There are great benefits to connectedness, but we haven't wrapped our minds around the costs.
Why It Was a Great Victory
Topic: War on Terrorism
7:31 pm EDT, Jul 26, 2008
Ronald Dworkin:
Boumediene v. Bush is one of the most important Supreme Court decisions in recent years. American law has never before recognized that aliens imprisoned by the United States abroad have such rights. The disgrace of Guantánamo has produced a landmark change in our constitutional practice.
The Bush administration, as part of its so-called "war on terror," created a unique category of prisoners that it claims have no such right because they are aliens, not citizens, and because they are held not in an American prison but in foreign territory. The administration labels them enemy combatants but refuses to treat them as prisoners of war with the protection that status gives. It calls them outlaws but refuses them the rights of anyone else accused of a crime. It keeps them locked up behind barbed wire and interrogates them under torture. The Supreme Court has now declared that this shameful episode in our history must end.
Senator John McCain called the decision "one of the worst" in the country's history. The conservative press was horrified: The Wall Street Journal said that Kennedy had turned the Constitution into a "suicide pact." No one explained why it would destroy America to allow people who claim innocence of any crime, or threat, a chance to defend that claim before an American judge who is presumably just as worried about his family's security as the president is. Why would it be suicidal to allow them the same opportunity for defense that we allow people indicted as serial killers?
Senator Barack Obama, on the other hand, welcomed the decision, so the Court's action may well become an important issue in the coming presidential election. McCain has already promised that if elected he will appoint more justices like Roberts and Alito. It would take only one such appointment to make further decisions like Boumediene impossible, and probably reverse that decision itself.
From the archive:
The government has provided no evidence to the public, to any court, or to Boumediene that he has ever supported terrorism in any way.
The immediate impact of the Boumediene decision is that detainees at Guantanamo may petition a federal district court for habeas review of the circumstances of their detention.
WE LOVE COMIC SANS ... and we'll kill animals to prove it
Typography is not simply a frou-frou debate over aesthetics orchestrated by a hidden coterie of graphic-design nerds. You need only imagine a STOP sign that utilizes the heavy-metal typefaces favoured by bands Dokken or Krokus to realize that clear, clean and direct typography can save lives, or at the very least prevent drivers from prolonged bouts of confused squinting.
Because everything you read, every sign, book and logo, is in a font. Fonts are like the air: you don't notice them when they are fine, only when they are mucked up or obscure.
Virginia Postrel talks with Gary Hustwit — director of Helvetica — about filmmaking, creativity, and the expressive implications of one of the world's most popular typefaces
To paraphrase President Clinton's 2002 remark, American voters generally seem to prefer strong and wrong to smart and right.
The Republican party has been seen as "tougher," regardless of the effectiveness of its policies. This faith in Republican toughness has had profound electoral consequences.
Donald Rumsfeld may be remembered for his policy failures, but he should also be remembered for the question he posed in a leaked memo in 2003:
"Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?"
Two terms of Republican rule have been disastrous for US national security. The question is: Have American voters noticed?
On January 21, 2000, a year before he would move into the White House, Bush said:
When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world.
And we knew exactly who the "they" were.
It was us versus them, and it was clear who "them" was.
Today we're not sure who the "they" are but we know they're there.
In his National Security Strategy for 2002, Bush used the words "liberty" eleven times, "freedom" forty-six times, and "dignity" nine times; yet people who live under oppression around the world have seen few benefits from President Bush's freedom doctrine. Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state under Bush, put it best when he said, "Since 9/11 our principal export to the world has been our fear."
From the archive:
"You can't talk sense to them," Bush said, referring to terrorists.
"It's very hard to enter the rectum, but once you do things move much faster."
...
The lions awoke, panicked and scattered into the bushes. The buffalo then trotted victorious back to the pride. It was a perfect illustration of the adage that the best defense is a good offense.
According to one who was present, Churchill suddenly blurted out: "Are we animals? Are we taking this too far?"
At a moment of serious challenge, battered by two wars, ballooning debt, and a faltering economy, the United States appears to have lost its capacity to think clearly.
The seriousness of American threats to Iran is confirmed by the fact that no significant national leader in the United States has ever disowned or objected to them in clear, vigorous, principled language. It is as if the whole country listens to the administration's threats with breath held, wondering if Bush and Cheney really mean to do as they say, and in effect leaving the decision entirely to them.
Two of the skeptics, Gates and Mullen, are running the Pentagon, and their cautioning remarks, only a step this side of insubordination, would seem to make attack impossible. But if attack is impossible, why does Bush talk himself into an ever-tighter corner by continuing to issue threats? Does he believe Iran will cave? Are these the only words he thinks people will still listen to? Is he hoping to tie the hands of the next president? Or is he preparing to summon the power of his office to carry out the last option on the table? One hardly knows whether to take the question seriously. It seems alarmist and overexcited even to pose it when the realities are so clear. But it is impossible to be sure—Bush has a history.
From the archive:
Standing there, the doctor's wife watched the two blind men who were arguing, she noticed they made no gestures, that they barely moved their bodies, having quickly learned that only their voice and hearing now served any purpose, true, they had their arms, that they could fight, grapple, come to blows, as the saying goes, but a bed swapped by mistake was not worth so much fuss, if only all life's deceptions were like this one, and all they had to do was to come to some agreement, Number two is mine, yours is number three, let that be understood once and for all, Were it not for the fact that we're blind this mix-up would never have happened, You're right, our problem is that we're blind. The doctor's wife said to her husband, The whole world is right here.
Being “always on” is being always off, to something.
Due to the nature of the threat revealed by this investigation, we are prohibiting any liquids, including beverages, hair gels, and lotions from being carried on the airplane. This determination will be constantly evaluated and updated when circumstances warrant.
"You can't talk sense to them," Bush said, referring to terrorists.
That’s what makes speculators a perfect target: by going after them, Congress can demonstrate to voters that it understands their pain, and at the same time avoid doing anything that might require real sacrifice from Americans. Our dependence on foreign oil, together with the fiscal fecklessness that has helped reduce the value of the dollar, means that there is no easy way out of where we are. But in an election year that’s hardly a message that anyone in Washington is going to deliver.
From the archive:
In all his speeches, John McCain urges Americans to make sacrifices for a country that is both “an idea and a cause”. He is not asking them to suffer anything he would not suffer himself. But many voters would rather not suffer at all.
More on suffering:
In the 21st century, we "shy away from death," she says, and we tend to think of a good death as a sudden one. Not so in the 19th century. Dying well meant having time to assess your spiritual state and say goodbye -- which is difficult to do if you're killed in battle.
What's more, there were so many dying: some 620,000 soldiers in four years. As a percentage of population, Faust says, that's "the equivalent of 6 million Americans today."
How could the culture not be changed?
... Her early work centered on the intellectual arguments of slavery's prewar defenders. She wanted to understand how whole classes of people can get caught up in a shared worldview, to the point that they simply can't see.
Continuing:
In the spring of 1863, Lord & Taylor in New York, down on Ladies’ Mile, opened a “mourning store,” where the new widows of the Civil War could dress their grief in suitable fashion.
According to one who was present, Churchill suddenly blurted out: "Are we animals? Are we taking this too far?"
Bush: first of all, we have said that whatever we do... will be legal.
The eXile, the Moscow-based alternative paper founded by Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi — and which has been home these past few years to occasional TAC contributor Gary Brecher, the War Nerd — has been shut down by Russian authorities.
Deal Reached in Congress to Rewrite Rules on Wiretapping
Topic: Surveillance
7:54 pm EDT, Jun 19, 2008
This just in: retroactive immunity, now in effect. (Well, not quite yet.)
After months of wrangling, Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress struck a deal on Thursday to overhaul the rules on the government’s wiretapping powers and provide what amounts to legal immunity to the phone companies that took part in President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program after the Sept. 11 attacks.
The deal, expanding the government’s powers in some key respects, would allow intelligence officials to use broad warrants to eavesdrop on foreign targets and conduct emergency wiretaps without court orders on American targets for a week if it is determined important national security information would be lost otherwise. If approved, as appears likely, it would be the most significant revision of surveillance law in 30 years.
It's Legacy time. Read the full text of the bill, courtesy of the majority leader.
WaPo offers this:
ACLU and some Democratic leaders have argued that the bill does not go far enough in protecting civil liberties. The proposal would give retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that can show the court that they received assurances from government officials that the program was legal and that they have "substantial evidence" in the form of classified letters from authorities to support their position.
To quote Condi Rice out of context:
“Obviously, in any compromise, there are compromises."
From the archive, a favorite:
About the failure everyone now agrees. But what was the problem? And what should be done to make us safe?
It wasn't respect for the Constitution that kept the NSA from reading the "Tomorrow is zero hour" message until the day after the disaster. It was lack of translators. To meet that kind of problem, the Comint professionals have a default solution: more. Not just more Arab linguists but more of everything -- more analysts, more polygraph examiners and security guards, more freedom to listen in on more people, more listening posts, more coverage, more secrecy.
Is more what we really need?
In my opinion not.
But running spies is not the NSA's job. Listening is, and more listening is what the NSA knows how to organize, more is what Congress is ready to support and fund, more is what the President wants, and more is what we are going to get.
To find stories you must give yourself to the moment. Time must weigh on you, its lulls, accelerations and silences. The life within, the deeper story, does not yield itself with ease.
It helps to be cut off, to have nowhere to go, nowhere but your story, and no excuse for not telling it.
I worry about stories dying, replaced by stuff. Content for platforms does not a story make. Today, you arrive anywhere and surf the Net. Being “always on” is being always off, to something.
According to Paola, our kids started off right because she breast-fed them, which “opened their taste buds.” I’m not sure that’s scientific. It’s possible Italians are so haughty about their cuisine that they think even their breast milk is superior.
Internet metering is a throwback to the days of dial-up service, but at a time when video and interactive games are becoming popular, the experiments could have huge implications for the future of the Web.
“The continued success of GTA IV is not translating into big hardware sales for the PS3 or the 360.”
When the governments of South Africa, China, Libya and Indonesia support Sudan’s positions in Darfur, do they really mean to adopt a pro-rape foreign policy?
Since poorer Americans spend a higher proportion of their incomes on low-wage imports (shoes from China, for instance), trade can also be seen as favoring the less well off. If only politicians would stop preaching to them otherwise.
Age of Conan has at least the potential to become the best new massively multiplayer game since World of Warcraft.
New York City during the 1970s was a beautiful, ravaged slag — impoverished and neglected after suffering from decades of abuse and battery. She stunk of sewage, sex, rotting fish, and day-old diapers. She leaked from every pore.
And as they sifted through files and images on the hard drives, investigators found tons of material — orders for equipment, names and places where the Khan network operated, even old love letters. In all, they found several terabytes of data, a huge amount to sift through.
“Now is the greatest time to be bartering,” Scott Ebberbach of Itex, a bartering outfit, recently told The South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “Unfortunately, it’s that way because of the economy.” Unfortunately.
