Maine Owl

Month in review: President Obama seeks to legalize black-hole detention and makes a bad turn on disclosure of photos showing American torture in Iraq


Rachel Maddow distinguished for making "prolonged detention" the top story on the day of the Obama speech on national security, May 21


Professor Jonathan Turley (May 22): "We're going to decide—for one thing, we're willing to give trials to people, unless we think they're going to win. And if we think they're going to win, we're going to deny them trials and we're just going to hold them indefinitely."

It's been a bad month for Terror War policies in the Obama administration. Decisions and statements by President Obama in May 2009 firmly have established his ownership of some of the worst aspects of Bush-era attacks on civil liberties. Furthermore, the president has attempted to maintain secrecy surrounding American use of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment in its occupied lands. Here I post a brief review in order to mark this inauspicious month.

Indefinite arbitrary detention
In the major National Security speech on May 21, President Obama said he wants formally to codify US power to "hold individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war." This would be at least as dangerous to human rights and civil liberties as any official action of the administration of George W. Bush.

This I find to be the most alarming and dangerous aspect of what the president is proposing--his desire to carve out a new kind of legal space where human beings may be held forever without being charged of committing any crime through an established process.

Though the president says "we will do so within a system that involves judicial and congressional oversight", it cannot be anything other than executive edict cloaked in secrecy and fraught with opportunity for abuse. The bottom line is that Obama wishes to have buy-in from all branches of government for indefinite detention of accused persons who would have no hope of release, even though there is no credible evidence they ever have committed a criminal act.

It looks to me like President Obama wants to take Bush's "misguided experiment" and guide it, not get rid of it. In fact it's telling that in all the criticism of the previous administration Obama does manage to spit out in the speech, he called the Bush detainee actions an "experiment" rather than a travesty.

Glenn Greenwald explained the emerging Obama tactic in matters concerning conflict of rights and justice with the National Security State:

Greenwald: The speech was fairly representative of what Obama typically does: effectively defend some important ideals in a uniquely persuasive way and advocating some policies that promote those ideals (closing Guantanamo, banning torture tactics, limiting the state secrets privilege) while committing to many which plainly violate them (indefinite preventive detention schemes, military commissions, denial of habeas rights to Bagram abductees, concealing torture evidence, blocking judicial review on secrecy grounds).

Augusta rally at State House Saturday calls for the end the health care system run by insurance oligarchs


Perfect backdrop


Mary Beth Sullivan of the Global Network Against Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space: Which would you choose, escalating war in Afghanistan or national single payer health care? The answer was obvious.

Channel 6 had a story on the 6pm news.

Continuation of video from the previous post

Feet on the street for single payer noon Saturday at the State House


Presser in Bangor Thursday featured statements by single-payer activist Jerry Call who was arrested at a Senate Committee hearing in Washington DC on May 12, and Dr. Walter Doerfler, a physician in Dover-Foxcroft who compares the health system of his native Austria with that of the United States

Jerry Call: He [Senator Max Baucus] held a series of three meetings. Forty-some odd special-interest, for-profit lobbyists were allowed to testify. Our organization repeatedly had asked him for just one seat at the table for the people....reputable surveys have shown that sixty percent want a single-payer, national health care program, and yet he wouldn't allow one seat!

Dr. Walter Doerfler: We [in the U.S.] spend the most per-capita and we really don't get the bang for the buck--we really have very little to show for this.

The event tomorrow in Augusta, noon to two at the State House, will be a RALLY FOR NATIONAL HEALTH CARE, advocating for the single-payer approach in Congressional bill HR 676, while rejecting mandatory for-profit private insurance. See HERE for additional details.

The Bangor Daily News did have a good story today, "Single-payer advocates generating support for rally," by Eric Russell.

So Augusta will be the place to be Saturday. If you can't get there, please distribute this short video to help get out the news in case the teevee stations do not cover it very well. There also was a very good 17-minute q & a after these statements, posted HERE.

The New York Times notices:

Hood and the two other big processors, Horizon Organic and Organic Valley, say cutting contracts, pay and production are necessary to absorb overproduction and offset softening demand. Organic Valley, a nationwide cooperative, told Maine organic dairy farmers last month that its sales growth had dropped to near zero from about 20 percent six months ago.

"Our inventory is overstocked," said John B. Cleary, the cooperative's New England regional pool coordinator.

For many farmers, the changes coincide with crushing debt resulting from the cost of turning organic, which can run hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition, the price of organic feed has doubled in the last year. Credit has dried up for some, and others say it is nearly impossible to sell cows and so thin their herds.

Ouch.

The Bangor Daily News had coverage of this issue beginning in early March, HERE. See also, HERE for some updated stories from earlier this spring.

We still buy the stuff. The product is notably better than conventional milk in every way. But it sure isn't like a few years ago when it was actually hard to find organic milk in stock.

This is a lesson about boom-bust cycles. Marx would analyze it in terms of an "epidemic of over-production" and a crisis of capitalism.

"Hiroshima was our original sin."

Can we expect any other country, if it perceives it is cornered with its survival threatened, to forgo the same decision U.S. WWII leaders made in 1945?

War is failure

A theme of this blog lately has been the unseemly celebration of war and the instruments of war. One example, the celebratory impulses displayed for Bath Iron Works amongst media and politicians when the Pentagon lavishly funds its splendid warships. Another, the diabolic remote-control drones used by U.S. military and intelligence services to terrorize defenseless populations. (Why? Well, even at a 98% rate of collateral damage, they're "the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al Qaeda leadership" according to DCI Leon Panetta.)

Perhaps the biggest mistake we can make is to assume all of these war-making activities have something to do with "preserving our freedom" or extending American ideals in a lawless world. I even have my doubts about American purity in the "good" wars, despite my awe at the sacrifices paid in World War II by the generation of my father. But these notions of American glory understandably are endemic to our culture. Sadly, this situation has enabled an apparently perpetual state of Terror War promoted with bottomless funding from American political leaders.

To show proper non-celebratory respect this Memorial Day, I offer Verse 31 of the Tao Te Ching:

Armies are tools of violence;
They cause men to hate and fear.
The sage will not join them.
His purpose is creation;
Their purpose is destruction.

Weapons are tools of violence,
Not of the sage;
He uses them only when there is no choice,
And then calmly, and with tact,
For he finds no beauty in them.

Whoever finds beauty in weapons
Delights in the slaughter of men;
And who delights in slaughter
Cannot content himself with peace.

So slaughters must be mourned
And conquest celebrated with a funeral.

And below is an excerpt from an article on Gandhi, nonviolence, and terrorism recently published in the Maine Peace Action Committee Newsletter by my friend, U Maine philosophy professor Doug Allen:

THIS story on MPBN radio "Maine Things Considered" illustrates why it is so very important to mount even small anti-war protests when the purveyors of death and destruction come to celebrate their achievements at Bath Iron Works.


Bruce Gagnon gets thirty-six seconds of public radio air time to say we're tired of war and that the weapons made in Bath are designed to hit first

I'll give MPBN reporter Tom Porter some credit here for making the protest an important part of the story--virtually the lede. Good. Otherwise the story would just have been the celebratory slosh we usually hear in media coverage of the Pentagon's favorite destroyer-building shipyard. Well, the report did become about the...

...enthusiasm felt by those behind the gates of Bath Iron Works - a unit by General Dynamics - over the likelihood of the shipyard being chosen to build the U.S. Navy's new class of destroyer. Inside the heavily-guarded facility, Defense Secretary Robert Gates presided over a pre-commissioning ceremony for the Wayne. E. Meyer - an Arleigh Burke-class, DDG51 destroyer.

"I've never visited a shipyard before so this has really been something, and I've really been impressed with the professionalism and the pride of the workers here at Bath, and the continuing innovation to try and wring costs and time out of production," Gates said.

"Whatever the navy wants, Bath Iron Works is prepared to deliver. This is a great shipyard, thank you Mr. Secretary," said Maine senator Susan Collins ...

Of course none of our delegation, including the Democrats, can mention a cross word about Bath Iron Works. Both Democrats, Rep. Chelli Pingree (1st District) and Rep. Mike Michaud (2nd District) were on hand yesterday too.

"Well you know there's a reason they say Bath-built is best-built," said Ms. Pingree.

What I would like to see is a revival of the long-awaited project to convert Bath Iron Works to "useful civilian production." Good idea.

Three "DDG1000 Zumwalt-class destroyers" are needed for what? Looking into that question does not seem to be on the media radar. Perhaps this is because BIW is so squeaky clean of controversy. Ending on a sad note, many years of small actions and protests have not changed this.

The United States Senate this week voted 86-3 to rubber stamp nearly $100 billion in off-budget war funding, including massive increases for funding of covert war and special forces activity in Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, as was quite a big story this week, the senate refused to allow the president funding to wind down the travesty known as Guantanamo. See HERE and HERE for previous Maine Owl posts on the matter.

The only senators to vote no were Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Russ Feingold (D-WI), and Tom Coburn (R-OK).

Senator Sanders: The bill contains $73 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without providing, to my mind, the kind of exit strategy to both conflicts that I believe we need.

Senator Feingold: For years I have been fighting to bring an end to our involvement in the misguided war in Iraq. While I am pleased that President Obama has provided a timeline for redeployment of our troops, I am concerned that he intends to leave up to 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. I am also concerned that this supplemental may pad the defense budget with items not needed for the war. We should be paying for such items through the regular budget, not running up the deficit to purchase them. Finally, while the president clearly understands that the greatest international security threat to our nation resides in Pakistan, I remain concerned that his strategy regarding Afghanistan and Pakistan does not adequately address, and may even exacerbate the problems we face in Pakistan, problems made even more clear by the current rising tide of displaced civilians.

I could not find a specific statement on why Republican Coburn voted nay.

Peak bloom


Syringa vulgaris

The season for the lilac bushes is short. This year I cleaned up dead branches out of our one pretty tall bush and it looks as good as it has in the seven years we've been here.

From the diaries at Turn Maine Blue:

Peace activists will hold a protest vigil in Bath, Maine on Friday, May 22 beginning at noon in front of Bath Iron Works (BIW) on Washington Street.

Secretary Gates is expected to meet with BIW workers and tour the weapons production facility at that time.

According to Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator of the Bath-based Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, "The Democrat and Republican politicians will line up to kiss the ring of Secretary Gates. This is what we do in America today - we build weapons of destruction. It's our #1 industrial export product. And when weapons are the number one industrial export product of a nation, what is your global marketing strategy for that product line? War, the more the better. We don't build rail systems, wind turbines, solar systems or other such useful technologies that we need to deal with climate change. But the politicians from both parties understand that the Pentagon has the big money these days so they are on their knees. We say that the time has come for our elected officials to get off their knees and say that we've had enough endless war. The people want health care, full education funding, our infrastructure fixed, and they want to see an end to spending more than $12 billion a month in Iraq-Afghanistan-Pakistan killing innocent civilians."

In a recent article called "The Disease of Permanent War," former New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges writes, "Citizens in a state of permanent war are bombarded with the insidious militarized language of power, fear and strength that mask an increasingly brittle reality. The corporations behind the doctrine of permanent war... must keep us afraid. Fear stops us from objecting to government spending on a bloated military. Fear means we will not ask unpleasant questions of those in power. Fear means that we will be willing to give up our rights and liberties for security. Fear keeps us penned in like domesticated animals."

Activists from all over Maine are expected to attend the protest. The protest will call for the conversion of Bath Iron Works to useful civilian production.

Gates is poison. This is illustrated by the installation of the head of the JSOC executive assassination committee as the Afghan commander. Why Obama buys this approach I do not understand. Maybe we all should have listened to Bruce a lot more closely in MARCH 2008.

Listen to an interview with Chris Hedges and Laila al-Arian HERE.

Apropos of the previous post, Ramzy Baroud quotes Pakistan writer Abd Al-Ghafar Aziz in a piece for Palestine Chronicle,

Since the US attack on Afghanistan, the province [of Balochistan] has been accused of supporting terrorism and harbouring the leaders of Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Since then, US planes, especially drones, have been striking what it calls 'precious targets', resulting in the death of over 15,000 people.

I see. This is a good war because the recipients of U.S.-supported military attacks and U.S.-flown drone bombers are utterly defenseless. Call me namby pamby, without the "stomach" for it as Dick Cheney would say, but won't the killings--now in the 10s of thousands--and the displacements in the 100s of thousands--make a lot more people from this region mad at the U.S. than already are?

Here is a gem from H R 2346, the $96 billion off-budget war supplemental passed yesterday by the U.S. House of Representatives. Yep, $400 million for a full-throated covert war in Pakistan with all of the accouterments:

Pakistan counterinsurgency capability fund
(including transfer of funds)

There is hereby established in the Treasury of the United States a special account to be known as the `Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund'. For necessary expenses to carry out the provisions of chapter 8 of part I and chapters 2, 5, 6, and 8 of part II of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and section 23 of the Arms Export Control Act for counterinsurgency activities in Pakistan, $400,000,000, which shall become available on September 30, 2009, and remain available until September 30, 2010: Provided, That such funds shall be available to the Secretary of State, with the concurrence of the Secretary of Defense, notwithstanding any other provision of law, for the purpose of providing assistance for Pakistan to build and maintain the counterinsurgency capability of Pakistani security forces, and, on an exceptional basis, irregular security forces, to include program management and the provision of equipment, supplies, services, training, and facility and infrastructure repair, renovation, and construction: Provided further, That these funds may be transferred by the Secretary of State to the Department of Defense or other Federal departments or agencies to support counterinsurgency operations and may be merged with and be available for the same purposes and for the same time period as the appropriation or fund to which transferred, or may be transferred pursuant to the authorities contained in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961: Provided further, That the Secretary of State shall, not fewer than 15 days prior to making transfers from this appropriation, notify the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate, and the congressional defense and foreign affairs committees, in writing of the details of any such transfer: Provided further, That the Secretary of State shall submit not later than 30 days after the end of each fiscal quarter to the Committees on Appropriations of the House of Representatives and the Senate a report summarizing, on a project-by-project basis, the transfer of funds from this appropriation: Provided further, That upon determination by the Secretary of Defense or head of other Federal department or agency, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State, that all or part of the funds so transferred from this appropriation are not necessary for the purposes herein, such amounts may be transferred by the head of the relevant Federal department or agency back to this appropriation and shall be available for the same purposes and for the same time period as originally appropriated: Provided further, That any required notification or report may be submitted in classified or unclassified form.

If this is what they appropriate publicly for the horror show they already have going in Pakistan, what do you suppose is in the black budget?

Thank you again, Mike & Chelli, for voting against this war.

Ick.

But Reps. Michaud AND Pingree joined the sixty who voted against the war supplemental.

Mike Michaud: "It would be disingenuous of me to support this funding just because the President happens to now be a member of my own political party."

Chelli Pingree: "Without a clear strategy for bringing our servicemen and servicewomen home, I could not vote for this request for additional war funding."

More at Turn Maine Blue, HERE.

I had no idea that there was a coastal property (in Harpswell) that actually is part of Baxter State Park.

"Elsevier has an entire division to publishing fake advertorial 'peer-reviewed' journals"

Wow. But it may just be a symptom of a much larger, much more insidious problem. THIS is a link you'll reach by clicking through from that Boing Boing item:

Laika’s MedLibLog: In fact, pharma-sponsored trials rarely produce results that are unfavorable to the companies' products ... For instance, none of the published 56 trials of NSAIDs in arthritis ... had outcomes that were unfavorable to the company that sponsored the trials. Another study showed that studies funded by a company were four times more likely to have results favorable to the company than studies funded from other sources ...

Ghostwriters, who write articles that are officially credited to another person, are part of the tactics. Ghostwriters may be hired by companies to write articles for medical journals that appear under the names of scientists who didn’t substantially contribute to the paper. In extreme cases pharmaceutical companies and their agents control or shape multiple steps in the research, analysis, writing, and publication of articles. This so called ghost management can be outsourced to MECC’s, medical education and communication companies. [see source link for references cited]

But what of "studies" appearing in mainline journals?

In my opinion we have to fear more from the strategic publication planning of the MECCs in authentic journals then the fake Australian Excerpta series. Firstly, because the known Journals are far more trustworthy and have far more impact than the throwaways. Secondly because the phenomenon of ghostwriting is widespread, also among "first class Journals". A conservative benchmark for ghostwriting of papers published in biomedical journals is roughly 10% ..., but in particular cases the percentage may be much higher .... This has caused Richard Smith, former editor of the BMJ to sigh that “Medical Journals Are an Extension of the Marketing Arm of Pharmaceutical Companies." [see source link for references cited]

Lesson? When hearing reports on medical research by Katie Couric, on the PBS News Hour, or whatever--whether they cite suspicious publications or mainline ones--treat them very skeptically.

Didn't Speaker Pelosi last June promise against more blank checks for war?

Bruce Gagnon wrote on Thursday:

Pingree-Michaud to Vote on War Supplemental Next Week

Dear Fellow Mainers:

Today I had a long talk with Rep. Chellie Pingree's Military Legislative Assistant, Eric Hansen, over the phone. He is based in the DC office. I called to ask him the status of the Iraq-Afghanistan-Pakistan war supplemental bill for the remainder of 2009.

Hansen told me the bill is in the House Appropriations Committee today and that it would likely be voted on in the House of Representatives as early as next week.

President Obama had requested $83 billion for the war supplemental but House Democrats have added $9.3 billion to that request to bring the supplemental to now stand at $94.2 billion.

I asked Hansen how Rep. Pingree would vote on the supplemental and he said that she wants to first "see what form the bill takes" before deciding on her vote. He told me that the Congresswoman was wanting to see if bench marks and timelines were included in the bill. So far Obama has not submitted any timelines on ending the Afghanistan occupation.

Hansen said that the war supplemental will also include funds for economic assistance to the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He talked about "soft power" options being important like moving some Pakistan funds from the Pentagon to the State Department's control for diplomatic purposes and for expansion of counter-insurgency capabilities.

Hansen also said that Rep. Pingree was seriously considering signing on as a co-sponsor to a bill presented by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) that would "require the Secretary of Defense to submit a report to Congress outlining the United States exit strategy for United States military forces in Afghanistan participating in Operation Enduring Freedom."

As of today the cost of the war in Afghanistan to American taxpayers has been more than $172 billion and the Iraq war has cost more than $656 billion.

As of this writing we have not heard anything definitive from the offices of Rep. Mike Michaud on his position on this 2009 war supplemental. It is important to remember that Obama has also already requested $130 billion for war funding for fiscal year 2010.

Please make a call immediately to your member of the Maine Congressional delegation. Urge them to vote against any more war funding.

Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
(Blog)

Do Chelli Pingree, or Mike Michaud for that matter, really have anti-war positions? Maybe. According to Bruce, there is some ambiguity.

At another moment of concern after her trip last February, when quotes in a news story were seemingly at odds with Rep. Pingree's campaign promise that "Congress must stop funding the war," I ASKED that question. I was at least a little happy with her answers. But now will be a another moment of truth. Will Reps. Pingree and Michaud be able to stand up to Administration and Pentagon pressure?

Thanks for this information, Bruce. The key anti-war constituencies that helped elect both Chelli Pingree and Mike Michaud will be watching closely.

Cripes. It gets worse and worse the more you look into it:

ROBERT SCHEER (Cashing In on ‘Government Sachs'): ... the chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank made millions off his secret purchase of Goldman Sachs stock, "in violation of Federal Reserve policy," as the WSJ put it, at a time when the N.Y. Fed was ostensibly overseeing the antics of the Wall Street firm, has barely registered a blip of outrage.

When N.Y. Fed Chairman Stephen Friedman bought stock in the company that he once headed, and where he still serves as a director, he was already in violation of Federal Reserve policy and was hoping for a waiver to permit him to hold his existing multi-million-dollar stock stash and to remain on the Goldman board. The waiver was requested last October by Timothy Geithner, then the president of the N.Y. Fed and now Treasury secretary. Yet, without having received that waiver, Friedman went ahead in December and purchased 37,300 additional shares. With shares he added in January, after the waiver was granted, he ended up with 98,600 shares in Goldman Sachs, worth a total of $13,330,720 at the close of trading on Tuesday.

Funny how the bailout process always seems to operate in favor of Goldman Sachs and its insiders, whether they be with the firm directly or ostensibly serving the public. Rules don't matter to them because no one in government is inclined to hold them to account. Goldman Sachs seems to own our government.

Letterman rips our favorite jackass:


Thanks, Dave, for the stiff dose of truth.

Just when you've thought you'd seen it all ... Wingnuttia, led by the Manatee, comes up with something even more incredibly stupid--Obama's mustard.

I suppose this guy, an Ivy leaguer himself, has a point about the burger trip being pr. And MSNBC sometimes is a cheering section for Obama and the Democrats--though certainly not always. But he appears to be so full of his own mission to root out "nutroots" that he can't be bothered to read closely enough to detect the sarcasm in the stuff he's mocking.

Oh, and I myself am so high and mighty that I'd never stoop to mockery of wingnuttia, NOT!

FYI, I've got a 9-oz container of Plochman's excellent "Premium Dijon" in the fridge, purchased a few weeks ago at Reny's for $1.99, about the same price as all the mustard on the shelf.

Worthwhile segment department


Naomi Klein on Rachel explains the real bailout: transfer of the risk of financial collapse from the gamblers to the public

Naomi Klein pushes more information here in five minutes than most normal people (including Rachel Maddow) can in an hour. It's no wonder it looks like a private "recovery" is on the horizon--the fraudsters now own the public treasury.

Marcy Kaptur, today from the House floor:


What have they spent the money on? "It's sure not shaking out to communities..."

Representative Marcy Kaptur was a leader in the "skeptics caucus" over the bank bailout last fall. She had reason to be skeptical, as it turns out. No surprise to me. HERE is a link-rich post with lots of very recent material about who's gotten money and what they've done with it--to the extent anyone knows. Representative Kaptur refers to an Inspector General's report, found HERE.

Below I have some more media, links, and some additional background material I've had in draft form while I've been too busy to finish and post. Well, here it is, although it reads more like notes:

Truly a good day in the State of Maine

AUGUSTA, Maine -- "Gov. John Baldacci on Wednesday signed a gay marriage bill passed just hours before by the Maine Legislature."

Update note: Turn Maine Blue has extensive coverage, HERE.

Black Agenda Report: failure so far

It's finals week and it's time for all freshman to show us what they've done. According to Black Agenda Report (via Bruce Gagnon), the score for President Obama is too low to pass at 25%.

This has gotta be the most serious and thorough assessment of all the 100-day b.s. that passed for news last week. (Mark Shields: "People like him.") It's a solid effort to analyze Obama in 18 areas from health care, to war and peace, to urban policy, to government contracting issues.

Food AND Medicine celebrates with WalMart action


Martin, Judd, and Will in song next to WalMart voting booth

How much workplace democracy is there for WalMart workers in Bangor? Some people from Wildcat SLAP and Food AND Medicine figured today was a great day to find out. They carried over the voting booth pictured above and tried to distribute some ballots for workers to use, right at at the store. Store management quickly displayed their actual interest in workplace democracy by ejecting the effort.

At the dinner event later at the Eastern Maine Labor Council in Brewer, Maine Commissioner of Labor Laura A. Fortman gave some remarks recognizing workers injured and killed on the job--21 died in 2008. May Day is workers Memorial Day too. Ms. Fortman also recognized the contributions of the first woman to be a member of the Cabinet, Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins. Read about her Maine roots HERE.


Laura Fortman speaks next to the smiley face

Georgie


Under the hollies by the feeder

This guy is a neighborhood character. Not sure who owns him, I guess everybody. He likes to park there like a sphinx for hours. Never see him go after the birds. But then again, he does seem fascinated by them. And they move out fast when they detect him.