November 13, 2008 archive

With government aid sporadic or non-existent, survivors of the October 29 6.4-magnitude earthquake that rocked the impoverished Pakistani province of Baluchistan are receiving assistance from local Islamist groups, some of which the US has condemned as “terrorist organizations.” Within hours of the quake, people from Jamaat-ud-Dawa–condemned by the US as the political wing of the Kashmiri liberation and alleged “Al Qaeda associated” outfit Laskhar-e-Taiba–were distributing blankets, food, milk, and biscuits, promising to return soon with tents, and pledging to construct 1000 temporary homes.

Through 2007, the Bush administration had awarded Pakistan more than $10 billion in overt War-on-Terra military aid, and an estimated additional $5 billion in covert funds. To assist the tens of thousands of Pakistanis injured and displaced by the October 29 quake, in danger of freezing to death or perishing of sickness in the frigid winter air, the Bush administration has ponied up . . . $1 million. Or approximately four to six times the suspected amount Sarah Palin recently spent on clothes, accessories, jewelry, luggage, and spray-on tans for herself, her husband, and her five-child brood.  

The Democrats of 2002 and 2007 haven’t gone anywhere

by Glenn Greenwald

Wednesday Nov. 12, 2008 15:28 EST

We know there are going to be major wars — not with Republicans, but among Democrats, and especially the party’s leaders — over things like closing Guantanamo, imposing an absolute ban on torture, restoring habeas corpus, withdrawing from Iraq, reducing executive secrecy and increasing transparency, imposing mild limits and oversight on the surveillance state, returning the Congress to its proper role, and especially investigating prior crimes of high government officials.  More generally, there’s going to be immense pressure for Obama to prove that he’s “centrist” by making only minor modifications, not major changes, to prevailing Bush policies — a view that is a principal motivating belief of the Democratic Party.

Yesterday’s vague and poorly-sourced Wall St. Journal article reporting that “Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies” is not, in my view, evidence of what Obama will do, but it is definitely compelling evidence that people close to him — those whom he has chosen to be influential — are pushing him in that direction.  Notably, the article actually describes minor modifications to (as opposed to wholesale overhaul of) Bush’s torture policies as the “centrist” and “pragmatic” approach.

It’s just a fact that there are all sorts of people close to Obama who have enabled those Bush policies and who are mobilizing now and attempting to ensure that nothing meaningful occurs in these areas.  It simply is noteworthy of comment and cause for concern — though far from conclusive about what Obama will do — that Obama’s transition chief for intelligence policy, John Brennan, was an ardent supporter of torture and one of the most emphatic advocates of FISA expansions and telecom immunity.  It would be foolish in the extreme to ignore that and to just adopt the attitude that we should all wait quietly with our hands politely folded for the new President to unveil his decisions before deciding that we should speak up or do anything.  

Politicians respond to constituencies and pressure.  Constituencies which announce their intention to maintain respectful silence all but ensure that their political principles will be ignored.