dan collier

I’m not a big fan of the Olympics and I missed the widely acclaimed opening of this year’s Games. While some of the events themselves are fun to watch, the attendant nationalistic pride and cookie cutter media stories of new Olympian heroes are as tedious as they are predictable. Father Raymond J. De Souza shared his thoughts on the Olympics in an op-ed column in the (Canadian) National Post. My favorite lines:

“Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind,” states the first “fundamental principle of Olympism” in the Olympic Charter. I am not sure what that means, if anything, but most philosophies of life do not come with exclusive sponsorship agreements or mandatory drug-testing.

A recently passed bill in the House of Representatives gave the Bush Administration everything it could hope for in terms of retroactive immunity for its partners in the illegal wiretapping of American citizens. I wrote about warrantless wiretaps months ago, and have since only become more convinced of the futility (as a technical issue) of mass surveillance of the “Plain Old Telephony System” because Voice-over-IP telephony can provide an easily established, strongly encrypted, decentralized, and virtually anonymous means of synchronous communication. In my less cynical moments, I am simply amazed that a law which diminishes our Constitutional rights while doing nothing to improve our security from determined adversaries is being seriously considered.

Senator Barack Obama has sadly recalculated his firm opposition to retroactive immunity and warrantless wiretaps, however Senators Russ Fiengold and Chris Dodd have continued to lead the defense of our Constitutional protections and the rule of law. Hopefully they will defeat or postpone the enactment of this deeply flawed legislation. Yesterday, Senator Dodd gave a very good speech on the floor of the Senate, discussing the many disturbing aspects of the warrantless spying, which I’ve excepted below.

Dodd’s speech lays out clearly what happened and why it is so troubling on a political level:

Clear, first-hand whistleblower documentary evidence [states]… that for year on end every e-mail, every text message, and every phone call carried over the massive fiber-optic links of sixteen separate companies routed through AT&T’s Internet hub in San Francisco—hundreds of millions of private, domestic communications—have been…copied in their entirety by AT&T and knowingly diverted wholesale by means of multiple “splitters” into a secret room controlled exclusively by the NSA.

The phone calls and internet traffic of millions of Americans, diverted into a secret room controlled by the National Security Agency. That allegation still needs to be proven in a court of law. But it clearly needs to be determined in a court of law and not here in Senate.

I suppose if you only see cables and computers there, the whole thing seems almost harmless. Certainly nothing to get worked up about—a routine security sweep, and a routine piece of legislation blessing it.

If that’s all you imagine happened in the NSA’s secret room, I imagine you’ll vote for immunity.

I imagine you wouldn’t see much harm in voting to allow this practice to continue either.

But if you see a vast dragnet for millions of Americans’ private conversations, conducted by a government agency that acted without a warrant, acted outside of the rule of law—then, I believe, you’ll recognize what’s at stake here. You’ll see that what’s at stake is the sanctity of the law and the sanctity of our privacy. And you’ll probably come to a very different conclusion.

Maybe that sounds overdramatic. Perhaps some will ask, “What does it matter, at the end of the day, if a few corporations aren’t sued? These people sue each other all the time.”

Others may say, “This seems a small issue. Maybe the Administration went too far, but this seems like an isolated case.”

Indeed, Mr. President – as long as this case seems isolated and technical, they win. As long as it’s about another lawsuit buried in our legal system and nothing more, they win. The Administration is counting on the American people to see nothing bigger than that – “Nothing to see here.”

But there is plenty to see here, Mr. President – and it is so much more than a few phonecalls, a few companies, a few lawsuits.

What is at stake is nothing less than equal justice—justice that makes no exceptions. What is at stake is an open debate on security and liberty, and an end to warrantless, groundless spying.

This bill does not say, “Trust the American people; Trust the courts and judges and juries to come to just decisions.” Retroactive immunity sends a message that is crystal clear:

“Trust me.”

And that message comes straight from the mouth of this President. “Trust me.”

What is the basis for that trust? Classified documents, we are told, that prove the case for retroactive immunity beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But we’re not allowed to see them! I’ve served in this body for 27 years, and I’m not allowed to see them! Neither are a majority of my colleagues. We are all left in the dark.

I cannot speak for my colleagues—but I would never take “trust me” for an answer, not even in the best of times. Not even from a President on Mount Rushmore.

Next Senator Dodd examines the false claims of irreparable harm if civil suits are allowed to continue against telecommunication companies which illegally aided in warrantless spying:

After all, in the official telling, the telecoms were ordered to help the president spy without a warrant, and they patriotically complied. We’ve even heard on this floor the comparison between the telecom corporations to the men and women laying their lives on the line in Iraq.

But ignore that comparison – which, frankly, I find deeply offensive. Ignore for a moment the fact that in America we obey the laws, not the president’s orders. Ignore that not even the president has the right to scare or bully you into breaking the law, though it seems that tactic has proven surprisingly fruitful.

Ignore that the telecoms were not unanimous; one, Qwest, wanted to see the legal basis for the order, never received it, and so refused to comply.

Ignore that a judge presiding over the case ruled that “AT&T cannot seriously contend that a reasonable entity in its position could have believed that the alleged domestic dragnet was legal.”

Ignore all that: If the order the telecoms received was legally binding, they have an easy case to prove. The corporations only need to show a judge the authority and the assurances they were given, and they’ll be in and out of court in five minutes.

If the telecoms are as defensible as the president says, why doesn’t the president let them defend themselves? If the case is so easy to make, why doesn’t he let them make it?

It can’t be that he’s afraid of leaks. Our federal court system has dealt for decades with the most delicate national security matters, building up expertise in protecting classified information behind closed doors—ex parte, in camera. We can expect no less in these cases.

No intelligence sources need be compromised. No state secrets need be exposed. After litigation at both the district court and circuit court level, no state secrets have been exposed.

In fact, Federal District Court Judge Vaughn Walker, a Republican appointee, has already ruled that the issue can go to trial without putting state secrets in jeopardy.

In closing, Senator Dodd sums up why the Senate, and the entire Congress, should reconsider placating the Bush administration in their attempted cover-up of their crimes:

That question is coming for every single one of us in this body. Every single one of us will be judged by a jury from whom there’s no hiding: our sons, our daughters, our grandchildren. Someday soon, they’ll read in their textbooks the story of a great nation, one that threw down tyrants and oppressors for two centuries; one that rid the world of Nazism and Soviet communism; one that proved that great strength can serve great virtue, that right can truly make might.

And then they will read how, in the early years of the 21st century, that nation lost its way.

We do not have the power to strike that chapter. No, Mr. President – we can’t go back.

We can’t un-destroy the CIA’s interrogation tapes. We can’t un-pass the Military Commissions Act. We can’t un-speak Alberto Gonzales’s disgraceful testimony. We can’t un-torture innocent people. And perhaps, sadly, shamefully, we cannot stop retroactive immunity. We can’t un-do anything that has been done in the last six years for the cause of lawlessness and fear.

We cannot blot out that chapter. But we can begin the next one, even today. Let its first words read: “Finally, in June 2008, the Senate said: ‘Enough.’”

I’ve been impressed since I first noticed Jim Webb, the current junior Senator from Virginia, during his run for his Senate seat. While I don’t agree with all of his politics, he seems more of a plain-spoken man with good intentions than the average politician.

The recent article on Jim Webb in the New York Review of Books sparked my interest in his writing, and I recently finished Fields of Fire. Webb, a highly decorated combat Marine in Vietnam, wrote Fields of Fire in 1979 as a fictionalized account of the real war that was fought by men dying for nameless hills in endless jungle only to give them up a day or two later.

In the excerpt below, a newly arrived Lieutenant Hodges (a central character) is being briefed by a battle-scarred Major prior to his deployment to his troops in the bush. I think it both gives the flavor of Webb’s writing and a synopsis of his view of the war:

The Major offered Hodges a small, challenging smile. “They go wild, Lieutenant. And there’s nothing you can do about it. You’ll go wild, too. Wild as hell. You spend a month in the bush and you’re not a Marine anymore. Hell. You’re not even a goddamn person. There’s no tents, no barbed wire, no hot food, no jeeps or trucks, no clean clothes. Nothing. You’re an animal. It gets so that it’s natural to squat when you take a shit. You get ringworm and hookworm and gooksores. You roll around in your own filth. You forget how bad you smell. Dead people, guts in the goddamn dirt, miserable civilians, it all gets sort of boring. You cry when your friends are killed, but a new friend comes in on the helicopter a few days later, and the dead friend becomes enshrined, a martyr to friendship. You teach the new friend about him, and you all remember him. It’s very romantic.”

“It doesn’t sound romantic.” [replied Hodges]

“That’s after a month. Or two. But Lieutenant. When you do it for six, or nine, or even longer, by Christ, you’ll never shake it. The bush gets in your blood and you hate anyone who hasn’t fermented in his own stench for months, or stood inside a dirt hole all night, waiting to kill a man who’s trying to kill him first.”

Major Otto scrutinized Hodges. “Oh, yeah. I’ve done a lot of thinking about it. That’s something a grunt isn’t supposed to do.” He chuckled again, a sort of dry bark. “But what else can a man do in An Hoa? Oh. And An Hoa. It becomes an oasis. You like An Hoa, Lieutenant?”

“I hate it.”

“You’ll like it when you get back to it from the bush, I guarantee. So. What kind of person can take it, for months on end?”

Hodges felt uneasy. He had expected the Major to wave the flag and talk about Iwo Jima, then send him aboard a resupply helicopter with fire in his heart.

“Someone who is very dedicated, sir. Either that or someone who is very crazy.”

“Well, there you are. That’s it in a nutshell. You just hit the nail on the goddamn head.”

Fields of Fire has been well reviewed by critics and grunts for its detailed account of a story told many times over. As one may expect in a book about the US Marines by a US Marine, the book does fail to offer a realistic picture of the Vietnamese as a people fighting colonialism and occupation. But I’ve seen many of the Hollywood movies, read a handful of books, and heard my share of Vietnam War stories. If I was going to recommend one book or movie about the American war in Viet Nam, it would be Fields of Fire.

Adrees Latif posted on Reuters Photograhpers Blog about taking the Pulitizer Prize winning photo of Japanese journalist Kenji Nagai being shot and killed by government troops in Myanmar/Burma. It is an interesting story.

Two minutes later, the shooting started. My eye caught a person flying backwards through the air. Instinctively, I started photographing, capturing four frames of the man on his back.

The entry point of the bullet is clear in the first frame, with a soldier in flip flops standing over the man and pointing a rifle. In the second frame, the man is reaching over to try and film.

More shots rang out. I flinched before getting off two more frames – one of the man pointing the camera at the soldier, and one of his face contorted in pain.

Beyond him, the crowd scattered before the advancing soldier. The whole incident, which went on to reverberate around the world, was over in two seconds.

Here is a higher resolution copy Latif’s photo.

Update 4/16/2008: Reuters has published a video featuring Adrees Latif reading the statement mentioned above along with more photos from the prize winning collection.

The Economist has a recent article titled “Anglo-Saxon attitudes” about the past and future of UK-US and UK-EU relationships. In part, the article looks at the assumption, as Mark Twain would have it, that “[w]e have always been kin”. Most interesting to me are the results of the survey. I clipped some I thought were particularly notable below.

The poll results seem to illustrate the notion that European conservatives are generally more socially liberal than American Democrats.

Malaria and how to beat it – The Economist reports on a study in 3 African countries that looked at the effectiveness of selling cheap mosquito nets versus giving away mosquito nets to mothers at health clinic visits. The free nets were more effective at preventing malaria in children. This finding may not stretch too far beyond mosquito nets, but I think it could be extended to healthcare in general. Despite well known risks, people without disposable income will forego preventative care. And it is cheaper for society to pay for prevention than treatment.

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Is the US really bringing stability to Baghdad? – I thought this was a good article from The Independent (UK) as a counter point to the avalanche of “the surge is working” news reports. The reporter is a longtime Middle East correspondent and formerly was stationed in Lebanon.

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The Poetry of Roger Clemens – From free form to haiku.

“Glute”

I have strained my glute
On a couple occasions.
I wish I could tell you
How many occasions.
-Feb. 5, 2008, deposition