35 Comments

1. Dan:

   Hi Stan!

   Good stuff, my friend.

   Regarding the media, mass movements, organizing, and penetrating the stifling wall of sound (wall of shit) insulating the People from the Facts, I have been concocting an “Idea”…

   Roughly, it goes like this:

   Millions of people across the US and around the world are getting their news from sites like yours, and larger sites across the Left, Liberal, and Progressive blogosphere – somewhere on the order of 15 million people or more.

   Now, you and I both know that on issues of political import – war, peace, economy, security, Global South, etc, the disconnect between many factions in this disparate group of Left of Center writers and readers is often HUGE. Read Kevin Drum, Billmon, DailyKos, Atrios, Gilliard, and the rest and get an idea of just how much we on the “Left” (although most of the blogosphere hardly qualifies) disagree on those fundamental issues.

   One thing that is nearly unanimously agreed upon is that the Press sucks dogshit, and has for some time. And it is getting worse.

   Here’s my pitch: Each and every person reading and writing on the Liberal/Progressive/Left side of the blogosphere buys as many shares in ONE, agreed-upon in advance, corpoarate media target as that person can afford. One share, 10 shares, 100 shares, whatever.

   Each person takes their share(s) and signs a proxy voting form…ONE person should be designated (by vote? by acclamation? by default?) as the agreed-upon proxy, and ALL forms are signed over to that person.

   Over the course of ? months ? a year or two ? via email, fax, secure list, server or whatever, the numbers are compiled.

   Once enough shares have been purchased and signed over to the proxy, we fire the board of directors, fire the editors, fire the reporters, and run the fucking paper/station/network the way we want it.

   Let me give you an example:

   The New York Times NYT has a market cap of 4.5 Billion, an enterprise value of 5.8 billion, and a share price of about 31 dollars per. There are about 145 million shares outstanding, with 5% held by insiders and 66% held by institutional investors (funds and etc). If each one of the 15 or more million people reading on the “left” bought 5, 10, 20, whatever shares…signed them all over to, oh, Alexander and Patrick Cockburn? Robert Fisk? You? Me? Whatever…we could, in fact, hold and use a controlling share, perhaps even a majority share.

   It worked for the folks who wanted Mike Eisner shitcanned at Disney – shareholder revolt is what brought that pig down.

   We could do the same to NYT, Sinclair, or any number of potential targets.

   The beauty is that, since we are buying stock, if the “project” fails, then we can all sell the stock at the same time, take a personal hit of a few bucks or tens of dollars, and be really none the worse off…but wooo…selling a few million shares in a few hours or days? Ouch.

   Is such a project worth seriously thinking about?

   Cheers! And say hi to the fam for me!

   Love

   Dan.

   30 June 2005, 7:42 pm

2. Stan:

   Domo arigato, Dan

   30 June 2005, 7:51 pm

3. Dan:

   Do iitashimate, Stan!

   Love your site….Chris S. says hi!

   30 June 2005, 8:00 pm

4. m.c.:

   I thinks that is a great idea!

   A point to ponder: Why isn’t Patrick Fitzgerald putting the same kind of pressure on Robert Novak as he is on Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper? My two cents is that journalists and the press in general should have as much leeway as possible to use unidentified sources in the name of Freedom of Speech & Expression. Somewhere else, I read a post that the Attorney/Client privilege, although not always sacrosanct, is stronger legally than the Journalistic Shield privilege that exists here in the U.S. Referring to the 1982 Intelliegence Identities Protection Act which this case is almost certainly a violation of, no less than Bush Sr. said at the time that those who out covert operatives knowingly are “the most insidious of traitors.”

   Another brick in the wall. Even the U.S. Supreme Court may not be able to contain this baby.

   30 June 2005, 9:16 pm

5. Tom:

   I’m game too. I mean it.

   tom

   30 June 2005, 10:34 pm

6. Janine Willis:

   So we just give up on the idea of the 4th Estate? Was it all an illusion anyway…or just the inevitable result of corporatization?

   I’d love to see little Judy go to jail but I just fear we’re not seeing ourselves get screwed because of the delicious schadenfreunde.

   30 June 2005, 11:26 pm

7. Bardamu:

   Let her rot.

   I’ve been getting e-mail from CWA (Communications Workers Of America) and their associated Newspaper Guild about the need to stick up for J. Miller & Scooter Libby. Never has a union been so short-sighted.

   Maybe its time the mainstream press started feeling the same heat that we in the alternative press get. Remember the bombing of Al Jazeera offices? Everyone else in America has had their civil rights suspended, and maybe this will help shock them out of being so fucking blase about it.

   And maybe someday we’ll get some real journalism out of the mainstream outlets. I’m not holding my breath.

   1 July 2005, 2:35 am

8. Dennis Eros:

   Fmr. NY Congressmember Holtzman Calls For President Bush and His Senior Staff To Be Held Accountable for Abu Ghraib Torture

   Thursday, June 30th, 2005
   Fmr. NY Congressmember Holtzman Calls For President Bush and His Senior Staff To Be Held Accountable for Abu Ghraib Torture

   In a newly-published article in The Nation former New York Congressmember Elizabeth Holtzman, who served on the committee that voted to impeach Richard Nixon calls on the public and the press to demand President Bush and his senior White House staff be held accountable for the torture of Abu Ghraib and be prosecuted under the 1996 War Crime Act. [includes rush transcript]

   In the last few months, mainstream human rights groups have been calling for top U.S officials in the Bush administration to be held accountable for the torture and abuse of military prisoners at U.S detention centers around the world. In April, Human Rights Watch demanded that a special prosecutor be named to investigate Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA director George Tenet and other top officials for possible war crimes related to the abuse. Last month, Amnesty International issued a damning report blasting the Bush administration for ignoring international law and mistreating detainees. The group criticized the Bush administration for failing to carry out a full and independent investigation of the torture at Abu Ghraib and for failing to hold any senior officials accountable.
   Well, The Nation magazine is publishing an article in its July 18th issue titled “Torture and Accountability.” In the article, the author, former Congressmember Elizabeth Holtzman, writes that there is precedent to hold U.S officials accountable for wrongdoing. She points to public pressure that forced Congress to end the Vietnam war, relentless press coverage of the Watergate scandal which ultimately lead to Nixon’s resignation and public demands that led to the independent 9/11 commission.
   · Elizabeth Holtzman, She served for eight years as a U.S. Congresswoman and won national attention for her role on the House Judiciary committee during Watergate. She was subsequently elected District Attorney of Kings County, the only woman ever elected DA in NYC, serving for eight years. Liz was also the only woman ever elected Comptroller of New York City. Liz was appointed, by President Clinton, to the Nazi and Japanese War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group, which is overseeing the declassification of the U.S. government’s secret Nazi war crimes files.

   RUSH TRANSCRIPT
   This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
   Donate – $25, $50, $100, more…
   AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Elizabeth Holtzman. Welcome to Democracy Now!
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Good morning, everyone.
   AMY GOODMAN: Well, it has been very interesting to read this article and also look at your background, from dealing with the issue of Holocaust war crimes to Watergate, to now talking about torture and accountability. Can you relate all three?
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Well, I think we need justice in this world. We need to make sure that people who commit horrendous crimes are held accountable, and we need to have social justice, as well. But I got to Congress in 1973 when nobody had any clue that Richard Nixon would ever be held accountable in connection with the Watergate break in that took place just before that. And then it was because of a lot of independent and relentless prosecutors and judges and, most important, press, and in the end, the American public, that a President of the United States was held accountable for something that nobody could have dreamed months before that he would be held accountable for, and his top administration officials.
   And it seems to me that with the terrible scandal, Abu Ghraib, that we need — we can’t, as they tried in Watergate to do, cut off the investigation at the small fry, at the lowest level. You have to look, and the international law precedence and American law requires it, you look up the chain of command. What I discovered by accident was that — this is not a concern that I have alone — President Bush’s White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, himself, who is now the Attorney General of the United States, wrote a memo in January 2002 to President Bush saying one of the reasons we need to opt out of the Geneva Conventions wasn’t just because they didn’t like the Geneva Conventions because they don’t like treaties, but he said, we have to worry about prosecutions under the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996. That, it turns out, is a federal statute that applies to any U.S. national, military or civilian, high or low, who violates the Geneva Conventions in certain ways. In other words, who engages in murder, torture, or inhuman treatment. And it’s not just those who engage in it, it’s those who order it or those who, knowing about it, fail to take steps to stop it. That means higher-ups.
   JUAN GONZALEZ: This 1996 law is not very well known.
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: No. It’s totally obscure. I only found out about it because Alberto Gonzales was worried about prosecutions of high level officials under it.
   JUAN GONZALEZ: What brought this law about? In other words, was Congress reacting to —
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: What happened was in the 1990s, during the, I guess it was the Clinton administration at that time, Congress decided that it wanted to adopt laws to take it into full compliance with its obligations under an international torture statute and an international torture treaty and the Geneva Conventions. And so, it passed two laws. One is a statute making it a U.S. crime to engage in torture. It was passed two years before the 1996 law, and then you have the War Crimes Act of 1996.
   And basically, what it does, it makes grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions a federal crime. Got it? Just like kidnapping or interstate burglary or child pornography, it is a federal crime. And the other thing, that’s interesting is that it carries the death penalty. If death results from torture or inhuman treatment, then there is a death penalty, and that means there’s no statute of limitations. That means that if any high level official violates the War Crimes Act, and somebody died, they can be prosecuted. They are subject to prosecution for the rest of their lives.
   AMY GOODMAN: So what did Gonzales do about President Bush?
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: What Gonzales did to President Bush, he said, ‘Mr. President, we have got to worry about prosecutions under this statute, and what we can do is we can reduce the possibility of prosecutions by opting out of the Geneva Conventions.’ And guess what. The President opted out of the Geneva Conventions. He followed the advice of Gonzales. And by the way, the same advice was given by Attorney General Ashcroft in a memo to the President, as well, saying that he wanted to make sure that law enforcement officials, intelligence officials and others were not prosecuted under the War Crimes Act. So, here we have two high level U.S. government officials warning President Bush that the War Crimes Act, a U.S. statute, could make high level American officials criminally liable, if they — unless they opted out of the Geneva Conventions.
   AMY GOODMAN: You make a distinction between Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and what happened in those two places.
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: I don’t make a distinction from the point of view of international law. What I’m saying is that even if you accept what Gonzales’s solution was — he said, ‘Mr. President, look, if we opt out of Geneva, we reduce the possibility of prosecution.’ And the Justice Department saying, ‘Look, if we change the definition of torture so that torture doesn’t mean what it normally means but is something Orwellian,’ if you just grant them that, just say, ‘Okay, we’ll accept for argument sake that you are right about that,’ they are still liable – still liable — for the inhumane treatment that took place in Iraq, because we never opted out of Geneva for Iraq.
   So if you look at Abu Ghraib, and you look at who ordered that, or you look at who knew about it and failed to stop it, or you look at C.I.A. interrogations, not of al Qaeda — let’s just leave that aside, because we don’t want to get into a legal argument with them about that — you have the possibility that the high level of — highest level officials of the United States government could be criminally liable under this statute. And that’s exactly what Mr. Gonzales was worried about, now Attorney General of the United States. That’s exactly what Mr. Ashcroft, then Attorney General of United States, worried about. And nobody has looked at this statute in that kind of fashion to see that accountability can be had and really should be had with regard to the highest level people in the United States government.
   JUAN GONZALEZ: But what about the situation in Guantanamo, given especially the Supreme Court rulings that the federal law does apply in Guantanamo? Does the Bush administration’s decision to opt out of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan affect those prisoners who then become transferred to Guantanamo?
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: I’m not a legal expert on that. I’m just saying personally, it seems to me that that’s a very bad argument. That you are just going to create a legal loophole so that people can commit what they know to be crimes. But what I’m saying is a different point, that you can hold, whether it’s for what happened in Abu Ghraib or what happened in Guantanamo, we still can hold people, highest level of government officials, accountable for inhuman treatment and for torture, in the normal sense of the word, if we — under the War Crimes Act of 1996. And give them the benefit of the doubt of every argument they want to make. There’s still a whole universe of abuse and mistreatment for which our government officials need to be held accountable.
   AMY GOODMAN: Let’s talk about chain of command. General Ricardo Sanchez, it looks like, is about to be promoted the commander in Iraq when the Abu Ghraib abuses took place?
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Well, it seems to me that that raises very, very serious questions. Obviously, we know that he did order for at least a short period of time abuses that would constitute inhuman treatment. Do they constitute criminal actions? The Senate of the United States is going to have confirmation hearings if he’s promoted. And they must look into this very seriously. In fact, what I would suggest to the Senate is that they require the — before he’s confirmed, or as a condition of considering his confirmation, that a special prosecutor be or an independent counsel be appointed to examine whether there is criminal liability of him or any other higher-up in connection with Abu Ghraib.
   JUAN GONZALEZ: You also raise in The Nation article the whole question of the direct role of President Bush himself, and what directives did he issue in relationship to treatment of prisoners that have so far not been revealed. Could you talk about that a little bit?
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN: Well, the President always says that he is against torture, but let’s step back and recognize that this administration has come out with a definition of torture that is totally unacceptable, which is one of the reasons that the War Crimes act is so useful, because it also has, as a predicate for liability, inhuman treatment. You don’t have to go to where they are on torture, but he issued his orders with regard to how prisoners were to be treated in Afghanistan, explicitly excluded the C.I.A. He said we’re supposed to treat prisoners humanely and something to the extent of if it’s militarily appropriate. But there was no limitation on anything to do with the C.I.A. questioning. And so, we have indication that that might — that he might have been sending some signal to the C.I.A. that you’re not bound by the requirements of humane treatment. That’s one of the indications that we have.
   AMY GOODMAN: Former Congressmember Liz Holtzman is our guest today. We’re going to break and then come back and talk about also how this goes back in her history, talking about World War II, and also ask her about the Holocaust analogies that have been made as she continues to be part of a federal panel that seeks documents on World War II crimes.
   [break]
   AMY GOODMAN:Our guest is Liz Holtzman, who served for eight years as U.S. Congressmember from New York, served on the House Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach Richard Nixon, and also continues to serve on a federal panel investigating Nazi war atrocities. Let’s talk about that. What about the information you’re getting there — I’m actually interested in an update on that — and then how that relates to today?
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN:Well, again, it was a battle of a couple of members of Congress who wanted to get the full truth about U.S. knowledge of Nazi war crimes both during the war and after the war, and our dealings with Nazi war criminals during the war and after the war; and, initially, as you can imagine, a lot of federal agencies said: Can’t do. Won’t do. Not computerized. Too much work. But the fact of the matter is, almost every single agency has fully complied. Defense Department has turned over documents, National Security Agency has turned over documents –
   AMY GOODMAN:That show what?
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN:F.B.I. has turned over documents. Eight million pages of documents. And the C.I.A. drew a line in the sand, basically said it was not going to turn over documents dealing with their relationship with Nazi war criminals after the war; but now they’ve agreed to comply with the law and to do what the other agencies have done.
   What it shows is—and what some of the documents show is that—one – couple of things. We knew the U.S. government and the British at the same time knew, for example, that the Jewish community of Rome was going to be rounded up by the Nazis; and we can’t find any action that was taken to warn the community, to tell the Germans not to do it. I mean, it suggests that the U.S. government failed to help a community that was at risk—big community.
   Secondly, after the war, Nazi war criminals worked for the United States government; and we knew about it. In fact, one of the – some of the documents that we now have received show that the U.S. knew explicitly. I mean, for example, one of Eichmann’s aides, who was responsible for rounding up the Jews of Holland, the C.I.A. wanted to work with him after the war. They didn’t care about his background.
   AMY GOODMAN:What do you mean, ‘work with him?’
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN:Use him. I mean, what happened after the war was — and we know this from a case involving Klaus Barbie, the butcher of Lyon — the Germans said, ‘How can we’ – the high German officials, SS officers said – ‘How can we save our necks? We now lost the war – Germany’s lost the war. How do we save our necks?’ And what happened was that they went to the British and they went to the Americans, and they said: ‘We are not really Nazis. We’re just really anti-communist, and we want to work for you.’ And the U.S. government said, ‘Great!’ And Klaus Barbie was the first and only case that we knew about in detail where the U.S. government employed him; U.S. officials committed crimes, and then sneaked him out of Europe.
   But what we are now documenting is that there were hundreds and hundreds of others; and worse yet, is that the hiring of these people –you know, everyone says – it applies to today. Everyone said we had to be macho, we have to use bad guys to get good intelligence. The fact of the matter is, by using Nazi war criminals, we may have exposed ourselves, first of all, because these were people who had blood on their hands and were liable to blackmail by the Russians. And the Russians, in fact, totally penetrated the West German spy apparatus because they had Nazi war criminals working for them. And, secondly, these people had an agenda. They wanted to keep their necks from being cut off. And so, sometimes they would give us biased intelligence. So the consequences of using (quote/unquote) the bad guys is something that’s going to occupy historians and will show us that there were huge risks and huge problems, aside from the moral issue of whether these people should have been saved from justice and allowed to – and hired to work for us.
   JUAN GONZALEZ:Now, your panel, what is it doing precisely? It is reviewing the –
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN:It beats up on – in a word, it beats up on federal agencies and says that you have to turn over these documents. Congress has ordered these documents. And, of course, the agencies say – they initially said no. And, later, the C.I.A. said no; but we work with them, or against them, and we get them finally to do what has to be done. And so this is the biggest declassification project that the government has ever —
   JUAN GONZALEZ:But does your panel actually review the documents itself, or just –
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN:We do, sometimes. The problem is there are 8 million of them, and we don’t – we have a teeny-weeny budget, basically no budget; so – but we have had historians – we have three historians who work for us, and they help us, first of all, explain to the agencies why they have to turn over the documents; and they did look at 250,000 documents, and there’s a book that’s now published that’s been put out working with the National Archives called U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis that was written by these three historians based on only 250,000 pages; but we assume that this is a treasure trove for historians through the years.
   JUAN GONZALEZ:And do you have a sense how, to what degree the United States government protected the Nazis once they had left Germany from prosecution from war crimes tribunals?
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN:Well, we know – yes, we know some of them, who were protected; and we know that some of them were hired by us, and we have some information about how they were protected. Yes, there’s no question that in a number of cases – and it’s not only those who left Germany. It’s those who were in Germany or those who were in Austria or those who were in Italy.
   AMY GOODMAN:So were the Nuremburg trials for those who simply wouldn’t cooperate with the U.S.?
   LIZ HOLTZMAN:No, no, the Nuremburg trials were those at the highest level, the very highest level; but the SS officers, particularly the intelligence officers, were people that we wanted to hire, and we did. And we created an apparatus. I mean, there’s a very well-known man called Reinhardt Gehlen, who created the West German spy network. He was a – Hitler’s chief of intelligence on the eastern front, which is where they killed most of the Jews who were killed, plus Gypsies and partisans and the rest. I mean, what went on on the eastern front in Russia and the east — eastern Europe was terrible. He was our guy. We set him up. We found now that he had at least a hundred Nazi war criminals working for him in his apparatus. This was an apparatus that was totally penetrated by the Russians. So what good did it – I mean, one, we have a moral issue about hiring these people and, two, it was totally penetrated. So, it raises a question of, you do immoral things and also you get a bad result.
   AMY GOODMAN:What about the comparisons now? Senator Dick Durbin making his statement and then having to retract it? Those who say – make comparisons to the Nazis? Those who make comparisons to talking about the gulag of detention centers, from Afghanistan – from Guantanamo around the world?
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN:Well, I think it’s dangerous to draw connections between this and Soviet system or the Nazi system. I mean, Nazis killed six million Jews and millions of non-Jews. Millions were killed in the gulag. We’re not talking about those numbers. But the idea that the ends justify the means, and the idea that you’re willing to use brutality is not – is something that was found in the Soviet system, and is something that’s found in the Nazi system, and is abhorrent when it’s found in our system.
   JUAN GONZALEZ:And the documents that you are uncovering, they’ll be available to the public –
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN:They are available at the National Archives. We’ve made eight million pages available, and more will – we’ve been extended for two years to deal with the C.I.A. documents, and we believe there will be more. And not only Nazis, but Japanese war criminals; and you may know also with regard to the Japanese war criminals after World War II, there was a Japanese unit that was involved in germ warfare, and instead of prosecuting the head of that unit, we hired him.
   JUAN GONZALEZ:Where’d he go to work?
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN:I don’t know the details of that, but – Yeah. This is a – so – yeah. After World – You know, it’s amazing, during World War II, we, ourselves, Americans, were terribly victimized by the Japanese as prisoners of war. That was the genesis of the Geneva Conventions and our support for them. We saw what happened to our own prisoners, and during World War II, we treated the German prisoners of war in a very humane way. And after World War II, somehow, the ends began to justify the means in U.S. policy.
   AMY GOODMAN:Well, we want to thank you very much for being with us. Liz Holtzman has a piece out –
   ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN:Thank you.
   AMY GOODMAN: – in the upcoming issue of The Nation magazine. It’s called “Torture and Accountability.” Thank you for being with us.

   1 July 2005, 4:18 am

9. john mccarthy:

   Stan,
   The media is still avoiding the information in:
   http://www.geocities.com/larryjodaniel/23.html
   Of course, to address the ‘law’ in this matter only confuses the issue, right?
   Bests,
   John
   http://johnmccarthy90066.tripod.com

   1 July 2005, 4:53 am

10. Stan:

    A couple of notes.

    The comments are moderated for two reasons, so they don’t go up immediately. Reason one, spam. There are times where there is comment spam coming from twenty or more different places, mostly to peddle a new drug or pornography. Reason two, the one I just used to delete a post from a frequent and usually friendly poster.

    Read the rules. This site will not tolerate racial or sexual slurs. Judith Miller’s actions, not her sex, are the subject of my invective, and the issue on the table. I will not post allusions to sexual cruelty, sexualized epithets, etc.

    This goes to a point that a good friend of mine brought up with regard to the satirical piece that went all over the internet a while back about Ann Coulter, in which some liberal-left MALE went on and on about some fictional sexual episode with Coulter.

    Here is the note she wrote. Pay attention, boys:

    some webnik has written up a “satirical” attack on the
    abominable Ann Coulter, in the form of a porno pastiche.

    my own commentary follows — I think this might be a good oppo
    to do some writing about misogyny, the Left, and the culture of
    porn — was sorta starting to write an essaylet but got bogged
    down, not to mention disgusted. definite tie-ins to the Man on
    Fire vengeance trope — what is it with the male imagination
    and the anal rape theme anyway? the url is at end, but I warn
    you it is quite nasty, as well as inherently tedious in the way
    that hatewanking always is.

    I recently was sent a link to a unpleasant — mildly clever
    in a Harvard Lampoon sort of way but also, like the HL,
    dickheaded-unpleasant — web page, an attack on the admittedly
    loathesome Ann Coulter framed as a porn fantasy. the mildly
    amusing part of it is that interspersed with the tedious tropes
    of pornoprose [Coulter is imagined as picking the author, a
    liberal, up at a sidewalk cafe as her "top" for a humiliation
    ritual] are passages of political discourse, i.e. part of
    the alleged turn-on for the imaginary Coulter is hearing
    the author praise Chomsky and damn Gingrich, etc.

    however the overall format is to my eye no different from the
    same technique — casting a hated female political opponent in
    a grotesque pornographic narrative — used by the Right against
    feminists, women of colour, etc. at base, the whole document
    boils down to the enduring male fantasy of anally raping and
    then pissing on a vanquished opponent, with the added fillip
    that the opponent is described as desiring her own humiliation
    (where have we heard that before eh?) — which not only
    increases the insult-value of the fantasy (how even more
    contemptible is a person who *wants* to be treated in this way)
    but gets the author off the hook, as he is not “imagining a
    rape” if the victim is allegedly in control… the usual self-
    serving conundrum of BDSM.

    liberal lefty types have been discussing this rather appalling
    text as “insanely funny,” “laugh out loud,” “crude and rude but
    hilarious,” etc. — which of course for me raises various
    parallels: would it be as funny if it were a rightwingnut
    vengeful fantasy about another visible woman on the LEFT?
    why is sexual slander against “the other
    side’s women” so quickly resorted to by males of all parties?
    is this merely a mirror-image response to the weirdly
    sexualised prose of the Time magazine feature on Coulter?

    would the image of sexual humiliation be as funny in their eyes
    if it were, say, the awful Clarence Thomas being cast as a
    “bottom” desiring some ghastly racist SM scene with a Whiteboy
    Lefty top? or would the casting of any *male* political
    opponent in such a scenario offend too greatly against male
    solidarity, despite partisan sentiment? what is it that really
    offends these lefty guys about Coulter? her politics or her
    femaleness (which is often called into question, much as
    rightwingnuts made jokes about HRC being secretly “the man in
    the white house” etc)? is this not in the end a fantasy about
    putting Coulter “back in her place” as a subservient female, a
    punishment for her daring to exercise man-like powers (most
    unpleasant ones in her case) in public life?

    I am reminded of the Muslim feminist who, looking at American
    society, said “Pornography is your veil.”

    there is a gutter/schoolyard quality to this discourse which
    would not surprise me in high school, directed into vengeful
    fantasies about hated teachers, but seems oddly inappropriate
    for adults engaged in a national political debate. I don’t
    know whether I should forward this url, it is not a very nice
    thing to read. I only went there to find out how bad it was,
    and it was pretty bad. OTOH pretending that this discourse
    does not exist is hardly productive engagement.

    another side issue this illustrates for me is that pornoprose
    is now so accepted a medium/style in male pop culture that it
    is a recognisable target for pastiche. HL in its day lampooned,
    e.g. The Lord of the Rings when that was “the” pop cult book
    which “everyone” of college age knew of, whether they had
    actually read it or not. the HL lampooned it on the borderline
    of the forbidden (at the time), with thinly-veiled, implicit
    pornographic and homophobic venom. but now the pornographic
    itself is pop culture, used as the substrate for satire rather
    than as the mean edge of satire — or rather used as both…
    anyway, I’m spinning in litcrit circles here but it is a
    disturbing bit of Net-flotsam and I think a “cultural document”
    worthy of some kind of critique.

    the stance on the left seems to be that the public pillorying
    and pornographic shaming of a woman is OK, so long as she is a
    “bad” woman, i.e. from “the other side.” the fact that the
    specifically sexualised slurs on her as a female are a
    signature equally of male rightwingnut attacks on progressive
    women, seems to be blithely disregarded — once again both
    “sides” of maledom are united in their eagerness to slander and
    (virtually, in imagination, online — or actually, as in armed
    warfare and class/race warfare) strip/abuse/violate “the other
    guy’s” women.

    http://tinyurl.com/bjtun

    yuck.

    de

    1 July 2005, 6:31 am

11. michael hersch:

    If these reporters have information the government wants, then these reporters should be tortured until they ‘talk’. After all, it’s a matter of National Security!

    1 July 2005, 6:54 am

12. Cee:

    I think Novak (who didn’t support the war or the neocons) already gave up the source and this investigation involves not only Miller, but the Office of Special Plans, AIPAC and Larry Franklin.
    No wonder some people are so desperate to protect Miller.
    Let her rot in jail for all the damage she has done. May the neocon cabal go with her.

    1 July 2005, 7:13 am

13. Stan:

    Michael, that’s not what I said and you know it. This is precisely the oversimplification I am pointing out that exposes the concrete power differentials between, say, the NYT and Jose Padilla. The “principle” in the abstract is supposedly backed up by some rationale… one I suspect, but which is roughly paraphrased as “protecting sources holds the government and other powerful entities accountable, and helps prevent abuses of power.” In this actual case, the exact oppostie happened. This hack, Miller, who has a track record of shilling for the administration (and Novak too), participated in a government conspiracy to take revenge on a whistleblower (the very people who are ostensibly protected by this ‘privilege’), and is now hiding behind her technical credentials as a journalist TO PROTECT ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL PEOPLE IN THE COUNTRY from being accountable for his actions.

    So-called principles are not laws of nature, nor passed down to us by God. They are human social constructions, and subject to critical deconstruction. It’s amazing to me that people still think it’s the Constitution-apotheosized that is protecting them. This is a perfect example of how this administration toys with that document like a cat with a mouse. What is protecting people like me and you from this government is the internalization by tens of millions of people of their own political agency – which they willnot surrender. The Bush adminstration spends so much time trying to scare us with their weird fictions precisely because they cannot directly exercise the power they’d like to… or they’d have an Iraq right here at home.

    My point in this post is to show the side of this story that is being spiked by the capitalist press – Judith Miller’s real history, and the sorry episode behind this bantering over confidentiality – which is consistent with its remorseless self-justification and self-promotion.

    (BTW, I just spiked an anti-Semitic post, just so the poster will know. We don’t go there.)

    1 July 2005, 8:13 am

14. Fuse:

    DAAAANNN! U R THE MAN! And with a plan no less! It can work in principle. It would have to be arranged quickly and quietly though(and probably not overtly over the internet) once decided upon, at the rate unamerican legislation passes, who knows what they might do to stop us. They count on us not working together,so this would be the perfect type of assault. A bunch of anonymous individuals buying a few shares here and there, and then when the time is right, simultaneosly proxy them all to like Alex Jones. Wow, a Way, difficult as it might be, a logistical nightmare actually, but to DO SOMETHING!Possibility! a tool. A faint glimmer of hope that, if not feasible, could usher in the idea that is.Dan,did I mention u da man?

    1 July 2005, 8:15 am

15. Fuse:

    I think I see a real way. We’re not fascists or corporate shills, and as bloggers we love freedom and think everyone should love freedom, which puts us at a great disadvantage when fighting on their turf. We don’t anticipate their next moves well because as a whole we don’t truly understand them or know what they are capable of. WE could not pull this off ourselves. We could however, employ their natural enemies, like sending a mongoose after a snake. Why reinvent the wheel? Most vermin have natural enemies, and these corporations are no different.Unions. Unions have the numbers, money and influence to make this work. With declining membership, they would kill to be relevant in Amerika again and if they could get a media outlet to push THEIR agenda against the forces of corporatism, it would be worth the time and expense. Imagine the kind of revenue they could generate being the ONLY PRO-PEOPLE netork!You think the people might watch? You think an energized,mobiled viewing audience might support the company and the products it pushes? Wouldn’t that make advertising on this network worth more than on the other stations, allowing them to charge advertisers more? yes, yes aaaannnd yes. With approximately 15.8 million members and an allied coalition of non-members, it might be just the army we need to fight the forces of fascism in Amerika. God bless us all. Help set Amerika free!
    http://www.reapinc.org/Profile%20Trade%20Union.html

    I’ll e-mail the relevant posts to Alex Jones and see if he replies…

    1 July 2005, 9:27 am

16. Robert S. Finnegan:

    Excellent Stan. Your credibility gives this issue all the punch it needs.

    Independent media is taking down the shills, we are the new 4th Estate and the old regime is crumbling, albeit slower than we would like. Keep up the pressure. GREAT job on FOCCED.

    Robert S. Finnegan
    Managing Editor
    Southeast Asia News
    seanews1@yahoo.com
    http://www.seanews.2truth.com
    (510) 797-1482 (US Bureau)

    1 July 2005, 11:23 am

17. Jacob:

    You know what? Dan’s idea won’t work. There’s no true democracy in the Fourth Estate. Most media companies, including the New York Times, have class A and class B shares. Class A are mostly available in the market and those share DO NOT HAVE ANY VOTING RIGHTS. Shares with voting rights – i.e: class B shares are held by the owing family. Same is true for Viacom, News Corp, Washington Post, and so many other companies.

    1 July 2005, 4:04 pm

18. Dan:

    Jacob,

    Shares available on the market are generally common stock. Common stock is voting stock. Period.

    Voting stock is set up such that one share constitutes one vote. Period.

    1 July 2005, 5:45 pm

19. R. GAMBERT:

    It is enlightning to read your article. I’ll have to study it more to see if you suggest any solutions but you are correct that the mdia is not doing the job required by a democracy.

    1 July 2005, 6:56 pm

20. Dan:

    R. Gambert,

    It is that way by design, by planning, and as the result of more than forty years of difficult, directed, expensive, and very intelligent hard work on the part of the Right Wing Reactionaries.

    Read the “Powell Manifesto” and look into the history of the Reactionary takeover of the press and the creation of the think tanks over on Consortium News

    1 July 2005, 7:19 pm

21. Jacob:

    Dan,
    Do a little bit of research. You’ll then learn that you can’t take control of the New York Times by all the outstanding class A sgares in the market. What you really need for voting rights and control are the class B shares; and you ain’t gonna get it. It’s slick, but that’s how most media companies’ ownership structure is engineered.

    2 July 2005, 10:46 am

22. Dan:

    Jacob,

    Whoa! You are correct…NYTimes, WaPo, DowJones, and others are the same way.

    Yeesh.

    Question – what about clear channel, gannet, or etc?

    I really don’t care what the target is, as long as it is 1. feasible (which you pointed out, the NYT is not) and 2. effective.

    Thanks for the heads up…appreciated

    2 July 2005, 5:56 pm

23. Dan:

    Secondary comment – since the Class B shares are not on the open market, and since they are generally carry 10:1 weight over common voting stock (Class A shares), what about a coordinated attack on the stock value?

    2 July 2005, 7:48 pm

24. Susan:

    When Miller goes to jail, I’m going to hold a “Judith Miller goes to jail for the wrong reasons!” party. And I will let NYT know.

    It may not accomplish anything, but it will be fun.

    2 July 2005, 11:17 pm

25. Dan:

    Susan,

    It should actually be titled “Judith Miller goes to jail for only one reason among the many, many reasons that she should be going to jail.”

    I am no great admirer of the CIA, but shit, Valerie Plame was working trying to track people like AQ Khan…and the shenanigans that guy and his government pulled, proliferating nuke tech all over the frickin’ planet…

    Of all the CIA agents that could have been outed, why her?

    Mebbe because she copped to the forged documents re: Niger and Iraq? Mebbe because she was not willing to tote that barge and lift that bale for massa cheney and overseer Bolton?

    In any case, Miller’s role in the Plame business is only ONE reason why she should be in the clink.

    3 July 2005, 7:42 am

26. jim priest:

    After posting my last little two cents, I had a funny feeling that I’d crossed a line. I thought I was just riffing on an image you’d used and I thought it was kinda funny, but your admonitions are well taken. It’s downright spooky sometimes how conditioning stays around long after the intellect decides to reject racism, sexism, etc. As they like to say in a little club I know (I think you know it too) Thanks for pullin’ my covers, man…

    4 July 2005, 11:38 pm

27. m.c.:

    Disclaimer: I generally don’t want to live in a country where journalists and reporters routinely go to prison for failing to disclose sources. Unlike other countries, notably the U.K. and Canada which have Official Secrets Act laws on the book; where a journalist(as well as their sources)can be held liable for revealing government secrets. Examples would be: Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein & the editors & publisher of The Washington Post going to prison for printing the Watergate story using DeepThroat’s information; or The New York Times going to prison for printing Daniel Ellsberg’s copy of the Pentagon Papers.

    To my knowledge, Miller and Cooper are not guilty of writing and printing the story(as under an Official Secrets Act) they could be, but of comtempt of court because they, along with Novak, are the only known witnesses(and only leads) to solving this case. Fitzgerald must prove in court that someone knowingly revealed the covert identity of a U.S. intelligence operative who was still working in the field in an active capacity and used these reporters as a means of wrecking her career. Not to say putting the lives of people she was working with in danger and maybe destroying years of careful planning and slow progress.

    5 July 2005, 12:09 pm

28. Stan:

    I am sort of looking at this in the same terms, but wiht opposite emphasis.

    Issue 1: Protection of coinfidentiality.
    Issue 2: CIA operations and security.

    I could honestly give a damn less if every CIA operation in the world were compromised (I don’t support US power over the world, the CIA isn’t all that good, anyway, and most intel now comes through ELINT from the NSA). But the issue has teeth, because there were likely two felonies – the outing itself, and perjury before a federal grand jury.

    On issue 1, however, I would again point out thast these “rights” – contrary to all the claims to divine intervention – are actually careful (anthrogenic) legal constructions carried out in the evolution of liberal law, and interpreted for their legitimate application based on what these protections are designed to do. In the case of confidentiality, most legal scholars agree that this principle exists to protect the people from abuses by the state… and the Watergate/Ellsberg cases fit this criterion. In the case of Plame, there is very good circumstantial evidence (which is all a grand jury needs) that this confidentiality was being used not to protect anyone from abuse of power by the state, but as an actual exercise of abusive state power… the exact opposite of confidientiality’s own presumed rationale.

    If this is the rationale cited in the decision rendered by the court against Miller — that theri stuation does not fit the criterion precisely because the crime in question was an abuse of state power and the manipulation of the media by the state, then this does not, IMO, constitute the legal scratch that will turn into the pantopticon gangrene.

    Cheny or Libby (or both) were engaged in a felonious conspiracy as officials of the state, not as whistleblowers. If anyone has seen the actual transcripts of this case, it might be helpful to know what the basis was for the decision before we all start locking oursleves in the First Amendment Panic Room.

    5 July 2005, 12:34 pm

29. m.c.:

    I agree with you. In addition, there may be more to this than meets the eye, like the tip of an iceberg. Cee mentioned above that Larry Franklin, AIPAC, the Office of Special Plans, and maybe Ahmed Chalabi could be connected. A recent New Yorker has a good piece about Franklin & Co.

    My main thing about protecting the First Amendment, is that conservatives may look at legal precedents differently than we might. Remember, Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney on this case is a republican and was appointed special prosecutor by John Ashcroft. Would somebody like Antonin Scalia(if he becomes C.J.), John Ashcroft, or Ken Starr care about protecting freedom of the press? Or would they use this as a clever way to circumvent the ‘spirit of the law’. Katharine Gun, the British translator at the U.N. was charged under the Official Secrets Act. The case was dropped but she had gained international attention and embarrasing questions would have come to light. But what I am arguing is that under different circumstances, she may have gone to jail. The law doesn’t always work for the “good guys” like it should in the movies; it’s like a river sometimes(it goes where it wants to go). If the U.S. Supreme Court had really been conservative and into protecting states rights during the 2000 recount, it would have let the Florida Supreme Court’s decision stand and Gore might have been elected.

    Bob Novak is the person who broke the story. Is the reason he’s not being sweated is because NBC has more juice than the NYT & Time?

    5 July 2005, 7:11 pm

30. Stan:

    Good points, and that’s why I asked if anyone has studied the language of the judgement.

    But just because Fitzgerald is a Bush appointment doesn’t necessarily mean he’s mixed up in something. I remember the slimy Starr, but I also remember Archibald Cox.

    One can only hope. (-:

    5 July 2005, 7:16 pm

31. Dave:

    Bravo Stan! I agree completely.

    However there is another story that is not being talked about. Now that the other reporter rolled over and told the court… Who ordered the Valarie Plame leak, and what is the white house doing to follow up on the why?

    The truth is we all know “why” but where is our special investigator? Where is the liberal version of Ken Starr hounding this Administration? Certainly there is more real stuff to find now.

    7 July 2005, 4:26 pm

32. m.c.:

    Another example of the legal authority of the Official Secrets Act: Sir Compton Mackenzie(1883-1972) was a popular and successful British writer as well as co-founder of the Scottish National Party in 1934. During WWI he worked for what later became MI6 in Greece and Syria. In 1932 he wrote a memoir, Greek Memories, which was the first time that the organization was publically disclosed. He even mentioned its first Director-General, Mansfield Smith-Cumming. In one passage he described it as “scores of under-employed generals surrounded by a dense cloud of intelligence officers sleuthing each other.” Mackenzie was prosecuted, his book banned and the few advance copies destroyed. He ended up a target of MI5 surveillance.

    In the U.S. Eugene V. Debs was sentenced to 10 years for violating the Sedition Act of 1918; although President Warren Harding commuted his sentence after three years served. Two cases of political suppression to me. If I sound like a Pollyanna for defending the First Amendment, so be it.

    14 July 2005, 6:31 pm

33. m.c.:

    {from Editor&Publisher; link on today’s Huffington Post}
    Writers Group Won’t Give Judith Miller ‘Conscience in Media’ Award After All
    The New York Times Company
    Judith Miller

    By E&P Staff

    Published: August 03, 2005 11:08 AM ET

    NEW YORK The board of The American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) has voted unanimously to reverse an earlier decision to give its annual Conscience in Media award to jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller, E&P has learned.

    The group’s First Amendment committee had narrowly voted to give Miller the prize for her dedication to protecting sources, but the full board has now voted to overturn that decision, based on its opinion that her entire career, and even her current actions in the Plame/CIA leak case, cast doubt on her credentials for this award.

    The group’s president, Jack El-Hai, posted an explanation on an internal list-serve yesterday, noting the opposition from the rank and file, and also mentioning two other reasons for the unanimous vote:

    * “A feeling that Miller’s career, taken as a whole, did not make her the best candidate for the award”

    * “Divided opinions on the board over whether her recent actions merit the award.”

    The American Society of Journalists and Authors is a 50-year-old group of some 1,100 non-fiction independent writers. The earlier vote by its First Amendment committee had already prompted at least one member of that panel to quit her position.

    Anita Bartholomew, a freelance journalist who has contributed to Reader’s Digest, wrote in a resignation letter, “The First Amendment is designed to prevent government interference with a free press. Miller, by shielding a government official or officials who attempted to use the press to retaliate against a whistleblower, and scare off other would-be whistleblowers, has allied herself with government interference with, and censorship of, whistleblowers. When your source IS the government, and the government is attempting to use you to target a whistleblower, the notion of shielding a source must be reconsidered. To apply standard practices regarding sources to hiding wrongdoing at the highest levels of government perverts the intent of the First Amendment.”

    El-Hai told E&P at that time, “It is unusual to have this kind of disagreement about an award, but independent writers are a prickly bunch.”
    ——————————————————————————–
    E&P Staff (letters@editorandpublisher.com)

    3 August 2005, 5:37 pm

34. bryan murray:

    dude! you finally learned how to use the thesaurus function. imprison journalists, kill the sons of your enemy….which emperor do we serve? which century is this? by the way, your packet of gannon pictures just arrived. apparently he finds scholars like you are a high caliber turn on.

    13 September 2005, 11:50 am

35. picture of zoroastrianism:

    Stan you use some words like “f…ing” that would make your posts unsuitable for anyone who follows strict moral paths.

    19 March 2006, 7:56 pm

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