Marmot Monday

Who knew there were so many pictures of marmots out there?

Separated At Birth

More like separated in elderly life.

Marmot Monday

Job Market

Man the job market is getting rough.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Jamie's Magic Palace

Apologies for the overly long rant that's to follow. I feel if I don't hammer this out it's going to fester like a cognitive zit begging to be pinched. There was finally a ray of hope on the evening television lineup. Tonight's NOVA was about the National Security Agency and it's role “post-9/11'. (By they way, we took a vote and decided that 'post-9/11' is the most abused and overused term of the decade.) Unfortunately for me and the thinking public they gave James Bamford the keys to the show, letting him write and direct it. You may remember Bamford from such hits as his 1982 book The Puzzle Palace, or such ditties as The Agency That Could Be Big Brother in the New York Times. Bamford has fashioned himself a career by selling the NSA as the boogey man to fear in our technology-laden society whilst pandering to the dark reasoning of people that go out of their way to believe the worst about this country.

I don't have a problem with Jamie B believing what he wants to believe about the world or the government. The distressing issue was his soiling a once great brand (Nova) with his personal neuroses. On a plate that cries out for balanced reasoning and thoughtful analysis we were served slick visuals and multiple money shots of his books. The first half of the hour touched on a few of the 9/11 hijackers and what they did inside the US. Bamford posits that based on their communications the NSA should have intercepted the plot and therefore stopped 9/11. Mind you, the communication Bamford references are calls made from within the US, so there's that whole pesky 4^th Amendment issue. Also, prior to 9/11 I'm not sure they actually broke any law by calling a house in Yemen. Mere association doesn't get you on the domestic legal system dance floor in a pre-9/11 America. It did, however, usually get you a date with a deportation hearing and a one way ticket home. That is, if the NSA is allowed to tell INS, which they aren't. The truly asinine aspect of the issue was the FBI had agents assigned to the NSA, and NSA was aware that some of the hijackers were associated with Al Qaeda. But due to legal restrictions, put in place by the Clinton administration, those FBI agents were forbidden from telling the FBI about the hijacker's existence. Never mind all that, says Bamford. Someone should have known what was going to happen and broken the law to bring the hijackers to the FBI's attention.

I think at this point I actually yelled at the TV. Because of Bamford's book The Puzzle Palace even cave-dwelling Koran thumpers are well aware of the NSA's collection methods and capabilities. As a result of this the hijackers and their overlords never discussed operational matters via telephone or e-mail. The communication restrictions are even outlined in the Al Qaeda training manual. So what, exactly, was the NSA supposed to know if no one talks about anything related to the plan?

The second half of the hour glossed over, from about 10,000 feet, how the NSA has changed 'post 9/11'. Of course, Bamford trotted out how it was wrong, wrong I tell you, for the NSA to ignore FISA. Mind you, the intercept targets that circumvented FISA were calls originating overseas from 'known associates' and NSA was doing so under Executive Orders. Those were facts that clogged up Bamford's well rehearsed speech...I mean show...so he didn't bother introducing them. There was a repeated tone of indignation at the idea the NSA would monitor calls inside the US. (Whereas it was this exact failing that was trotted out in the first half our as Bamford's reason why 9/11 happened.) Somewhere around this point in the program Mrs. Ares, who is by all measure a layman on this topic, saw the distinct nakedness of the show's intellectual emperor.

Again, I don't give a snot if Bamford believes what he cares to believe. But tonight Frontline and an infomercial had a baby and it was called NOVA. I know that the P in PBS stands for Public. But given that PBS is taxpayer funded can't we call down some thunder against X-Files rejects dressing up like smart people and beclowning the good name of NOVA? PBS is supposed to be the last refuge of thinking Americans that actually still turn on the television during prime time. It's our 10 acres of palm tree-covered beach in an ocean of American Idol and Desperate Housewives. And thanks to Jamie Bamford, it just went condo.

Ares

Marmot Monday

Rendition

Interesting little blurb percolated its way out today. Seems the Obama administration has issued an executive order allowing the continuation of the practice of rendition. For those unfamiliar, rendition is where you turn a terrorism suspect over to a third party government for interrogation. The practice actually goes back to the Clinton administration, but we don't like to talk about that. The interesting part of this little development has been the silence that has met the announcement. The New York Times and Washington Post, two outlets that flogged the last president for the practice, are conspicuously silent on the new ruling. I guess it's only bad when someone you don't like is ordering it.

Ares

Update: Someone with way more time and smarts than I followed through on this. Professor Hutchison of the Dissenting Justice blog posted some before and after statements by Human Rights Watch. This is the before:

The US government should:

Repudiate the use of rendition to torture as a counterterrorism tactic and permanently discontinue the CIA's rendition program;

Disclose the identities, fate, and current whereabouts of all persons detained by the CIA or rendered to foreign custody by the CIA since 2001, including detainees who were rendered to Jordan;

Repudiate the use of "diplomatic assurances" against torture and ill-treatment as a justification for the transfer of a suspect to a place where he or she is at risk of such abuse;

Make public any audio recordings or videotapes that the CIA possesses of interrogations of detainees rendered by the CIA to foreign custody;

Provide appropriate compensation to all persons arbitrarily detained by the CIA or rendered to foreign custody (emphasis added).

This is what was issued after by Human Rights Watch:

"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured -- but that designing that system is going to take some time."

Note to Human Rights Watch: Turn off the lights & lock the door. You're now hacks instead of advocates. Mind you, I'm actually in favor of the practice of rendition. But when a group that advocates something as basic as human rights twists sideways in it's seat merely because of who occupies the Oval Office they've ceased to be useful. Co opting is it's own form of corruption.