Torturing With the Best of Them

I think it is this report by Andrew Sullivan, on the torture going on in Gitmo, that is really depressing him.  And the fact that the Obama administration refuses to open up about any of it.  He wants to believe in them, but finds their unwillingness to expose and pursue the torturers very troubling.

It will probably be this, more than anything else, that eventually causes his break with this administration.  Yes, and their unwillingness to move on 'gays in the military.'

Yes, it is true, one has to move cautiously and prudentially (I'm speaking now of the administration), but ultimately, one DOES have to move.  Otherwise your words and promises are exposed as sheer sophistry and political talk.  And then, because you are weakened, you give your political opponents room to advance (i.e. Scott Brown).

Gloomy Andrew

Andrew Sullivan is really bummed out:

The Democrats are a clapped out, gut-free lobbyist machine. The Republicans are insane. The system is therefore paralyzed beyond repair.

Yes, I'm gloomy. Not because I was so wedded to this bill, although I think it's a decent enough start. But because if America cannot grapple with its deep and real problems after electing a new president with two majorities, then America's problems are too great for Americans to tackle.

And so one suspects that this is a profound moment in the now accelerating decline of this country.

As for me, I've been gloomy ever since Obama started appointing his advisors (which means for over a year now). It seemed to me then that there would be no real reform, but just an attempt to resurrect the 90s. And that was not what I voted for, nor do I think it will work.

I realize now that I let myself be deceived by the campaign rhetoric and energy into believing that fundamental reform of our system could be effected.  However, I've come to believe that the basic problem, along the lines of what Sullivan is saying, lies in our corrupt, paralyzed political system and culture. 

And that, even if Obama wanted to change it (which I really don't think he does), would be bigger than his ambitions and powers.

Unpopular

Not too much has changed for Sarah Palin, including that only something like 25% of the American population want her to be president.  Fortunately, that's not enough to win.  And you can't say people don't know who she is.  She may be the most recognizable politician in the country right now.

A new CBS News poll finds that a large majority of Americans say they do not want former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to run for president.

Specifically, 71 percent say they do not want the former Republican vice presidential nominee to run for president, while 21 percent say they do want her to run.

When the results are split out by party, 56 percent of Republicans say they do not want her to seek the office and 30 percent do. Meanwhile, 88 percent of Democrats do not want her to run. Among independents, 65 percent do not want her to run and 25 percent do.

Could she still win the presidency? Yes she could, given the right political and national circumstances. The Cosmo Boy was down 20 percentage points just about 2 weeks ago in Massachusetts, and now he's pulled ahead. Earthquakes (geological AND political) can happen.

Centerfold

It looks like this may well be the new Senator from Massachusetts, according to the polls.  Scott Brown in Cosmopolitan when he was a 22 year old law student at Boston College.

Himalayan Glaciers Not in Danger

On the climate change front, another claim by the global warming catastrophists, that the Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2035, is about to be withdrawn by the IPCC.  It turns out, as reported in the Times of London, that it was based on a single interview with an Indian scientist in 1999, who has since changed his mind.

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

Professor Murari Lal, who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC report, said he would recommend that the claim about glaciers be dropped: "If Hasnain says officially that he never asserted this, or that it is a wrong presumption, than I will recommend that the assertion about Himalayan glaciers be removed from future IPCC assessments."

If this kind of frightening scenario was passed off as rock-solid science by the IPCC even though it was based on little evidence, what else are they saying that is also unreliable scientifically?
 

What are you? Everything?

I'm sorry, but this just seems weird to me.

Newsweek was readying a story about the Google-China row when the earthquake hit. Editor Jon Meacham scrapped his plans and hit the phones in search of the highest authority he could find to weigh in, according to a person familiar with the matter. He reached David Axelrod, senior adviser to Obama, who asked his boss if he was game.

Getting Obama to write an essay about the Haiti tragedy is a coup for the struggling magazine and aligns squarely with its new strategy. Newsweek lost $25 million in the first half of 2009, and the Post Co. last year reinvented the magazine, cutting its staff and shifting its focus from news reporting to commentary.

What is it that Tevye says in Fiddler on the Roof, when Motel the Tailor suggests that he wants to marry Tevye's daughter Tzeitel,

"What are you? Everything? The bridegroom, matchmaker, and guests in one? I suppose you'll perform the ceremony, too?"

Increase Faith in Government

Glenn Greenwald of Salon reports on a truly creepy and, it seems to me, despotic idea:

Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama's closest confidants. Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs." In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites -- as well as other activist groups -- which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper's abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.

Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups." He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called "independent" credible voices to bolster the Government's messaging (on the ground that those who don't believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government). This program would target those advocating false "conspiracy theories," which they define to mean: "an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role."

Nicaragua--Free Market Country

One of the more interesting websites that deals with contrarian economics--from a basically Austrian economics perspective--is The Daily Reckoning.  Though it is basically free-market in orientation, it's also refreshingly non-ideological in other respects.  For example, I ran across this description of Nicaraqua in one of their daily reports:

So, "Is it safe?" That's the first question anyone you talk to about Nicaragua asks. Old news stories containing names like Sandinistas, Contras and Ollie North come to mind for most. "Wasn't there some scandal with guns and the Iranians?" one asks, visions of civil war and death squads dancing around in their heads.

"Si, si, si," our driver Damien, a native of Granada, informed us, "but that was my father's generation." The current generation of 20- and 30- something Nicaraguans are much like those in Baltimore, Dubai or Bombay. They're up on communications technology...and want to use it to make their lives better. Damien was born in Managua, educated in Guatemala and now runs the concierge service for Rancho Santana. But his family owns an Internet cafe and he's saving money to start his own networking business. The true benefit of the "information age" is that a guy like your editor can set up shop in a low-cost, low-tax joint with world-class surfing waves (like Rancho Santana) and still keep his life together. Heh.

"So what about the Sandinistas?" They did overthrow the US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. But at the time, the Somoza family owned everything in the country...the media, education system, means of production for the country's export crops of plantains, coffee, almonds, rum...leaving anyone without "connections" living hand to mouth off the land. Today, you see a myriad of little businesses and small distribution outfits for all manner of goods and services. After the revolution, the Sandinistas restored the republic and they've been holding elections ever since. Now, according to Interpol (the international police), Nicaragua is "the least violent country in Central America and one of the safest in the entire hemisphere"...including the United Sates.

"After 17 years as a free market country," a list of the greatest travel destinations for 2010 published by Scotsman.com echoes, "Nicaragua's economy is growing and according to the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, it's the safest country in Central America, with a reported crime rate lower than that of Germany, France and the US."

Believe me, you'd never hear this from the neocons!

Revolt

Karen Kwiatkowski is a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel turned anti-war libertarian.  She writes:

So why am I excited about 2010? I think this year many more Americans will begin to bear the pain of the corporate and warmongering state, led by a gutless, fat-cat Congress and its fake but very expensive wars on terror, drugs, tobacco, alcohol, fat, privacy, private property, guns and free speech. They will bear it with decreased personal revenue and the frustration of dealing with government at all levels. They will increasingly suffer repeated small humiliations associated with living in a mature confiscatory and emerging police state. As they suffer, they will be increasingly exposed to the utter waste and stupidity of our government, at home and abroad – and will begin to consider themselves superior to it.

What if, instead of a new series of state-created and state-led wars, we got some recombination of a people-created and people-led war against the state? We have seen and lived the Ron Paul revolution, and witnessed the undeniable rise of Tea Party populism. Coming mass tax increases combined with state and federal defaults, and inflation, will shape the American psyche in a way that could make us quite ungovernable. In government circles, 2010 could become known as the Year of the Bad Serf.

In the face of expensive wars and a dying desperate federal state, 2010 will mark the year that Americans self-consciously embrace the power of civil disobedience, and launch a decade of fundamental and good-natured repudiation of all things government – its wars, its debts, its never-ending lies and yes, even its promises. It’s already happening, and it’s going to be a lot of fun.

There is no doubt that the Democratic mandate has pretty well disappeared, and who knows what is next.  Something unusual seems to be happening.  Maybe this is it.

Torture

Here is some excruciating writing by William Gregg on torture by the CIA and its clients:

One of the most popular destinations for victims of "extraordinary rendition" is Uzbekistan, a pocket of Stalin-grade Communism in Central Asia ruled by Islam Karimov, a Soviet-trained dictator of the old school.

Former British Ambassador to Tashkent Craig Murray lost his job and has endured severe vituperation at the hands of his government because he objected to Britain's collaboration in CIA-sponsored torture conducted in Uzbekistan.

"If you are put into prison in Uzbekistan the chances of coming out again alive are less than even," writes Murray. "And most of the prisons are still the old Soviet gulags in the most literal sense."