alabama State Troopers….
Available weapons and tech for these officers was:
a range of weapons and machinery used in the execution of the sting. M4 Carbines, MP5 Sub-machine guns, shotguns, SWAT gear, halogen lamps, and battering rams were available to agents in the field. Helicopters were also available to officers in case a suspect decided to flee the scene.
Well, if you're CBS 8 reporter Jessica Gertler, all of the above information can be ignored, or breezily rushed past in vague description. The only thing her CBS piece offers is a parade of b-roll of masked SWAT officer and various black men being put into cars, some saying sassy things to the camera about "haters! Snitches!" The above block-quoted information is from the al.com blog which, though seemingly a bit slanted, at least managed to include some useful information.
Gertler, on the other hand, invites viewers along for "an adventure you won't want to miss". Her tone is breathless and excited about the police action.
The Thursday morning raids were one of the largest drug raids in state history. They were a success, if only because no one — not law enforcement or any of the suspects, or even any dogs, as far as we know — was injured. They didn't even have no-knock raids, but they rather "knocked and announced [themselves]" according to one undercover agent involved. The amount of drugs found was not yet reported, though most of the folks' warrants were issued because they had sold marijuana and crack cocaine to undercover agents. There were also a few illegal weapons found.
But of that information is not very relevant to Gartler, it's just good fun to watch the authorities, whoever they are, do whatever it that they're doing. Check out the report for yourself below. Also telling is the mayor of Autaugaville referring to the arrested as "trash":
On the other hand a different blond, young CBS 8 reporter actually bothered to talk to neighbors a few hours after the raids and after Gertler's report. Some locals — though not all — were troubled by the raids. Noted Autaugaville resident Totanisha Cobb, "First thing in the morning, I just didn't really know what was going on, especially with the kids and them being kind of scared and figuring out what was going on."
Strange, schizophrenic reporting from CBS, but there's no excuse, even an initial lack of information, for the kind of childish, ra-ra SWAT reporting that Gertler engages in; even if she is not the only one.
The post Great Moments in Local Journalism: CBS Says Autauga County, AL Drug Raids Are "an adventure you don't want to miss." appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Say, speaking of the travesty that is the U.S. justice system, via Glenn Greenwald comes the story of Shakir Hamoodi, an Iraqi-American who earlier this month began serving a three year term in Fort Leavenworth federal prison for the crime of sending money to Iraqi relatives during the post-Gulf War I, pre-2003 invasion U.S. sanction period.
Hamoodi, who moved to America in 1985 and became a citizen in 2002, studied nuclear engineering, and eventually had five American-born children. He also has numerous relatives left in Iraq, including a blind mother and 11 siblings. During the sanctions period, his family was basically broke and starving. So, in spite of the legal restrictions on sending money to Iraq during this time, Hamoodi decided to help. He eventually coordinated with other Iraqi ex-pats and helped his family and theirs survive during these lean years. Eventually Hamoodi and the other Iraqis sent over $200,000 over to their native country.
Now, that may seem like a big number, during that time the Iraqi dinar was nearly worthless. According to Greenwald:
Because sending money into Iraq from the US was physically impossible, he set up a bank account in Jordan and proceeded to make small deposits into it. From that account, small amounts of money—between $20 and $100—were dispersed each month to his family members.
When other Iraqi nationals in his Missouri community heard of his helping his family, they wanted to help theirs as well. So Hamoodi began accepting similar amounts of money from a small group of Iraqis and ensured those were disbursed to their family members suffering under the sanctions regime. From 1993 until 2003, when the sanctions regime was lifted after the US invasion, Hamoodi sent an average of $25,000 each year back to Iraq, totaling roughly $250,000 over the decade: an amount that fed and sustained the Iraqi relatives of 14 families in Columbia, Missouri, including his wife's five siblings.
Prosecutors later found no proof that Hamoodi's money had any connection to the Saddam government, indeed his careful bookkeeping accounted for all the money sent. (Prosecutors did counter that they had no idea where the money went after it reached Iraqi.)
The illegality of Hamoodi's charitable efforts culminated with a massive FBI raid in 2006. Hamoodi's connections to the nuclear industry and his outspoken opposition to the American invasion in 2003 had made him a particular target. He was also not secretive about his money sending. In 2009, Hamoodi had pled guilty to conspiracy to violate the International Economic Emergency Powers Ac, and admitted that he had indeed sent the money; he was hoping to avoid jail time. But in May, Hamoodi received a three-year sentence for something that had not been a crime for nearly a decade.
Hamoodi has received staunch community support and efforts, including this petition, to get Obama to commute his sentence, but for now the 60-year-old is now in prison. He is most worried about his youngest son, who is currently in 10th grade.
Said Department of Justice attorney Garrett M. Heenan, it does matter that Hamoodi's crime is no longer illegal:
"But it is still a serious crime, and the larger United States government interests in having sanctions and, moreover, having people in the United States — citizens — abide by the requirements of [the] Treasury [Department] and not violate those sanctions is an important thing that the United States would seek to promote."
In June, the Daily Beast reported on the Hamoodi case, as well as other cases of sanctions violations.
The post The Case of Shakir Hamoodi: Three Years in Federal Prison For Sending Money to Iraqi Relatives During Sanctions appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The past year brought forth much talk of 99 percents and 1 percents and even though Occupy Wall Street's influence has waned, people as percentages is now firmly fixed in the lexicon, and the concerns of rich versus poor, and corporate versus personal will remain forever and ever amen, particularly in this post Mitt "47 percent" Romney era.
Anyway; Over at the Hoover Institution, Research Fellow David Henderson suggests that the percent to really worry about is indeed the 1 percent, but not the richest of the rich, but rather those at the bottom; that is to say, prisoners, who are the poorest of the poor and in the worst straits.
Henderson estimates, based on U.S. prisoner numbers (2.2 million) and general population (314 million), that the former makes up three quarters of one percent of the population. That's a substantial number of folks to worry about, and when you add the five million more under "correctional supervision" the numbers become almost incomprehensible. They are, indeed, higher than the rest of the world's imprisoned.
Henderson is keen on fixing things for prisoners in general. He is particularly concerned, though, about the folks who were imprisoned for consensual crimes including prostitution, drug, and gambling offenses. He even defends the choice behind drug selling (after all, drug dealers are merely providing a product that is in demand). Indeed, the subtitle of the piece hits it straight-on: "To lower taxes, free all prisoners who have committed victimless crimes."
And Henderson isn't just a big old softy who is worried about criminals, he's got some dollars and cents to back up his push for change. About the
top 1 percent who are getting such negative attention. In recent years, they have been paying over 25 percent of all federal taxes. That's all federal taxes, not just income taxes. In their textbook, Public Finance, Princeton University economist Harvey S. Rosen and Georgetown University economist Ted Gayer estimate that in 2005, the top 1 percent paid a whopping 27.6 percent of all federal taxes, including Social Security.
[…]
We hear the Occupy Wall Street people—and President Obama—advocate taxing the top 1 percent more. I've got a better idea: Let's tax the top 1 percent less and let a few hundred thousand of the bottom one percent out of prison—and out of poverty.
Henderson also points to the human cost of California's famously draconian 1994 three-strikes law, which
mandated that the third time someone was convicted of a felony, maybe even minor theft or drug crimes, they were sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Previously efforts to overturn the law have failed in California, though Proposition 36, if it passes in November, will somewhat lessen its cruelty. The types of felonies where the punishment will stick, though, are still "violent or serious". As the LA Times noted, while endorsing the Proposition:
A third-striker whose prior convictions involved certain sex-, drug- or gun-related crimes would still get 25 to life even if the third offense wasn't serious or violent. And even those whose third offenses were nonviolent and didn't count as third strikes wouldn't get off easy — they would have to serve double the usual time for their latest offense. So, for example, a thief facing a third strike for a nonviolent crime that would usually merit a sentence of two to four years would instead get four to eight.
That leaves something to be desired still.
There are other reasons for the staggering number of prisoners in America, including 170,000 in California alone. The disturbing power of the California Prison Guards' Union has been documented in the pages of Reason magazine by dot com Managing Editor Tim Cavanaugh. (Read the July, 2011 print issue, seriously.) Henderson's piece also notes that though the national cost per prisoner is $22,000 a year, in California each prisoner costs taxpayers $47,000 annually.
Even those less sympathetic prison folks, well, there's the question of what they will do when they get out of jail. Based on a 2002 study from the Economic Policy Institute, Henderson offers stats on what prisoners get paid while in jail: federal prisoners average $0.18 per hour, after deductions for housing and other expenses; state prisoners don't do much better, averaging a net wage of $0.72 an hour.
Why not, asks Henderson, let more private employees compete for more employment of prisoners? Even the ones that committed serious crimes of violence, theft, or fraud and who are getting out someday, would would benefit, as would taxpayers whose burden might be lighter. "With more employers competing for a fixed number of workers, wages would rise. Workers would be better off making money and retaining or acquiring skills. Employers would obviously be better off."
But Henderson also loops back to this simplest form of fixing this national disaster, "People who are in prison for victimless crimes are poor mainly because the government has made them poor—by putting them in prison. There's a simple solution: Let them out of prison." Not realign them into probation or county jails, mind you, but let them out and maybe just stop sending them there for bad reasons in the first place.
Go check out the article, it's an excellent read that deftly mixes fiscal and moral concerns towards our prison industrial complex. The only time the piece gave me pause was when Henderson used this phrasing for a familiar libertarian critique: "Both Barack Obama and George W. Bush have admitted using illegal drugs. Would society have been better off if they had spent time in prison?"And the answer to that is, yes, probably. Either Bush and Obama would still be there, sparring us from their civil-liberties crushing, war-mongering presidencies; or they'd be out, and if they somehow had still won the executive hotseat, maybe their time behind bars would have given them some empathy, the sort that U.S. criminal justice sorely lacks.
[Hat tip to Instapundit for the Hoover Institution link]
The post Forget the Super-Rich, America's <em>Bottom</em> 1 Percent are Imprisoned and It's an Ethical and Fiscal Nightmare appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Otto Perez Molina, of Guatemala, along with Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, and Philipe Calderon of Mexico yesterday spoke at the U.N. and urged serious discussion of drug policy. This was not based on libertarian pleas for freedom, but more a realistic, depressing realization, particularly on the part of the departing President Calderon, that unless people stop having a taste for drugs, something else has to happen. The new-to-office Molina also is preparing to go hard against the cartels who have moved from Mexico into his backyard, even as he plead to the General Assembly that it's time to seriously change the drug war's tactics.
Calderón's speech characterized organized crime as a principal cause of death and "one of the greatest threats to democracy in the 21st century."
He urged drug-consuming nations to "evaluate with all sincerity, and honesty, if they have the will to reduce the consumption of drugs in a substantive manner."
"If this consumption cannot be reduced, it is urgent that decisive actions be taken," Calderón said.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos also called for a debate looking at alternatives to the traditional "war on drugs," saying the discussion "must be frank, and without a doubt, global."
"It is our duty to determine — on objective scientific bases — if we are doing the best we can or if there are better options to combat the scourge," Santos said.
Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina in the past has called for legalization of drugs as one possible alternative, but did not go that far in his U.N. address.
Instead, Pérez Molina said his government "would like to establish an international group of countries that are well disposed to reforming global policies on drugs" and would consider "new creative and innovative alternatives."
On the other hand, Perez Molina told the AP on Tuesday, with no dancing around the issue, that he was in favor of legalization, even of cocaine and heroin (regulated, of course).
Of course, back in April, during the Summit of the Americans, when several of these same leaders pushed at Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to seriously discus ending the war on drugs, the result was less than progressive The only sign that came from non-Latin American leaders was the extremely grudging admittance from Obama that this issue "worth discussing." But the answer was, of course, still no.
The Organization of American States is preparing a report on drug legalization, but it's for next year. On the off-chance that things move in the right direction on drug legalization, we can always depend on things to move at the excruciating pace of bureaucracies who have no sense of how bad the drug war is for people caught in its middle.
The post Presidents of Guatemala, Colombia, and Mexico Urge U.N. to Consider Changing the Drug War appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>In a country of two million-plus jailed individuals, one might think that the least the state could do when they get the wrong guy or gal is to is to pay through the nose, or do anything to help that state-sanctioned kidnap victim try to get their life back.
But whoops, says USA Today, turns out if you were innocent all along, that may not mean much. Indeed, even if you were jailed for a federal crime that turned out to not have been proper, well, good luck with that. Back in June, Reason's Scott Shackford related USA Today's investigation into the fact that 60 individuals in North Carolina were put into prison for being felons in possession of firearms, even though, that was not a federal crime. The details of the wonky law's federal versus state clashes can be found at the above links…
The point at the moment is that with some of these folks (17 so far, with 12 more with their convictions overturned) finally being released, well, turns out there are fewer options than you might hope for them getting their feet back on thr ground.
Most of them have received little more than a bus ticket. Federal law does not require the government to help them search for jobs or find basic necessities such as clothing and a place to live, assistance the guilty routinely receive during their post-prison supervision, partly to keep them from returning to crime.
[…]
…The U.S. Justice Department had originally argued that they should remain in prison anyway, but reversed its position last month "in the interests of justice," according to court records.
At least 10 states provide services such as job training, health care and housing assistance to wrongfully convicted prisoners, according to an Innocence Project study. Most states and the federal government also provide some help in finding social services once someone serves his full prison sentence and is released on parole or supervision, though that help is not available to people whose convictions are overturned.
Compensation for the time they were locked up is even less likely. Federal law permits the government to pay people up to $50,000 for every year they were wrongly imprisoned, but the ex-prisoners—almost all of whom could have been convicted of state crimes with lesser penalties—are unlikely to meet its strict eligibility requirements.
"Exonarees fall into this hole where there really isn't a re-entry program for them. Their path to re-entry is often more difficult than someone who has legitimately served time," said Michele Berry, an Ohio lawyer who has handled wrongful conviction cases there. She said that means prisoners freed because they are innocent could have a harder time after they are released than guilty inmates who finish their sentences.
The rest here. More hideous tales of the U.S's prison addiction can be found all over Reason, particularly in our July, 2011 print issue.
The thing about the prison-industrial complex is how perfectly it encapsulates the fact that government always wins. Or rather, ordinary people will always bare the burden of government mistakes. If you suffer the unimaginable horror of being jailed for something you did not do (or something that shouldn't be a crime at all… ), you absolutely deserve payment for your stolen years. But who will pay? Taxpayers, of course. Never bad cops, bad prosecutors, or bad judges.
Another disturbing, rarely-remembered facet of incarceration nation, can be found over at Mother Jones where James Ridgeway writes about "The Other Death Sentence," the grim fact of what caring for elderly lifers in prison means. It's essential reading if you're worried about this issue, and even if you have trouble sympathizing with actual murderers, no matter how old and feeble they may be.
In June, Ridgeway talked to Nick Gillespie and Reason TV about solitary confinement and whether it counts as torture.
The post Depressing U.S. Prison Story of the Day: Released Innocent Prisoners Get Less Help Than the Guilty appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Law professors at Stanford and New York Universities have just released the results of their nine-month study of drone strikes in Pakistan, mainly in North Waziristan, and its conclusions do not bode well for the truth of the Obama administration.
Principled lefties and publications — remember those? — including Glenn Greenwald, Gawker's Hamilton Nolan, and HuffPost dug into the 150-page study, which involved 130 interviews with Pakistani civilians, half of whom were either survivors of strikes or family members of individuals killed. What they found was that there is a serious psychological toll that comes with the knowledge that drones are permanently patrolling overhead, and if they decide to strike, there's not a damn thing you can do about it. This should be no surprise to an actual humans. The paper's title is "Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civillians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan" so the authors are not hiding their conclusions, which include a plea for transparency, and actually citing the legal justifications for these strikes, particularly when it comes to "signature strikes".
Greenwald highlights the report's descriptions of the stress caused by repeat drone strikes on the same areas, including secondary strikes on both rescue crews and funeral processions. He also notes that the report says that less than 2 percent of the targets killed by strikes were "high value." And, says the report, "furthermore, evidence suggest that US strikes have facilitated recruitment to violent, non-state armed groups, and motivated further violent attacks." And really, why wouldn't that be true? Rudy Giuliani and Jay Carney types notwithstanding, even people who work for the Pentagon and CIA often stumble upon the basic truth that populations get angry if you target them with drones (or missiles, or all-out boots on the ground wars, or any kind of intrusive, foreign intervention).
The authors of the report suggest that the number of those killed in Pakistan is much higher than the Obama administration admits, which should come as no surprise considering the various lawsuits that have been filed in attempt to get the Department of Justice to simply admit that the program is real. The LA Times, in their summary of report says "474 to 884 civilian deaths since 2004, including 176 children" is a credible number, which comes from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
The report also skewers the New America Foundation's kill numbers, which CNN repeated earlier this summer, and which do not seem to hold up to scrutiny. It's pretty easy to see, for anyone with a skeptical brain, that if you cannot trust the administration to reveal the existence, the extent, or the names of targets their overseas kill campaign, maybe you cannot trust the way they classify the dead.
But really, why ever stop when every male killed by a drone strike is a militant? That sounds awfully effective when you put it that way.
The post New Drone Study Casts Doubt on Obama Narrative of Terror-Fighting Strikes With Minimal Civilian Casualties appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Seventeen U.S. states and the District of Columbia recognize marijuana as a medicine. But under the last three presidencies, medical marijuana distributors have learned that state-level protection doesn't preclude federal crackdowns, which have been upheld by the Supreme Court under the Commerce Clause.
In fact, federal courts generally bar any mention of state legality in marijuana cases, deeming it irrelevant. But thanks to a May decision by a federal judge, that could change.
In November 2011, sheriff's deputies searched a Spokane, Washington, property based on marijuana odor. The case was turned over to the feds with the alleged growers facing a minimum of five years in prison.
Their attorney argued that the search violated the Fourth Amendment because suspected marijuana cultivation does not constitute probable cause for a warrant in Washington, which lets people grow the plant for medical use, unless there is evidence that the grower is exceeding state limits. U.S. District Judge William Nielsen agreed, writing that "a state crime has not been committed simply by possessing or manufacturing marijuana in Washington." The Justice Department has appealed the decision.
Meanwhile, the Truth in Trials Act, introduced by Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Ron Paul (R-Texas), would "provide an affirmative defense for the medical use of marijuana in accordance with the laws of the various States."
The post Pot Federalism appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>On last Friday's Real Time, host Bill Maher sat down with Eugene Jarecki, the director of the forthcoming anti-drug war documentary The House I Live In. The conversation is great; it's a serious discussion of the drug war's disastrous effects, particularly on minority communities. Maher even makes a great, withering point about the prison guard unions' vested interest in keeping the war going by dismissing the need for employment as an excuse. Says Maher, boohoo, those guards should "get a new fucking job, find something else to do."
And Jarecki adds that he met the head of the Office of Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske, and that the don't-call-him-a-drug-czar reminded Jarecki of the cruel joke that is the Obama administration's new take on things: if you change the name, it's supposed to be different. It, as frequently pointed out by this website and anyone paying attention, is not different.
Throughout the exchange, we can see the Maher who is supposed to be at least halfway on the side of libertarians. After all, he knows the drug war is a serious, top tier issue, he makes great points about it, and he has a great guest in Jarecki. Maher, not for the first time, has some harsh words for Obama on this issue, calling him an "unrelenting asshole, breaker of promises, imprisoner of people…."
All of this makes the fact of Maher's $1 million donation to the Obama reelection campaign the more infuriating. Maher is free to do what he likes with his own money, but here we have a public figure who cares passionately about drug policy, saying it is a serious issue. But once again, he doesn't care quite enough to, oh, support Gary Johnson, write in Ron Paul, or not vote at all; anything that wouldn't fund the policies Maher claims to despise. Hell, Maher, won't even say that drug warrior and Attorney General Eric Holder is bad. With anti-drug war friends like Maher, prohibition may just stay forever.
The post Bill Maher Does Great, Infuriating Interview with the Director of the New Anti-Drug War Documentary <em>The House I Live In</em> appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>On Saturday a Houston, TX police officer fatally shot a mentally ill man in a wheelchair who had one arm and one leg. The victim was a resident of a group home and had a history of mental problems. The caretaker of the place was the one who called police at 2:30 am because the as-yet-unnamed man was causing a "disturbance."
Things are a bit fuzzy so far, since the incident is fresh, but the story is that the wheelchair-bound man somehow cornered one officer Matthew Jacob Marin, a 5-year veteran of the force, who has one previous fatal shooting in his career. The victim was threatening Marin, and in fear for his and his partner's life, the officer fatally fired. Marin is now on the traditional three-day administration leave.
This brings up a lot of questions, namely, how did Marin not realize that the man was waving what turned out to be a pen? And even if he didn't recognize it, and if the victim indeed ignored pleas to calm down and stop acting aggressive, how fast did the officer turn to using lethal force on a mentally ill man with half of his limbs missing? And how fast is too fast, considering that one party was an armed agent of the government, and the other was a wheelchair-bound double-amputee with mental problems?
A spokeswoman for the department, who we can assume wasn't present at the incident, said the pen came "within inches to a foot" of the officer. Certainly someone in a wheelchair is capable of harming an officer, and an aggressively-thrust pen can do some damage, but it would be preferable that the officer were harmed while trying to do his job, namely, defuse the situation, rather than once again rely on officer safety as first priority. Anyone can prioritize their own safety over someone else's, if that is what cops are doing as well, what good are they? If cops have the power to use lethal, legal force, shouldn't that power come with an obligation to risk their safety and lives so that incidents like this don't happen?
The police spokeswoman said "The officer was forced into an area where he had no way to get out."
[Update at 11:52 pm]: Courtesy of the twitter of Robert Fellner, this CNN report that clarifies a few things about the shooting: Most importantly, the police officer who shot the man in the wheelchair was not the one cornered, but rather his partner was edged in " this darkened room" while being menaced by the pen-wielding double amputee. This makes the fact that the firing officer was unable to tell that the "weapon" was merely a writing implement more credible. Still, the story is bizarre and demands a lot more answers than the public may ever get. It's hard to fathom how the officer couldn't have used any of the myriad non-lethal means that should have been at his disposal.
The post Houston Officer Fatally Shoots "Threatening" Double Amputee Who Turned Out to be Holding a Pen appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>It's been official gospel for a while that homeschooling is no longer the domain of religious weirdos, a la Weavers on Ruby Ridge, or even the lesser-known breed of unschooling hippie types. Because, if home education were limited to those archetypes, how could there be endless trend pieces about how homeschooling is totally a normal thing now?
To be fair, "The Homeschool Diaries," part of a section on "New Ideas for American Schools" in The Atlantic's October issue, is refreshingly narrow. And though it's easy to mock Newsweek and other mainstream glossies that seem to incessantly just discover that within the rising ranks of homeschoolers (somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million of 'em these days) "normal people" are taking over, it's still nice to learn that the homeschooling bug has jumped from fringes, to suburban averages, to oh, so cool arty New York City parents: Ya know, the kind of who publish articles in The Atlantic.
Writer Paul Elie describes a learning method that is not dramatically different than what is socially accepted. Yes, they leave the house, for one.. Elie and his wife teach their 5th grade sons some things like math, they send them to other groups of folks for the all-important socialization and they take advantage of the amazing art and architecture and all that good New York City stuff. Elie also notes that in the family's local homeschooling circle there are also the more out-there unschooling types, whose methods of learning are, according to one small study, maybe not as effective as more "traditional" homes education.
Elie goes through a laundry list of the benefits of teaching the kids at home as well as the long list of encouragement for homeschooling in New York City, which includes dodgy safety issues and endless district realignment and confusion for public, budget slimming for Catholic, and jaw-dropping price tags for private schools (27-40k a year are figures mentioned). The takeaway for those who might even have better local options for their kids, is that what the hell is wrong with teaching your kids in the way that they — ideally — will learn in college? What's remotely artificial, restrictive, or sheltering about using the world around you to teach your kids what you want them to learn?
Our older boys are now in the fifth grade. They know their way around the Museum of Natural History and Yankee Stadium; they are versed in the exploits of Huck Finn and Jack Sparrow. This spring, they'll take the required state Regents exams—the tests that determine New York City students' options for middle school. But they, and we, hope to continue homeschooling. Meanwhile, when they sit down at the table with protractors or head to a museum, it is college I am thinking about. Not just because a university education is our unquestioned aspiration for our children, but also because it seems to be the closest model for the education we are now trying to provide. Tightly focused class sessions; expert presentations complemented by individual instruction; hands-on learning in areas that vary from day to day and year to year; education undertaken in the wider world—these aspects of our so-called homeschooling are basic to postsecondary learning. Higher education in America may be very different by 2022, when our twin sons would enroll, but I like to think that they will have had a taste of the university already.
Read the rest here.
Bonus: most awful objection to homeschooling that I have seen in a while.
The post Homeschooling is So Boring, Even Hip Brooklyn Parents Do It appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Today two national police groups, Blacks in Law Enforcement of America and the National Latino Officers Association endorsed Colorado's November ballot initiative, Amendment 64, the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol; joining them are numerous other cops, clergy, judges, politicians, and other seemingly straight-laced folks including the NAACP. (Oddly enough, the Colorado Education Association recently came out in opposition to legalization.)
Amendment 64 is one of three full-legalization pushes for the 2012 election. Oregon and Washington state will also offer initiatives. Colorado's, however, might have the biggest reasons for optimism. Recently The Denver Post reported that support for Amendment 64 has passed 50 percent and is gaining.
Today Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) hosted a conference call with LEAP Executive Director Lt. Neil Franklin, a 34-year veteran of the Baltimore Police department andTony Ryan, a 36-year veteran of the Denver Police Department, now on LEAP's board, along with Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol advocacy director Betty Aldworth.
Aldworth mentioned that marijuana prohibition leads to the arrest of "about 10 thousand Coloradoans each year, nearly 95 percent for simple possession," and Amendment 64 is looking to turn that around. It would also bring Colorado an estimated $60 million in revenue and savings, according to the Colorado Center on Law and Policy. Ryan talked about his 36 years on the Denver force, mostly on street patrol. "Where marijuana is concerned, the only calls I remember getting for marijuana was because someone was mad at someone and wanted to turn them in for using it," he said. ""Far as I can see, people who use marijuana don't cause any problems."
Franklin read statements said earlier today from representatives of Blacks in Law Enforcement of America and the National Latino Officers Association. Blacks in Law Enforcement of America's Ron Hampton, said:
"Keeping these outdated prohibition laws on the books accomplishes nothing to reduce marijuana use, but it does cause incredible damage to our communities of color. Even though African Americans use marijuana at a rate virtually identical to that of whites, people from our community are arrested, sentenced and jailed at a much higher rate. Passing Amendment 64, while it won't solve all our problems, is a great step toward ensuring equality for all under the law."
The statement from the National Latino Officers Association included a hope for increased cooperation between law enforcement and communities, which Franklin echoed later. NLOA's Anthony Miranda said:
"Right now, communities of color see the police as aggressors rather than as protectors. People are unwilling to come to us, to give us information, even to report crimes, because they see us as the enemy. When Amendment 64 passes, we'll be one step closer to rebuilding that community trust that allows us to effectively perform our jobs."
When Reason asked about how Amendment 64 might increase officer and citizen safety, Franklin dropped many topics familiar to regular readers. He also reiterated that the drug war has seriously decreased trust in law enforcement and perhaps for good reason, saying:
"Police are not well respected, and when police are not well respected, you have many opportunities for conflicts between citizens and police. Citizens do not trust police, they do not give them information. In Baltimore they had things like stop snitching campaigns. when we don't have citizens working with police to get violent criminals off the steet…"
He also mentioned cartels and the violent criminals involved in drug trades. Franklin went on to say that another area where safety will be improved by legalization:
"These dynamic SWAT raids we use on a regular basis, they are very, very dangerous…." "People are getting hurt, innocent people are getting hurt. We are conducting raids on the wrong homes. Even in homes where there might be some illicit activity, marijuana, there is no violence…yet the raid itself is an act of violence."
When asked what backers of Amendment 64 anticipated the Federal response might be if they were successful in November, Aldworth said:
"We anticipate that when Colorado passes amendment 64, the federal government will work with us. The DEA has never made it its business to prosecute or investigate individuals for simple possession of marijuana. We don't expect that DEA priorities will be shifted."
When pressed as to whether the DEA and/or Department of Justice might go after growers or retailers of marijuana, Aldworth mentioned the 10th amendment, and with some hesitation said "I hope that the federal government finds themselves in a position where they want to work with us on that."
Reason TV's Nick Gillespie interviewed Franklin back in July 2011
The post Supporters Hope Amendment 64, Colorado's Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, Might Increase Safety, Increase Community Trust in Police appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>According to the Lake County News-Sun, last Friday a family in the village of Beach Park, Illinois was given a ten minute window between the postal delivery of a mysterious, unsolicited package — said to contain marijuana — and a no-knock drug raid that involved the family tied up, with guns pointed at their faces, while their home was ransacked by police.
Paul Brown, the source of the story, claims that the police destroyed property, and, says the article, "even pull[ed] out insulation in the basement." Brown, who lived at the residence with his wife, daughter, son-in-law, the son in law's brother, and Brown's 77-year-old mother-in-law says he was working in the basement when a loud noise startled him and he walked upstairs to find cops breaking into his home, in spite of his open garage door. Cops pointed their guns in his face, cuffed Brown, made him sit in a chair and refused to answer questions as to what they were doing.
What police with the Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group were doing, besides emptying drawers and "smash[ing] things and crash[ing] things" was assuming that the family knew about the apparently illicit content of the package addressed to someone who didn't live in the house. Brown says he didn't see the name, or even get a good look at the package which, says his son-in-law had the name "Oscar" and some other last name. The address was correct. Brown's son-in-law had just signed for accepted the package and left it, unopened, beside the front door.
The cops apparently had a warrant for Brown's address, except that it was listed as Waukegan, which is one of the two townships that contains Beack Park. Waukegan is nearly five miles to the south of Beach Park, though, according to Google maps.
Says the Lake County News-Sun, Brown found the whole experience to be traumatic:
"It's pretty shadowy and pretty bizarre for us," he said of the two-hour ordeal that began around 4 p.m. Friday. "I was terrified. My chest was hurting and I am a diabetic and prone to heart attacks."
Watching the officers fist bump and high-five each other as they tracked broken glass from the front door through the house also irritated him.
"I was basically held hostage," he said.
His 77-year-old mother-in-law also lives with them and she was in the kitchen when the raid happened. Police gave her the search warrant to read instead of giving it to Brown.
"We live a very simple life," he said, "We all work. No one does drugs here." His son-in-law works in general construction and his brother works for a security firm.
"They were upset they didn't find anything. When I asked them who was going to pay for the door they basically said, 'Not us'," said Brown, who noted the door on his luxury home was valued at $3,000 some 12 years ago and the lock set was another $130 from Home Depot.
Brown also says his mother's blood pressure has been high since the raid, and the whole family is having trouble relaxing. The family's call to the police department have gone unreturned, and they have gotten a lawyer who is is looking into filing a civil suit.
Calls from the Lake County News-Sun and from Reason have so far gone unreturned as well.
At first glance, this case is reminiscent of what happened to Berwyn Heights, Maryland Mayor Cheye Calvo who had a package of unsolicited marijuana delivered to his home in 2008. Calvo was encouraged by his grim experience, which included police killing his two pet dogs, to start advocating for more accountability and oversight with the use of SWAT teams. The Prince George's County Police raid on Calvo's home was ruled legitimate.
The post Illinois Cops Give Family Ten Minutes Between Delivery of Mysterious Marijuana Package and No-Knock Drug Raid appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Two years ago this October, LA County Sheriff's Deputy Julio Jove told three young men, including 20-year-old Jonathan Cuevas, to halt. They had been out partying and drinking, and they had just jaywalked. It was around 1:45 in the morning in Lynwood, California. When Deputy Jove told the three men to stop, Cuevas ran.
Then, Deputy Jove says Cuevas reached for a handgun at his waist, and pointed the weapon at him. So the Deputy reacted by shooting Cuevas multiple times.
The shooting was minor news at the time, Some small amount of community outrage clearly did not have the hoped-for effect as two years have passed since the incident.
And, to be sure, the newly-released, frustratingly grainy and faraway surveillance footage from that night does not discount the claim of Cuevas pulling a gun. But what it does definitively show is that Jove fired multiple shots at Cuevas as he ran — saving the last one for when Cuevas had fallen on the ground. A WCSH6 Portland report says the autopsy shows at least three bullets had already struck Cuevas, bringing the total to at least four.
A gun was found at the scene, but Cuevas' family's attorney James Segall Gutierrez claims that it's suspicious because the young man's prints were not found on it. He also counts seven total shots fired by Deputy Jove in the footage.
Now the family of Cuevas is filing a $5 million wrongful death suit against the sheriff's department. Deputy Jove is been back on the force, working street patrol, since his actions were judged "within policy." The LA County District Attorney's office told Reason that they investigate every officer-involved shooting, as does each police department or country sheriff's office. More background on their methods of investigations can be found here, including slightly unsettling details such as "All physical evidence shall remain in the custody of the police agency conducting the investigation."
Check out the footage for yourself:
Again, whatever else is under debate, Deputy Jove clearly fires his gun at the fallen Cuevas.
According to Southern California Public Radio, Spokesperson for the Sheriff's Department, Steve Whitmore said the video isn't enough for the public to judge:
"This video that was shown today is partial, small part of this story. It is by no means telling the whole story," he said.
Whitmore said because of the civil lawsuit, he was not able to fully comment or divulge more details of the case but said the department looks forward to telling their side of the story in court.
Whitmore also told Reason, when pressed as to the appropriateness of an officer firing at a suspect already on the ground. "what the video doesn't show is what [Cuevas] was doing on the ground and what precipitated that." Whitemore also said Cuevas was "armed and a gang member" and asked, what if Cuevas was shooting at a deputy while still on the ground? The correct place for details of the shooting to come out is "a court of law," he continued, and that is where it will come out. Whitmore declined to elaborate as to why it took two years to release the surveillance video of the shooting, or to speak to why Gutierrez is claiming that the gun found on Jonathan did not have his prints.
Go watch Reason TV on how important cameras are in the fight to keep police accountable. If footage of the Ceuvas shooting has been captured on, say, an on-officer camera, there wouldn't be nearly as much trying to decide which person with a vested interest in telling their story their way was telling the truth.
Hat tip to dogged commenter sloopyinca
Updated: The Los Angeles District Attorney's office emailed Reason the closing letter for the Cuevas case, which they concluded was a "lawful self-defense" on the part of the deputy.
There's lots here, but Deputy Jove had seen Cuevas and his friends Eduardo Villa Jr. and Ernie Campos "flashing gang signs" at cars. And:
Based on their unusual behavior, Jove believed they were setting him up for an ambush. Jove then saw Cuevas pull a handgun from his front waistband.
As Jove jumped out of the police car, Cuevas Walked southbound on the sidewalk Jove yelled to Cuevas, "Let me see your hands! Let me see your handsl" Cuevas quickly turned his upper body toward Jove. Fearing that Cuevas was about to shoot him, Jove fired one round from his service Weapon. Cuevas began running southbound. As Jove gave chase, he saw Cuevas turn once more and blade his body toward him. Jove ñred another round at Cuevas fearing that he was still trying to shoot him. Cuevas ran a short distance before falling to the curb just north of the northeast corner of Josephine Street and Long Beach Boulevard. Cuevas screamed, "You fucking shot me!" Jove ran up to Cuevas and stood in the number two lane of trafñc on Long Beach Boulevard. He was momentarily blinded by the headlights of oncoming vehicles. The drivers were honking their horns at him as he stood in the street. He could also hear Campos and Villa yelling and cursing at him back at the police car.
Cuevas was lying on his stomach with his hands beneath his body at his waistband. He was aggressively moving his shoulders from side to side. Jove repeatedly ordered Cuevas to, "Let me see your hands, let me see your handsl" Cuevas did not comply and continued to move his body While screaming, "Fuck you! Fuck you! You fucking shot me, you fucking shot rnel" Cuevas began "messing with his waistband" then rolled toward his left shoulder. His right shoulder and knee came off the ground. Cuevas was looking directly at Jove while ignoring his commands to show his hands. Jove believed that Cuevas was attempting to roll over in order to pull the gun from beneath his body and shoot him. He fired a third round at Cuevas. Cuevas rolled onto his back and put his hands above his head. Jove saw the gun falling out of Cuevas' waistband. Cuevas arched his back While cursing at Jove and complaining of pain. Jove ordered Cuevas to stop moving several times before it appeared to Jove that he was complying. Jove turned his attention to Campos and Villa and ordered them to their knees. Cuevas began to move again and his hands lowered toward his waistband. Jove repeatedly ordered Cuevas not to reach for the gun. Cuevas ignored the commands and continued to reach for the gun. In fear for for his life, Jove tired two to three rounds from his service weapon to prevent Cuevas from grabbing the gun. He did not believe he struck Cuevas until the last round when Cuevas said, "Alright already, alright," and put his hands back above his head. Cuevas stopped moving but continued to yell profanities at Jove.
Unsurprisingly, the statements of Villa is not quite as carefully detailed, but do not detail Cuevas constantly reaching for his waistband. Campos did not know Cuevas very well, and did not he was carrying a gun. Villa's opinion was that Cuevas panicked because he was carrying a Smith & Wesson .38. The DA report includes additional details, including confirmation that four bullets hit Cuevas and five were fired.
Regardless of whether Jove was in the right, it behoovs us to remember that the penalty for carrying a gun, even illegally, should not be death. And a man who has been shot multiple times would tend to move around a lot. Once again, if you're given the power of lethal, legal force, you should be filmed at all times.
The DA's report concludes:
The evidence examined in this investigation indicates that rather than risk arrest, Cuevas chose to flee from Deputy Jove with a loaded firearm in his hand. Cuevas ignored J ove's commands to show his hands, and instead turned toward the deputy on two occasions as he fled. Cuevas' actions placed Jove in reasonable fear that he was about to be shot causing him to respond with deadly force.
It is undisputed that Cuevas was moving around once he fell to the sidewalk. Although the witnesses attributed his behavior to pain, they were unaware that he was armed with a gun. Jove believed that his life was in jeopardy when Cuevas rolled from his stomach exposing the gun beneath him and ñred additional rounds. Once on his back, Deputy Jove continued to order Cuevas to stop moving and not to reach for the gun falling out of his waistband. Instead of complying, Cuevas placed Deputy Jove in reasonable fear for his life when he reached for the gun.
Without a camera, though, you still have to trust law enforcement. As the closing letter notes, "The following analysis is based on reports prepared by the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department (LASD), submitted to this office by Adan Torres and Jeff Leslie, LASD, Homicide Bureau." Officials from the DA's office investigate, but there's still a lot of trust to be put in police in these cases.
The post Newly Released Surveillance Footage Shows LA County Sheriff's Deputy Fatally Shooting Jonathan Cuevas While He Was on the Ground [Updated] appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The fight over the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) might be a long one. In response to U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest's permanent block on NDAA's Section 1021 (b)(2) — which potentially allows for indefinite detainment of American citizens— the Obama administration hastily appealed to the Second Circuit Court. Now, as of late last night, Judge Raymond Lohier has temporarily stayed Forrest's ruling until it is overturned or not, depending on the ruling of a three-judge panel. So, in theory, but let's hope not in practice, indefinite detainment is back on. (Lohier's one-page response is simply, let's see what is decided on September 28.)
Meanwhile, the main plaintiff in the January lawsuit that lead to Forrest's ruling, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, has written an overview of the case and where civil liberties stand so far. Here is his look at the potential powers in the NDAA as he, and Judge Forrest see it. The takeaway from Forrest's legal logic is not only is the government violating the Fifth and First Amendments with unconstitutional vagueness, but they aren't bothering to explain anything about the NDAA:
Although government lawyers argued during the trial that the law represented no change from prior legislation, they now assert that blocking it imperils the nation's security. It is one of numerous contradictions in the government's case, many of which were illuminated in Forrest's opinion. The government, she wrote, "argues that no future administration could interpret § 1021(b)(2) or the AUMF differently because the two are so clearly the same. That frankly makes no sense, particularly in light of the Government's inability at the March and August hearings to define certain terms in—or the scope of—§ 1021(b)(2)." The judge said that "Section 1021 appears to be a legislative attempt at an ex post facto 'fix': to provide the President (in 2012) with broader detention authority than was provided in the AUMF [Authorization to Use Military Force Act] in 2001 and to try and ratify past detentions which may have occurred under an overly-broad interpretation of the AUMF."
The government, in effect, is attempting to push though a law similar to the legislation that permitted the government to intern 110,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II. This law, if it comes back into force, would facilitate the mass internment of Muslim Americans as well as those deemed to "support" groups or activities defined as terrorist by the state. Calling the 1944 ruling "an embarrassment," Forrest referred to Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the government's internment of Japanese-Americans.
The judge said in her opinion that the government "did not submit any evidence in support of its positions. It did not call a single witness, submit a single declaration, or offer a single document at any point during these proceedings." She went on to write that she found "the testimony of each plaintiff credible."
Read the whole thing here. Hedges does sound optimistic at his lawsuit's chances, mainly because the government keeps getting denied, ever since Judge Forrest's temporary block of the provision in May. But the fact that the government — ya know, currently the guys who are supposed to at least care about civil liberties if you can remember as far back as the Bush administration — is fighting this hard to keep this power feels ridiculous. Hedges, though, calls the Obama administration's crackdown on civil liberties "more severe" than Bush's. He knows the score.
Hedge also quotes his lawyer who posits that the NDAA can, and may, be used against protests related to the Innocence of Muslims film, which have rocked the Middle East these last weeks. On September 13, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned that the violence related to that prophet-slandering film could spread to America, though obviously nothing but college bomb threats have happened so far…
Yet somehow, critics like The Washington Post editorial board suggest that NDAA nervousness makes both Hedges, his lawyer, and Forrest paranoid. Yes, to push back against a government that is claiming the vague, yet boundless right to detain American citizens without trial, that is foolish. Much more reasonable to wait for the threat to be undeniable?
This is how new normals work, and it even works on libertarians and those who try to guard their civil liberties like a dog with a beloved chew-toy. Can anyone else remember as far back as 11 year ago, when holding suspected terrorists without charge or overarching evidence that they were guilty seemed like a really big deal? It still is, and the injustice of it only grows year after year. But the feeling that there is no way they could do that and get away with that is long gone. Gitmo is now an accepted fact, if an unpleasant one, not just the intitial, outrageous, frightened response to an attack on America.
NDAA actually being used on American citizens may sound like crossing the Rubicon for real this time, but government gives people all over the world, and even in America, their own personal dystopias every day, through the drug war, or myriad others ways that say you belong to us, citizen. Detainment happened in World War II, and as monsterous as that was, the war had an end, and it ended. This one is against a tactic, a belief, and people spread all over the world. It need never end, and it may never end, when you have real religious extermist combined with government denial of the fact that U.S. foreign policy makes people angry and for damn good reason.
The post Indefinite Detainment is Back On: Second Circuit Judge Stays Anti-NDAA Ruling Until Decision appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Last Thursday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an emergency appeal of U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest's permanent block on section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which may allow for indefinite detainment of American citizens. The DOJ is currently asking the Second Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay until they rule on Forrest's verdict, which argued that the NDAA is unconstitutional under the First and Fifth Amendments.
Meanwhile, for the edification of media bias watchers, here's a marvelous example that the mainstream press is, as former Reasonoid Radley Balko posited, authoritarian, not liberal. Turns out the paper that (sort of) brought down Richard Nixon and opposes torture and is generally thought to be left-leaning, therefore half right from a libertarian point of view, well, The Washington Post editorial board is siding cozily with the Obama administration in the NDAA lawsuit.
It's tempting to ask whether the Post would be so breezy about a potentially dystopian — more than Gitmo already is, mind — use of power by a Republican president. And maybe not. But, Media Matters argued in February, the paper is not exactly batting .300 for liberal — much less libertarian, even the civil variety —principles. They may be down on torture, but they're not keen on punishing Bush officials who let it happen and it seems that the ability to indefinitely detain even American citizens is not something that keeps the paper up at night. Yep, the Post is taking the same view that the Obama administration does, the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Act already allowed for the powers granted in the NDAA, therefore Judge Forrester's ruling "smacks of judicial activism."
Judge Forrest's ruling, issued before any individual had been so much as threatened with detention, let alone actually detained, strikes us as an overreaction. May the administration's appeal of the judge's ruling prosper.
The stance of The Washington Post editorial board seems to be that the prudent, constitutional thing is to wait until an American is seriously threatened with detainment until the end of this unending war on terror. Then, and only then, but maybe not then, would it be reasonable to object to the powers granted. Forrest, writes the board, is to be scolded for "her uncritical acceptance of the plaintiffs' claims — and equally summary dismissal of the administration's protestations of good faith." Forget watchdog press, even if this is a lapdog press, the lapdog has been lulled to sleep.
This attitude is not new, and it's not unique to the left or right; that the potential for overreaction or paranoia is more threatening than government action itself. Not to mention, The Washington Post also defended the nasty Kelo v. New London (2005) decision that allowed private developers to take property for eminent domain purposes.
In a pleasant surprise, The New York Times editorial board, who have previously defended policies as nasty as Kelo applauded Forrest's decision as correct, blaming the government for not actually outlining their claimed right to detain and how far it goes. Still, this Post editorial demonstrates one more reason to eagerly await the downfall of some of the journalism standards. After all, The Christian Science-Monitor editorial board welcomes more and harsher crackdowns on marijuana usage, particularly the medical variety. Authoritarians have the right to free speech as well, but you have to wonder what motivates these writers in the morning when they sit down to yet again agree with government overreach and encourage it to impede even farther into all our lives. And hell, if the biggest newspapers aren't on the side of the First Amendment, what good are they?
The post The Department of Justice Filed an Emergency Appeal to Uphold the NDAA's Indefinite Detainment Powers, and <em>The Washington Post</em> Wishes Them Luck appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>When it comes to national security and steps towards a less dystopian United States, there was about five minutes of good news Wednesday when Federal Judge Katherine Forrest permanently blocked section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, which — arguably, but it definitely doesn't not — allows for indefinite military detainment of American citizens connected to terrorism, even those captured on U.S. soil.
Sadly less than 24 hours after Forrest blocked section 1021, the Obama administration appealed the decision. They are continuing the argument that the NDAA is simply redundant with powers already granted in the 2001 Authorization for Military Force Act. Forrest disagrees, and maintains that her ruling would not conflict with those powers, but that the NDAA unconstitutionally expands the category of people who can be legally detained.
Under Judge Forrest's oddly unreported ruling, which came after her May temporary injunction in response to a lawsuit filed by seven civil liberties activists, the NDAA was dubbed to be a violation of the Fifth Amendment's right to due process, as well as having a distinct chilling effect on First Amendment rights. The latter argument was underlined by the fact that one of the plaintiffs, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges has interviewed members of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda nearly a score of times. This made the NDAA's vague threat that someone who can be detained by the military is an individual "who was a part of or substantially supported Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces" seem more serious, and led to Forrest ruling that the plaintiffs indeed had standing to challenge NDAA.
The real threat of the NDAA, if not in practice for now, then definitely in precedent, was further strengthened by the fact that the government repeatedly refused to address Forrest's concerns and confirm that the NDAA can or cannot be used against journalists like Hedges. Hedges was joined in his lawsuit by rabble-rousers Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky, and other opponents of excessive government security state madness.
Today, under the shadow of massive riots throughout the Middle East, mostly directed toward America and its allies' embassies, the Obama administration would like to remind us all that the power to indefinitely detain people is vital to national security,
In a stay request signed by New York's Southern District U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, Assistant Attorney General Stuart Delery and Department of Defense General Counsel Jeh Johnson, the government argued that the injunction was an "unprecedented" trespass on power of the president and the legislature that by its very nature was doing irreparable harm.
Bharara also argued that the ruling put an excessive burden on military commanders at war, and that the plaintiffs had no fear of being detained "in the foreseeable future".
"The Court's injunction against application of section 1021 'in any manner, as to any person,' … combined with its mistaken view that section 1021 goes beyond reaffirming the authority contained in the AUMF, could impose entirely unjustified burdens on military officials worldwide, complicating the ability to carry out an armed conflict authorized by Congress in the public interest," the stay request says.
Hedges et al.'s attorney Bruce Afran is arguing that the government is already breaking the law if their argument is that stopping the detainment power would do irreparable harm. This is because the Obama administration refused to confirm or deny the detainment powers. So, of because Judge Forrest's May temporary injunction, as Afran puts it "The only way they could be doing irreparable harm is if they've been using this all along. It just shows the lawlessness of this, even under the Obama administration."
Judge Forrest denied Bharara's request for an immediate temporary stay, but the the office is also petitioning for a permanent one until a higher court rules on the matter. A hearing is set for next week. In the meantime, the detainment provision cannot legally be used.
60,000 people have signed a petition asking the Obama administration not to appeal Forrest's ruling, and not to include section 1021 in the as-yet-unvoted-on 2013 NDAA, but that seems unlikely. After all, Obama promised that he wouldn't detain anyone, and the American people are supposed to trust that.
The post Obama Administration Argues That Blocking the NDAA's Indefinite Detainment Provision Will Harm the U.S. appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Remember way a few months ago when we were all freaked out by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and how it seemed its section 1021 allowed for the indefinite military detainment of American citizens, even those picked up on American soil, and we were basically all doomed? (The actual wording being the person who can be detained is someone "who was a part of or substantially supported Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces.")
Lately we've moved on to more important issues like the high stakes 2012 presidential election, starring the guy who signed the NDAA, with a weak, promise to not detain Americans, versus the guy who "would have" signed the NDAA.
In the meantime, a strangely awesome federal judge named Katherine Forrest has been busy trying to roll back the insane advances of the government of which she is technically part. In May, she agreed with plaintiffs who had challenged the law in March, and issued a preliminary injunction to block the detainment provision of the bill that dealt with American citizens, saying it had a "potentially chilling effect on free speech." Those plaintiffs included the American Civil Liberties Union, Daniel "Pentagon Papers" Ellsberg, journalist Chris Hedges, and lefty-scholar Noam Chomsky.
Now, as Reason 24/7 noted earlier today, Forrest has made it official and declared that the detainment provisions of the NDAA are permanently blocked. Part of Forrest's reasoning was that the broad wording of the act might lead to the detainment of journalists who attempted to write about or interview members of or forces associated with Al-Qaeda, something Hedges has actually already done more than 15 times. This violates the First Amendment of the U.S Constitution (the "chilling effect"), and Forrest also believes the NDAA is in violation of the Fifth Amendment's right to due process.
Notes the Huffington Post, in May Forrest found the:
language too vague, and repeatedly tried to get government attorneys to say that the reporters' fears were unfounded. The lawyers declined.
"At the hearing on this motion, the government was unwilling or unable to state that these plaintiffs would not be subject to indefinite detention under [section] 1021," Forrest wrote. "Plaintiffs are therefore at risk of detention, of losing their liberty, potentially for many years.
On Judge Forrest's Wednesday ruling, the AP noted:
She questioned in her 112-page opinion whether a news article perceived as favorable to the Taliban and garnering support for the Taliban could be considered to have "substantially supported" the Taliban?
"How about a YouTube video? Where is the line between what the government would consider "journalistic reporting" and "propaganda?" she asked. "Who will make such determinations? Will there be an office established to read articles, watch videos, and evaluate speeches in order to make judgments along a spectrum of where the support is 'modest' or 'substantial?'"
Ellen Davis, a U.S. Attorney's office spokeswoman, said the government had no comment.
Plaintiffs' lawyer Bruce Afran called the ruling "very historic" and said it was rare in the last half century that a judge would declare a federal statute unconstitutional for directly intruding on speech.
Forrest also took issue with the Obama administration's argument that the NDAA provision is simply redundant with the powers granted by the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force Act (AUMF), as well as the argument that the plaintiffs had no standing to challenge the law because they couldn't prove that they had been affected by it.
No doubt the Obama administration will be tempted to challenge this ruling, but we should all take a moment to appreciate the fact that a judge did something this awesome. Meanwhile, people like Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) have made the even bolder statement that the U.S. Constitution was meant to apply to people, not just citizens. This the Amash argument behind his failed amendment to the Act from last spring, and he got called a terrorist "coddler" for his troubles.
For a law this bad, and this vague, it's amazing to have people like Forrest and Amash and these plaintiffs fighting against even the potential use of this government power. But let's not forget that indefinite detainment was happening to people long before the Obama administration took the White House. And it has already happened to citizens, which Forrest pointed to in her ruling, alluding to Japanese internment:
"Although it is true that there are scattered cases—primarily decided during World War II—in which the Supreme Court sanctioned undue deference to the executive and legislative branches on constitutional questions, those cases are generally now considered an embarrassment."
[Update]: Thanks to Tangerine Bolen, of stopndaa.org, and one plaintiff for the NDAA lawsuit, for pointing out that my optimism was already out of date. Lawyers in the Manhattan office of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara today have already filed for review of Judge Forrest's ruling, on behalf of the Obama administration. They are still arguing that the NDAA is redundant with the powers granted by the 2001 AUMF. Judge Forrest argues that her ruling does not conflict with the AUMF.
The post Federal Judge Permanently Blocks the Indefinite Detainment Provision of the NDAA, Because It's Unconstitutional, Obama Administration Appeals [Updated] appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>During then nearly 11 years that Guantanamo Bay has held prisoners of the war on terror, nine people have died there — six of which were ostensibly suicides. The ninth man who died on September 8 doesn't seem to have left the planet by his own hand, though the official cause of death has not been released.
Yemeni Adnan Farham Abdul Latif, though, was apparently sedated and depressed, and mostly left in solitary confinement. He made numerous suicide attempts during his stint in Gitmo, as well. So we'll have to see whether he finally succeeded, or whether the cause of his death was something else.
But it gets worse. Latif, who spent nearly a third of his life in Gitmo after being captured by Pakistani police near the Afghanistan border in December 2001, was first cleared for freedom…in 2009.
NBC news reports that a unanimous panel of security experts had to approve the release, and they did so with Latif, a Yemeni citizen whose supposed ties to Al-Qaeda were also, in the words of U.S. Judge Henry Kennedy who upheld that finding a year later, "unconvincing." Notes Amnesty International, Judge Kennedy also noted:
Adnan Latif's detention was unlawful, even under the broad authority claimed by the government, and that he should be released. The Obama administration appealed and in October 2011, the Court of Appeals overturned the ruling. In a meeting with his lawyer 11 days later, Adnan Latif said "I am a prisoner of death".
That Appeals decision can be found here. It is, however, chock full of redacted passages. The main question at play was whether the document from Pakistani police detailing Latif's supposed Al-Queda connections was enough to hold him in spite of the above mentioned decisions.
Latif went on hunger strikes throughout 2012, his last one ending in June.
Amnesty International had intended to launch a campaign to free Latif. Their website also notes that the prisoner was denied a hearing aid that he needed for injuries sustained in a 1994 car accident.
In December, Jacob Sullum explained Latif's reasons for having been in the suspicious border area when he was arrested by Pakistani police. To put it simply, he said he was trying to cross to Afghanistan to seek medical treatment to treat lingering headaches and other complaints from that car accident, then he was trying to cross into Pakistan to meet a Yemeni man who had "promised to help him."
There are 167 prisoners still detained at Gitmo, in spite of the 2008 ruling that found they had habeas corpus rights after all. Still, it seems the ability to challenge your detainment, and even expert conclusions that you're no terrorist are not enough to free you, if the U.S. governments says no.
The post Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, the Gitmo Prisoner Who Died September 8, Was First Cleared for Release in 2009 appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Speaking of important documents being ignored, turns out, as Reason 24/7 noted yesterday, the United States has long known more than it was telling about a 70-year-old war crime. The Katyn forest massacre was the killing of 22,000-odd Polish officers and various prisoners in 1940. For decades, the Soviets denied responsibility and tried to blame Nazi Germany, but in 1990, it was confirmed that the real responsible parties were definitely, most assuredly the Soviets…because they finally admitted as such.
Now, according to the AP, 100 pages of newly declassified documents prove that Allied prisoners of war, including Americans Capt. Donald B. Stewart and Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet Jr, were taken to the site by their German captors in 1943 and shown the corpses in an attempt at anti-Soviet propagandizing. The Americans reluctantly believed the Germans, due to the state of decomposition of the bodies, as well as papers and letters, none of which were dated past 1940, years before the Germans arrived in Russia.
Stewart testified before the 1951 Congressional committee about what he saw, and Van Vliet wrote reports on Katyn in 1945 and 1950, the first of which mysteriously disappeared. But the newly declassified documents show that both sent secret encoded messages while still in captivity to army intelligence with their opinion of Soviet culpability.
That congressional panel concluded that the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) was responsible for the massacre, even without Stewart and Vliet's testimony being part of the official record. But it took another 40 years for the U.S. to feign surprise when Russian confirmed it was indeed the work of the Soviets.
The declassified documents also show the United States maintaining that it couldn't conclusively determine guilt until a Russian admission in 1990 — a statement that looks improbable given the huge body of evidence of Soviet guilt that had already emerged decades earlier. Historians say the new material helps to flesh out the story of what the U.S. knew and when.
The Soviet secret police killed the 22,000 Poles with shots to the back of the head. Their aim was to eliminate a military and intellectual elite that would have put up stiff resistance to Soviet control. The men were among Poland's most accomplished — officers and reserve officers who in their civilian lives worked as doctors, lawyers, teachers, or as other professionals. Their loss has proven an enduring wound to the Polish nation.
That '51 panel also concluded that there were "clear danger signals in Russian behavior evident as early as 1942" and that the U.S. might have behaved differently towards the Soviets if they had had more information earlier. Notes AP, congress:
found that Roosevelt's administration suppressed public knowledge of the crime, but said it was out of military necessity. It also recommended the government bring charges against the Soviets at an international tribunal — something never acted upon.
Despite the committee's strong conclusions, the White House maintained its silence on Katyn for decades, showing an unwillingness to focus on an issue that would have added to political tensions with the Soviets during the Cold War.
In '43, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill also sent U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt a long message that concluded Soviet culpability in the massacre.
The history of shuffling Soviet atrocities aside does not began or end with Katyn, though. For example, letters have long proven that Pulitzer-winning New York Times foreign correspondent Walter Duranty was aware of the extent of the 1930s Ukrainian famine which killed perhaps 6 million peasants, but he deliberately refrained from reporting on it. Pulitzer has so far refused to posthumously revoke Duranty's prize.
For more on whitewashing (contemporary) dictatorships, check out Reason TV's conversation between contributor Kennedy and contributing editor Michael C. Moynihan on why travel books tend to swoon over some of the world's worst countries:
The post Newly Declassified Documents Show Allies Buried Proof of the Soviets' Katyn Massacre appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) walks a delicate line, trying to placate his dad's fans and occasionally rabble-rousing about the TSA or the NDAA, while also trying to ease into the Republican establishment. His official endorsement of former Gov. Mitt Romney did not make a lot of people happy. Nor did his mostly establishment-friendly speech at the Republican National Convention at the end of last month.
However, as in most things, it depends on your point of view. Paul the younger's speech may have seemed line-toeing when compared with dear old dad's hell-raising, 20-year smackdown of the GOP. But compared to the other RNC speeches, Rand Paul was downright anarchistic, if only for the four subversive paragraphs that Matt Welch pointed to on August 30. Perhaps the most overtly libertarian being:
Republicans and Democrats alike must slay their sacred cows. Republicans must acknowledge that not every dollar spent on the military is necessary or well-spent, and Democrats must admit that domestic welfare and entitlements must be reformed.
More exciting still, on CBS This Morning, the good Senator also urged that the U.S. rein in its habit of bombing the hell out of people in other countries. To be fair, Paul took a pragmatic angle there as well, saying that the GOP might do better on the west coast and in New England if they got a bit more Ron Paulish in their foreign policy ambitions. As Reason 24/7 noted earlier today, Paul said:
I think one of the problems we face, as a Republican party, is that we're behind the eight-ball to begin with
We're not winning the West Coast. We're not winning New England. Maybe we need to embrace more Ron Paul Republicans, more libertarian Republicans. … It means people who are little bit less aggressive on foreign policy. They believe in defending the country, but they don't believe we need to be everywhere all the time
We should have a more defensive foreign policy, a less aggressive foreign policy. I think that would go over much better in New England than the typical 'we need to bomb everybody tomorrow' policy you hear from some Republicans.
In further reaching out to poor, lonely libertarians, Paul also went on ABC's This Week on Sunday, and said that the GOP should try to bring libertarians into the fold. And in order to do so, the party could try, again, to be:
Maybe a less aggressive, more socially tolerant but still fiscally conservative policy that may be more libertarian. Might do better in California, might do better in Oregon and Washington and New England, and I think if we had that it would be a great strategy.
Paul also has a new book, Government Bullies, which he talked up on HuffPost Live earlier today. Its subject is federal power run amok, something that the Republicans talk about, but with a lot less specificity and vitriol than Paul during, say, his attempt to prevent the PATRIOT act from being re-upped back in May 2011. Paul's current efforts to to sneak some liberty into the party that sorely lacks it may be too subtle for many. And is Welch noted in the afore-linked piece, the most disturbing aspect to Paul's quiet attempts may be that he is a radical anti-statist anti-interventionist when compared with most others in the party (Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) and his vintage-2004-Bush RNC speech being one troubling example). Still, Paul's handful of spirited, Senate floor defenses of the Fourth Amendment constitute more good than most politicians have ever done. That is something, no matter if he goes on to break small government hearts by, say, turning into another Ronald Reagan, all talk, but no friend to liberty.
Reason TV explored the question of how much of a line-toer Rand Paul will be, back at the RNC:
The post Rand Paul Sweet Talks Libertarians, Anti-Interventionalists, Touts Their Potential Home in the GOP appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>San Francisco start-up Uber has a simple concept, use their phone app and they will help you find a car. Usually it's a vehicle that's a little nicer than a regular old taxi, but the point is still the same, a legal, licensed limo, cab, or towncar will come pick you up.
Uber exist in 20 cities, including Washington DC, Toronto, and New York. Once again, it hooks consumers up with licensed, regulated cabs, towncars, or limos. Uber does not drive, it does not do anything except help its users use services that already exist. So why is the Taxi, Paratransit and Limousine Association (TPLA) acting like Uber consists of a fleet of Flintstones-esque vehicles, driven solely by child molesters and serial rapists? Why is Uber, and lower-priced like-models such as Get Cab and Ground Link, a "rogue service" where "the passenger is placed at-risk for personal safety, uninsured accident claims, fare gouging and other illegal activity"?*
Because the free market ain't free, and the the transportation industry is a great place to find this demonstrated in particularly unsubtle fashion. Take New York City, where yellow cab medallions turn out to be better investments than gold. In order to acquire a medallion (which allows drivers to pick passengers off the street when they hail), as of June 2012, you must pay $700,000. Who is benefiting from that kind of restriction? Obviously the people already driving cabs or owning companies. Though 100 or so New York City drivers out of 13,000 are now trying out Uber, it may not be legal at all. The head of the Taxi and Limousine Commission's current word on Uber is that drivers who use it to find passengers could have their licenses revoked or suspended.
Absurd restrictions on the most basic of transportation modules is not just a New York thing. Pittsburgh, a city of 300,000 has 300-odd cabs (mostly Yellow); none of which can be hailed from the street, and many of which don't bother to show up except for pricey trips to the airport. Of course this has lead to the steel town having a burgeoning, illegal jitney cab industry, which mostly serves the black and lower income communities. This should come as no surprise, because the procedure for starting a new company in Pittsburgh is basically having to convince the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) and existing companies that your new company will not compete with the already comfy cab business. A few years back, I called a spokeswoman from the PUC, who oversees taxi companies for Pittsburgh and surrounding counties. She admitted that lack of cabs were a problem in Pittsburgh, but that they encouraged consumers to "try to use licensed cabs." She also pleaded that whenever the state government has floated the idea of lifting barriers of entry into the market, lobbyists for the cab companies made such an outrcry that it was just never going to happen.
DC, by contrast with Pittsburgh, feels like a dream for transportation (you can actually, no, stay with me here, get a cab — in under ten minutes! — by simply raising your arm!). Still, it has had its problems, namely that Reason TV producers occasionally get arrested when trying to report on potential changes to DC taxi laws. The current fee for a DC cab license is an extremely affordable annual fee of $125. However, as Jim Epstein noted in December, the 60-hour, $375 course to ge a license has been indefinitely suspended since 2009. If DC politicians wanted to "fix" the system in DC, that would be a terrific place to start.
Progressives who ostensibly care about teeny entrepreneurs and opressed minorities occasionally realize that if they're on the side of the little guy, they should be against cab medallions. But mostly they don't seem to notice that taxi regulations are just another type of restriction that has almost nothing to do with safety or fairness. Indeed they just harm consumers and workers, and reminds us, as in the case of the the TPLA's fear-mongering over Uber, that trade groups and even other business owners tend to have about as much interest in an actual free market as do government bureaucrats.
Check out Reason TV's awesome piece from last summer on the threatened DC taxi cab restriction that would require NYC-like medallions and would have capped the number of city cab drivers at 4,000, cutting taxi numbers by about a third.
*[Update] The full press release from the TPLA can be found here, and it's rich with fearful detail about how these apps create "an uneven playing field."
The post With a Straight Face, Taxi and Limo Trade Group Warns of the Dangers of Car-Hailing Apps Like Uber appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Echoing what Mike Riggs wrote on September 4, this newly-crafted video continues to savage the lazy, mocking, September 3 video where Barack Obama "calls" his favorite lying, lapdog actor and former Associate Director of Public Engagement for his campaign, Kal Penn. The gist of the official video is, if you missed it, is that a wink at stoner culture will get their vote, actual fact of the president's marijuana policy be damned.
After two days of Democrats patting themselves on the back for loving women and gay people and America the mostest, while ignoring or lying about marijuana, spending, and drone wars, more of this kind of critique, please. Whoever the hell Sidepocket Images is, they're better at critiquing the president than most members of the mainstream media. This video is well worth watching in spite of the ending that urges people to tell the president to "earn" their vote by fixing drug policy.
By the way, as Reason 24/7 noted today, Obama's theme for the night is "promises kept."
The post New Youtube Video Asks: 'What if President Obama had called a real marijuana user?' appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The DNC is happening in Charlotte, North Carolina, and here at Reason we have folks on the ground and folks tweeting up a storm on all the doings and goings-on. For the former crowd, it's possible that they've spotted some familiar, blue-clad government drones as they made their way through security. Yes, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) is there in Charlotte, too. Garrett Quinn has reported that security overall seems minor compared to the Republican convention (at least for press), but he confirms that there are TSA agents helping with security checks into the arena. This source says 55 agents are present, Quinn suggesed it's more like 20.
The TSA is a favorite boogeyman over at Alex Jones' tinfoilhat-stravaganza infowars.com, but contrary to many of their wilder conclusions about, say, how chemtrails will give us all autism, those conspiracy theorists tend to have a pretty good grasp on the grandma-groping TSA. And recently, infowars have been excellent at pointing out — much more prominently than the mainstream media, who seem to bury this news when they mention it at all— that the TSA's mission creep beyond airports, and even bus stations and highways, has continued into political events.
As previously mentioned in Reason, several TSA agents were spotted in August, assisting Secret Service agents at a Florida Paul Ryan rally. Shouldn't people be asking why the hell workers who belong in airports, or at least something related to transportation, are now expanding their mission to political conventions? Ostensibly, the TSA is used to dealing with checking masses of people for weapons, but transportation is right there in the name. It's complete mission creep to have them move into being all-purpose security at events. Or, worse still, the "transportation" part of their name now officially refers to walking as well.
Reason TV's TSA playlist:
The post Why is the TSA Mission Creeping into DNC Convention Security? appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Will the protest—which is organized by the Raelian movement—accomplish anything more that "lots of Googlin'" (in the words of one observer)? Take a look for the yourselves.
About 2.30 minutes. Produced by Joshua Swain; interviews by Lucy Steigerwald.
Subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube channel and receive automatic notification when new material goes live.
For more information on the topless movement, go here.
The post "Go Topless Day": What We Saw at the 5th Annual Protest appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Richard Flor died in a Las Vegas Bureau of Prisons medical facility on Wednesday.
Flor, 68, was just a few months into a five-year prison sentence for running a Billings, Montana marijuana dispensary with his wife and son. Flor also co-owned Montana Cannabis, one of the largest medical marijuana dispensaries in the state, and which was the subject of a March, 2011 federal raid. Montana legalized medical cannabis in 2004, but that doesn't matter under federal law.
Flor's wife got two years in prison for bookkeeping, and his son got five years for running the Billings dispensary. These were pleas entered and settled before the Department of Justice (DOJ) could make sure that medical marijuana went unmentioned in the court room. (More about the debate over mentioning the state legality of marijuana in court defenses can be found here and here.)
US District Court Judge Charles Lovell sentenced Flor to years in federal prison despite testimony that he was suffering from a variety of illnesses, including dementia, diabetes, hepatitis C, and osteoporosis. Lovell did recommend that Flor "be designated for incarceration at a federal medical center" where his "numerous physical and mental diseases and conditions can be evaluated and treated."
The Great Falls Tribune confirms this list of ailments and notes:
Last month, [Flor's attorney Brad] Arndorfer filed a motion requesting the court release Flor pending an appeal of his sentence due to health concerns. Arndorfer's brief supporting the motion detailed how Flor suffered from severe osteoporosis and on multiple occasions while in custody, Flor had fallen out of bed breaking his ribs, his clavicle and his cervical bones as well as injuring vertebrae in his spine. Flor also suffered from dementia, diabetes and kidney failure among other ailments, Arndorfer said.
"He is in extreme pain and still is not being given round-the-clock care as is required for someone with his medical and mental conditions," Arndorfer wrote in his brief to the court. "It is anticipated he will not long survive general population incarceration."
In his Aug. 7 order denying the motion, Lovell wrote that it was unfortunate the Flor had not yet been transferred to an appropriate medical facility but that the concerns detailed in the motion were "not factually or legally significant."
Lovell wrote that the federal Bureau of Prisons could provide the necessary medical care and that recent tests found kidney dialysis wasn't needed, despite the fact that a year earlier a VA health care provider discussed with Flor the possibility that he might need dialysis in the future.
Lovell wrote that "defendant has no such present need."
In a statement released by his staff, Lovell said he was sorry to learn of Flor's death but that judicial ethics prevented him from commenting further.
Flor had numerous, serious medical problems, so it's hard to know how much longer he would have lived, but being in prison sure shortened his life and diminished its quality. Thanks to the DOJ, the man got to spend his last months of life in in a cage, with his wife and son suffering the same, so they didn't get a chance to say goodbye to him. His daughter, however, was at his side when he passed and said of her father's months in custody, "they didn't give him any of the medical attention he needed, and they never took him once to a medical doctor." Arndorfer is considering a lawsuit against the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Prisons, saying that Flor's complains about kidney pain were ignored.
Meanwhile, the other co-owners of Montana Cannabis go to trial in September.
This is Obama and the DOJ's don't call it a war, drug war; just as callous as the real thing.
Previous Reason reports on medical marijuana in Montana.
The post Montana's First Registered Medical Marijuana Caregiver Dies in Federal Prison appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Yesterday afternoon, President Barack Obama took to the so-called front page of the Internet, Reddit.com, in order to answer questions from users in an AMA —"Ask Me Anything." Almost four million page views crashed the servers and Obama ended up answering a mere ten questions out of more than 22 thousand.
And, he ignored a lot of big issues, noted Slate:
Popular questions about medical marijuana, soldiers with posttraumatic stress disorder, and the president's failure to close Guantanamo, meanwhile, went unanswered. "20 bucks says he doesn't address this," one Redditor predicted, correctly, about the marijuana question. "Should have been titled, Ask Me Almost Anything," another grumbled.
To be generous, let's say five were legitimate questions and answers, including one on Internet freedom:
We know how Republicans feel about protecting Internet Freedom. Is Internet Freedom an issue you'd push to add to the Democratic Party's 2012 platform?
A: PresidentObama
Internet freedom is something I know you all care passionately about; I do too. We will fight hard to make sure that the internet remains the open forum for everybody—from those who are expressing an idea to those to want to start a business. And although there will be occasional disagreements on the details of various legislative proposals, I won't stray from that principle—and it will be reflected in the platform.
The sentiments are vague, but positive! That's nice. Questions about what Obama would do to remove the corrupting influence of money in politics (hilariously slanted in its wording, as if Republicans were the only ones cozying up to corporations and raking in their cash) were also answered, and those are real politic issues, so uh, good for the president there. Another query from a broke law student about their job prospects got some yay-ObamaCare in the semi-legitimate response from the president.
Another three or so were the gentlest of softballs, providing, for example, opportunity for the president to wax poetic about how hard it is to send brave American troops to die in Afghanistan.
And four of them were pure marshmellow goo: "How do you balance family life and hobbies with, well, being the POTUS?", "What is the first thing you'll do on November 7th, win or lose?", "who is your favorite basketball player", and most irritating of all "What's the recipe for the White House's beer?"
Already meme worthy, that last one.
Clearly this is proof that the president is hip enough to realize that ignoring questions about marijuana on Google+ hangouts, is not where it's it.
Maybe it's not totally Obama's fault —Google/Youtube wussed out back in January by picking people who prefaced economics questions with "thanks for saving the auto industry" and excluding all the questions on marijuana, including the highest voted question by a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
Maybe it's absurd to expect anything from the president. Why would he do anything except accept fluffy questions, or slanted ones, ripe for self-aggrandizing answers? But that makes it all the more tiresome when he find another gimmick way to play man of the people for half an hour. Why even bother?
But we already know how Obama responds when faced with a direct question about marijuana legalization: after the 2009 youtube "townhall," Obama joked like a true politician, and then dismissed the question about legalization helping the economy with a breezy no. Ever since then, in spite of continued Internet-driven efforts to get Obama to actually take drug policy seriously, it's mostly been up to Attorney General Eric Holder, or Office of Drug Control Policy head Gil Kerlikowske to reassure people that the administration cares about science and health concerns, and that America doesn't have to choose between jailing people for drug crimes or forcing them into treatment.
There are other AMAs to check out, I recommend the kindergartener on her first day of school. Much more informative.
The post Reddit Yet Another Platform for Obama to Ignore Marijuana Legalization and Other Serious Policy Questions appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Remember when the GOP of 2012 was going to be all about the economy? Because dang it, the voters want it that way? Well, that's mostly, sort of, a little true. The Tampa RNC theme is anti "you didn't build that." It's about small business and bootstraps and all of the things that Barack Obama ostensibly hates. Still, the always dependable social con Rick Santorum used his moment at the podium to to bat for traditional marriage. He noted:
"The fact is that marriage is disappearing in places where government dependency is highest. Most single mothers do heroic work and an amazing job raising their children, but if America is going to succeed, we must stop the assault on marriage and the family."
Please note the shiny new Republican Party platform is with Santorum. See the words under "Preserving and Protecting Traditional Marriage":
The institution of marriage is the foundation of civil society. Its success as an institution will determine our success as a nation. It has been proven by both experience and endless social science studies that traditional marriage is best for children. Children raised in intact married families are more likely to attend college, are physically and emotionally healthier, are less likely to use drugs or alcohol, engage in crime, or get pregnant outside of marriage. The success of marriage directly impacts the economic well-being of individuals. Furthermore, the future of marriage affects freedom. The lack of family formation not only leads to more government costs, but also to more government control over the lives of its citizens in all aspects. We recognize and honor the courageous efforts of those who bear the many burdens of parenting alone, even as we believe that marriage, the union of one man and one woman must be upheld as the national standard, a goal to stand for, encourage, and promote through laws governing marriage. We embrace the principle that all Americans should be treated with respect and dignity. [emphasis added]
Great! So two parents are better than one for kids, but the GOP also understands that sometimes things happen and parents parent alone. But, two gay people, one assumes, is the only thing worse than one gay person.
The bolded sentence is a perfect microcosm of Republicanism — it's a call to restrict freedom in order to preserve freedom. And it's particularly insidious to the cause of small government, because the cry to restrict the rights of gay individuals (and potentially, single parents) is wrapped up in anti-dependency, anti-government language.
Santorum even finished his speech with critiques of Obama's penchant for executive strong-arming, which a libertarian might dig if 1) the cited, totalitarian examples weren't Obama's lessening of deportations and his DOJ's refusal to keep defending the Defense of Marriage Act and 2) Santorum's speech wasn't a hysterical self-parody involving a refrain about clasping hands with the American dream. Santorum, see, has "shook the hand of the American dream, and it has a strong grasp."
In different sections of the platform, the GOP actually comes right out and says the dreaded words "same-sex." This is to say, the Obama administration had the audacity to let DOMA go. Mostly. There is also stated support for a constitutional definition of marriage.
Oh hell, if you need proof that the Republicans are no friends of small government, look no further than Jacob Sullum's heroic rant from yesterday.
The post Rick Santorum's RNC Speech, and the New GOP Platform Wrap Anti-Gay Rhetoric in the Flag of Small Government appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Well, the rumors were true. That is to say, here is one thing Morality in Media (and The Daily Caller back in July) got right, the 2012 GOP platform does in fact mention obscenity and pornography beyond just being opposed to the child kind (not exactly a daring stance to take, that).
Straight from the the elephant's mouth, the wording under "Renewing America's Values" and then "Making the Internet Family-Friendly" reads, after a call to outlaw Internet gambling, as follows:
The Internet must be made safe for children. We call on service providers to exercise due care to ensure that the Internet cannot become a safe haven for predators while respecting First Amendment rights. We congratulate the social networking sites that bar known sex offenders from participation. We urge active prosecution against child pornography, which is closely linked to the horrors of human trafficking. Current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced.
Isn't just the Republican party for you? Being opposed to sex trafficking, even being okay with social networking sites booting "known sex offenders" (such people, of course, are not guaranteed to be convinced serial rapists, or anyone vile like that) is opposing harm and or just wanting to let websites choose their terms of service.
This is a call to make sure laws against consensual activities are good and followed. This is a call to use government resources to further crack down on consensual activities. And it's not just obscenity, mind you, it's "laws on all forms of pornography." Pornography, if not classified as "obscenity," has First Amendment Protections. So, even if you buy the "know it when I see it" Miller Test nonsense, laws against porn are particularly absurd and censorious.
Head of the Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, who is apparently responsible for this flashback to the Bush Department of Justice, is too chicken to call for new laws against porn and obscenity, though one can guess that he's for them. But the much more sensible thing is always to call for enforcing laws already on the books. People invariably have a harder time arguing with that. But consider that to this day, people are prosecuted and threatened with draconian jail time, simply for making an extreme or disturbing form of speech (porn). That is completely antithetical to the idea of "small government."
And this may be the executive we'll be getting if Mitt Romney beats Obama in November; a president who has a long history of approving of restrictions on pornography.
Even if Paul Ryan wasn't a small government fraud, even if Romney wasn't an opportunist, empty suit consultant, this little part of the platform is a nice reminder that the GOP is no more interested in individual choice than is the Democratic Party,
The post Yes, the 2012 GOP Platform is For 'vigorously enforced' Laws Against Pornography and Obscenity appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Last month, The Daily Caller reported some whispers from former Department of Justice official and current president of Morality in Media Patrick Trueman, who said that a Mitt Romney presidency would be one that "vigorously" enforced obscenity laws and would prosecute purveyors of "obscene" adult pornography.
Now, according to a Morality in Media press release, the 2012 Republican Party platform — a portion of the draft of which was recently leaked —has been changed to reflect a new commitment to fighting not just child pornography, but also technically illegal adult pornography. Morality in Media is, unsurprisingly, a big fan of this kind of crackdown.
Their press release claims:
"Distribution of obscene or hardcore pornography on the Internet is a violation of current federal law," explained Trueman. "Yet, most children in America have free access to obscene pornography as soon as they learn how to use a computer. The average age of first exposure to obscene Internet pornography is now eleven," Trueman said.
The new language replaces previous platform wording, which only opposed child pornography. It will now read, "Current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced." Trueman noted that current federal obscenity laws not only prohibit distribution of hardcore pornography on the Internet but also on hotel/motel TV, on cable/satellite TV, and in retail shops.
"We are most grateful to Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council who led the effort to get the tough new language into the platform," said Trueman. "Without enforcement of federal obscenity laws, pornographers have had a green light to target our children and families," he added.
The rest of it is a tearjerker saga about the untreated porn "pandemic" in America. No mention is made of how the GOP, or Morality in Media, or the Family Research Council intends to solve this tragedy. The logical assumption is that they will do so either by a torrent of federal crackdowns, or some sort of actual policing of the Internet, in the spirit of the eventually struck-down 1996 Communications Decency Act. Considering their website's list of "past accomplishments" and the above wording from Trueman, the group is clearly, blatantly pro-censorship, so they're probably keen on both solutions to this moral panic.
If true, this is bad news for any small government fans who were hoping to bite the bullet, choke back the bile, and vote Republican, in the endearingly naive hope that the GOP will be the small government fans that they pretend to be on occasion.
Watch Reason TV's video on the silliness and subjectivity of the word "obscenity":
The post Morality in Media Says the New Republican Party Platform Encourages Prosecution of "Obscene" Adult Pornography appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>The FBI and police warn, in a vague, but ominous sort of way, that anarchists and other "extremist" folks are planning scary things for the upcoming Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.
Now, is there a good chance that when thousands of people, including some of the radical political persuasion, gather, some not okay property damage will happen? Of course. However, is there an even bigger chance that the rumored threats, which this time 'round include anarchists using improvised explosive devices and "acid-filled eggs" are wildly overhyped? Definitely.
as of March, the FBI had intelligence indicating individuals from New York "planned to travel to Tampa and attempt to close" all of the Tampa Bay-area bridges during the Republican National Convention next week.
According to the document, the FBI's information as of March showed that anarchist extremists proposed "engaging in potentially destructive criminal activities against critical infrastructure outside the security perimeter throughout the Tampa Bay region because they expected access to the main RNC venue to be tightly controlled."
Now seems like a great time to point out what kind of "critical infrastructure" the RNC has. It includes A $50 million tax payer-funded"security perimeter" and other safety measure such as an eight-foot security fence, a $273,000 SWAT truck, and drones overhead. "Suspicious" bricks and pipes were recently seized by nervous Tampa Police, as were 16 prostitutes, for some reason.
Also, as the Tampa Bay Times reports:
Fox News reported that the bulletin, titled "Potential For Violent or Criminal Action By Anarchist Extremists During The 2012 National Political Conventions," says extremists probably can't get past the high fences, roadblocks and other tight security that will surround the convention itself.
So instead, the network reported, the bulletin said extremists could target nearby infrastructure outside the convention's secure perimeter, including businesses and transit systems and could use tactics that include throwing Molotov cocktails or acid-filled eggs.
CNN reported the bulletin notes that anarchists have a history of trying to disrupt major events by blocking streets, intersections and bridges, interfering with business or public transportation and in some instances have "initiated violent confrontations with police." At the 2008 RNC in St. Paul, Minn., the bulletin said, anarchists discussed blocking bridges and skywalks, taking over a radio station, targeting corporations and identifying hotels where delegates were staying.
Do you know who else has a history of disrupting movement and blocking bridges and roadways? The planners and the police during every single G20, WTO, or RNC or DNC summit or conference. Not to condone violence, or even blocking average people's progress around the city, but it's hard to keep a straight face when there are dire Law Enforcement warnings of violations of "public safety" and "public transportation" when for three days, these events impede, harass, and stifle normal people from going about their business.
And public safety is undoubtedly violated when police use violent tactics against protesters who pose no threat to anyone, even those with the audacity to trespass past the insane security lockdowns. So are the pre-emptive raids on anarchist gatherings, most notably pre-2008 RNC, but also most recently the FBI's search for "anarchist literature" in the homes of Occupy activists. That does not make me feel safe. Nor does this soothing PSA from the Tampa Police, even if they admit that anarchists are not particularly dangerous, just disruptive. It is good PR to say that you support, or understand, legitimate protest, but the extent that law enforcement will be controlling this event means that it's not really free speech.
Pittsburgh G-20, which I witnessed, was of course a perfect storm of law enforcement excess that mostly flew under the radar. A few black-clad protesters rolled a dumpster or two, the LRAD sound weapon was tested on said dumper-rollers, some more black-clad folks on the next night caused $50,000 in damages. But 200 people, mostly college students in their own neighborhoods, were arrested, pepper-gassed, and chased by hundreds of riot cops, with most arrested on the night after the conference was completed.
The chance that a rogue protester at the RNC or DNC will do something worse than break a few windows is not zero, but the chance that cops will crack down on legitimate protest is much, much higher. It's pretty much a guarantee.
The post Anarchists Are Planning Lots of Violent, Extremist Things for the Conventions, Warns Law Enforcement appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Via infowars, but backed up by other sources, here's your government-creep image of the day. Check out these bored-looking Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents spotted at a Paul Ryan campaign event by a Florida political blog. That August 18 event, by the way, took place at an enormous retirement community. So we've arched from horror stories of Grandma getting groped or shamed at the airport, to the potential gropers coming straight to where Grandma lives; or at least where she considers her options for November 2012. As the Florida Examiner set the scene:
At 7 a.m. they opened the gates and then we had to go through a screening process with Secret Service and TSA members before we could access the 'secure' area, which was the area where we could get right up close and personal to our special guest.
What the Transportation Security has to do with elderly potential Romney-Ryan voters is not clear. The slow progression of the TSA into port and bus station security is one thing —logical, though a bad sign — but their presence at a campaign event is baffling. Is this what TSA chief John Pistole meant when he told USA Today back in 2010 that he wanted "to take TSA to the next level"?
Reason TV's mighty playlist of TSA-related mocking and worrying:
The post TSA Agents Spotted Working at Florida Paul Ryan Campaign Event appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>As Jesse Walker noted earlier, it's been two decades since the standoff at Ruby Ridge, Idaho; that snowballing disaster that stemmed from what was supposed to be a minor weapons charge against Randy Weaver.
Twenty years after FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shot her mother in the head in front of her, eldest Weaver daughter Sara is more at ease, greatly thanks to her born again Christianity. Getting over that loss, as well as the death of her little brother — shot by a U.S. marshal the day before her mother was killed —took her many years, but she seems to be at peace.
After reading various optimistic news reports on Sara's progress, it's frustrating, though not surprising, that the usual anti-anti-government suspects quoted in these articles about Ruby Ridge are so unwilling to admit to the level of negligence involved in the FBI's dealing with one little family. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which is currently ironically defending itsself against charges that its description of the Family Research Council as a hate group is what inspired alleged shooter Floyd Lee Corkins II to wound a security guard there last week, is quoted in several stories on the anniversary. In one, Potok declares that "Ruby Ridge was the opening shot of a new era of anti-government hatred not seen since the Civil War" which is a bit offensive, to spin a tragedy where people died into a mere sign-post for the rise of '90s boogie-men militia groups. But that is what happened to both Ruby Ridge and Waco, which is certainly another thing on which to (greatly) blame Timothy McVeigh. Sara Weaver says she was, and continues to be, horrified that McVeigh used her family's tragedy, and that of the Branch Davidians, to justify killing 165 people. That's bad enough, but in so many mentions of the tragedy, it feels like McVeigh's actions completely drowned out the injustices that inspired them. Now, to be angry about Waco and Ruby Ridge is to be painted with the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League and other hatewatch groups' broad brushes.
This Spokesman-Review editorial notes that law enforcement overreaction helped cause the tragedy at Ruby Ridge, and Waco, eventually leading to McVeigh's attempted "revenge" at Oklahoma City. Yet, is it intellectually honest to describe the matriarch of the family as dying in "a second burst of gunfire" when, if not certain about all the details, we're quite certain that FBI sniper Horiuchi shot Vicky Weaver in the head while she held her youngest child? Why detail the family and Northern Idaho's unpleasant ties with racist groups, but wave over the details of who died and exactly how? This vagueness is not uncommon when talking about both Waco and Ruby Ridge, but it's frustrating every time, especially when contrasted with the societal obsession towards remembering soldiers and cops who died in the line of duty.
Still, the most jaw-droopingly clunky summary of The Meaning Of All This comes from Daryl Johnson, author of a forthcoming book about right wing threats, with a forward by the SPLC's Potok. Johnson is currently in private terrorism consulting, but he used to do a similar job for the FBI and the ATF. And either their rhetoric really rubbed off on him, or the author of this Idaho Spokesman-Review piece forgot that the key to writing is not to use the same word over and over again. The word chosen by both, unsurprisingly, was "extremist." And Reason readers will be pleased to know that not only is being peeved about Ruby Ridge the sign of such radicalism— so is worrying over:
what some describe as a militarization of law enforcement at all levels, including federal agencies.
"For American extremists, the siege at Ruby Ridge symbolizes the 'militarized police state,'" said [Johnson].
Johnson is the author of a soon-to-be released book, "Right Wing Resurgence," that addresses how, in his opinion, domestic extremist threats aren't being taken seriously enough at the highest levels in the U.S. government. He owns a private consulting firm, DT Analytics, that monitors domestic extremist activity and provides specialized training to law enforcement.
The U.S. government, through its Department of Homeland Security in particular, Johnson said, "has unintentionally fostered, and even solidified, Orwellian conspiracies concerning an overzealous, oppressive federal government and its perceived willingness to kill to ensure citizen compliance."
"In the minds of modern-day extremists, (Homeland Security) has enhanced the lethal capability of many underfunded, small-town police forces through its grant programs," Johnson said.
Using federal grants, state and local law enforcement agencies have been able to buy expensive equipment and training that are "commonly associated with the military," he said.
"Extremists view such a security buildup as a continuation of the Ruby Ridge legacy," Johnson said.
That legacy is a continuing drumbeat for extremists and white supremacists who recruit with the message of "big government versus the little guy" and "the government set me up," Johnson said.
These extremist ideas continue as messages and even recruiting themes among various radical groups in the United States, he said.
Reason covered Ruby Ridge way back in the day. We're also the sorts of extremists who heavily cover the militarization of police, entirely free of scare quotes.
By the way, for my money, the best summation of Ruby Ridge is still Jess Walter's Ruby Ridge: The Truth and Tragedy of the Randy Weaver Family. No punches are pulled when it comes to the family's racist inclinations, but more importantly, the government's criminal negligence and cover-up are described by Walter in excellent, damning detail.
The post 20 Years After Ruby Ridge, Newspapers and Hatewatch Groups Can't <em>Quite</em> Bring Themselves to Fully Describe the Government Screw-Up appeared first on Reason.com.
]]>Before I point out that The Atlantic has a good point, let me first say that memory and outrage and whatever the hell catches humans' attention isn't fair; speaking from an American perspective, the Titanic is more famous than the Lusitania, the Holocaust is more famous than the Ukrainian famine or even the Great Leap Forward, and Thomas Kinkade sold a whole lot more paintings than did Vincent Van Gogh. It's frustrating when your cause or atrocity or gift is the one forgotten in favor of another, sexier, more inexplicably interesting one. Basically, mass taste, even in outrages, is mixed at its very best.
In "The Kony-ification of Pussy Riot" Joshua Foust makes some good points. The three members of the feminist punk collective Pussy Riot who were sentenced on August 17 to two years in Russian prison for their February 21 "Punk Prayer" protest are victims, though they knew what they were doing and risking. Any time international attention is paid to victims of oppressive governments, it's probably a good thing. Still, Foust is reminded of the much-criticized Invisible Children Kony 2012 campaign from earlier this year, and its awkwardly Western optimism and desire for nosey intervention and world-policing.
Also, notes Foust, the obsession with the artistic and punk side of these women is excessive, to expect that that will change things in Russia. And it ignores other dissidents in Russia who didn't have their names printed on Madonna's back. The women's two year punishment is insane, and it's worse still when they have children at home, but if anything happens to them during that time, the world will definitely notice. Other protesters may not be so lucky.
Another Atlantic writer has previously noticed that the language used in Western media to describe the women has been pretty nauseatingly sexist, which the self-described feminist band may not appreciate. And Gawker today is riffing on some Vice staffers who got the Russian word for "hooligan" tattooed in "solidarity" on their flesh for the women. Writes Hamilton Nolan:
They got some tattoos—Russian tattoos. READ IT AND WEEP, PUTIN.
[…]
The tattoos about Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tibet, Western Sahara, Belarus, Burma, Chad, China, Cuba, Laos, Libya, and South Ossetia are going to take up a lot of space, but nobody said freedom fighting would be easy.
Yes, it's a bit trendy, but maybe it's sincere (an emotion I realise is not the forte of either Gawker or Vice) support for women who have an unpleasant two years ahead of them. Writing is perhaps more useful than tattooing, but gestures when a story means something to you are not necessary to mock, even if they are not helping as much as a comando raid to free the women might. The woman from the DC solidarity with Pussy Riot rally said she hoped that the band would see pictures of their supporters in bright colors and know that people were thinking of them. It's a good thought; it may be a little naive, but that's not the worst thing in the world.
Every Christmas Eve I toast the World War I truce, and war hasn't yet stopped. On occasion I wear a shirt that says "Raoul Wallenberg is my favorite superhero" and his true fate in the Soviet gulags has yet to be confirmed. So what? These are the stories that speak to me, though I have no logical reason to care. Maybe people who care about Pussy Riot are projecting, maybe they're being trendy, but maybe not. Why look the gift horse of solidarity and a hope for freedom in the mouth? And yes, Counterpunch, consistency in noticing atrocities is good. I also wish that the U.S. media paid more attention as a whole to some of their government's nastiness. That has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Putin is awful (he is) and whether or not these women should go free (they should).
At The New York Times, Russian analyst Vadim Nikitin points out that the women of Pussy Riot are not poster children for Western-style democracy, nor were dissidents from the Soviet era necessarily:
How many fans of Pussy Riot's zany "punk prayer" in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova's erudite and moving closing statement were equally thrilled by her participation, naked and heavily pregnant, in a public orgy at a Moscow museum in 2008? That performance, by the radical art group Voina (Russian for "war"), was meant to illustrate how Russians were abused by their government. Voina had previously set fire to a police car and drew obscene images on a St. Petersburg drawbridge.
Stunts like that would get you arrested just about anywhere, not just in authoritarian Russia. But Pussy Riot and its comrades at Voina come as a full package: You can't have the fun, pro-democracy, anti-Putin feminism without the incendiary anarchism, extreme sexual provocations, deliberate obscenity and hard-left politics.
Except for the condescending use of "zany" to describe an edgy, anti-state stunt, this is fair to bring up. A very uncomfortable Lew Rockwell blog post did the same thing, and managed to sound less opposed to jailing the women for two years than most mainstream media. And it's true, the women are more Russian, more bizarre, and less tidy poster children than most outlets have noticed. The truth is usually more nuanced and interesting than anyone's pet cause suggests. Still, Nikitin is incorrect when he writes that we need to accept all of Pussy Riot's wilder elements in order to be outraged on their behalf:
Unless you are comfortable with all that (and I strongly suspect 99 percent of Pussy Riot's fans in the mainstream media are not), then standing behind Pussy Riot only now, when it is obviously blameless and the government clearly guilty, is pure opportunism. And just like in the bad old days, such knee-jerk yet selective support for Russian dissidents — without fully engaging with their ideas — is not only hypocritical but also does a great disservice to their cause.
Some outlets have portrayed the case as a quest for freedom of expression and other ground rules of liberal democracy. Yet the very phrase "freedom of expression," with its connotations of genteel protest as a civic way to blow off some steam while life goes on, is alien to Russian radical thought. The members of Pussy Riot are not liberals looking for self-expression. They are self-confessed descendants of the surrealists and the Russian futurists, determined to radically, even violently, change society.
I don't have a vast understanding of this sort of art, or of Russian society, but to completely disavow the freedom of expression angle is wrong when the women themselves have talked that angle up to Vice and during their own closing statements at trial.
Writes Nikitin:
Pussy Riot's fans in the West need to understand that their heroes' dissent will not stop at Putin; neither will it stop if and when Russia becomes a "normal" liberal democracy. Because what Pussy Riot wants is something that is equally terrifying, provocative and threatening to the established order in both Russia and the West (and has been from time immemorial): freedom from patriarchy, capitalism, religion, conventional morality, inequality and the entire corporate state system. We should only support these brave women if we, too, are brave enough to go all the way.
Wrong. Fans of free speech, as quaint as that term may be to Nikitin, should support these women no matter how radical, offensive, or alarming their views come off as. And the women, it's safe to say, among their other beliefs, also are for free expression, or opposed to the level of oppression that is coming from Putin's Russia.
Come the day when Russia is a nice, healthy democracy and Pussy Riot are at the gates of America, trying to overthrow our system and institute some sort of Democratic-Socialistic-Surrealist-Matriarchy, we can talk about disagreements. For the moment, there's nothing else for advocates of the individual to do but support these women and hope they get home sooner than two years from now.
Reason TV on the DC solidarity rally for Pussy Riot:
The post The Backlash Against Pussy Riot As Poster-Women for Sexy Free Speech Has Some Good Points, But Not Many appeared first on Reason.com.
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