I am in Washington DC for the national conference of the National Consumer Law Center. Our special guest today was Senator Elizabeth Warren. In a blistering plain-language talk, delivered to an audience of approximately 900 consumer lawyers, Warren took aim at lobbyists, courts and the campaign finance system. [more . . . ]
Glenn Greenwald takes issue with a recent comment by U.K. "journalist" Chris Blackhurst: "Edwared Snowden's secrets may be dangerous. I would not have published them." This leaves Greenwald in a state somewhere between seething and despondent:
What Blackhurst is revealing here is indeed a predominant mindset among many in the media class. Journalists should not disobey the dictates of those in power. Once national security state officials decree that what they are doing should be kept concealed from the public - once they pound their mighty "SECRET" stamp onto their behavior - it is the supreme duty of all citizens, including journalists, to honor that and never utter in public what they have done. Indeed, it is not only morally wrong, but criminal, to defy these dictates. After all, "who am I to disbelieve them?" That this mentality condemns - and would render outlawed - most of the worthwhile investigative journalism over the last several decades never seems to occur to good journalistic servants like Blackhurst. National security state officials also decreed that it would "not be in the public interest" to report on the Pentagon Papers, or the My Lai massacre, or the network of CIA black sites in which detainees were tortured, or the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program, or the documents negating claims of Iraqi WMDs, or a whole litany of waste, corruption and illegality that once bore the "top secret" label.
Glenn Greenwald highlights a question he was recently asked on Reddit, and his response:
Glenn Greenwald: "I was also asked: "Do you see the US Democratic Party as hopelessly corrupt in terms of orchestrating progressive change? If so, what can we to do roll back abuses of surveillance state and take back system from the rich?" My reply: "I never see any political questions as hopeless or unchangeable, but consider this: "When I first began writing in 2005, I was focused primarily on the Bush NSA program, and I was able to build a large readership quickly because so many Democrats, progressives, liberal bloggers, etc, were so supportive of the work I was doing. That continued to be true through 2008. "Now, a mere four [years] later, Democrats have become the most vehement defenders of the NSA and the most vicious attackers of my work on the NSA - often, some of the very same people cheering so loudly in 2006 and 2007 are the ones protesting most loudly and viciously now. "Gee, I wonder what changed? In the answer lies all you need to know about the Democratic Party."
Barack Obama: “For nearly seven decades, the United States has been the anchor of global security. This has meant doing more than forging international agreements; it has meant enforcing them. The burdens of leadership are often heavy, but the world’s a better place because we have borne them.” Matthew Rothschild responds at Common Dreams:
Was the U.S. an anchor of global security and an enforcer of international agreements when it overthrew the Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953, or the Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954? Is the world a better place because the U.S. helped overthrow Salvador Allende’s democratically elected government in Chile almost exactly 40 years ago? Is the world a better place because the United States killed 3 million people in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia and because we dropped 20 million gallons of napalm (waging our own version of chemical warfare) on those countries? Is the world a better place because the United States supported brutal governments in El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s, which killed tens of thousands of their own people? Is the world a better place because George Bush waged an illegal war against Iraq and killed between 100,000 and a million civilians? And what international agreements was the United States enforcing when it tortured people after 9/11?Bill Maher:
Forget the Syria debate, we need to debate on why we're always debating whether to bomb someone because we're starting to look, not so much like the world's policeman, but more like George Zimmerman -- itching to use force and then pretending it's because we had no choice.
Represent us has accomplished a lot in a short amount of time, including the launch of the American Anti-Corruption Act with bipartisan support, including Lawrence Lessig and Trevor Potter. 400,000 Americans have signed up to support the Act. Here is an effort to illustrate how laws are made in Washington D.C.: If you want to be part of this effort to expose the electoral process and fix it, visit www.represent.us or "like" its Facebook page.