Which is Worse - Photographs of Murder or Murder?

(L. to R.) Spc. Jeremy Morlock, Spc. Andrew Holmes,
Spc. Michael Wagnon, Spc. Adam Winfield.

What's wrong with this story from The New York Times? The topic is a set of photographs that putatively confirm that the fine fellows pictured above engaged in all sorts of bad behavior while wearing the uniform of the U.S. Army. Of course, these men have not been convicted of anything. But the story in The Times suggests that the evidence against them is damning. Let the trial proceed as it should.

The first problem with the story is that the news reports do not show the photographs in question. My understanding is that the Army and a U.S. Court have issued orders to suppress publication. I have not found them anywhere on line. Your tax dollars at work. What ever happened to the idea of a free press?

The second problem is that the U.S. Army is continuing an official practice we've repeatedly witnessed when Americans do heinous things. They are apologizing, quite fervently, for the images and the distress they cause instead of the actions that the images depict. Pretty poor aim there soldier.
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P.S.: My thanks to Stanley Wolukau-Wanambra for this link to the report in Der Spiegel which published some of the images.

Beck's Campaign Against Francis Fox Piven (3)

"I am now convinced that the simplest approach will prove to be the most effective — the solution to poverty is to abolish it directly by a now widely discussed measure: the guaranteed income." - Martin Luther King, Jr. Where Do We Go From Here? (1967).

"It is our purpose to advance a strategy which affords the basis for a convergence of civil rights organizations, militant anti-poverty groups and the poor. If this strategy were implemented, a political crisis would result that could lead to legislation for a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty." - Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward The Nation (1966).

In The Guardian today there is yet another story on Glenn Beck's ongoing campaign against Francis Fox Piven. I found it funny that Piven arranged to meet the correspondent from the paper at a NYC restaurant called "Havana Central."

One thing that strikes me about Beck is his ignorance about history. You can find a link to the 1966 essay by Piven (and her husband, the late Richard Cloward) that so exercises Beck here at The Nation. That is where I lifted the statement above - from the first paragraph of the essay. My point today is just to say that Piven and Cloward were advocating a strategy to implement a policy that, as I noted here a year ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. also endorsed. And since Beck has announced his aim to reinvigorate Dr. King's message, how is it that he objects to Piven and Cloward? What better way to end poverty does Beck envision than the one King came to embrace? Beck instead ought to be embracing Piven as an ally in that cause. Maybe that is why he has afforded her all the publicity that trails in the wake of his diatribes.
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P.S.: You might find this portrait of Piven and this more recent Op-Ed from The Los Angeles Times - both by Barabara Ehrenreich - interesting.

Nobel politics and Liu Xiaobo

Liu Xiaobo. Photograph: Liu Xia.

I have posted here several time about Liu Xiaobo, currently imprisoned Chinese regime for his political activities. Today has won the Nobel Peace Prize. You can find reports here and here. I think this is a very worthy choice.

There has been a relatively high visibility campaign on Liu's behalf over the past year. Most notably, a group of prominent political figures circulated this statement, with another group following with this letter, publicly urging the Nobel committee to award the prize to Liu. The campaign has itself reportedly prompted an extremely negative response from the Chinese government. And it generated conflict among Chinese dissidents, with some endorsing the candidacy with others opposing it. With all due respect, I think the opponents are shortsighted. What is at issue here is not Liu's personality - whether he is flawless, a saint rather than a political actor - but the extension of democratic principles in the face not just of authoritarian politics but of market forces as well. On this point I recommend this essay by Chinese novelist Ma Jian. And disagreement is just what those principles countenance. In a sense the Nobel committee has created some political space. To the extent that the Chinese people are able to get the news it, of course, offers them encouragement. But the prize can and should be seen not just as holding the Chinese government to account but also, and importantly, as placing pressure on "our" democratic governments to endorse their own principles by speaking out on the prize. It will be interesting to see if any intrepid Western leaders take advantage of the opportunity the committee has afforded them! Any leader who speaks out would not just potentially jeopardize relations with an important trading partner, but open whomever speaks out to scrutiny of their own political practices. I am not holding my breath. Are you?

I'm With the Rapist ...

At the Cannes film festival photocall for Palme d'Or contender
Des Hommes et Des Dieux (Of Gods and Men), French director
Xavier Beauvois holds a T-shirt to show his support for Roman
Polanski, who has been under house arrest in Switzerland since
last December. Photograph © Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

I came across this photograph at The Guardian; let's say it falls into the category of the truly astonishing. Roman Polanski had sex with a 13 year old girl, confessed to the crime, and then ran away to avoid serving his sentence. What cause, precisely, is it with which Mr. Beauvais (and his friends) is demonstrating solidarity? Is it the cause of men who rape children? Or is it the cause of justice being applied differentially according to one's financial wherewithal? Just wondering. Perhaps Mr. Beauvais should consider switching to this tee-shirt:

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P.S.: And, of course, there are fresh allegations about Polanski's predilections for young girls. While he is innocent until proven guilty, I am sure he will want to have a full airing of the latest charges in court, no?

A Terrorist by Any Other Name

There is a story today in The New York Times that raises important issues about American political discourse. It is a story about law enforcement officials planning for "the next angry man" - not the next terrorist, please! Of course, there is the 'background' - relevant or otherwise:

" The Army doctor who opened fire at Fort Hood. The man who flew a plane into the Internal Revenue Service offices in Austin. The professor who killed three colleagues in Alabama because she had been denied tenure. "

Then of John Bedell, the man who tried to shoot his way into the Pentagon recently,the story goes on:

"Here was our next active shooter, mentally disturbed and with an anger that had metastasized into a justification to attack the Government, often the catch-all phrase for the oppressor, the deceiver, the denier of dreams. In this view, it seems, the Government is made of paper, concrete and whispers."

What is wrong here? Well, in the first instance, the female academic in Alabama was perhaps disturbed, but she did not (to the best of my knowledge) compose an anti-government screed before shooting her colleagues. She was pissed at having been denied tenure. She may have been deranged, but there is no evidence that her grievance was anything other than personal. On the other hand, the other three - all men - fall into a lineage of domestic terrorists who decide that there is some reason to turn their imagined grievances into political violence. They may be mentally unhinged, but they are not just unhinged. They are unhinged men who do a typically right-wing and typically destructive and self-destructive thing. A while ago I noted this post and this one, by Glen Greenwald at Salon.com; there is a more recent follow-up here. Greenwald poses the pertinent questions 'Why do our government and law enforcement officials and our press not call things by their proper names? Why do they refuse to call violent, anti-government extremists what they are - namely terrorists? More basically, given that they all flaunt the 't-word', what exactly are they talking about? I guess the folks at The Times have not asked themselves that yet.

Dangerous Clichés at The Times

Situation getting out of control in Chile’s second largest city. Photo credit.

In a reflection on media coverage of the earthquake in Haiti, Rebecca Solnit remarks:

"Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences.

I’m talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I’m talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol."

Yesterday, as if to punctuate her observation, The New York Times ran this Op-Ed by Donald McNeil, one of the paper's staff writers. The essays apparently was prompted by reports of widespread looting following the even more recent earthquake in Chile:

"Nonetheless, a pattern that now is a cliché of disaster journalism broke out there as well: Early reports of people raiding markets for food and diapers were quickly followed by pictures of people carrying TVs and dishwashers off into a city with no electricity. Intact stores were broken into. A department store in Concepción was set ablaze. In a few places, roving bands robbed anyone they could. Residents who formed self-defense posses were quoted saying that the “human earthquake” was worse than the geological one.

[. . .]

By midweek, with thousands of troops deployed, the pictures began shifting: young men spread-eagled on the ground with gun muzzles pressed behind their ears.

All in all, it sounded a lot like Haiti. Or like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Or like Dayton, Ohio, after the 1913 flood. Or like Rome in 410.

It is hard to name a single disruption in the social order, natural or man-made, that has not triggered looting somewhere. [. . .] Though looting starts spontaneously, how quickly it stops appears to depend on how rapid and severe a response it meets. That, in brief, is the argument for using force decisively."

That what McNeil reports is "a cliché of disaster journalism" seems lost on he and the editorial page crew at The Times. Does he question the cliché? Or, does he presume that journalists and their enabling editors and publishers, who nicely conform to the stereotype that Solnit identifies, are getting the story "right"? Professional courtesy, I suppose.

As a start toward thinking rather than regurgitating clichés, McNeil might have read this report from his own paper which suggests that in "New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina" what he calls "the argument for using force decisively" appears, simply put, to have been little more than a rationale for murder and cover-up. The alleged perpetrators are not "looters" but the officers from NOLA police department. Moreover, as these reports [1] [2] from The Nation suggest, the police were hardly the only ones who may have acted murderously. By peddling clichés, The Times is directly perpetuating the distorted ideas that elites use to rationalize violence and panic.

Their Criminals, and Ours

"China has no 'dissidents' . . . There is only the difference
between criminals and those who are not criminals."
~ Ma Zhaoxu, Spokesman Chinese foreign Ministry

This is a remark, reported here at The Guardian, by a Chinese government official commenting on the imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo. It might seem comical to hear regime mouthpieces, with a straight face, parsing words in hopes of rationalizing their oppressive actions. But, as I have noted here repeatedly, it makes a difference. It makes a difference to individuals like Liu Xiaobo. It has consequences for the debasement of language and thereby of politics. And it does not, of course, happen only in those despicable far away authoritarian places like China. After all, just this week David Margolis, an official at the U.S. Justice Department, engaged in the very same practice. He announced that when John Yoo and Jay Bybee flouted - systematically and knowingly - domestic and international law in their quest to rationalize the torture of people being held in U.S. custody under suspicion of partaking in terrorist activity they simply exercised 'poor judgment' instead of professional misconduct. The distinction Margolis draws basically is between being morally obtuse and being legally culpable. The news reports are here and here. We don't have war criminals in the United States, we just have eager, if slightly flawed, public servants operating under circumstances of extreme stress.*

Just to be clear about the political consequences of all this - Margolis not only lets the Bush minions off the hook here, he gives cover to the 'let's ignore the past and hope for the future' strategy that Obama is pursuing on this matter. And, not to be overlooked, he allows countries like China to continue thumbing their noses at sanctimonious rhetoric from Americans.
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* But of course, as subsequent news reports make clear, we have dramatically incomplete record for making that assessment because large numbers of official emails to and from Mr. Yoo during the relevant time period mysteriously are missing and unrecoverable.

P.S.: And if you want to see that this language game is being played not just in the halls of justice but in the mainstream media, see this post and this follow-up by Glen Greenwald at Salon.com . . . We don't have Terrorists in the U.S., we just have deranged 'tax protesters.' (Meaning, presumably, that we cannot torture the latter if they are captured?) Just ask the folks at Newsweek. Pretty remarkable!