Daily Briefing — 28th-29th July 2009

Interview with a recently released Bagram detainee; U.S. military possibly broke Posse Comitatus spying on activists for two years; The sheep are begging for the Police State; 96% of risk in the hands of five banks; and more…

A former Bagram detainee described his “completely wild” arrest, terrorizing treatment, and psychological scars to Jonathan Horowitz of the Open Society Institute, working as a consultant in Afghanistan (HuffPo)

“John Jacob” spent the last two years spying on anarchist activists of the Students for a Democratic Society in Tacoma and Olympia, WA for the U.S. military. (InfoShop News)… If the InfoShop link has problems, you can read more by Jeremy Pawloski at The Olympian. Democracy Now! devoted their whole show to this story today. See the video here or here.

“Once the President defines the operation as a national security matter, Yoo and Delahunty conclude ‘First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully,'” writes Prof. Jonathan Turley. “It is an argument ready-made for authoritarian rule…. The fact that two law professors would make such an argument is unsettling. If accepted (and it came within one man of being executed), it would have opened the door to a classic form of tyranny.”

“The Makings of a Police State-Part II: The Discretion Factor & TSA Black Hole” by Sibel Edmonds (123 Real Change): “The No Fly List, also called the terrorist watch list, is a secret list created and maintained by the US government of people who are not permitted to board a plane for travel in or out of the country. The list includes at least 1 million names as of now, up 32% since 2007 as reported by USA Today in March 2009. On September 11, 2001, the FBI’s ‘no transport’ list had the names of 16 people were considered to present a specific known or suspected threat to aviation.”

“Today, Henry Gates; Tomorrow, You” by Kelley Vlahos (AntiWar.com): “So we have become a nation of passive, potential suspects, and often it is the random circumstance like a jammed door that can bring it all down, superseding in an instant everything else – background, race, social class, pristine criminal records – everything.”

“President Obama has stated that he is now considering whether he has the power to order the detention of persons outside of both the laws of armed conflict and the U.S. criminal justice system,” writes Scott Horton, adding to Cheney’s ‘plans for a military coup’ (Harper’s). “While the Yoo memoranda have been repudiated, their arguments of almost limitless presidential power seem almost as appealing to the current White House as the old one.”

Two great pieces from Anthony Gregory:

“Why Do Conservatives Always Side With the Cops?”
“When Will the Wars End?”

“This morning the FBI arrested seven men, including six US citizens, in North Carolina on charges based around a vaguely defined terrorist plot the men ostensibly engaged in,” writes Jason Ditz (AntiWar.com). “It appears that none of the seven actually engaged in any violent terrorist actions, though the leader, Daniel Patrick Boyd, is accused of having trained in Afghanistan in 1989.”

“The Obama administration has announced the distribution of $1 billion in grants to hire 5,000 ‘local police nation-wide,” wrotes William Grigg (LRC Blog).

Taser International has manufactured a new taser model that can shock three people without reload (Raw Story).

“National Security by Spreading Democracy?” by Michael Rozeff is a piercing analysis of the hubris in deifying democracy and attempting to spread it by force. (LRC)

Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territory of the West Bank is nearly 500,000, including those in Palestinian East Jerusalem (AntiWar.com).

‘Genocidal eugenics is practical if you spin it right!’ is the weird implication from David Brooks in today’s NYT.

96% of derivative risk in the hands of five banks: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley (Washington’s Blog). Coincidentally, the dollar is worth 4% of what it was worth at the time when the Federal Reserve Act was passed in 1913.

“What a sad day for a newspaper with a storied reputation for exposing waste, fraud and abuse in government, to oppose the Federal Reserve Sunshine Act, legislation that would simply increase transparency at the Federal Reserve,” slef-proclaimed democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) letter to WaPo on their July 24 editorial (WaPo). “We must not equate “independence” with secrecy. No matter how intelligent or well-intentioned the Fed chairman and his staff may be, it isn’t appropriate to give a handful of people the power to lend an unlimited supply of money to anyone it wants without sufficient oversight.”

“Goldman Sachs is using its new taxpayer-subsidized status to bring increased risk to the financial system, a group of House members charged Monday,” writes Ryan Grim (HuffPo) “They want to know why the Federal Reserve is allowing it.”… How dumb are these people? It’s because the FED is Goldman Sachs.

“FDR during World War II had a cocktail party every single night,” plagarist “presidential historian” Doris Kearns Goodwin said (HuffPo).

Anti-Racist Action is holding its 15th annual conference in Pittsburgh, PA Oct. 9th-12th, this year (InfoShop News).

“Greek authorities are [kidnapping] large numbers of migrants and asylum seekers in the country’s cities and islands and moving many of them to the north, raising fears of illegal expulsions to Turkey” said Human Rights Watch. “Human Rights Watch also documented how Greek authorities miscategorize unaccompanied children as adults and detain them for prolonged periods of time in conditions that could be considered inhumane and degrading.”

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