De neoconservatieve Jeffrey Goldberg heeft gereageerd op een stuk van Glenn Greenwald, hier ook op drasties. Greenwald zet in dat stuk op een rijtje waarin Goldberg het in het verleden fout heeft gehad, zeg maar zo’n beetje alles dus.
In een reactie zegt Goldberg dat Greenwald eerst maar eens, net als hij, naar Koerdistan moet reizen om uit te vinden hoe fijn de Koerden de verwoesting van Irak vinden. Dan pas mag Greenwald oordelen. Vervolgens gaan ook andere neoconservatieven zich er mee bemoeien. Ze stellen dat Greenwald de bezetting van Sudetenland door de Nazi’s vergelijkbaar vindt met de bezetting van Irak door George W. Bush. Lees hier hoe dom en leugenachtig allemaal.
Jeffrey Goldberg responded yesterday to my post detailing his long list of journalistic malfeasance by telling me that he and the Prime Minister of Iraqi Kuridstan would like me to travel there to hear how much the Kurds appreciate the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Leaving aside the complete non sequitur that is his response — how does that remotely pertain to Goldberg’s granting of anonymity to his friends to smear people they don’t like or the serial fear-mongering fabrications he spread about the Saddam threat prior to the invasion? - I don’t need to travel to Kurdistan to know that many Kurds, probably most, are happy that the U.S. attacked Iraq. For that minority in Northern Iraq, what’s not to like? [read on](more…)
This weekend President Obama attended the G-20 Summit on international economic cooperation in Toronto. Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann fears that the 20 countries were really working to set up “a one world government.” In an interview on Scott Hennen’s radio show today, Bachman declared that “President Obama is trying to bind the United States into a global economy”:
BACHMANN: What really concerned me was Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said that we don’t want to see one country’s economy doing better than another. What? This is the U.S. Treasury Secretary? We don’t want to see Zimbabwe’s economy do better than the United States? Aren’t we supposed to be about the United States and making sure that our economy can be the greatest in the world. If you look at the G20, what they’re trying to do is bind together the world’s economies. Look how that played out in the European Union when they bound all of those nations economies together and one of the smallest economies, Greece, when they got into trouble, that one little nation is bringing down the entire EU. Well, President Obama is trying to bind the United States into a global economy where all of our nations come together in a global economy. I don’t want the United States to be in a global economy where, where our economic future is bound to that of Zimbabwe. I can’t, we can’t necessarily trust the decisions that are being made financially in other countries.
Matt Yglesias: “The existence of a global economy in which events outside our borders impact us is not something Barack Obama dreamed up, and the idea that having world leaders gather for occasional meetings constitutes a ‘one world government’ is insane.” [read on](more…)
Glenn Greenwald gaat weer eens in op de belabberde staat van de pers in de Verenigde Staten. Hier naar aanleiding van de neoconservatieve journalist Jeffery Goldberg die in zijn opruiende stukken vrijwel altijd fout zat - Saddam Hoessein en Al Qaeda werkten samen voor 9/11 - maar toch nog een forum heeft in de VS.
In a stunning display of self-unawareness, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg pointed to last week’s forced “resignation” by Dave Weigel from The Washington Post as evidence that the Post, “in its general desperation for page views, now hires people who came up in journalism without much adult supervision, and without the proper amount of toilet-training.” Goldberg then solemnly expressed hope that “this episode will lead to the reimposition of some level of standards.” Numerouscommentatorsimmediately noted the supreme and obvious irony that Goldberg, of all people, would anoint himself condescending arbiter of journalistic standards, given that, as one of the leading media cheerleaders for the attack on Iraq, he compiled a record of humiliating falsehood-dissemination in the run-up to the war that rivaled Judy Miller’s both in terms of recklessness and destructive impact. [read on](more…)
Minister van Defensie Ehud Barak zei dat er in Gaza maar één persoon is die humanitaire hulp nodig heeft. De gevangen gehouden Israelische soldaat Gilad Shalit.
De neoconservatieve Amerikaan Jay Nordlinger schrijft dat Gaza net is als de dictaturen in Cuba en China waar het Rode Kruis geen toegang krijgt tot gevangenen. Volgens deze neoconservatief “zou daartegen in Europese en Amerikaanse steden massaal worden gedemonstreerd als Gilad Shalit geen Israelier zou zijn.”
Gelukkig hebben we Glenn Greenwald.
Waar waren die demonstraties dan? Zijn eigen land de VS heeft namelijk precies hetzelfde gedaan als Cuba, China en Gaza. Te weten, het Rode Kruis de toegang ontzeggen tot (niet Israelische) gevangenen? Weet je nog Nordlinger, toen jullie aan de macht waren via de stroman George W. Bush.
Diens vader George H.W. Bush zei ooit dit nadat de Amerikaanse marine een Iraans passagiersvliegtuig met 300 inzittenden uit de lucht had geschoten: “I will never apologize for the United States of America, I don’t care what the facts are.”
National Review’s Jay Nordlinger cites a truly repellent (and false) comment made this week by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to Defense Secretary Robert Gates: “A million and a half people are living in Gaza, but only one of them is really in need of humanitarian aid,” Barak said. Nordlinger points out that Barak was referring to Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, held hostage for years by Hamas, which refuses to permit the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to him. After observing that neither “the Cuban dictatorship or Chinese dictatorship permit the Red Cross to see prisoners,” Nordlinger then claims — with the needy victimization that typifies the Right — that “there’d be mass demonstrations in [Shalit’s] behalf all over Europe, and on American streets, too” if “Shalit were other than Israeli.” In other words, Nordlinger believes that the Western World would never tolerate the denial of ICRC access to detainees except when the detainee is Israeli.
I’m asking this literally: is Nordlinger ignorant of the fact that the United States of America denied ICRC access to non-Israeli prisoners for years during the prior administration? [read on](more…)
CIA-artsen hebben onder president George W. Bush medische experimenten uitgevoerd op gevangenen. De proeven werden verricht om martelmethodes als het suggereren van verdrinking (waterboarding) te verbeteren. Dat schrijft mensenrechtenorganisatie Physicians for Human Rights in een vandaag vrijgegeven rapport. Geert-Jan Knoops, hoogleraar internationaal strafrecht: ”Het verbaast me, omdat na de Tweede Wereldoorlog medische experimenten op gevangenen zijn afgezworen. Er blijken zoutoplossingen te zijn gebruikt waardoor de verdrinkingsdood kan worden uitgesteld.”
Hier de reactie van Glenn Greenwald op dat bericht.
President Obama is not only protecting repugnant crimes and the criminals who committed them, but also ensuring that they will occur again.
Physicians for Human Rights yesterday released a report documenting (while relying on heavily redacted material) that “medical professionals who were involved in the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogations of terrorism suspects engaged in forms of human research and experimentation in violation of medical ethics and domestic and international law.” To those paying close attention, the evidence suggesting that this occurred has long been clear. Today, The New York Times Editorial Page said this: read on>> (more…)
Vice President Dick Cheney was the big boss of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. Democrat senator Lautenberg found that Dick Cheney’s Halliburton stock options have risen 3,281 percent in 2004/2005, RAW STORY can reveal. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) asserts that Cheney’s options — worth $241,498 a year ago — are now valued at more than $8 million. The former CEO of the oil and gas services juggernaut, Cheney has pledged to give proceeds to charity.
Liz Cheney sticks up for Halliburton: ‘I don’t know what planet you live on’
This morning on ABC This Week, Arianna Huffington brought up the role the Bush administration played in creating a regulatory system “full of loopholes, full of cronies and lobbyists filling the very agencies they’re supposed to be overseeing,” especially when it comes to the oil industry. Indeed, a 2008 report by the Interior Department’s Inspector General found that workers at the Minerals Management Service were “partying, having sex, using drugs and accepting gifts and ski trips and golf outings from energy company representatives with whom they did government business.” She then tried to talk about the role Halliburton, the energy giant formerly run by Dick Cheney, has in the oil spill, but she was soon cut off by Liz Cheney, who rushed to defend her dad and the corporation:
HUFFINGTON: Right here, we have the poster child of Bush-Cheney crony capitalism. Halliburton involved in this, and we haven’t said about that. They after all were responsible for cementing the well. Here’s Halliburton, after it defrauded the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars –
CHENEY: Arianna, I don’t know what planet you live on, but that’s not – read on>> (more…)
Rep. Alan Grayson:
At their hugely popular website ‘Crooks and Liars,’ John Amato and David Neiwert have helped to expose the fact that there is no conservative party in America any more. They show that the right wingers are not conservatives, they are anarchists.
The only law the right wing believes in is the Law of the Jungle. No schools, no hospitals, no job programs, no nothing. Their idea of nirvana is Mogadishu. See it there, at ‘Crooks and Liars,’ and read it here.
Dit is echt voor het eerst dat JdeW met groot genoegen uitkijkt naar het gebruik van bunkerbusters. Ik bedoel, het hoeft toch niet beslist een atoombom te zijn? Een paar goed geplaatste superbommen kunnen wellicht het boorgat in elkaar drukken en/of zoveel zand verplaatsen dat het boorgat afgesloten wordt. En er komt geen radioactief materiaal vrij. Kom op Oilbama, laat zien dat je niet onder doet voor de Bushmen: Shock and Awe that oil well into submission!
Nuking the oilspill is becoming a serious option! Oilman Matt Simmons - chairman of Simmons & Company International, a prominent oil-industry insider - said the US government should immediately take the effort to plug the leak out of the hands of BP and put the military in charge.
“Probably the only thing we can do is create a weapons system and send it down 18,000 feet and detonate it, hopefully encasing the oil,” he said.
His idea echoes that of a Russian newspaper that earlier this month suggested the US detonate a small nuclear bomb to seal the oil beneath the sea. Komsomoloskaya Pravda argued in an editorial that Russia had successfully used nuclear weapons to seal oil spills on five occasions in the past.
The video is a pretty decent overview of how the Russians have tackled blown wells with nuclear devices, but it doesn’t really look at the ecological price attached to detonating a nuclear device in an ecologically sensitive area, or how to contain the toxic waste generated by such an explosion. David Neiwert wrote about this awhile ago, and some of the comments really sent chills down my spine. continue reading»
George W. Bush: “The Marshall Plan is a crazy idea of the Democrats. All of the economic growth of the United States has been encouraged by wars.”
Oliver Stone’s new documentary South of the Border, which interviews several left-wing leaders of Latin American countries, has unearthed a startling new allegation from Argentina’s former president Néstor Kirchner. During his interview with Stone, Kirchner said he once discussed global economic problems with former President George W. Bush. The former Argentine president says that when he suggested a new Marshall Plan, referring to the WW II-era European reconstruction plan, Bush “got angry” and suggested that “the Marshall Plan is a crazy idea of the Democrats.” Instead, Kirchner says, Bush suggested that “the best way to revitalize the economy is war”:
KIRCHNER: I said that a solution for the problems right now, I told Bush, is a Marshall Plan. And he got angry. He said the Marshall Plan is a crazy idea of the Democrats. He said the best way to revitalize the economy is war. And that the United States has grown stronger with war.
STONE: War, he said that?
KIRCHNER: He said that. Those were his exact words.
STONE: Is he suggesting that South America go to war?
KIRCHNER: Well, he was talking about the United States: ‘The Democrats had been wrong. All of the economic growth of the United States has been encouraged by wars.’ He said it very clearly.
It is worth noting that despite the prosecution of two major wars, there was very minimal net job growth during Bush’s tenure as president. And of course, he bequeathed an economy that suffered massive job losses in his wake.
Ieder weldenkend mens weet dat George W. Bush verantwoordelijk is voor alle ellende heden ten dage in de Verenigde Staten: de oorlogen, de recessie, de misdaad, de olievervuiling in de Golf van Mexico, dat Oprah weer dik is. Met hulp van de neocons, het is allemaal wetenschappelijk bewezen.
En, laten we er geen doekjes om winden, ook voor de rotzooi in de rest van de wereld. Eigenaardig dan ook dat er toch mensen zijn die het interessant vinden om te discussieren over deze schuldvraag. Zie dit stuk op Crooks and Liars.
Today at President Obama’s press conference, it was Villager Chip Reid’s turn to be all offended:
REID: Secondly with regard to the Minerals Management Service, Secretary Salazar yesterday basically blamed the Bush administration for the cozy relationship there.
The birthers argue that Barack Obama is not born in the United States of America and therefore not a legitimate president of the U.S.A.:
“Hawaii, the state where President Obama was born, has done everything they can to debunk this myth that he wasn’t born in America,” Clinton said. “They’ve done everything but blow up his birth certificate, put it in neon lights and hang it on the dome in the Capitol.”
“But 45 percent of registered Republicans still believe that he is serving unconstitutionally,” Clinton insisted, though he did not identify the poll.
“Why?” he asked. “Because they’ve been told that by the only place they go to get information.”
Het meest agressieve land van de wereld is zonder twijfel de Verenigde Staten van Amerika. Het voert op dit moment oorlogen in Irak en Afghanistan en als het aan de neocons ligt binnenkort ook in Iran. Is dat een onderwerp tijdens de aanstaande tussentijdse verkiezingen voor de Senaat en het Huis, vraagt Glenn Greenwald zich af.
Nee dus. Het zijn dan ook geen Republikeinse oorlogen meer, het zijn ook de oorlogen van de Democraten. Gevolg: einde debat!
Glenn Greenwald: Thanks to Fred Hiatt and his friends, war is basically the permanent American condition: war is who we are and what we do as a nation. We’re essentially a war fighting state. We have been at “war” the entire last decade (as well as largley non-stop for the decades which preceded it), and continue now to be at “war” with no end in sight. That’s clearly true of our specific wars (in Afghanistan). And, worse, the way in which The War, more broadly, has been defined (i.e., against Islamic extremism/those who wish to harm Americans) makes it highly likely that it will never end in our lifetime. The decree that we are “at war” has been repeated over and over for a full decade, drumbed into our heads from all directions without pause, sanctified as one of those Bipartisan Orthodoxies that nobody can dispute upon pain of having one’s Seriousness credentials immediately and irrevocably revoked. With war this normalized, is it really surprising that nobody debates it any longer? It’d be like debating the color of the sky.
The absence of debate over war
The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt ponders how little attention our various wars received during the primary campaigns that were just conducted: ”You would hardly know, from following this year’s election campaign or the extensive coverage of last week’s primaries, that America is at war… those wars, and the wisdom of committing to or withdrawing from them, have hardly been mentioned in the hard-fought campaigns of the spring.” Hiatt is right in that observation, and it’s worth examining the reasons for this. read on>> (more…)
Bill Maher, on threats to the creators of ’South Park’:
“What is it with radical Muslims and cartoons? They watch more cartoons than pot-heads.”
Glenn Greenwald:
[..]I abhor the threats of violence coming from fanatical Muslims over the expression of ideas they find offensive, as well as the cowardly institutions which acquiesce to the accompanying demands for censorship. I’ve vigorously condemned efforts to haul anti-Muslim polemicists before Canadian and European “human rights” (i.e., censorship) tribunals. But the very idea that such conduct is remotely unique to Muslims is delusional, the by-product of Douthat’s ongoing use of his New York Times column for his anti-Muslim crusade and sectarian religious promotion.[..]
[..]The various forms of religious-based, intimidation-driven censorship and taboo ideas in the U.S. — what Douthat claims are non-existent except when it involves Muslims — are too numerous to chronicle. One has to be deeply ignorant, deeply dishonest or consumed with petulant self-victimization and anti-Muslim bigotry to pretend they don’t exist. I opt (primarily) for the latter explanation in Douthat’s case. [..]
[..]Several people are insisting that the problem of violence and threats by Muslims is far greater than, and thus not comparable to, those posed by Christians and Jews. This is just the same form of triabalistic, my-side-is-always-better blindness afflicting Douthat. Who could possibly look at the U.S. and conclude that brutal, inhumane, politically-motivated, designed-to-intimidate violence is a particular problem among Muslims, or that Muslims receive special, unfairly favorable treatment as a result of their intimidation? Do you mean except for the tens of thousands of Muslims whom the U.S. has imprisoned without charges for years, and the hundreds of thousands our wars and invasions and bombings have killed this decade alone, and the ones from around the world subjected to racial and ethnic profiling, and the ones we’ve tortured and shot up at checkpoints and are targeting for state-sponsored assassination?[..]
Have a look at the neoconservative magazine National Review’s experts in an online symposium on black unemployment in the US:
Yesterday, National Review Online (NRO) posted an article by the American Enterprise Institute’s Kevin Hassett arguing that the fact that the recession has been worse for minorities “suggests that discrimination may well still be a factor in the American labor market.” read on>> (more…)
Je moet er maar werken. In dat bolwerk van neoconservatief rechts Amerika, de denktank American Enterprice Institute. Het is een speciale denktank waarin wordt voorgeschreven wat je mag denken.
Oh ja, dat is waar ook. Ayaan Hirsi Ali werkt er. Echt wel sneu. Een leven van slavernij.
Bartlett: Frum’s Dismissal Shows ‘All That Matters Now Is Absolute Subservient Adherence’ To The GOP
Former Bush speechwriter David Frum — who famously authored the phrase “axis of evil” — has been unceremoniously forced out from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a right wing, neoconservative think tank. Frum’s dismissal resulted from criticism he directed at the Republican Party for staking a failed strategic posture of “no compromise” on health care. As a result, “it’s Waterloo all right: ours,” Frum wrote to his fellow conservatives.
Right-wing donors of AEI began raising concerns about Frum. So, AEI president Arthur Brooks took Frum out to lunch this week to tell him that, while he valued “a diversity of opinion,” he wanted to downgrade Frum to a nonsalaried position. Frum declined the offer and posted a letter of resignation on his personal website. read on>> (more…)
The New York Times, Maureen Dowd - Besides, there is no love lost between the Israeli prime minister and Obama’s aides, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod — ever since Bibi obnoxiously labeled them “self-hating Jews” last summer.
The president and his inner circle are appalled at Israel’s self-absorption and its failure to notice that America is not only protecting Israel from Iran, fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also dealing with a miasma of horrible problems at home. And Israel insults the Obama administration over a domestic zoning issue that has nothing to do with its security.
Vice president Joe Biden zei dat het beleid van Israel, zoals huizen bouwen op Palestijns land, Amerikaanse troepen in de regio in gevaar brengt. Letterlijk zei Joe Biden: “This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”
Volgens Glenn Greenwald heeft hij gelijk en dus wordt hij aangevallen door de neocons. Misschien wel nuttig om op te merken dat de Amerikaanse politiek in de regio een nog grotere bron van haat tegen Amerika en het westen is. Politiek die is bedacht door de neoconservatieven en uitgevoerd door hun onnozele vazal George W. Bush.
The rather extraordinary dust-up between the U.S. and Israel has, among other benefits, shined a light on two of the most taboo yet self-evidently true propositions: (1) our joined-at-the-hip relationship with Israel is a significant cause of anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, fuels attacks on Americans, and entails a very high price for the U.S. on multiple levels; and (2) many American neoconservatives have their political beliefs shaped by allegiance to Israel.
As for the first: not only did Joe Biden tell Prime Minister Netanyahu that Israel’s actions are endangering U.S. troops in the region, but — more important — as Foreign Policy’s Mark Perry reports, both Adm. Mike Mullen and Gen. David Petraeus within the last couple of months stressed the same causal connection to Obama officials: ”Israel’s intransigence could cost American lives.” It’s rather difficult to maintain the fiction that only fringe Israel-haters see the connection between our support for Israel and Muslim hatred toward the U.S. when two of America’s most respected military officials (responsible for U.S. troops in the region) are making that case explicitly. read on>> (more…)
See this interesting piece on progressive ‘anti-Israel’, ‘anti-Semitic’, American media like the Huffington Post, Salon and Daily Kos, written by the American Adam Levick. In this pseudo scientific report from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs he accuses blogger Glenn Greenwald - frequently cited on drasties - of vilifying supporters of Israel and Jews. That’s because Greenwald suggests that some American Jews may be guided in their political advocacy by allegiance to Israel. Oh the horror!
Who is this Adam Levick?
See this biography on his Twitter account: “I’m an American who just made Aliyah (moved to Israel), and love America and my new country.”
Here the introduction in his article and the part on Glenn Greenwald, who according to Adam Levick ‘is Jewish, though he does not refer to this’.
Anti-Israelism and Anti-Semitism in Progressive U.S. Blogs/News Websites: Influential and Poorly Monitored, Adam Levick
*Sixty-seven percent of the worldwide internet population visit social networking sites and blogs (web 2.0). These are now outpacing email in popularity. According to Nielsen Online they have become the fourth most popular online category. The popularity of political blogs is increasing as traditional media struggle to stay afloat.
*The three most popular progressive political blogs in the United States are Huffington Post, Salon, and Daily Kos. These three together have over thirteen million unique visitors per month.
*Within these three blogs a number of historical anti-Semitic staples appear frequently: excessive Jewish power and control over society/government; Jewish citizens are more loyal to Israel than to their own country; Israel resembles Nazi Germany; Israel is demonized.
*In part because of the huge size of the blogosphere - there are thousands of bloggers at Daily Kos alone - such hateful commentary often escapes the kind of scrutiny that the traditional media faces. A major challenge is that anonymity provides bloggers with moral impunity.
[..] Salon: Glenn Greenwald [..]Glenn Greenwald is one of Salon’s regular political contributors, and his blog stands out in popularity and influence. Although he is Jewish, he does not refer to this. He also has contributed to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The National Interest, and In These Times. Interestingly, Greenwald also has penned columns for Patrick Buchanan’s paleoconservative magazine The American Conservative, often on Israel-related stories.[11] read on>> (more…)
We krijgen er flink van langs in dit stuk, dat, als ik het goed begrijp, in 1992 is geschreven door de Amerikaan Michael Walsh en nu met een nieuwe introductie opnieuw wordt gepubliceerd. Of juist niet? JdeW komt er niet uit. Is Nederland echt het slechtste land van Europa, een riool van sociale afwijkingen? Of zat Michael achttien jaar geleden juist stiekem van Amsterdam te genieten.
Ook snap ik niet goed hoe Michael enerzijds Nederland een land van zieke gekken kan noemen en hij anderzijds de Nederlandse aard samenvat met het gezegde (dat blijkbaar iedere student Nederlands als eerste leert): ‘Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg’. Hij is overigens niet de enige die het helemaal heeft gehad met de Nederlanders. Zie dit commentaar van onecent:
“The Dutch will be gone in a few generations, driven into burqas by their soon to be Muslim overlords demographically. It couldn’t happen to a more pathetic specimen of what’s left of western culture in Europe - pathetic sniveling self-loathing lefty toadies that they are… Tolerance of intolerance isn’t a virture and in the Dutch case it’s cultural suicide. They won’t be missed.”
Sex, Drugs and Cultural Euthanasia: Amsterdam, 1992
Holland today is probably the worst country in Europe, a sinkhole of social pathologies that would make Berkeley blush. And yet, at every step, the decisions the Dutch took to liberalize their formerly straitlaced Calvinist society seemed to make sense at the time, at least to some. Today, with crime rampant, social tensions brought on by enormous, apparently unassimilable migration from the Muslim world, and the collapse of its social cohesion and cultural self-confidence, the Netherlands is the Sick Man of Europe.
I originally wrote this story for the now-defunct Mirabella Magazine, to answer the editorial question: why are the Dutch so tolerant. “Tolerant” seemed like the right word at the time; today, nearly 18 years later, “suicidal” might be a better choice.
This is what I found. read on>> (more…)
This video was supported by Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz and neocon Bill Kristol, both almost daily on Fox News. In it lawyers, who now work for the Justice Department and who represented detainees in Guantanamo, are called: the Al Qaeda 7.
Sabin Willet, an attorney who has represented Chinese Uighur detainees at Guantanamo, has a few words for the fear-mongers amongst us:
… as the years went by, the right did learn one thing useful about Guantanamo detainees. The public can’t distinguish one from another. If imprisoned endlessly, the detainees will furnish an endless source of scaremongering — that rich mulch in which votes will grow.
And so Cheney and Grassley beaver away to Keep America Scared. Some Americans will see the rule of law as a threat, and lawyers as the enemy. Small men with loud voices will exploit their fears on cable television. Petty politicians will mine them for votes. It’s been this way since Shakespeare’s famous policymaker Dick the Butcher said, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’’
But most Americans aren’t with Dick the Butcher. They know that their freedom is secured when lawyers — including the president’s lawyers — live out a professional code, with honor, as General Royall did, and as Department of Justice lawyers have done in my case.
McCarthyites Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol launching repulsive smear campaign
As [Glenn Greenwald] noted yesterday, the group run by Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol released what is certainly one of the more repugnant political ads of the last decade, if not the most repugnant. It’s the type of McCarthyite act which would, if we had any minimal standards in our political culture, result in the shunning of Cheney and Kristol by all decent people (instead, it will likely land the Vice President’s daughter on multiple Sunday talk shows where she can pose as an expert on national security). The ad brands Eric Holder’s DOJ the “Department of Jihad” because it employs 9 lawyers who previously represented Guantanamo detainees (including Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who successfully represented the Guantanamo-plaintiffs in the 2006 Hamdan case before the U.S. Supreme Court). The ad darkly asks of these lawyers: “whose values do they share?,” and labels 7 of those unidentified DOJ lawyers “The Al Qaeda 7.” The premise of the ad is as clear as it insidious: any lawyers representing accused Terrorists are of suspect loyalties and allegiances, are devoted to “jihad,” and are sympathetic to, if not part of, Al Qaeda (this profoundly ugly smear campaign began with the always-unhinged Andrew McCarthy in National Review, who branded such lawyers “terrorist sympathizers”). read on>> (more…)
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Vooruitgang bestaat niet, en dat is maar goed ook, want zoals het is, is het al erg genoeg.
Gerard Reve