I didn’t vote for him on November 3, but Mike Bloomberg has done the country a service and I wanted to acknowledge it. In stark contrast to his predecessor, the insufferable demagogue Rudy Giuliani, Bloomberg has voiced support for Eric Holder’s decision to try KSM and other 9/11 defendants in a civilian court here in New York. One now sees why President Obama endorsed Bill Thompson only halfheartedly and campaigned for him not at all: because on the national stage, Bloomberg is not an Obama foe. (In some respects, Bloomberg is more liberal. In a yes-or-no lightning round during the first mayoral debate, he was asked whether Obama has done enough on gay rights. “No,” Bloomberg said.)
I can think of few things more nauseating than Giuliani, Dick Cheney and others lecturing the country on the proper way to deal with terrorists. One chief argument is that we shouldn’t grant these suspects the full constitutional protections enjoyed by U.S. citizens. But these same people support the denial of such protections even to defendants who are citizens, such as Jose Padilla. They also believe the Geneva Conventions are “quaint” and don’t apply to anyone detained in the war on terror, citizen or not. So Giuliani, Cheney, the especially ludicrous Sarah Palin — they’ve all made plain their contempt for due process and the rule of law across the board. Thankfully, they have no authority on these matters at present and we must work to keep it that way.
Furthermore, the Obama haters — these supposed authorities on national security — are the same people who plunged the U.S. into an occupation of Iraq with no planning whatsoever; who awarded key posts in Iraq to the inept sons and daughters of GOP cronies; who frittered away billions upon billions of dollars not just on the cost of the war itself, but on outrageous boondoggles, hopelessly mired in corruption. (And now we’re warned in apocalyptic terms about health care reform adding to the deficit.)
I can scarcely keep up with the avalanche of stupidity surrounding the impending trial, the Sarah Palin “book” tour, the ongoing campaign to derail health care reform and etc. But just as Palin is a symbol of everything that’s wrong with the right, I have to point once again to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez as a symbol of everything wrong with the left.
Chavez has now taken the step of praising the hostage-taker and murderer Carlos the Jackal. He once again cites Robert Mugabe and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as “brothers” and even has positive words to say about Idi Amin.
I wouldn’t blink at this point if Chavez hailed Jeffrey Dahmer as a great anti-imperialist. It’s far more insidious that morons and frauds on the extreme left, people who have the nerve to call themselves “peace” advocates, continue to paint Chavez as a hero.
David Grann’s New Yorker piece on Todd Willingham, who was all but certainly innocent of the crime for which he was executed in 2004, is essential reading, and the full text is online.
Willingham couldn’t afford decent legal representation and so was done in by two crackpot arson investigators; a quack psychologist who testified that Willingham’s Iron Maiden and Led Zeppelin posters were evidence of a sick mind; the judge who outrageously allowed that testimony and hopefully will never again enjoy a peaceful night’s sleep; and not least of all secessionist Texas Governor Rick Perry, who’s been making a lot of noise lately about the Obama administration’s supposed “thumbing its nose at the American people,” yet who denied Willingham clemency without so much as a second thought — the ultimate act of government arrogance and disregard for the individual.
Here at Lerterland, we oppose the death penalty on predominantly libertarian grounds — no state in the union has the moral authority to take the life of its citizens. Repulsive clowns like Rick Perry (or other governors — Sarah Palin comes to mind) must under no circumstance be given power to decide the life or death of any state resident. We see in the Willingham case a breathtaking example of the corruptibility of justice, the train of events that can easily lead to a wrongful conviction. One shudders to think how many other times this has happened. Damien Echols, one of the West Memphis Three, is still on death row, essentially for the crime of having goth-style hair and not fitting in.
From Peter Applebome’s NYT account of politics and historical memory in Peekskill, New York, specifically as relates to Paul Robeson:
[Robeson] became a pioneering and uncompromising human rights advocate. He spoke out against segregation decades before the civil rights movement began, and was a fierce opponent of colonialism when that was barely an issue.
He also became an enthusiastic, unflagging admirer of the Soviet Union, something he never renounced or backed away from, even in the face of Stalin’s atrocities.
I certainly don’t defend the blacklisting and harassment of Robeson and the nefarious politics of the Red Scare. But the fact is that Robeson’s advocacy of human rights was not “uncompromising.” It was very severely compromised. I’m not sure how blatantly contradictory passages like the above can even be written and get past an editor.
Protests are heating up again in Iran, so comment on the following is timely.
In June 2007 I remarked on Amy Goodman’s fawning interview with left extremist John Pilger, a declared supporter of the Iraqi insurgency, an admirer of Hezbollah and apologist for Palestinian suicide bombers, and a Balkan genocide revisionist to boot. (Pilger considers himself part of the “peace movement.”) Now Goodman has aired another fawning interview with Pilger (hat tip Brett), in which he issues the following Palin-esque statement on Iran:
Now there is no doubt that among the people protesting, the many people protesting in the streets of Iran, are those who want another Iran, those who want greater freedoms, we have heard from that in the past, but without any smoking gun, without any credible information, without any evidence that that election in Iran was rigged. Rigged to get rid of something like 10 million votes. I mean, I don’t think anyone does in an election like in Iran or in the United States, there is a fraud. In most elections, there are. They may well have been extensive fraud in the Iranian elections.
Goodman fails to challenge this doublespeak. No credible information? No evidence of fraud? Iran’s Guardian Council has conceded there were widespread irregularities. We also have Chatham House’s authoritative study, which Juan Cole endorsed and linked to on June 22. The argument is settled. Goodman posted the Pilger interview on July 6 and she says their discussion occurred “last week.” So Pilger is either ignorant of the Chatham House report, or he chooses to deny its existence. (The late Harold Pinter on Pilger — my italics: “He unearths, with steely attention to facts, the filthy truth, and tells it as it is.” Nonsense.) It is Goodman’s duty as a journalist to mention the Chatham House study to her listeners. Widely hailed on the left as a tough-minded and well-informed interviewer, she is neither.
Incoherent as it is, Pilger’s quote above allows him some wiggle room to deny he’s wholeheartedly backing the Iranian regime. But there’s no mistaking it — in this epic contest between the Iranian people and the baton-wielding state, Pilger is nauseatingly sympathetic toward the latter:
[Obama] has made a number of patronizing appeals to the Iranians, but now, as he is in effect saying, the protesters should be allowed to control the streets of Tehran. Turn that around. What if it was suggested that protesters should be allowed to control the streets of Washington?
Again, Goodman — I remind you, she is host of a program called Democracy Now! — fails to challenge Pilger on this chillingly anti-democratic statement. But it is helpful to know that if unruly mass protests were ever to break out in evil Washington, Pilger would apparently put in a word for random beatings and arrests, shootings, street surveillance, total blockage of the media and social networking and so on. Maybe he feels the Kent State and Chicago ’68 protesters had it coming.
Along the way, Pilger hails Democracy Now! as an “alternative source of information.” In truth, it is a softball, back-patting forum for the fringe left.
PS — Goodman has also interviewed Cynthia McKinney about her arrest and deportation from Israel. As Adam Holland has reported, McKinney is making the rounds of racist and antisemitic hate radio, first on something called Information Underground, more recently on the program of Daryl Bradford Smith, a fellow who believes in a “Judeo-Bolshevist plot against Christianity.” Don’t expect Amy Goodman to report on McKinney’s hard-right fascist ties anytime soon. And shame on pro-Palestinian activist Adam Shapiro for consorting with her.
Some days ago, before the bloodshed, Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett penned a piece headlined “Ahmadinejad Won. Get Over It.” They wanted to assure us that a 62.6% victory for Ahmadinejad really wasn’t at all far-fetched. Well, now Iran’s own election authorities have conceded that there were widespread voting irregularities in 50 cities. Mind you, this is what the officials are admitting. So just imagine how much worse the truth is. Oh, and remember this next time you read anything under Flynt Leverett’s byline.
[PS - Juan Cole links to Chatham House's indispensable study and remarks: "The election was stolen. It is there in black and white."]
People are being murdered in the streets and chaos is breaking out all over Iran. Andrew Sullivan has continuous updates and video, some of it extremely disturbing, some of it equally inspiring. There’s one clip of protesters managing to relieve the the riot police of their batons.
BURMESE REFUGEES AND HUMAN RIGHTS SUPPORTERS IN NEW YORK CELEBRATE BURMA DEMOCRACY LEADER’S BIRTHDAY…
Refugees, exiles, and Human Rights supporters from the Southeast Asian country of Burma will host a celebration of Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s 64th birthday at the United Nations Plaza this Saturday, while the Burmese democracy leader faces an extension of her 6-year house arrest or possible prison time by Burma’s military dictatorship.
The event, which also celebrates World Refugee Day. The event is being co-sponsored by following national and international organizations: -USCB (U.S. Campaign for Burma) -IBMO (International Burmese Monks Organization) - -ABMA (All Burma Monks’ Alliance) -The Burma Fund organization -AI-USA (Amnesty International – USA) -WOMB (Women On the Move for Burma) -International Campaign for Freedom of Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma -NLD-LA (National League for Democracy – Liberated Area) -88 Generation Students (Exile)
*Free and open to the public. 2009-06-20 1:00 – 4:00 PM 777, United Nations Plaza, 10th Floor, 44th St. & 1st Ave. New York United States For more information: Tim Aye Hardy (TimAHardy@gmail.com)
Anastasia has it right — “It seems very weird and off, somehow, to be writing about the arts of the Muslim world (or anything else, for that matter) instead of what is going on Iran right this minute.” Check Andrew Sullivan, Nico Pitney, The Lede and many others for ceaseless, awe-inspiring updates.
Just thought I’d note that Glenn Greenwald is adopting a maddeningly passive, wait-and-see attitude on Iran, subtly undermining the protest movement and giving more benefit of the doubt to Khameini’s fascist regime than he has ever given to the Obama administration, which he hammers on a daily basis for backsliding on liberty.
I’m going to leave the debate about whether Iran’s election was “stolen” and the domestic implications within Iran to people who actually know what they’re talking about (which is a very small subset of the class purporting to possess such knowledge).
The election was stolen, Mr. Greenwald, not “stolen.” In fact, it wasn’t even an election. Fair enough, let’s defer to the experts — but instead of recycling the cliche that the Iranian protesters are all “middle class and cosmopolitan” and Ahmadinejad’s ranks are filled with the noble, rural poor (in fact, the pro-Ahmadi rallies are being photoshopped by the regime to appear larger), let’s pay attention to experts like Trita Parsi, who note that Mousavi’s supporters hail from a range of class backgrounds.
Again, Greenwald continues to blast the Obama administration, mercilessly, on issues of torture accountability, indefinite detention, government secrecy and etc. Right now in Iran, the torture is happening in broad daylight, on the street. And Greenwald stuffily tells us to keep calm.
