The Strident Centrist Blog

James Fallows, frequent contributor to The Atlantic and all-around public intellectual, is currently living in Beijing from where he is keeping the rest of us abreast of the preparation for the forthcoming Summer Olympics. Two issues are getting his attention in particular. One is the atmospheric environment in the city which he addresses with a running series of photos taken out of his window. Here’s his most recent, posted without comment beyond the time, date and location.

He’s also been keeping track of the Chinese government’s messing with the internet, the technology of which he is far more familiar with than most users with his range of interests. In recent weeks he’s been passing along accounts of the obvious ham-handedness of government security organs’ in their attempts to disguise their blocking efforts while seeming to meet the internet-related expectations of the visitors expected for the events. Today he passes along some suggestions from an ethnic Chinese person who is now a naturalized Western citizen: (more…)

McClatchy reports today that Islamic militants are surrounding the city of Peshwar, which is strategically located athwart the eastern approaches to the Khyber Pass. This is the primary ground route supplying the coalition’s forces in Afghanistan.

Taliban groups and other extremist warlords now threaten Peshawar from three sides. Should they take over Peshawar, the rest of the North West Frontier Province could follow, leaving Islamic extremists in control of a region that borders Afghanistan and sits astride one of the main supply routes to U.S. and coalition troops there.

The strategic disasters initiated by the Bush-Cheney cabal continue to unfold.

Updated below, 6/25/08, 11:00 am, CDT

What follows is a brief explanation of what the controversy regarding the FISA Modification Bill is all about.

• The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was enacted in 1978 to rein in the various elements of the intelligence community following the revelations of the Senate committee led by the late Senator Frank Church. The committee hearings had exposed rampant violations of Americans’ civil liberties that had been going on for decades.
• Beginning in 2005 the Bush-Cheney administration, with a troubling level of acquiescence on the part of the Congressional Democratic leadership, pushed through several modifications to FISA. So far they have been unable to overcome the push-back from Constitutionalists against their most egregious attempts to erode civil liberties and to immunize themselves from being called to account for their past misdeeds.
• There is compelling, indirect evidence suggesting that the Bush administration surreptitiously but massively violated the terms of FISA as then in effect in the wake of 9/11, and very likely even before. These violations are believed to include huge data mining operations conducted by the NSA on most or all communications of American citizens, in direct violation of the minimization provisions of FISA.
• The “compromise” FISA Modification Act that passed by the House Friday, June 20, was negotiated in secret between the Congressional Democratic leadership and the White House, and formally introduced in t he House only about 24 hours before the vote. Thus there was no time for meaningful debate.
• This is a flagrant breaking of the promise made by then minority leader Nancy Pelosi in January, 2006 to stop such behavior, which was routine during the twelve years of the GOP House majority control, if she became Speaker.
• A similar attempt is being made to push the bill through the Senate in an equally hasty manner this week.
• The FISA Modification “compromise” in effect guts the Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted search and seizure of American citizens with regard to any form of electronic telecommunication.
• The “compromise” is vehemently opposed by the progressives on the left, as well as the remaining Constitutionalists on the right. Most but not all such people have severed their relationships with what has become of the Republican Party. Among the most vocal of them are: John Dean; Kevin Phillips; Paul Craig Roberts; Bruce Fein; Rep. Ron Paul; and former Rep. Bob Barr, who was recently nominated to be the Libertarian Party’s candidate for President.
• The administration’s primary “must have” provision in the negotiations is the so-called “Telecom Immunity” clause that prevents the carriers from being sued by private parties for complicity in civil rights violations during government surveillance.
• In reality the Telecoms almost certainly don’t need immunity. Lawyers who’ve had extensive experience dealing with that industry dismiss as laughable the suggestion that sophisticated companies like AT&Ts and Verizons would enter into contracts of this type with the government that did not include ironclad, blanket indemnity provisions.
• The real purpose of the Telecom immunity clause is to prevent the rampant FISA violations that took place earlier this decade from ever seeing the light of day. In view of the fact that the Justice Department is now an utter captive of the GOP White House political operatives, private litigation is the only remaining avenue through which the misdeeds might be exposed.
• It is believed that Congressional Democratic Party leaders, several of whom were among the so-called “gang of four” and “gang of eight” who were responsible for intelligence community oversight, have conspired with the White House on this bill because they, too, don’t want their meek acquiescence to the wide-spread Constitutional violations exposed.
• The “compromise” FISA Modification bill, if enacted, will set an ominous precedent for future presidents of whatever party, saying in effect that it’s OK to blatantly violate the law and subsequently pass legislation to cover it up.
• There’s still time to stop this! Contact your US Senators. Both Klobuchar and Coleman. Emphasize the danger these precedents set for any future president.
• Contact Senator Barack Obama! Join the thousands who just since this past Friday have pleaded with him to step forward and take the lead on this critical Constitutional issue. After all, he claims this branch of the law his specialty!

For more information here are some links:

Keith Olberman’s interview of Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley provides a succinct video of the issues at stake.

Marcy Wheeler’s blog post entitled “The FISA Bill”, dated Thursday, June 19, hits the highlights in her clear prose.

For more background information and ongoing coverage:

Marcy Wheeler’s blog (She covers a range of Bush-Cheney malfeasance besides FISA, especially revelations related to Valerie Plame Wilson)

Glenn Greenwald’s blog at Salon, which addresses a variety of issues, most of which relate to his background as a Constitutional lawyer.

Update - The Olberman/Turley interview link, above, has been updated to one that is still active. Also, Constitutional scholar Scott Horton has this to say at the Harpers Magazine website about the forthcoming Surveillance State.

Ken Silverstein at the Harpers blog points us to a truly fair and balanced obituary in the Daytona Beach News-Journal:

Shock doesn’t begin to describe the effect on those who stay behind. Try anger, try a sense of loss that, contrary to greeting-card drivel, never fades until, I expect, one’s own final collapse. Russert wasn’t family, but it’s fair to say, as the casket-lidded lines at the end of obituaries usually do, that his survivors include the 3 million viewers who tuned in every Sunday to watch “Meet the Press,” and even the procession of politicians who’ve been squirming their way through his show since 1991. . .

Respect for the man aside, there’s a matter of respecting journalism when assessing Russert’s place in the trade. That respect has been lacking in the almost universally fawning tributes to Russert and the craft he represented. . . .

The truth is that on any night of the week Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” does more in a two-minute segment to show in politicians’ own words how venal, dishonest, contradictory and just plain dense they can be than Russert did in his Sunday services. . .

I mourn his death. But I wish I could mourn the death of the journalism he represented. To the detriment of journalism and malinformed citizens, that parody lives on.

Earlier today Marcy Wheeler, of emptywheel.firedoglake.com and one of the most forceful opponents of the assault on the Constitution (the FISA modification Act “compromise” that includes telecom immunity and weak exclusivity and minimization provisions) that passed in the House today, wrote an open letter Senator Barack Obama asking him to vocally oppose the Act as written. Referring to the recent Boumediene decision of the Supreme Court, she wrote:

Ultimately, the Supreme Court found aspects of the Military Commissions Act unconstitutional because it tried to limit the review of Article III Courts to mere review of whether the Administration had complied with its own procedures, and not a real review of the legality of the detention of men at Gitmo.

The Court of Appeals has jurisdiction not to inquire into the legality of the detention generally but only to assess whether the CSRT complied with the “standards and procedures specified by the Secretary of Defense” and whether those standards and procedures are lawful. [from Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion]

Yet this is precisely the kind of procedural review that the current FISA bill envisions. The “political branches” are attempting to limit court review of wiretaps on Americans to a procedural review in three ways: (more…)

From The Globalist, under the title “A Leaderless Global Order”:

Usually in such circumstances [the internal political conflicts in Lebanon], the United States would have intervened by sending a prominent ambassador or the Secretary of State to conduct shuttle diplomacy — and resolve the conflict. But not this time.

Even if the United States had sought to address the crisis in Lebanon, it would have failed. As has been the case in recent years, the United States found itself aligned with one side — the government and Sunni Muslim leaders — and not on talking terms with the other side.

The “we talk only with those who agree with us” policy has disabled U.S. diplomacy. The world’s most powerful player is finding itself on the margins of peacemaking.

. . .

Qatar has shown that with the decline of the United States as a global pivot point and broker, regional players who enjoy the respect, trust and confidence of all parties can play the role of peacemakers in the absence of the superpower.

This past weekend I attended the National Conference for Media Reform here in Minneapolis, and if anyone has any doubts that reform is needed, the events of the last 12 or so hours should remove all doubt.

Last evening Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who until a few months ago was a Democratic candidate for president, introduced a 35 article bill for the impeachment of George W. Bush. The event was covered live by C-Span as part of their routine gavel-to-gavel coverage of the House when it is in session. Kucinich read the entire bill for the record from the well of the House. I learned of what he was doing from comments being made on the blog Emptywheel shortly after 9:00 pm CDT, at which point he was up to Article 22. It took him at least another hour and a half to finish, so I can only assume that he was at it for at least three hours in total, and more likely closer to four or more. The House adjourned almost immediately after he finished.

I checked a few mainstream media sites last evening, but there was not a word. OK, maybe they didn’t have advance knowledge of what was going to happen and all their reporters had gone home for the night when Kucinich was recognized by the chair. But now it’s been almost 8 hour since it ended, and there is still nothing. I’ve checked the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Star Tribune, the websites of the three major over-the-air television networks, and KSTP TV here in Twin Cities (the ABC outlet). Nothing. Not a word, even in deep links in the News/Politics sections I’ve checked for some (but not all) of them.

Wouldn’t you think this deserves a mention at least on page A 16?

Update: I just checked the NPR site, specifically the “Morning Edition” page, and still nothing.

Update 2: Kargox at Kos has a post up about the probable fate of Rep. Kucinich’s bill in the House. Meanwhile there are no stories about the bill on such high-traffic, left of center blogs as TalkingPointsMemo or the Washington Independent.

Gorilla Guides points us to a piece at Azzaman, an independent Iraqi newspaper published in London, in which a Kurdish legislator compares what the US is now doing to Sadr City to the poison gas attack Saddam perpetrated against the Kurds back in the 1980s.

“The aerial bombardment and military operations the U.S. is carrying out in Sadr city are similar to what happened in Halabja,” Iraqi member of parliament Falah Hassan said.

U.S. helicopter gun ships and warplanes have been pounding the city, home to more than 2 million people – their declared aim is to have it flushed of gunmen.

While gunmen are nowhere to be found, those bearing the brunt of U.S.’s disproportionate use of force are none but the city’s impoverished inhabitants.

Sadr City is a warren of mainly one-story houses, most of them shabby and dilapidated.

Iraqi demographers say the city is even more densely populated in terms of the number of people per square kilometer than the city of Gaza in Palestine.

What a way to win hearts and minds.

The six students who constitute the Republican Club at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, somehow raised the $15K fee to entice former Attorney General John Ashcroft to speak last night. It may be a while before he speaks on another campus, or at least has a Q & A afterwards, unless it’s of the likes of Regents or Oral Roberts Universities.

A student who goes by the name Elsinora (at least on the internet; sometimes) asked how he could have approved of waterboarding in light of the fact that one Yukio Asano was convicted and sentenced to 15 years for waterboarding American prisoners during World War II. When she pursued the matter after he tried to suggest there were differences in the procedures, he became completely unhinged: (more…)

Last summer, at the behest of some friends, I attended an early Obama campaign event in Minneapolis in return for a minimum donation of $15 and my email address. We left in plenty of time to be there when the doors opened, however when we arrived the line already wound around much of the block on which sat the International Market Square building in which the event was held. By the time I got inside the only space with a view available was on the fourth level of the atrium, where the acoustics were so bad that I only understood about one in ten words he spoke. The enthusiasm of the crowd, as exemplified by both the turnout and its friendly, cheering response to the candidate, gave me my first inkling that some sort of groundswell phenomenon was under way.

Needless to say I’ve been on the campaign’s email list ever since, and today’s delivery included an invitation to “Dinner with Barack?” (more…)