Category Archives: Politics

Security and Obama and, well, ahhh, ehh, Obama

Americana, Politics

Enigma Decryption Machine

I have so many conflicting thoughts on  Edward Snowden and the leaks from from the National Security Agency.

I think, Edward Snowden is a hero whistle blower and we need more people like him. I also think Edward Snowden seems sort of nuts and it is scary that people like him are able to get $200,000 per year jobs – supposedly – to protect us when they can’t even get themselves through Highschool.

I worry that this huge domestic spying regime is threatening our democracy. But I know that the government has been tracing our calls – duh! hasn’t anyone seen The Wire – for a long time, so what else is new? Sure, Snowden broke the law and abused the government’s trust in giving him a Security Clearance. But, he released information that everybody already knows, so No harm, no foul (and, lets face it, Google already knows all this information about me, or anybody who uses the internet for that matter).

And on and on.

Circling around behind all these thoughts – thoughts, bouncing around like a ping pong ball in a garbage disposal – is the awareness that the government is becoming stronger and more invasive and the people in power often puts their own interest above that of the People’s interest. And behind that, is the fear that Obama is worse than Bush in this regard or – atleast – has continued Bush’s polices and is more zealous in going after the whistle blowers. I am afraid that his promise of Transparency – that I so resonated with during the campaign – has been co-opted by the, increasingly, powerful Security State.

I also wonder what good this massive security apparatus is doing if they couldn’t even flush out a couple of amateurs like the Tsarnaev brothers who said they were Chechen and got the plans to their bomb from an internet site published by al-Qaeda in Yemen. Why weren’t their emails and searches picked up?

As my thoughts calm down, I realize that I am less concerned with the fact that we – my country – is wiretapping than the Administration’s reaction to the whistle blower. And that really boils down to What does Obama want to do and what does the Security Establishment want him to do? 

Bahrain

Americana, Politics

 

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I read in Al Jazeera that A Bahraini court has sentenced six Twitter users to one year in prison for allegedly insulting King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa….The six were charged by the lower criminal court with “misusing the right of free expression”…and “undermining the values and traditions of Bahrain’s society towards the king”.

I guess the good news is that the courts said  the right of free expression and used a lower case “k” when referring to the king. The bad news, to me, is everything else and I am afraid that even the good news is just window dressing.

The United States 5th Fleet is stationed in Bahrain so we have to be nice to our host (I tried to resist saying kowtow). Our host, in this case is a regime that called in the Saudi army to help it put down peaceful protests. Our host is a minority Sunni regime that suppresses its Shiite majority. A host that, by its own admission, has killed and tortured its own citizens when they protested.

The FIA runs a Formula One race in Bahrain and that bothers me, but it bothers me even more that we have a Navy fleet stationed there. I don’t know, for sure,  how many fleets we have, but I think it is six and I know we have to put them somewhere and many democratic governments don’t want a US Navy fleet stationed in their country. As an aside,I do know that we have eleven aircraft carriers and the next most powerful country – still Russia – has only one, so we are pretty safe on that front. End aside.

According to a PR release, the fleet is there to ensure the free flow of oil through the Gulf, as well as monitoring Iran and deterring piracy and navy officials have said there is no sign that the protesters  intend to direct their hostility toward us. I guess that the latter is good news, but – really – what are we doing there? Why are we the world’s protector of the world’s free flow of oil? Why don’t the oil producers protect their oil? They are the ones making huge profits. Why do we have to subsidize Arab oil?

I think it perverts us. It leads our leader to pretend everything is great in Bahrain when it isn’t. It leads Hillary Clinton to say I am impressed by the commitment that the government has to the democratic path that Bahrain is walking on. when they are putting people in jail for misusing the right of free expression. 

 

 

We invaded Iraq 10 years ago

Americana, Politics, War

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“Fuck Saddam, we’re taking him out.” President George Bush to three U.S. Senators in March 2002.

“The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas.” President George Bush

“My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” Vice President Dick Cheney.

“[Saddam] is a threat. He’s a murderer and a thug. There’s no doubt we can do this. We’re stronger; he’s weaker. You’re looking at a couple weeks of bombing and then I’d be astonished if this campaign took more than a week. Astonished,”  Bill Clinton

“Five days or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last longer.” Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense

“Sunni Islamist insurgents linked to al Qaeda are regaining ground in Iraq, invigorated by the war next door in Syria and have stepped up attacks on Shi’ite targets in an attempt to provoke a wider sectarian confrontation…After Operation Iraqi Freedom promised to liberate the Iraqi people, Iraq has struggled with a decade that drove the country into sectarian mayhem which killed tens of thousands and the turmoil of a young democracy emerging out of dictatorship. Since the last election in 2010, Maliki’s Sunni and Kurdish critics have accused him of consolidating his own authority, abusing his control of the security forces to pressure foes and failing to live up to a power-sharing deal.” Reuters

“At least 56 killed in Baghdad attacks. Twelve bombs explode in Shia areas on tenth anniversary of US-led invasion of country.”  The Guardian

 

Total United States causalities: 4,487 dead, 31,965 wounded.   

Only three degrees of seperation from President George Washington

Americana, Politics

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In early August 1962 – atleast I think it was 1962, it could have been 1966 – my dad took me to to the Democratic California State Convention at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. In those days, the Fairmont, owned by Ben Swig, was the Democratic Hotel and the Mark Hopkins Hotel –  across the street and owned by cowboy movie star Gene Autry – was the Republican hotel. This convention was to nominate Governor Pat Brown to run for either a second term against Richard Nixon – which he won – or a third term against Ronald Reagan,  – which he lost – and all of California’s Democratic big wigs were there.

By now, I had become a little used to going to Democratic Conventions with my dad, having gone to the 1960 National Convention earlier. My dad was not very good at remembering names which was a distinct disadvantage at a convention of glad-handers where the whole point was what we now call networking. My dad’s strategy was that we could walk around together but, if he stopped to say Hello to somebody, I would just keep walking. If my dad knew their name, he would call me back and introduce me to his friend? acquaintance? famous-to-everybody-but my-dad luminary?  If he did not know their name, I would just keep walking. Since I knew almost nobody and my dad couldn’t remember alot of names, often I would wander around among the big wigs, alone, for a while.

As an aside, I am not sure when the Convention’s business was over, but the drinking and partying continued way past the legal-bar-closing time of 2:00 AM. I did not want to pay the exorbitant fee of $2.00 to park, so I had parked about a mile away, across Van Ness Avenue, in a residential area. As an aside to the aside, Van Ness is so wide because the buildings on one side were dynamited to make a fire break after the earthquake of 1906 which is also why there are no wooden Victorians to the east of Van Ness and so many on the west side. End of aside to the aside. Anyway, about 3:00 AM, I walked back to my car. The streets were mostly empty because of the hour, but every bus zone, every fire hydrant, every no parking zone -really – had a car in it. There were no tickets on any of the windows: it was a graphic demonstration of  how politicians – and Police Chiefs, and Fire Chiefs, and assorted highranking public employees, just big wigs in general – don’t feel it necessary to follow the laws they make. I won’t say that I was devastated, but I did become more cynical and angry as I walked. End aside.

One of those big wigs was an old man whose name I don’t remember and I don’t think that my dad did either. (When I say old man, it comes from the perspective of a young twenty-something; the old man would now look considerably younger but, then, he could have been anything over 70.) Anyway, when my dads called me over and I shook hands with the old man, I was told that the old man’s grandfather had shaken hands with President George Washington so I was three handshakes away from Washington himself. At the time, it did not seem like a very big deal because, among other things, at the time I did not not think of myself as very young, so that the connection could easily be stretched by, say, 17 years and the old man was sort of wasting his time with me. Now the connection seems pretty amazing, and just marginally possible which I guess was the point.

This was the early to mid 1960’s: let’s say 1962. If the old man was 86, he would have been born in 1876. Let’s say that a handshake doesn’t count until a child is five and knows what they are doing, that means the earliest time he could have meaningfully shaken his grandfather’s hand was 1881. If his grandfather lived to be 86, that means the earliest time he could have meaningfully shaken Washington’s hand was 1799. The same year that Washington died. But, Washington died at the very end of 1799 – December 14th – making the whole thing possible. Giving me only three degrees of separation from the first President of the United States.

Syria and Jordan

Politics, War

SYRIA-CONFLICT

 

As the Civil War in Syria rages on and is becoming  more entrenched, Jordan just held an election – with scattered protests – in which the King of Jordan put alot of effort into making sure that nothing really changed.  I don’t understand that and I suspect it is because my point of view is different than that of a middle east monarch. King Abdullah, afterall, grew up in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. His – God-given, I suppose –  right to be monarch is even in the country’s name. I grew up in a democracy and my main political influence was a father who was both a Democrat and, more importantly, a democrat.

When I first read about the protests in Syria, in March of 2011, I was sure that Bashar al-Assad would agree to work at setting up a democracy. The autocratic rulers of Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt had already fallen and it seemed to me that the writing was on the wall. Now, almost two years later, in his craving to hold on to power, Dictator Bashar al-Assad has killed, atleast, 60,000 people  – more than the 50,000-plus U.S. combat deaths in Vietnam – and driven more than 750,000 of his own people into exile. If I were King Abdullah of Jordan, I would be worried that the same thing could happen to me. I would be jumping through hoops trying to get a real Democracy established so that Jordan doesn’t turn into Syria – or Egypt or Libya – even though the situation is not exactly the same.

Maybe the ruler of Jordan feels safe because, in Syria, the ruling class of Alawites is in the minority. Maybe he thinks that that is the only reason a popular uprising in the streets has morphed into a Civil War. From my point of view – with almost no knowledge of particulars – Jordan might be next. I suspect that I see only all the similarities between Syria and Jordan and King Abdullah sees only the differences. But, more importantly, democracy and change are in my blood and, I suspect, not in Abdullah’s.

I hold George Washington to be a National Hero because he gave up power and, in the United States, the tradition has continued with not only our elected leaders giving up their power to the next elected leader,  but over the years, the ruling class of land-owning, white, men, has given up its exclusive power. In Jordan, the rulers are part of the majority population and they are holding on to their power as tight as they can (but there is an large immigrant population that does not seem to be very happy with this). In Jordan, elections are held but they don’t seem to change anything – although I did read that this year, one big change is that the ballots are actually printed – and I am of the point of view that that this refuse to change will boil over into a bigger problem.