Democratic Transparency

Democratic Transparency - James Gillray

The content of political rhetoric is fluff, spin, and image mongering.  More so today than ever before?  Perhaps.  For those who are interested, the truth is not hard to find behind the colored pictures of the magic lantern show of television.

Every once in a while, I come across an article or a letter in the NYTimes that nails it right on the head.  Simply, and without complications.  Here is my latest entry:

To the Editor:

John McCain’s choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate is reminiscent of President George H. W. Bush’s choice of Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court.

Faced with public sentiment for an African-American to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall, Mr. Bush said, in effect: “You want an African-American? Here’s one who will consistently work against most African-American interests.”

Mr. McCain, thinking that he can seduce supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton, says: “You want a woman on the ticket? Here’s a solidly anti-choice woman who’ll work against women’s interests.”

Interestingly, both choices play the same game of identity politics that Republicans claim to abhor.

Their cynicism is shameless.

Joseph Russo

Bristol, R.I., Aug. 29, 2008

Thanks, Mr. Russo.

“A dagger at my heart…”

Once again (see this post) I return to the story of mass arrests in NYC – peaceful protesters, or people not even demonstrating, hauled into the precinct station, some of whom were held for days.  Only two people tried – acquitted of course – in proceedings that surely must have been absurd to witness given the evidence available that totally undermined all of NYPD’s claims. Everyone else released, no charges.  Why were they arrested?  HYSTERIA!

The New York Times has been following, and sometimes editorializing about the process by which the lawsuits against the city are being settled.  Today, it describes how at great cost in legal fees and staff time, after much stalling and stonewalling, the city is paying out millions of dollars to settle claims related to its violation of civil rights.  Of course, the NYPD admits no wrong doing – state organs never do.

The article quotes the fellow shown in the picture above:

Then they started arresting us, one by one. At that point, I got emotional — I could not believe in my country, in my city, I could get arrested for doing absolutely nothing and standing on the sidewalk,” Mr. Shirazi added.

Are there any lessons from the day? The Law Department said the $2 million payout did not mean the police had done anything wrong. “This settlement was reached without any admission of liability on behalf of the city and the individual defendants,” said Ms. Halatyn, the city lawyer.

The Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on the settlement.

Mr. Shirazi said that as he was being handcuffed for the first time in his life, he told the officer that the plastic cuffs were squeezing him. “He said, ‘You should have thought about that before you came out this morning.’ It was like a dagger in my heart, that a police officer of my city would come up with anything like that.”

In what does patriotism and love of country consist?  Following orders motivated by unthinking fear or hallowing and practicing the ideas that gave it rise in the first place?

Soul Man

As the television world watches the Olympics in Beijing, the Party is ensuring that certain things will not be seen.  In order to stage a protest of any sort, especially during the festivities, you must get a permit and only exercise your right to speech in selected zones.  (Sounds a bit like the Republican convention in NYC, 2004, eh?)  According to this article in the NYTimes, quite a few of those who sign up for the right to voice their grievances publicly are ending up disappearing into the maw of the Chinese Communist Party security apparatus.  It reminds me of that grim old joke about Stalin and the Soviet constitution that was packed with liberal human rights.  They only published it to see who would sign on, so that then they could be dealt with.

The fellow shown here is a veteran protester, profiled briefly in the article:

Despite what seem to be the perils of applying for a permit, scores of people continue to flock to the capital seeking an opportunity to publicize their grievances. Gao Chuancai, 45, a farmer from Heilongjiang Province, evaded a police cordon in his hometown and arrived in Beijing with a handwritten poster describing a litany of abuses by local officials.

Mr. Gao said in an interview that he had no delusions about his prospects. Over the years, he said, he has been jailed a dozen times and beaten repeatedly for trying to publicize corruption in Xingyi, a village just outside Harbin in China’s northeast. Security officials from Harbin had in the past even tracked him down in Beijing and stopped him from petitioning higher authorities in the capital, he said.

Early this month, after he learned of the Olympic protest zones on television, he mailed in an application to Beijing.

On Wednesday, he worked up the nerve to visit the application office. “Whatever happens, happens. I don’t care if I die,” he said as his taxi pulled up to the building.

Just what makes a person act this way?  Some sort of glorious stubborness that might, under most circumstances, make him a rather unpleasant person?  Surely, the authorities are asking themselves the same question:  “Why won’t he just shut up!!“  Philip Pan’s engrossing new book, Out of Mao’s Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China, tries to answer just this question.  He profiles several men and woman, inspiring, brave people with   tremendous grit, who won’t buckle under to the the Chinese state.  He also describes others who are cynical, rapacious, brutal, and totally unprincipled, and he sees it as an open question as to which group will carry the day in China, ruled as it is by an entrenched, corrupt, kleptocracy.  (Communist ideology dropped by the wayside long ago.)

Meanwhile, Mr. Gao…

At the reception area, a pair of officers questioned him about the nature of his protest and asked him to fill out a lengthy form that included the names and numbers of the officials who had wronged him. Mr. Gao was reluctant, but he complied.

After an hour, they smiled and told him to return in five days. As he walked out the door, he overheard one of the officers on the phone. He was calling the police station in Harbin.

I wish him luck.

Dead Again

Oops, they did it again.  Mistakes were made.  Another (black) man riddled with bullets on suspicion of carrying a weapon with which to threaten NYPD officers.  Turns out, he had none.  If I were a black man, I’d be afraid to walk the streets of NYC at night…maybe by day too.  If I had a son, I’d fear for him.

Some say, why was Sean Bell hanging out in such a seedy place, a known thug warren?  Shouldn’t he have known better?  [Do we expect to be killed for our poor decisions in entertainment?]  The police were only doing their job – they feared for their lives.  [We pay, and supposedly train them to behave well in such situations.  They behaved like panicked children, and they had the guns.]  The police weren’t murderers!  [Perhaps not, but they certainly didn't act properly.] 

Alas, many claim that there was no racism involved – after all, two of the officers were black or latino.  The fact is, however, that it is only men of color who find themselves at the wrong end of these occassional mistakes.  Why this is so is the real question.  I would lay the blame on the NYPD itself.  The training it gives its men and women before they go out into the community with lethal weapons at the ready is surely abysmal.  One interviewee I heard, an expert on this, said the training is radically contradictory:  If you feel in danger, shoot, vs. Shoot twice, then stop and check.  Not a clear message to take out into the field.  The fact that these incidents continue to happen now and then indicates to me a deeply entrenched attitude of indifference to the consequences of the bad training, the unintended killing of an innocent man of color now and then.

I imagine the mentality goes something like this:  Hey, it’s a jungle out there.  There are a lot of dangerous criminals, and we’re on the front line fighting them.  Yeah, we make mistakes now and then – we don’t want to, we feel bad, but if you want to fight crime, that’s the price.  If you hold us responsible for our mistakes, you’re on your own.  Cut us some slack…

A rather self-serving point of view.  Certainly not a point of view that will help eliminate the problem.

Bridge Political

Some American women competing at an international bridge tournament in Shanghai, China have caused an uproar in certain circles because they displayed a sign that said, “We did not vote for Bush!”  Today, I read several letters to the editor complaining about their behavior – not appropriate!  I believe that they were criticized by the international association hosting the event.

I wonder if the Chinese government is watching this?  Of course they are!  Can you imagine the wheels turning in their heads?  “Hmmm…they announce their opposition to their national leader with a sign, and they are condemned by the bridge organization.  People declare their actions are inappropriate and unsuitable for this venue.  We put people in prison for similar expressions of dissent, and the entire world condemns us and gets on our case!  Maybe we can learn something from this!”

Just Say No to Rudy

I cannot understand the attraction of this man for the electorate, no, not on any level. Just to highlight one aspect of his miserable career as mayor of NYC, America’s Mayor, as he likes to call himself, I quote in full this excellent letter to the New York Times from today. The emphasis is added by me.

To the Editor:

Many thanks to Frank Rich for reminding people that after 9/11 Rudolph W. Giuliani tried to destroy democracy in New York City by urging that our elections be postponed so that he could overstay his term. In my experience, many people here have forgotten this shameful attempt at a power grab.

Whenever Mr. Giuliani the candidate says that “they” attacked us because they hate our freedoms and our rights, people should be reminded that his first response to this hatred was to try to strip away our most precious right: the right to vote.

The rest of America needs to know that the person they call “America’s mayor” desperately tried to become “New York’s autocrat.” Mayor Giuliani responded to an emergency by attacking the right of the people to vote. How would a President Giuliani react to an emergency?

Eliot Camaren

New York, Nov. 11, 2007

We’re Back in the USSR!

I found this article depressing, infuriating, and ironic in a ghastly way. Bold face emphasis added by me with notes in italic:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 — Despite a Canadian inquiry that cleared a Syrian-born Canadian citizen of any terrorist ties, the Bush administration has formally refused a Canadian government request that it remove the man, Maher Arar, from the terrorist watch list, saying that the United States has secret information justifying his inclusion. (Now, this really sounds like the KGB.)

On Monday, the Justice Department released a letter affirming the Mr. Arar’s listing sent last week by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, to the Canadian minister of public safety, Stockwell Day.

In the letter, dated Jan. 16, Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Chertoff said their departments and American intelligence agencies “have re-examined the materials in the possession of the United States regarding Mr. Arar.

“Based on this re-examination,” he added, “we remain of the view that the continued watch listing (Okay, English likes to turn nouns into verbs…) of Mr. Arar is appropriate.”

After the letter was sent, Mr. Day met last week with Mr. Chertoff and Mr. Gonzales and reviewed the American dossier on Mr. Arar in its entirety, but still disagreed with the American decision, Canadian and American officials said.

For human rights advocates, Mr. Arar became a symbol of the United States’ counterterrorism policies gone drastically awry, when he was detained in New York in 2002 while trying to change planes and then sent to Syria. He was imprisoned in Syria for more than a year and beaten repeatedly with a heavy metal cable before the Syrian authorities released him in October 2003.

A two-year investigation by a Canadian government commission concluded in September that Mr. Arar had no terrorist ties and that the Canadian authorities had passed misleading information about him to the United States before he was sent to Syria. The disclosures led to the resignation of the head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (In the USA, when our leaders are caught making a huge blunder, they take responsibility and do nothing – at least in some countries they have the decency to resign.) and a formal protest by the Canadian government to the Bush administration over Mr. Arar’s treatment.

The Bush administration refused to provide documents or witnesses to Canada’s Arar Commission, and it has never admitted to any mistakes in its handling of Mr. Arar.

At a hearing last week, Senator Patrick J. Leahy a Vermont Democrat who is the new Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, angrily pressed Mr. Gonzales about the case. In a statement on Monday, Senator Leahy said he was “puzzled” by the decision to keep Mr. Arar on the watch list.

“This abhorrent practice stains America’s reputation as a defender and protector of human rights, and I hope this administration will renounce it at long last,” Senator Leahy said. Mr. Gonzales has agreed to brief Mr. Leahy and Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the top Republican on the committee, on the case.

Spokesmen for Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Chertoff declined Monday to discuss the case, noting that a federal lawsuit filed by Mr. Arar against the United States government and dismissed last year is still on appeal.

An attorney for Mr. Arar, Maria C. LaHood, said the recent exchange provided more support for a statement last month by the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, that “we simply have a U.S. government that won’t admit it’s wrong.”

By Scott Shane

Published: January 23, 2007

Gillray – George Bush

(click to enlarge the image)

For Shame, America!

A SHAMEFUL RETREAT FROM AMERICAN VALUES

By Garrison Keillor

Tribune Media Services

I would not send my college kid off for a semester abroad if I were you. This week, we have suspended human rights in America, and what goes around comes around. Ixnay habeas corpus.The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor and majesty, has decided that an “enemy combatant” is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish grandmother or your Czech au pair, and can be arrested and held for as long as authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to examine the matter. If your college kid were to be arrested in Bangkok or Cairo, suspected of “crimes against the state,” and held in prison, you’d assume that an American foreign service officer would be able to speak to your kid and arrange for a lawyer, but this may not be true anymore. Be forewarned.

The Senate also decided it’s up to the president to decide whether it’s OK to make these enemies stand naked in cold rooms for a couple days in blinding light and be beaten by interrogators. This is now purely a bureaucratic matter: The plenipotentiary stamps the file “enemy combatants” and throws the poor schnooks into prison and at his leisure he tries them by any sort of kangaroo court he wishes to assemble and they have no right to see the evidence against them, and there is no appeal. This was passed by 65 senators and will now be signed by Mr. Bush, put into effect, and in due course be thrown out by the courts.

It’s good that Barry Goldwater is dead because this would have killed him. Go back to the Senate of 1964 — Goldwater, Dirksen, Russell, McCarthy, Javits, Morse, Fulbright — and you won’t find more than 10 votes for it.

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Idea. Mark their names. Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees to these people forfeits its honor:

Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts, Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter, Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich, Warner. (My senators in bold.)

To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott:

Mark their names and mark them well. For them, no minstrel raptures swell. High though their titles, proud their name, boundless their wealth as wish can claim, these wretched figures shall go down to the vile dust from whence they sprung, unwept, unhonored and unsung.

Three Republican senators made a show of opposing the bill and after they’d collected all the praise they could get, they quickly folded. Why be a hero when you can be fairly sure that the Court will dispose of this piece of garbage.

If, however, the Court does not, then our country has taken a step toward totalitarianism. If the government can round up someone and never be required to explain why, then it’s no longer the United States of America as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have made us become like them.

I got some insight last week into who supports torture when I went down to Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church. It was spooky. I walked in, was met by two burly security men with walkie-talkies, and within 10 minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes’ church and that it would be better if I didn’t talk about politics. I was there on a book tour for “Homegrown Democrat,” but they thought it better if I didn’t mention it. So I tried to make light of it: I told the audience, “I don’t need to talk politics. I have no need even to be interested in politics — I’m a citizen, I have plenty of money and my grandsons are at least 12 years away from being eligible for military service.” And the audience applauded! Those were their sentiments exactly. We’ve got ours, and who cares?

The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be snatched off the streets, flown to Guantanamo, stripped naked, forced to stand for 48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise, so why should they worry? It’s only the Jews who are in danger, and the homosexuals and gypsies. The Christians are doing just fine. If you can’t trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?

(c) 2006 by Garrison Keillor. All rights reserved.