Paul Mason at The Guardian writes Torture will just push our enemies to more violent excess:
I have been struck, in the days since the report, by two standard responses. The first is the way even critical media reporting has stuck to the official language and then moved on, at the first decent opportunity, to other stories. The second is where parts of the left and anti-war movement have said: “We knew the Americans were torturers, so what’s new?” Across the political spectrum there has been a reluctance to confront detail, either about the physical reality of torture or the political justification for it in the official channels. [...]
To break the cycle needs more than law, which can always be circumvented. It needs a public willingness to confront torture’s detail, the psychological and physical harm it causes to its victims, and the self-deception, degradation and loss of discipline experienced by institutions that use it. And it demands the proactive prosecution of those who perpetrate it.
David Atkins at
The Washington Monthly writes
Why are torturers being given “balance” in the press?
After the publication of the torture report, the torturers and their enablers have been all over the airwaves defending themselves and the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” These “techniques” included horrific acts of rape, threatening family members with rape and death, suspension from ceilings and walls for days on end, forcing prisoners to soil themselves in diapers, and various forms of psychological torture including sleep and sensory deprivation. In many cases the people being tortured had done nothing wrong and had no information of value.
There is simply no defense for any of this. None. “It gave us actionable intelligence” isn’t a defense. It happens to be untrue. [...]
This stuff is obvious. And yet the TV shows and newspaper stories are full of balance given to the pro-torture side. Why? Despite objections to the contrary, journalists do not always give balance to both sides of an argument if the other side is deemed irrelevant or depraved. Whenever the deficit bugbear rolls to the forefront, almost no balance is given to the Keynesian point of view despite their predictions being consistently correct: the idea that one needn’t actually cut the deficit during a recession is treated as so outre as to require no journalistic attention.
More pundit excerpts can be found below the fold.
In an essay larded with filled lies and and punctuated with bullshit, the guy who concocted the tortuous memos arguing torture wasn't torture, law professor John Yoo at the Los Angeles Times writes Dianne Feinstein's flawed torture report:
War forces us to confront tough decisions and trade-offs. Current polls indicate that a large majority of Americans support tough interrogation measures, including waterboarding, to get information from terrorists. They could have turned Bush out of office in 2004, after details of the interrogation program came to light. And as the 2014 midterm elections show, Americans remain worried about national security and terrorist threats, especially Islamic State.
Americans rely — where the Feinstein report and Senate Democrats will not — on the men and women of the CIA to protect the nation as foreign dangers and disorder rise around us.
Jon Wiener at
The Nation writes
Prosecute John Yoo, Says Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky:
Torture is a crime, a violation of the Federal Torture Act. Those who engaged in the torture documented in such exhaustive detail in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report should be prosecuted, and those who conspired in that torture should also be prosecuted. They include UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo, says Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of the Law School at the University of California Irvine.
Yoo was co-author of the infamous “torture memo” of 2002, when he was Deputy Assistant US Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Bush Justice Department. In the memo he declared that—in the words of Jane Mayer in her book The Dark Side—“cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of detainees could be authorized, with few restrictions.”
Jo-Marie Burt and Foreign Policy In Focus at
The Nation write
Latin America’s Lesson for the US: Prosecute the Torturers:
As an academic and longtime human rights activist, I welcome the release of the Senate report. Hard-nosed fact-finding and truth-seeking is important in the aftermath of atrocity. A report of this nature can help set the record straight about what happened and determine, based on careful review of the evidence, whether such atrocities were the doing of a few “bad apples” or of systematic state policy. [...]
Some of the most heinous dictators of the region have been tried and convictedArgentina’s Jorge Rafael Videla, Peru’s Alberto Fujimori and Uruguay’s Juan María Bordaberry, to name a few—and democracy in those countries is the stronger for it. On December 10, the Brazilian National Truth Commission—fifty years after the military carried out a coup d’état and established one of the longest-standing dictatorships in modern Latin American history, and twenty-nine years after the transition to democracy in 1985—released its own report, outlining the abuses committed during its dictatorship and calling for prosecutions of the surviving military officers responsible for these horrendous abuses.
I refuse to believe that it is not possible for the United States to do the same. We are a wealthy, powerful nation with a robust democratic tradition. If we do not prosecute those responsible for torture, we run the risk not only of such heinous practices being used again, but of destroying the very democracy we claim to hold so dear.
Dana Milbank at
The Washington Post wastes a ton of pixels complaining about swearing by politicians, especially the use of the word "crap" instead of the crap policies in his
The coarsening of politics:
Salty talk isn’t new to politics, of course. One difference now is political figures’ blue language is more likely to be caught on tape and less likely to be cleaned up before it goes public. George W. Bush in 2000 was caught on a hot mike calling a New York Times reporter a “major league [bad word for anus].” Back in the ’90s, the University of Pennsylvania compiled a Vulgarity Index of words used on the House floor. But the top violations, words such as hell and stupid, seem quaint now. Lyndon B. Johnson had a famously foul mouth and used the word “piss” a lot, but that was generally in private. In public, he created the President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. [...]
Maybe it’s time to reinstate Johnson’s obscenity commission. That would scare the crap out of some people.
Kevin Kelley at
An Untold History writes
Keeping Hope Alive: A Call to Action:
Simply electing the "best" candidate is not enough- the solution must involve organization designed to produce mass pressure and drive promised reform. Make no mistake, however, driving necessary social involvement will not be an easy undertaking, for several reasons.
First, the youth, long considered one of the most important elements of any social movement, have become accustomed to, and consequently passive, in the face of injustice. College campuses, historically lightning rods of civil disobedience and social movement, are now hives of future worker bees increasingly preoccupied with grades, graduation and good job. Reluctant to give voice to government/corporate criticism, lest it taint their prospects for ever-more competitive employment or lead to ostracism by potential networking peers, they remain silent witness. [...]
Another deterrent to organization/action is unrealistic timeline and discouragement through routine disappointment. In today's hustle-bustle, "I want it now" society, instant gratification and results are expected. Meaningful change, however, is accomplished neither overnight, nor without overcoming the often-overwhelming obstacles set forth by those who benefit from a current system and oppose change. Therefore, while those within a social movement wish to see their vision implemented in their respective country or community during their lifetime, this is often not the case. For example, many American abolitionists did not live to see wrongly enslaved Africans emancipated. Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated before he could see his dream of an India free from British rule. Martin Luther King Jr. was also struck down by an assassin as he attempted to organize a Poor People's Movement to lift the voices of every poor and working class American.
Heidi Moore at
The Guardian writes
Savings accounts are at risk as long as JP Morgan CEO gets everything he wants:
If you want to understand what’s wrong with the US financial system, start by asking this question: why does Jamie Dimon always get his way? [...]
To see Dimon interacting with lawmakers is a surreal experience: they don’t just smile, they fawn and swoon and lose their senses. Whether it is Dimon’s riches, his power or his wardrobe, one can’t shake the feeling that the rumpled men of Congress, fighting it out in the swampy muck of politics, regard Dimon as the person they’d like to be reincarnated as. [...]
Here’s what’s remarkable about this time, however: even despite Dimon’s abiding charm, some members of Congress stood up and said the derivatives provision would be wrong. In fact, they were willing to shut down the government over it. [...]
A few years ago, these would have been the voices of conscience outside of Congress while Congress itself was focused entirely on preserving the life and profits of big banks. Now, at least some prominent lawmakers feel empowered enough to criticize Wall Street in public, to push back and make a fuss and shame the influencers of Wall Street. In 2011, those statements might have come from the Occupy voices shouting in the streets of New York and on the Capitol steps. Now those statements are coming from inside Congress itself. It’s a sea change in how we talk about Wall Street, and money, and influence. And it’s something that Jamie Dimon should be very worried about.
Paul Krugman at
The New York Times writes
Wall Street’s Revenge:
The Masters of the Universe, it turns out, are a bunch of whiners. But they’re whiners with war chests, and now they’ve bought themselves a Congress. [...]
In itself, this rollback is significant but not a fatal blow to reform. But it’s utterly indefensible. The incoming congressional majority has revealed its agenda — and it’s all about rewarding bad actors. [...]
Again, in itself last week’s action wasn’t decisive. But it was clearly the first skirmish in a war to roll back much if not all of the financial reform. And if you want to know who stands where in this coming war, follow the money: Wall Street is giving mainly to Republicans for a reason.
Charles M. Blow at
The New York Times writes
America, Who Are We?:
Last week I spoke at a seminary and graduate school in New York about the protests following the grand jury decisions in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases. [...]
I couldn’t help noticing a disturbing sentiment echoed in a few of the questions about the value of voting. One gentleman even said something to this effect: “It doesn’t make a difference whom you put in office because the office is corrupt.”
I couldn’t disagree more. Voting is not some fruitless, patrician artifact from a bygone era. It is not for those devoid of consciousness and deprived of truth. It is an incredibly important part of civic engagement. No politicians are perfect, but neither are they all the same. The sameness argument is an instrument of deceit employed by the puppet masters to drive down the electoral participation of young idealists.