Thoughts On Returning To The US After A Month In Argentina

I wrote this yesterday.

I’m over the Pacific just west of Acapulco, about three hours from landing in LA.  We’ve been out of the US for just over a month.  This is the longest stretch out of the US since  twelve years ago when we were in Thailand for three months where I worked as a volunteer with an NGO that helped poor farmers.  .  

As our return was nearing this last week, I began to think about Jews who traveled outside of Germany - or other countries the Nazis would take over - during the 1930s and then returned.  Many, if not most, ended up in concentration camps.  Should I seek political asylum in Argentina?  

No, I’m not a target.  Yet.  For now the targets are people with darker skin than mine.  Jews are in a strange never-never land.  They’re, as always, in the scopes of white nationalists/neo-Nazis, but the president’s son-in-law is Jewish and his daughter converted.  Being pro-Israel is a conservative thing now, probably because of strong Evangelical Christians support of Israel.  So, what happens to Jews who have serious questions about the way Israel is treating its Arab citizens and the neighboring Palestinians?  

But that’s an aside to the terror Trump is causing among Central American immigrants to the US.  This fear isn't unlike what Jews, LGBTQ folks, Communists, Romani, and others felt about the Gestapo arriving at their door.  You can say that they aren't intentionally killing people on the border, but that came later in Germany as well.  People just knew it was bad and they may not see their families again.  Same as now.  This fear affects more than those seeking asylum - a perfectly legal thing to do.  It includes those in the US without documentation, including all the dreamers, and those with papers who could find themselves targets anyway,  The same thing happened in Argentina in the 70s and 80s, and in Chile under Pinochet.  In the later two places the US was supporting the abusive governments.  

And I thought about all this as we lined up in Lima for our last leg of our trip home.  Nearly all the people with us on this plane are NOT native speakers.  I didn’t hear anyone speaking English.  It was all Spanish, maybe some Portuguese.  Many dark skinned people.  We’re on a Boeing 787-8. Maybe 300 people.  How many planes like this fly into the US everyday from the south?  

What does that say about Trump’s policies on the border?  And the ICE raids? (Yes, I realize this past weekend’s raids didn’t actually happen in the scale expected.). Does it mean that all the focus on the border is simply for show?  Does it mean Trump isn’t worried about legal immigrants as he says, just undocumented ones?  Does it mean Democrats ought to acknowledge the many people flying in legally?  Probably all those questions are more complicated than yes/no answers could cover.  Clearly the treatment of people seeking asylum on the border is outrageous and easily preventable if the Trump administration cared at all.  But there’s also a high level of incompetence in the administration, and most likely the contractors for the camps are making a fortune.  

But what happens next?  Are things going to return to normal after the 2020 election?  

Even if the Democrats win the presidency and the Senate, I’m not sure they will.  Trump has pushed the norms of governing in the US so far beyond respect for the law, for decency, for precedents, for freedom of the press, for respect for one’s opposition, that it will be hard.  And Trump and his supporters will fight any loss in the streets and in the courts.  (Or the long shot possibility is that they will lose their steam.  But don't count on it.  They have lots of guns.)

But what if we don’t have a fair election, or a fair enough election, to get rid of Trump and the Republican majority in the Senate?  By that I mean more cyber and other propaganda from abroad and from conservative billionaires.  I mean voter suppression and hacking  voting machines.  Germans didn’t think that Hitler would last, but he meddled with the system, and the burning of the Reichstag, which many think the Nazi's instigated.  And so he stayed in power.  Trump’s majority on the Supreme Court leaves us with no guarantee that justice will be served if elections are challenged.  We already have the Florida election decision that gave Bush the election in 2000, from a less conservative court. And the court majority just recently had no objection to political gerrymandering.  

So asking about returning isn’t the silly question some might think.  And I’ve only been talking about the US.  I haven’t mentioned the catastrophe that is Alaska after Dunleavy’s vetoes weren’t overridden.  

These are dark times.  I guess the main reason to return is to fight to get my state and country back.  


[We didn't seek asylum in Lima.  We're back home.  And I know Argentina will stop dominating my brain very fast.  But it's time to more seriously and intensely work for a better Alaska and USA.]

Sleeping In Public, Immigrants, Separating Kids From Parents, Can Getting Stoned Cure All This? Sunday Reading

NPR's Ted Talk show this week* , Attention Please, was about how the world is vying for your attention.  They noted the average person sees (does that include hears) 4000 - 10,000 ads a day, all competing for your attention.  I've been writing here about how people's attention is diverted from critical issues, from learning deeply enough to understand critical issues.
*Link gets you to this week's show which will thus be out of date soon  This link gets you to one of the talks on this subject.

And I'd remind you that this blog DOES NOT TAKE ANY ADS.  The more time you spend here, the fewer adds you're subject too. :)

Here are some recent  articles that cover well issues that we either don't hear or think about enough, or at all.


1.   Sleeping In Public - Starts with a story about a Yale student calling the police because black Yale student dozed off in a dorm common room, but goes on to explore our norms against sleeping in public.  It gives some examples of where it's ok, but doesn't mention the beach, where it's ok if you're in swim wear, but not if your in street clothes.  Think about your reaction to people you see sleeping in public - when is it ok, where is it ok, does it matter how they're dressed or what color they are?

2.  Crackdown on immigrants takes a toll on federal judge: 'I have presided over a process that destroys families' - a judge talks about how soul destroying his job is.  Here's a brief snippet:

Brack also sees migrants charged with drug offenses or long criminal records and is unsparing in their punishment. But they are a minority, he said.
“I get asked the question, ‘How do you continue to do this all day every day?’ I recognize the possibility that you could get hard-edged, you could get calloused, doing what I do,” he said. “I don’t. Every day it’s fresh. I can’t look a father and a husband in the eye and not feel empathy.”
Brack, 65, is the son of a railroad-worker father and homemaker mother and earned a law degree at the University of New Mexico. He served as a state judge before being named to the federal bench by President George W. Bush.

3.  Taking Children from Their Parents Is a Form of State Terror - Masha Gessen is bi-cultural having grown up in both the US and the Soviet Union/Russia (maybe they makes her trip-cultural.)  She was a journalist in Russia and has written a searing biography about Putin.  She's someone I think understands the world better than most.  Here's a paragraph from that piece that is a relevant follow-up to #3 above.

"Hostage-taking is an instrument of terror. Capturing family members, especially children, is a tried-and-true instrument of totalitarian terror. Memoirs of Stalinist terror are full of stories of strong men and women disintegrating when their loved ones are threatened: this is the moment when a person will confess to anything. The single most searing literary document of Stalinist terror is “Requiem,” a cycle of poems written by Anna Akhmatova while her son, Lev Gumilev, was in prison. But, in the official Soviet imagination, it was the Nazis who tortured adults by torturing children. In “Seventeen Moments of Spring,” a fantastically popular miniseries about a Soviet spy in Nazi Germany, a German officer carries a newborn out into the cold of winter in an effort to compel a confession out of his mother, who is forced to listen to her baby cry."
  

4.  Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs  - Andrew Sullivan argues that psychedelic drugs help expand people's minds,  help people  experience universal love  and  see the unity of humankind. From Jesus to Lennon we've heard "All You Need Is Love."   And that's why authoritarian leaders over the same time period have wanted them banned.  (The last sentence is my thought. But the idea is connected with George Carlin's piece  )

Babylon Berlin (Netflix) Looks At 1929 Berlin As Democracy Struggles To Survive

Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch)

This tight German series focuses on a Köln (Cologne) police officer, Gereon Rath, transferred to Berlin.  There are lots of plots and subplots.   A secret army unit is rebuilding the German air force clandestinely in Lipetsk outside of Moscow and plotting with a rich industrialist.  Trotskyites have brought a train full of poison gas and gold to Berlin.  There's factions inside the police department, and everyone seems to cross paths in the Armenian's nightclub/whore house, which gives the Armenian useful knowledge and power.

The Weimar Republic is only a few years old as Germany tries to recover from WWI and the sanctions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, which, forbade Germany from having an air force.

Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries)

There are lots of other characters with rich parts, but the other key character is Charlotte Ritter, living in a wretched flat with difficult relatives, making ends meet working at the Armenians nightclub and aspiring to become a police detective in a force where women are only in supportive roles.

The New York Times writes:

This new epic crime drama, set during the Weimar Republic, the chaotic 15-year era that preceded the Third Reich, is widely predicted to become an international television sensation. Reportedly the most expensive German-language TV show ever produced,  . . .

"The makers of “Babylon Berlin,” however, were interested in exploring the prelude to the Third Reich. 'All these people didn’t fall from the sky as Nazis,' Mr. Handloegten said. 'They had to become Nazis. . .'

“In 1929, there were no Nazis in Berlin,” said the producer Stefan Arndt. “You cannot see or even smell that there’s danger coming.”

The acting is superb and the story gripping, with a dash of history just before the collapse into fascism.   A big hit since it began airing in Germany last October, it's on Netflix now.

[Screenshots turned out black, so I took photos of the screen to get the images.  These stills don't do these two charming actors justice.  And if you're having trouble seeing links to the NYTimes and other papers, try opening a "new private window" in your browser and pasting in the URL.]

"It's fear that makes us lose our conscience. It's also what transforms us into cowards." Lessons from Iran For The US From Graphic Novel Persepolis

I've recently finished Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.  It's one of the graphic novels I got at Pulp Fiction in LA.

The time I've spent in authoritarian countries, particularly China, has given me a sense that there are always spaces where people find ways to make things work, despite the official rules.  For instance, my Chinese students surprised me when I asked about how many siblings they had, then corrected myself when I remembered the one-child policy.  Except, they corrected my correction, because more than half the class had siblings, a one as many as five.  Despite the policy there were ways people got around it.

So I wasn't surprised by Satrapi's portrayal of modern life in Iran.  Some I'd heard about before - the way people dress in public and in private.  I remember when the reality of Iran first hit me - watching a movie about a widow raising her daughter going out to the car and using her automatic key to unlock the door.  Yes, in many ways, Iran is a modern country.


I was struck by her fearlessness.  We learn in the book it comes through her genes.  Her grandfather had been a hero in difficult times and her parents raise her to be herself and not what the culture wants her to be.  And her grandmother is an important role model.

But fearlessness in Iran is a lot different from fearlessness in the US.  Here our protests might cost us our jobs, even get us into prison at the extreme, (and today, get trolled, sometimes viciously).  But in Iran, torture and death are real possibilities.  Back in 2006 I met Iranian philosopher, Ramin Jahanbegloo,  in India where he was teaching after having been arrested at the Tehran airport on his way to a conference in Brussels.  He'd recently been released from prison after an international protest against his arrest.  At the time he was out on bail.  My post at the time about that encounter was brief at his request.

So I look at Iranians as good sources for information on how to survive in authoritarian regimes.  We aren't there yet, and hope it doesn't happen, but here are a couple of inspirational lessons from Satrapi's book.

The book is autobiographical and by the time we get this part, Satrapi has lived a few years abroad, on her own, in Austria and returned to Iran.  She has a boyfriend, though that is not publicly acknowledged, and the two of them have been accepted to art school.  School is interrupted one day by a convocation and all the students must attend. [All the images should get sharper if you click on them.]

[For blind readers, whose computers can't read text in images I'm also offering text.]

"Once in the amphitheater, we discovered the reason for our convocation.  The administration had organized a lecture with the theme of "Moral and Religious Conduct," to show us the right path.
"We can't allow ourselves to behave loosely!  It's the blood of our martyrs  which has nourished the flowers of our republic.  To allow oneself to behave indecently is to trample on the blood of those who gave their lives for our freedom.  Also, I am asking the young ladies present here to wear less-wide trousers and longer head-scarves.  You should cover your hair well, you should not wear makeup, you should  , , ,]

I'd note that invoking the blood of our martyrs happens here in the US too.  From  a letter to the Desert News:

"I completely disagree with kneeling before the flag. It disrespects all the soldiers, Marines and pilots who gave their lives to make America free."

When the lecture is over . . .

"Does anyone have any questions?  If not, this meeting is over."
"Sir, I have a question.  You say that our head-scarves are short, that our pants are indecent, that we make ourselves us, etc.

"But as a student of art, a good portion of my time is spent in the studio.  I need to be able to move freely to be able to draw.  A longer head-scarf will make the task even more difficult.
As for our trousers, you criticize them for being too wide even though they effectively hide our shape.  Knowing that these trousers are in vogue right now I ask the question is religion defending our physical integrity or is it just opposed to fashion?"

"You don't hesitate to comment on us, but our brothers present here have all shapes and sizes of haircuts and clothes.  Sometimes, they wear clothes so tight that we can see everything.
Why is it that I, as a woman, am expected to feel nothing when watching these men with their clothes sculpted on but they, as men, can get excited by two inches less on my head-scarf?"    "OHHHHH!!"

What is it that causes some people to stand up for justice for themselves and others, while other people pull back and say nothing?  Or even worse, attack those who stand up?

Then, after the lecture.

"After the Lecture"
"You're really courageous"
"Bravo what frank speaking!"
"Thanks"
"Satrapi.

You've been summoned by the Islamic commission... good luck!"

"Is it serious?"

"I really don't know"

"The director of our college had studied in the United States and remained quite secular"

"What is it?"

"I've been summoned by the Islamic Commission"

"Oh shit!"

"Wish me luck."

 ". . .But to my pleasant surprise, my executioner proved to be the "true religious" man.  The one who had passed me on the ideological test."
"So Miss Satrapi . .  always saying what you think . .   It's good!  You're honest, but you are lost."
"Yes"

"Read the sacred text.  You'll see that wearing the veil is synonymous with emancipation."

"If you say so."

"It is not I who says it, it's God . . . I'm going to give you a second chance.  This time, you're not expelled.  In exchange, I am asking you to imagine the uniform adapted to the needs of the students in your college.  Nothing extravagant, you understand."

"Of  course."

So, she redesigns the uniform slightly, and life goes on.  And she gets congratulated by her grandmother.  

"This little rebellion reconciled my grandmother and me."

Grandmother:  "It's fear that makes us lose our conscience.  It's also what transforms us into cowards. You had guts!  I'm proud of you!"

So let's all remember that in the long run, standing up for what is right and just is more important than keeping out of trouble.  Yes, losing jobs is a big thing.  But I used to tell my students that if they wanted to maintain their ethics, they needed to sock away a year's salary, so they could do the right thing when the time came.  

I'd note another example of people standing up to authoritarian government comes in "How Russia's homoerotic "Satisfaction" became a nationwide meme of solidarity" - by Masha Gessen,  Putin biographer and astute Russian/American.  Links to videos included.

Is 2017 Really 1984? Forbidden Words At CDC - Controlling Language Is Way To Control Thinking

According to the Washington Post:

Policy analysts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta were told of the list of forbidden words at a meeting Thursday with senior CDC officials who oversee the budget, according to an analyst who took part in the 90-minute briefing. The forbidden words are “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”
In some instances, the analysts were given alternative phrases. Instead of “science-based” or ­“evidence-based,” the suggested phrase is “CDC bases its recommendations on science in consideration with community standards and wishes,” the person said. In other cases, no replacement words were immediately offered.

The article goes on to say the ban is related to the 2019 budget.  I guess if you can't say the words, you can't allocate funding to the projects.  Diversity, transgender people, science, and fetuses will, I guess, be ‘vaporized’ (see 'unperson' below) if there are no labels for them. But surely they don't want to get rid of babies, so fetus, I guess, will become 'unborn innocent baby.'


Tampering with Thinking Integral to 1984

This is really tampering with our ability to think.  This is so outrageous and dangerous that probably no one ever thought of a law to prevent it.   The NRA has already prevented the CDC from doing any research on gun deaths and injuries.  If you have no data, you can't do research and you can't prove anything.  But, of course, science based is now being banned as well.

I remember as a kid, thinking that the year 1984 was so far into the future.  Then it came.  And then it was 1985.  What I didn't know was that 1984 was really 2017.

George Orwell's 1984 introduced the term NEWSPEAK. Orwell envisioned an authoritarian world where thinking was controlled by the government.   Here are some of the ideas, if not the exact terms, we can now expect from our new regime as they revise the English language to their service.  Courtesy of Wikipedia:

• bellyfeel – a blind, enthusiastic acceptance of an idea

• blackwhite – to believe that black is white, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary

• crimestop – to rid oneself of unwanted thoughts, i.e., thoughts that interfere with the ideology of the Party. This way, a person avoids committing thoughtcrime

• crimethink, thoughtcrime – thoughts that are unorthodox or outside the official government platform

• doubleplusgood -Replaces excellent, best and benevolent

• doublethink – the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct

• duckspeak – Voicing political orthodoxies without thinking, lit. "to quack like a duck"

• equal – Only in the sense of physically equal, like equal height/size, etc. It does not mean socially – politically or economically – equal, since there is no such concept as social inequality in purportedly egalitarianistic Ingsoc

• facecrime – An indication that a person is guilty of thoughtcrime based on their facial expression

• free – Meaning Negative freedom (without) in a physical sense, only in statements like "This dog is free from lice", as the concepts of "political freedom" and "intellectual freedom" do not exist in Newspeak

• good – (Can also be used as a prefix vaguely meaning "orthodox")

• goodthink – thoughts that are approved by the Party and follow its policies, ideals and interpretations. It is the opposite of crimethink

• goodsex – intercourse between man and wife, for the sole purpose of begetting children and without physical pleasure

• joycamp – Forced labour camp

• malquoted – flaws or inaccurate presentations of Party or Big Brother-related matters by the press. See misprints below

• miniluv – "Ministry of Love" (secret police, interrogation and torture)

• minipax – "Ministry of Peace" (Ministry of War, cf: 'Department of Defense' vs 'War Department')

• minitrue – "Ministry of Truth" (propaganda and altering history, culture and entertainment)

• miniplenty – "Ministry of Plenty" (keeping the population in a state of constant economic hardship)

• misprints – Errors or mispredictions which need to be rectified in order to prove that the Party is always right. See malquoted above

• oldspeak – English; perhaps any language that is not Newspeak

• oldthink – Ideas inspired by events or memories of times prior to the Revolution

• ownlife – the tendency to enjoy being solitary or individualistic

• plusgood - replaces the words better and great. Refers to good compliance with Party orthodoxy.

• pornosec – subunit of the Fiction Department of the Ministry of Truth that produces pornography

• prolefeed – The steady stream of mindless entertainment to distract and occupy the masses

• recdep – "Records Department" (division of the Ministry of Truth that deals with the rectification of records; department in which Winston works)

• rectify – used by the Ministry of Truth as a euphemism for the deliberate alteration (or 'correction') of the past

• sexcrime – all sexual activity which is not goodsex

• speakwrite – An instrument used by Party members to note or "write" down information by speaking into an apparatus as a faster alternative to an "ink pencil". It is, for example, used in the Ministry of Truth by the protagonist Winston Smith. Speakwrites are also apparently able to record everything that is spoken into the device

• telescreen – television and security camera-like devices used by the ruling Party in Oceania to keep its subjects under constant surveillance

• thinkpol – the Thought Police

• thoughtcrime – the criminal act of holding unspoken beliefs or doubts that oppose or question Ingsoc

• Unperson – someone who has been "vaporized"—not only killed by the state, but erased from existence

I would note that banning words really doesn't make them go away.  People find other ways to say the ideas.  However, if the ban is supported by a capable government authority it can distort how people conceive of the world.  Just consider the people who only watch Fox News and people like Limbaugh.  They now live in an alternative reality that can't be breached.  Now, the people who created that alternative reality are running much of the US government.  

Trump/Pence Would Like Your Opinion

Here's the kind of questions you get at the Trump/Pence Mainstream Media Accountability Survey.

5.  On which issues does the mainstream media do the worst job of representing Republicans? (Select as many that apply.)
☐ Immigration
☐ Economics
☐ Pro-life values
☐ Religion
☐Individual liberty
☐Conservatism
☐ Foreign policy
☐ Second Amendment rights

12.  Do you believe that contrary to what the media says, raising taxes does not create jobs?
☐Yes
☐ No
☐No opinion
☐Other, please specify:
[This one has a box to fill things in]

17.  Do you believe that the media has been far too quick to spread false stories about our movement?
 ☐Yes
 ☐No
 ☐No opinion
 ☐ Other, please specify:

[Again there is a box where one can elaborate]

At the end you leave your name, email address, and zip code.

Is this a ploy to get a favorable poll?
Is this a way to get fundraising lists? [apparently yes]
Is this a way to pick places for Trump to hold rallies?

Anyone want to predict what will happen to the people who submit these with anti-Trump comments?   Is it a fishing expedition for the Trump/Pence enemies list?

If you are going to be contrary and snarky, I suggest you set up a secure email address somewhere and use a proxy server to take the test.  Starting to feel like you live in China yet?

Nah, just go fill it out.  Let them see how many people disagree with them.

It seems to come from the Trump/Pence campaign.

Here's a Twitter trail of folks discussing the survey and whether to leave names or not.

Note: I cut and pasted the questions in without copying the format which had lots and lots of coding.

Stand Strong And Protect Those For Whom Trump Comes First . . .

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."

About the author:

"Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps, despite his ardent nationalism. Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation: “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out...”

There are a lot of parallels to the rise of Trump and the rise of Hitler.  There are probably a lot of parallels between Trump's rise and other less notorious authoritarians which may be closer fits.   But it's the one comparison I know best.  And it's probably been better documented than others. And there are a lot of similarities    From History place:

"Adolf Hitler and the Nazis waged a modern whirlwind campaign in 1930 unlike anything ever seen in Germany. . . . Hitler offered something to everyone: work to the unemployed; prosperity to failed business people; profits to industry; expansion to the Army; social harmony and an end of class distinctions to idealistic young students; and restoration of German glory to those in despair. He promised to bring order amid chaos; a feeling of unity to all and the chance to belong. He would make Germany strong again; end payment of war reparations to the Allies; tear up the treaty of Versailles; stamp out corruption; keep down Marxism; and deal harshly with the Jews."

One only has to substitute the date and the names - US for Germany, 2016 for 1930,  payments to NATO for war reparations to the Allies, NAFTA, TPP, and Climate Treaty for treaty of Versailles,  Muslims for Jews,  and this would read like a description of Trump.

But there are also differences.  One is that Hitler's Germany had a centralized government.  American   states have a lot of independence from Washington and states' rights has been a traditional Republican value.

Another difference is that we know what happened in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.  There are still some people alive who experienced it.  The example is still in our memories.   And we have lots of documentary evidence of what happened and how.

Americans would do well to reflect on the Niemöller quote.

The campaign has already targeted Muslims and immigrants, and people close to Trump are associated with white nationalism.  Trump's grandfather was arrested at a KKK and Fascist rally in 1927.  So these values aren't alien to the Trump family.

Those of us who believe in the rule of law, in decency and tolerance for human beings of all races and religions, have good reason to stand up for those targeted by the Trump administration.  If not for altruistic purposes, then to protect yourself and your family when the first targets - it would appear they'll be Muslims and immigrants -  have been dispatched.   We need to reach out and embrace these groups and resist Trump's attempts to target groups of people based not on what individuals have done, but based on assumptions about the guilt of the groups.

One immediate effort Americans can make is to invite Muslims and immigrant families to their Thanksgiving dinner.  Or find out where there will be community dinners where you can help out. Show them your support.  Get to know them and let them know you.  Connect so that if and when Trump moves to disrupt their lives, you will know and you will support them, and resist the kind of things that happened not only in Germany, but in the US with the internment camps for the Japanese.

It's time for good, loyal Americans to speak up.

I hope that those of us who fear the worst are totally wrong.  But Hitler's rise to power was as surprising in its time as Trump's rise is now.  People dismissed his most extreme views and focused on the positive things he promised - the jobs, the renewed glory of German people.  We have that example relatively fresh in our history.  Let's not let it repeat itself today.  When Germany was eventually defeated in WW II, the United States assumed the role of the leading country in the world.   Today, the most powerful countries in the world ready to take the place of the US on the world stage are Russia and China.

Dismantling Democracy Starts With Restricting The Media

I said yesterday it felt like part of the USA had died.  It appears others have felt the same.  This piece by Neal Gabler at Moyers&Company starts out with that focus, but then goes on to look at the death of the American media.  

And as AP News pointed out today, excluding the media was one of Trump's first moves.

"President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday refused to let a group of journalists travel with him to cover his historic first meeting with President Barack Obama, breaking a long-standing practice intended to ensure the public has a watchful eye on the nation's leader.
Trump flew from New York to Washington on his private jet without that "pool" of reporters, photographers and television cameras that have traveled with presidents and presidents-elect.
Trump's flouting of press access was one of his first public decisions since his election Tuesday."

The media, when doing their job well, and a lot of the media did NOT do their jobs well during this campaign, are the bulwark of democracy.  They are the key to keeping government accountable.  And restricting the media is one of the first steps a dictator takes.

In 2007 I posted Naomi Wolf's Ten Steps For Dismantling Democracy. Now's a good time to review those steps.   I suggest putting them up on the refrigerator.

I looked up authoritarian fonts for this list.  I was directed to Fraktur - this one above is Breitkopf Fraktur.  I know, it's hard to read.  So here's another one that's easier, but a bit messy.  But I want the image to be as jarring as the message.  Or you can write out your own copy.  That helps cement these in your mind. While looking for a font, I also found a book I found called A True Authoritarian Type. 

Restricting the press (8) already began during the campaign, and was one of the first actions newly elected Trump has taken that we know of.  And Bush had already begun on this road and Obama has also contributed to it (4).


Yesterday I decided that all posts about American politics need to have a positive step that readers can take. Here are two.

___ Clipping the list and putting it on the refrigerator is one.
___ Check out Klein's website, her Wikipedia page, or The Economist's rejection of her ideas 

"The United States government has never acknowledged any error in detaining Mr. Boumediene, though a federal judge ordered his release, for lack of evidence, in 2008."

IT was James, a thickset American interrogator nicknamed “the Elephant,” who first told Lakhdar Boumediene that investigators were certain of his innocence, that two years of questioning had shown he was no terrorist, but that it did not matter, Mr. Boumediene says.

The interrogations would continue through what ended up being seven years, three months, three weeks and four days at the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. . .  [SCOTT SAYARE, NY Times May 26, 2012]

The United States claims to be a different kind of country.  A democracy that values freedom.  Our government was angry when three young American hikers were arrested in Iran after having crossed the border.  They were arrested in Iran, and it wouldn't be completely irrational for the Iranian government to wonder if they had had any contact with the CIA before entering Iran.  Our government demanded their release.   Boumediene was arrested far from US shores - in Sarajevo where he worked with orphans for the Green Crescent, the Islamic equivalent of the Red Cross.

Our moral high ground has been obliterated by Bush's reaction to 9/11 and the conversion of Guantanamo Bay into a 'terrorist' torture camp.  Despite campaign promises Obama has not closed Guantanamo.

American citizens are responsible for this, because we are a democracy.  We are the Board of Directors, so to speak.  And while in the private sector, such directors have found ways to avoid responsibility for their companies' misdeeds, that moral responsibility does lie squarely on them, and in this case, on us.

I've tried to pick out parts of the story that point to all the times he was declared innocent or that there was no evidence.  The rest of his story you can read in the article.  

The United States government has never acknowledged any error in detaining Mr. Boumediene, though a federal judge ordered his release, for lack of evidence, in 2008. The government did not appeal, a Defense Department spokesman noted, though he declined to answer further questions about Mr. Boumediene’s case. A State Department representative declined to discuss the case as well, except to point to a Justice Department statement announcing Mr. Boumediene’s transfer to France, in 2009. 

President George W. Bush hailed his arrest in a State of the Union address on Jan. 29, 2002.

A human being's life isn't worth anything if he can be used by a politician as a symbol of his prowess.  How many times does this have to happen before we (more than the skeptical 20 or 30%) challenge presidents who do this?  

In time, those accusations disappeared, Mr. Boumediene says, replaced by questions about his work with Muslim aid groups and suggestions that those groups financed Islamic terrorism. According to a classified detainee assessment from April 2008, published by WikiLeaks, investigators believed that he was a member of Al Qaeda and the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria. Those charges, too, later vanished. 

In a landmark case that bears Mr. Boumediene’s name, the Supreme Court in 2008 affirmed the right of Guantánamo detainees to challenge their imprisonment in court.

[T]he government’s sole claim was that Mr. Boumediene had intended to travel to Afghanistan to take up arms against the United States. A federal judge rejected that charge as unsubstantiated, noting that it had come from a single unnamed informer. 

The terms of his release have not been made public or revealed even to him.

If this article is accurate, Boumediene wasn't given an apology nor even told the terms of his release.  He's living in France, but without a passport.

Mr. Boumediene, as an American, I am ashamed at how you were treated and I offer you my sincerest apologies.   I know that isn't much, but it's something.  I understand when law enforcement, at any level, arrest someone because they have some evidence of criminal involvement.  But when they know they've made a mistake, there should be an apology, and in egregious cases like this one, some sort of compensation and assistance.  (The article says that he's getting a monthly stipend but he does not know from whom.  I'd like to think the US government is giving it, but I know that's probably wishful thinking.)

And if anyone reading this has a problem with my apology, I'd just ask how you would react if an Iranian apologized just like this to the three American hikers his country imprisoned. 

And to my American readers, we all have a responsibility for getting the US back on the right track.  If you aren't registered to vote, do it this week.  If you are, get ten others to register.  We also need to let Obama know that we aren't pleased with some of the policies that he has continued from the Bush administration.  I understand he's not dealing with a friendly Congress, but let's let him know that we want him to stand up strong for what he believes.  The majority of the American people don't need to agree with you 100%, Mr. President, they just need to know that your core values are good and that you stand firmly behind them. 

Libyan Rebel Leader Says He Was Victim of CIA Torture in Bangkok's Don Muang Airport 2004

I don't have a lot of time for this, but did want to at least link to this piece which comes from documents found in Gadaffi's stash which adds information to what we know about the CIA torture activities in Thailand.  It comes from journalist Richard S. Ehrlich.  It's at what appears to be a New Zealand website Scoop:

Mr. Belhaj -- known by his nom de guerre, Abdullah al-Sadiq -- was named in at least two of the tens of thousands of documents recently discovered in Mr. Gadhafi's External Security buildings, in the Libyan capital, after rebels took over Tripoli.

As the article itself says at the bottom, a CIA interrogation site had been mentioned in the past.

Testimony by U.S. officials and other investigations earlier confirmed the CIA secretly waterboarded other suspects in Thailand in 2002, two years before Mr. Belhaj's ordeal in Bangkok.
At that time, the CIA secretly waterboarded suspected al-Qaeda facilitator Abu Zubaydah, and USS Cole bombing plotter Abd al-Nashiri in Thailand, but the location has not been made public.
In 2005, the CIA's former head Porter Gross, and his top aide, reportedly agreed to destroy videotapes kept in Bangkok documenting harsh interrogation, according to internal CIA e-mails.

He apparently was fingered by Gadaffi and caught and tortured at Don Muang - Bangkok's main airport until a few years ago.

London's Guardian newspaper reported on Sept. 5, however, that Britain's M16 intelligence agency helped the CIA in March 2004 arrest Mr. Belhaj, who is now a powerful commander in Tripoli for the anti-Moammar Gadhafi transitional government.

"Belhaj was detained by the CIA in Thailand in 2004 following an MI6 tip-off, allegedly tortured, then flown to Tripoli, where he says he suffered years of abuse in one of Muammar Gaddafi's prisons," the Guardian reported.
"MI6 had been able to tell the CIA of his whereabouts, after his associates informed British diplomats in Malaysia that he wished to claim asylum in the UK.

"Belhaj was then allowed to board a flight for London and abducted when the plane called at Bangkok," the Guardian reported.
In 2004, all international flights in and out of Bangkok -- including Mr. Belhaj's supposed British Airways flight -- used only Don Muang International Airport.
In Malaysia, he had bought "a ticket to London via Bangkok," the paper said.
"I got on the plane," Mr. Belhaj said, believing the flight would stopover for refueling in Bangkok and that he would be welcomed in London and given political asylum.

"Belhaj was captured by CIA officers, in co-operation with Thai authorities, inside Bangkok airport.

"He says he was tortured at a site in the airport grounds," the Guardian said.
"I was injected with something, hung from a wall by my arms and legs and put in a container surrounded by ice," he told the Guardian on Sept. 5, describing his alleged treatment at Bangkok's international airport by two people he described as CIA agents.

"They did not let me sleep, and there was noise all the time. And then they sent me to my enemy," Mr. Belhaj said, referring to his secret rendition flight by the CIA from Thailand to Libya.

 The whole piece is at Scoop.

Here's what it says about the author:

Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist who has reported news from Asia since 1978. He is co-author of "Hello My Big Big Honey!", a non-fiction book of investigative journalism. His web page is http://www.asia-correspondent.110mb.com.

 

Death of the Adversary

"The papers published in this volume were given to me some time after the war by a Dutch lawyer in Amersterdam."

So begins Death of the Adversary.

The narrator asks some questions but the Dutch lawyer is evasive.  We learn the papers are written in German. A page and a half later, we're reading the papers themselves.

"For days and weeks now I have thought of nothing but death.  Though I am normally a late riser, I get up early every morning now, calm and uplifted, after a night of dreamless sleep." 

I was having trouble at this point, but the book was supposed to be a masterpiece.  My mother had alerted me to an LA Times obituary of the author Hans Keilson who died this past June at age 101.   

"Hans Keilson was a newly minted physician in the mid-1930s when the persecution began. As a Jew in Hitler's Germany, he was stripped of the right to practice medicine. A writer, he soon lost that identity too: His autobiographical first novel was pulped soon after it was released because of a Nazi ban on Jewish writers.

"He fled to the Netherlands, where he wrote the beginnings of two more novels and buried the pages in his garden. After the war's end, in 1945, he dug them up and finished them. "Comedy in a Minor Key," a darkly humorous story set in Nazi-occupied Holland, was published in Germany in 1947, the same year as Anne Frank's diary. The second, more philosophical work, "The Death of the Adversary," earned enthusiastic reviews when it was published in America in 1962.

"That was the last that American audiences heard of Keilson — until last year. After five decades of literary obscurity, he landed on bestseller lists when both books were published again. It was a miracle of literary reclamation all the more remarkable because the long-forgotten author had lived long enough to witness his rediscovery."

Fortunately, Loussac had a copy.  The book is about a man whose life is dominated by his enemy whom he learns about overhearing his parents talking.

My enemy - I refer to him as B. - entered my life about twenty years ago.  At that time I had only a very vague idea of what it meant to be someone's enemy;  still less did I realize what it was to have an enemy.  One has to mature gradually towards one's enemy as towards one's best friend.

I frequently heard Father and Mother talk about this subject, mostly in the secretive, whispering voice of grown-ups who do not want the children to hear.  A new kind of intimacy informed their words.  They were talking in order to hide something.  But children quickly learn to divine the secrets and fears of their elders, and to grow up towards them.  My father said:




"If B. should ever come to power, may God have mercy on us.  Then things will start to happen."
My mother replied more quietly, "Who knows, perhaps everything will come out quite differently.  He's not all that important, yet."

This book mixes abstract ideas of the nature of 'the enemy' and the relationship between adversaries and very concrete detailed incidents as he grows up and learns more about the enemy.  He's excluded by classmates, he meets others with the same enemy,  he runs into the enemy in the flesh on two occasions. 

He never mentions Hitler or Jews by name.  It's all sort of vague.  It took a while for me, reading it, to figure out this was not some personal family adversary.

At the end, when the narrator is returning the papers to the Dutch lawyer who says,

"I received them from the author with the assurance that they contained not a single word that could endanger me, if I kept them."
"Did you believe him?"
"In the beginning, yes, but that was before I had read them.  Later I did read them."
"And then?"
"Then I buried them. . ."

What struck me throughout wes the wrestling of the narrator of the text (rather than the narrator of the intro) with his relationship with the adversary.  First it was understanding what it meant to have an adversary.  Then there was the denial of the serious impact the adversary would have on his life.  Here's an example of fellow victim of the adversary who feels he's being too complacent:

"At bottom you know as well as I where you belong, nor do I believe that you are rebelling against it.  That's not what worries you.  What you're after is something impossible:  you are trying to plaster up the crack that runs through this world, so that it becomes invisible;  then, perhaps, you'll think that it doesn't exist any more.  You are right in the centre of a happening and are trying to render an account of it to yourself, and at the same time to alter the situation so as to allow you to extricate yourself from it with a single leap and to look at it from the point of view of the man in the moon.  You're trying to look at something that concerns you as though it both concerned and did not concern you.  Am I right?"

Today we are all struggling with the adversary.  People are denying reality, trying to either maintain their life as it has always been, or trying to analyze it abstractly and objectively.  We do this with the crashing economy.  We do this with politics.   Some take things seriously and act.  Others carry on as though  things will just pass. Jews in Nazi Germany - the most scientifically and  technically advanced nation in the world at the time - responded in many different ways.  Some realized the danger and got out if they could.  Others thought it would pass and things would return to normal.    The book gives a very intense, and from what I can tell, pretty much contemporary account of the mental processes people struggled with. 

"Self-deception is the pleasantest form of lying.  It is a panacea for all personal ills and injuries, it can heal even metaphysical wounds.  The experience with my friend had been a hard blow, of course, [A good friend had declared his allegiance to the enemy and their friendship ended] but it had not brought me to my knees.  On the contrary.  This first and severe disappointment had strengthened me and prepared me for all the future ones.  I no longer confronted them unprepared.  Had my loss not brought me a gain, or was this the beginning of self-deception?"

I think this is an eternal dilemma.  How does one know when there is imminent and serious danger and when it's no big deal?  While Tea Party members seem to be certain they must act now, and ruthlessly, to prevent the US from collapse, so too there are those who see the Tea Party as being manipulated by rich conspirators who are the greatest threat to American democracy.

And in the land that Keilson wrote about there was a similar sort of dichotomy.  Many Germans were spellbound by Hitler's charisma and demonizing of Jews, Socialists, and others.  It wasn't till many people died - not just those who died in concentration camps, but also those who died on the battlefield - that the bubble burst and they recognized they had been deceived.  Though there were many who continued (continue) to believe in Hitler. 

New Hampshire Bill Would Make TSA Patdowns Sexual Assault

I've been reading so much stuff on the TSA 'enhanced Pat-Down" (enhanced is supposed to mean made better, isn't it?) that my head feels clotted with all the information and I'm trying to figure out where and how to write about this coherently.   A series of short specific posts seems the better approach - more focused, more likely to be read.  But an integrated look at the big picture needs to part of this too. 

I'm at the point where I believe it is truly outrageous for people who have a medical prosthetic to be singled out for the new scanner and the 'pat-down' without any other reason to believe they are terrorists.  (The 'without any other reason' is important.) In fact, with strong reasons to believe they are NOT terrorists.  I read today a story in one of the emails to Rep. Cissna's from a woman who'd just had a mastectomy

"I had two very aggressive TSA officers in _____ insist that they were going to rifle through my bandages to look for explosives.  I finally just pulled up my shirt and let them look at the tubes, bandages and blood collectors, and felt completely humiliated.  It had been less than a week since my double mastectomy and removal of my ovaries, (in fact I still had drains in, and my hospital ID bracelet on my wrist) and I was not in the mood for any of it.  I just wanted to get home, as I was in soooo much pain from all of the traveling."

This was two years ago - before the new enhanced 'pat-downs.' That's just one of many similar stories, though a bit more graphic than most.  You can see how common sense is not allowed to interfere with the rules that require . . . well I'm not sure what the rules require.  It seems the rules require that if you have metal in you, you get both a body-scan AND a pat-down. Even if you travel weekly.  Even if you have a card from your doctor.  Even if a cursory check online would show you to be someone in a responsible position and a pillar of the your local American community.  The machine, not reason, decides you must be searched. 

An aside:  I also found a law suit making pretty much the same argument - that scanners that show your nude body and pat-downs should not be the primary screening method to travel by air in the US.  I'll do another post on that. 

I just wanted to give you some context for why I'm sympathetic to the sentiment behind this new legislation.  I'm not sure this is the best way to go - it clearly would set up a show-down between federal and state agents - but it's a sign of how strongly people feel and how powerless they feel.  The March 1 report from WMUR New Hampshire says there's little support for this bill.

CONCORD, N.H. -- Lawmakers and residents engaged in heated debate Tuesday over a bill that would make random airport security pat-downs and body scans criminal in New Hampshire.

The bill (HB628-FN) "makes the touching or viewing with a technological device of a person’s breasts or genitals by a government security agent without probable cause a sexual assault," according to the introductory text of the bill.

"Let's put their name on the sex offender registry, and maybe that will tell them New Hampshire means business," said bill co-sponsor Rep. Andrew Manuse, R-Derry.

"That is a crime in this state, and we should charge them every single time," said bill co-sponsor Rep. George Lambert, R-Litchfield.

There's video at the link as well.

". . . no one should have to sacrifice their dignity in order to travel"

[Update, Feb. 24: New post with video of Rep. Cissna talking to media as she gets off the ferry.]
The Alaska State House passed a "Sense of the House" resolution today in support of Rep. Sharon Cissna, offered by Rep. Chris Tuck. His introduction was:

Last weekend the long-time member of this body from District 22 chose respect. She stood up for her rights, her sense of decency, and her prior commitments to herself at the Seattle airport by not submitting to an intrusive search of her body.

The sense of the house that passed stated:

"It is the Sense of the House that efficient travel is a cornerstone of the economy and our quality of life, especially in Alaska, and that no one should have to sacrifice their dignity in order to travel."

The vote was 36 yeas, 2 excused (Cissna, Fairclough), and Representatives Bob Lynn and Dan Saddler voted against.  

Cissna's office has been inundated with supportive emails from around the country.  The stack in the photo above is just Monday, and an equal sized stack came in Tuesday.  

Meanwhile there was a lively forum at flyertalk.com. (Not sure the link works if you don't register - for free - to flyertalk.)  Here's a post that apparently was also sent to Rep. Cissna:

Dear Rep. Cissna,

I wish to congratulate you on your bold stand against the TSA at SEA as recently reported in the Seattle press. Please know that a number of your fellow Americans stand behind you, and we, too, are tired of the ongoing abuse leveled by this agency. No one wants less security. What we do want is security that is safe, sane, effective, respectful, and doesn't make people like Michael Cherthoff richer. Instead what we have at the hands of the TSA are expensive machines that can't detect guns (recently reported in Dallas), thieves who have stolen a combined total of nearly $300,000 from innocent travelers (Newark and New York - JFK), and people who are literally sticking their hands in our pants. The images created by the full body scanners would make decent people blush, and as you are unfortunately aware do not protect anyone from an invasive body search demanded under threat of authority. I wish you good health, and as a fellow Democrat hope for your continued political success.

Sincerely,
barbell

 Here's another:

And check out TSA's reaction:

Quote:

TSA spokesman Kwika Riley was asked to respond to Cissna’s comments when contacted by The Associated Press. But a general statement issued later did not mention her or her claims, saying the agency is "sensitive to the concerns of passengers who were not satisfied with their screening experience and we invite those individuals to provide feedback to TSA."

Translation: Stuff it, you whiner.

A number focus on TSA's treatment of people with medical prosthetics:

Quote:

Originally Posted by BubbaLoop As usual, the TSA fails horribly when dealing with prosthetics. Lucky for us, it was with a public figure. This has to get out to more news media. I´ll do my share to make this link go viral.

Problems with abusive and humiliating treatment of breast cancer survivors has been reported before. In that case, a TSA agent put her full hand on the (prosthetic) right breast of a US Air flight attendant and made her remove the prosthesis from her bra for inspection.

This post gives contact info for various beast cancer organizations.

These organizations should be "strongly encouraged" to fight for the rights of women to continue with their lives and careers after surviving breast cancer, including the right to travel without harassment, humiliation, and abuse.