Tag: ek Politics

I’ve had the opportunity to meet some other writers that should impress you if you’re paying attention at all and one of them is Gaius Publius who writes this today-

Obama economic adviser: Using the sequester to cut benefits was "part of the DNA from the start"

by Gaius Publius, Americablog

3/3/2013 10:00am

We now have stunning confirmation that Obama is using the sequester “battle” as blackmail to get his Grand Bargain (Grand Betrayal) passed – and that “entitlement” benefit cuts are, and always were, part of the plan. It could not be more clear.

Barack Obama wants to cut entitlements, and he’s using the sequester to do it. This, and no other reason, is why the sequester is happening.

The person who made the statement quoted in my headline – that cutting entitlements is “in the DNA” of the sequester – is Gene Sperling, a “top economic aide” to Barack Obama, and someone who knows what he’s talking about.

Why Obama Refuses to Kill the Sequester

Bill, Black, Naked Captalism

Monday, February 25, 2013

I wrote last year about the fact that President Obama had twice blocked Republican efforts to remove the Sequester. President Obama went so far as to issue a veto threat to block the second effort. I found contemporaneous reportage on the President’s efforts to preserve the Sequester – and the articles were not critical of those efforts. I found no contemporaneous rebuttal by the administration of these reports.

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I raised the President’s efforts to save the Sequester because they revealed his real preferences. Those of us who teach economics explain to our students that what people say about their preferences is not as reliable as how they act. Their actions reveal their true preferences. President Obama has always known that the Sequester is terrible public policy. He has blasted it as a “manufactured crisis.”

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When he acted to save the Sequester, Obama proved that he preferred the Sequester to the alternative. When the alternative threatened by the Republicans was causing a default on the U.S. debt (by refusing to increase the debt limit), one could understand Obama’s preference (though even there I would have called the Republican bluff). The Republicans, however, had extended the debt limit in both of the cases that President Obama acted to save the Sequester in 2011.

Similarly, President Obama has revealed his real preferences in the current blame game by not calling for a clean bill eliminating the Sequester. It is striking that as far as I know (1) neither Obama nor any administration official has called for the elimination of the Sequester and (2) we have a fairly silly blame game about how the Sequester was created without discussing the implications of Obama’s continuing failure to call for the elimination of the Sequester despite his knowledge that it is highly self-destructive.

The only logical inference that can be drawn is that Obama remains committed to inflicting the “Grand Bargain” (really, the Grand Betrayal) on the Nation in his quest for a “legacy” and continues to believe that the Sequester provides him the essential leverage he feels he needs to coerce Senate progressives to adopt austerity, make deep cuts in vital social programs, and to begin to unravel the safety net. Obama’s newest budget offer includes cuts to the safety net and provides that 2/3 of the austerity inflicted would consist of spending cuts instead of tax increases. When that package is one’s starting position the end result of any deal will be far worse.

Gaius again-

Obama wants the Grand Betrayal to be his legacy. Give it to him. Everyone reading this has some “reach” – some group of people you influence. Every time you talk about Obama, tell just tell the truth.

“Barack Obama wants to cut Social Security and Medicare. He’s tried it every time these phony crises come along. He just needs Republican tax hikes to hide the knife.”

In other words, rebrand him; paint him with the truth. Don’t hide it from yourself; don’t hide it from your friends. At some point, the new paint will stick. But for that to happen, we must persist.

I also recently had a chat with lambert strether of Corrente and Naked Capitalism and one of his major topics was rebranding.  Well, here’s the issue.

As much as I think other little things like War Crimes, Global Warming, and stuff are equally important indictments of current government policies; Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are supported by 90%! majorities.

The outcry against this must be as strong by true leftists (progressive is what liberals call themselves because they’re weak and ashamed and cowardly, and Democratic is merely a party of convenience rapidly compromising themselves into irrelevance) as it was against W.

Or are you just a tribalist celebrity suck up with no principles you’re not willing to sellout for an insincere smile?  History and voters will punish you.

19:20 (h/t Susie Madrak)

Ben Bernanke, Hippie

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 28, 2013

We’re just a few weeks away from a milestone I suspect most of Washington would like to forget: the start of the Iraq war. What I remember from that time is the utter impenetrability of the elite prowar consensus. If you tried to point out that the Bush administration was obviously cooking up a bogus case for war, one that didn’t bear even casual scrutiny; if you pointed out that the risks and likely costs of war were huge; well, you were dismissed as ignorant and irresponsible.

It didn’t seem to matter what evidence critics of the rush to war presented: Anyone who opposed the war was, by definition, a foolish hippie. Remarkably, that judgment didn’t change even after everything the war’s critics predicted came true. Those who cheered on this disastrous venture continued to be regarded as “credible” on national security (why is John McCain still a fixture of the Sunday talk shows?), while those who opposed it remained suspect.

And, even more remarkably, a very similar story has played out over the past three years, this time about economic policy. Back then, all the important people decided that an unrelated war was an appropriate response to a terrorist attack; three years ago, they all decided that fiscal austerity was the appropriate response to an economic crisis caused by runaway bankers, with the supposedly imminent danger from budget deficits playing the role once played by Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Now, as then, this consensus has seemed impenetrable to counterarguments, no matter how well grounded in evidence. And now, as then, leaders of the consensus continue to be regarded as credible even though they’ve been wrong about everything (why do people keep treating Alan Simpson as a wise man?), while critics of the consensus are regarded as foolish hippies even though all their predictions – about interest rates, about inflation, about the dire effects of austerity – have come true.

Incestuous Amplification, Economics Edition

Paul Krugman, The New York Times

January 29, 2013, 5:44 pm

Back during the early days of the Iraq debacle, I learned that the military has a term for how highly dubious ideas become not just accepted, but viewed as certainties. “Incestuous amplification” happen when a closed group of people repeat the same things to each other – and when accepting the group’s preconceptions itself becomes a necessary ticket to being in the in-group. A fundamentally flawed notion – say, that the Germans can’t possibly attack though the Ardennes – becomes part of what everyone knows, where “everyone” means by definition only people who accept the flawed notion.

We saw that in the run-up to Iraq, where perfectly obvious propositions – the case for invading is very weak, the occupation may well be a nightmare – weren’t so much rejected as ruled out of discussion altogether; if you even considered those possibilities, you weren’t a serious person, no matter what your credentials.

Which brings me to the fiscal debate, characterized by the particular form of incestuous amplification Greg Sargent calls the Beltway Deficit Feedback Loop. I’ve already blogged about my Morning Joe appearance and Scarborough’s reaction, which was to insist that almost no mainstream economists share my view that deficit fear is vastly overblown. As Joe Weisenthal points out, the reality is that among those who have expressed views very similar to mine are the chief economist of Goldman Sachs; the former Treasury secretary and head of the National Economic Council; the former deputy chairman of the Federal Reserve; and the economics editor of the Financial Times. The point isn’t that these people are necessarily right (although they are), it is that Scarborough’s attempt at argument through authority is easily refuted by even a casual stroll through recent economic punditry.

But these people aren’t part of the in-group, and if they do make it into the in-group’s conversation at all, it’s only by blurring their message sufficiently that the in-group doesn’t understand it.

And at this point, of course, all the Very Serious People have committed their reputations so thoroughly to the official doctrine that they almost literally can’t hear any contrary evidence.

Disastrous Predictions and Predictable Disasters

Paul Krugman, The New York Times

March 1, 2013, 9:53 am

Joe Weisenthal is wrong. He writes that the unfolding economic disaster in Europe is what everyone predicted. Not so. It’s what he predicted, it’s what I predicted, but it’s not at all what many people were predicting. And the people who got it completely wrong happen to be the people still running European economic policy.

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Readers sometimes complain about my frequent references to the things my friends and I got right, and others got wrong. But look, it’s not ego (or anyway it’s not just ego). Predictions are how you judge between models. If the world delivers results that are very much at odds with what your framework says should have happened, you’re supposed to reconsider your framework – as I did, for example, after I was wrong about interest rates in 2003.

And the fact is that a more or less Keynesian framework – a framework that says that austerity in a depressed economy is a terrible idea – has yielded pretty good predictions through the crisis, while the anti-Keynesian stories that became the conventional wisdom in Brussels and Frankfurt have delivered an awesome record of predictive failure.

(h/t Crooks & Liars)

BusinessWeek–

Since 1979, after-tax income grew 277% for the top 1%.  For the bottom fifth, after-tax income grew by only 18%.

Ok, so it’s been obvious for years that Bob Woodward of Watergate fame is nothing but a toady bootlicker of a Versailles Villager but I need a title and talk about jumping the shark!

(h/t Atlantic Wire)

Bob Woodward embodies US political culture in a single outburst

Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian

Thursday 28 February 2013 07.57 EST

How ironic that this comes from the reporter endlessly heralded for having brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency on the ground that Nixon believed himself above the law. Nixon’s hallmark proclamation – “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal” – is also apparently Bob Woodward’s.

All of this, of course, is pure pretense. Is it even remotely plausible that Obama is refraining from engaging in military action he believes is necessary out of some sort of quaint deference to the law? Please. This is a president who continued to wage war, in Libya, not merely without Congressional authorization, but even after Congress expressly voted against its authorization. This is a president who has repeatedly argued that he has the right to kill anyone he wants, anywhere in the world, not only due to Congressional authorization but also his own Commander-in-Chief powers. If Obama really wanted to deploy that second aircraft carrier, he would do so, knowing that journalists like Bob Woodward and members of both parties would cheer him. This is just a flamboyant political stunt designed to dramatize how those Big, Bad Republicans are leaving us all exposed and vulnerable with sequestration cuts.

But whatever Obama’s motives might be, the fact is that what we call “law” really does require some cuts in military spending. To refuse to do so would be to assert powers not even most monarchs have: to break the law at will. Woodward is right about one point: not only would prior presidents have been willing to do this, this is exactly what they did. Indeed, George Bush’s entire presidency was explicitly predicated on the theory that the president has the power to break the law at will whenever he deems that doing so promotes national security. That America’s most celebrated journalist not only supports this, but demands that all presidents follow this model of lawlessness, is telling indeed.

…

Bob Woodward, with one rant, expressing the core values of America’s media class. The president is not constrained by law (contemptuously referred to as “this piece of paper”). He not only has the right but the duty to do anything – even if the law prohibits it – to project military force whenever he wants (even though the Constitution mandates as his prime duty not to Keep Us Safe but rather that he “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed” and thus must swear as his oath “to the best of [his] ability [to] preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States”). The US must act as empire, dominating the world with superior military force if it wants to stay safe. Any reduction in military spending and deployment will endanger us all.

It’s to be expected that these authoritarian and militaristic values shape political leaders and their followers. That these values also shape the “watchdog” media class, as embodied by one of their “legends”, explains much about US political culture generally.

Bob Woodward fulfills an important function. Just as Tim Russert was long held up as the scary bulldog questioner who proved the existence of an adversarial TV press while the reality was that, as Harper’s Lewis Lapham famously put it, he maintained “the on-air persona of an attentive and accommodating headwaiter”, the decades-old Woodward lore plays a critical role in maintaining the fiction of a watchdog press corps even though he is one of the most faithful servants of the war machine and the national security and surveillance states.

Well, if you’ve been following the news, it’s really kind of obvious that this was going to happen.

The Shell high tech, best in the industry effort is basically 1 Ship, 1 Rig, and a Barge.

The ship is the Noble Discoverer, an obsolete hunk of junk with barely the power to get out of its own stink when the engines are working which they seldom do.  They couldn’t even muster enough steam to get it out of the way of Alaskan property taxes.

The Coast Guard found a lack of preventive maintenance and “systematic failure” led the Discoverer to experience a loss of its propulsion system and an explosion in its exhaust system.

…

The Coast Guard reportedly found that the Discoverer is not able to maintain sufficient speed at sea to maneuver safely in all conditions without a tow; multiple dead end wires and improper wire splices in the engine room; main engine cooling water contaminated with oil and sludge.

In addition, the vessel experienced an abnormal propeller shaft vibration on the way back from the Arctic in November, requiring the crew to shut down the vessel’s main engines and have the rig towed to the Port of Seward.

Oh, and it catches fire all the time too.

The Coast Guard inquiry began after the ship had propulsion problems while pulling into Seward, Alaska last November. Earlier that month, a fire broke out in the rig stack on the vessel while it was in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. It was swiftly put out by personnel on board the Discoverer and no one was injured.

After exploding in flame in Dutch Harbor, missing the January 1st property tax deadline, and collecting 16 major Coast Guard citations for safety violations the ship is being floating drydocked to South Korea for repair since it’s too unseaworthy to sail there on its own.  It won’t arrive until late spring to say nothing of the time needed for repair (unless they determine that it’s fit only for razor blades).

Then there is the Kulluk which when last we checked was doing a pretty good job of grinding itself to razors near Kodiak after it broke it’s tow.  It’s headed to South Korea too though it’s still a Keystone(XL) Cops comedy of errors.

The Corbin Foss, one of Seattle-based Foss Maritimes’ tugboats, hit the port side of the Ocean Wave, a Crowley Marine Services tug, around 5:30 p.m. Friday in Killiuida Bay on the eastern side of Kodiak Island, where the Kulluk is anchored while awaiting Coast Guard approval to leave, said Petty Officer David Mosley.

It won’t get there or be fixed any time sooner than the Noble Discoverer.

And then there was the Arctic Challenger a useless dockside Queen an “Ice Breaking Barge” with no utility except as a floating hole which on a calm tranquil September day in Puget Sound had its super high tech blowout containment unit crushed like a beer can at half its rated depth.

So-

Shell Vessels Sidelined, Imperiling Arctic Plans

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS, The New York Times

Published: February 11, 2013

The new potential delay in drilling does not necessarily doom Shell’s seven-year, $4.5 billion quest to open a new oil frontier in the far north, but it may strengthen the position of environmentalists who have repeatedly sued to stop or postpone exploration that they claim carries the risks of a spill nearly impossible to clean up.

It may also give the Obama administration considerably more time to decide whether to allow Shell to continue operations in two Arctic seas after repeated accidents, failed inspections and mechanical problems that have called into question the company’s safety management

And today-

Shell Suspends Drilling for Arctic Ocean in 2013

By DAN JOLING Associated Press

ANCHORAGE, Alaska February 27, 2013 (AP)

Royal Dutch Shell PLC says it will not drill for petroleum in the Arctic Ocean in 2013.

The problem with our elites is that they’re massive morons and inbred idiots.

UK’s credit rating downgraded from AAA to AA1 by Moody’s

Press Association, The Guardian

Friday 22 February 2013 18.05 EST

The agency warned that “subdued” growth prospects and a “high and rising debt burden” were weighing on the economy. But Osborne said the loss of the gold-plated status did not mean the government should change course.

“Tonight we have a stark reminder of the debt problems facing our country – and the clearest possible warning to anyone who thinks we can run away from dealing with those problems,” he said.

“Far from weakening our resolve to deliver our economic recovery plan, this decision redoubles it.

Osborne humiliated as UK loses AAA credit rating

By George Eaton, New Statesman

Published 22 February 2013 22:50

Back in February 2010, a few months before he entered the Treasury, George Osborne declared: “Our first benchmark is to cut the deficit more quickly to safeguard Britain’s credit rating. I know that we are taking a political gamble to set this up as a measure of success.” A gamble it was and how it has backfired on the Chancellor. Tonight, Moody’s became the first rating agency to strip the UK of its AAA credit rating (downgrading it to AA1), citing the “continuing weakness” in the UK’s growth outlook and its “high and rising debt burden”.

For Osborne, who chose to make our credit rating the ultimate metric of economic stability, it is a humiliating moment. Not my words, but his. During one of his rhetorical assaults against Labour in August 2009, he warned: “Britain faces the humiliating possibility of losing its international credit rating”. Rarely before or after becoming Chancellor, did Osborne miss an opportunity to remind us just how important he thought the retention of our AAA rating was.

…

By Osborne’s own logic, then, his deficit plan is no longer credible.

…

The economic consequences of the downgrade are unlikely to be significant. France and the US, for instance, have seen no rise in their borrowing costs since losing their AAA ratings (in fact, yields on US and French bonds have fallen). All the evidence we have suggests that the market is prepared to lend to countries that can borrow in their own currencies (such as the UK) and that enjoy the benefits of an independent monetary policy, regardless of their credit ratings or their debt levels. But the politics of the downgrade are toxic for Osborne.

Still, you might ask, why should we listen to Moody’s, the agency that gave AIG an AAA rating just a month before it collapsed? The answer is simple: we shouldn’t. But this doesn’t alter the fact that Osborne did. For political purposes, he used Britain’s credit rating as a stick to beat Labour with. He can hardly complain if others now use this move against him. Tonight, the Chancellor has been hoist with his own petard.

“I don’t care what the ratings agencies think about anything, but if it’s a stark reminder of anything it’s a stark reminder that you’re the stupidest fucking person on the face of the planet.”- Atrios

“Often “austerity” and the “need” for budget cuts are just excuses to kicks the poors and olds and ram through whatever horrible agenda you wanted to ram through in the first place. But I think the simpleton Gideon Osborne really believes it. He likes kicking the olds and the poors too, but he’ll nonetheless be proved fucking right.

And for some reason Labour is unwilling to just say Shit Is Fucked Up And Bullshit, austerity bites, and we gotta step on the gas.”- Atrios

The condensed Moody’s downgrade

By Alex Hern, New Statesman

Published 23 February 2013 10:43

Some will focus on the fact that Moody’s analysis starts with poor growth as the basic factor for Osborne’s failure. Others will note that Moody’s is still a firm advocate of high-speed deficit reduction.

Still others, myself included, will argue that, apart from the fact that the Chancellor has been hoist by his own petard, all the news really does is prove yet again that ratings agencies aren’t very good at their jobs. Moody’s recognises that Britain’s economic travails stem from depressed growth, but its analysis seems incapable of progressing on from there. Taken as a whole, the agency is saying, with a straight face, that “Britain’s attempts to cut its debt have harmed its attempts to cut its debt, and this could harm its attempts to cut its debt”, and it sees nothing problematic with that.

Really, nothing in Moody’s analysis matters. The only important part of it is that one missing A, and the effect that has on Osborne’s credibility.

Ikea withdraws meatballs in Europe, 21 nations hit

By Karl Ritter, Associated Press

February 25, 2013

Ikea’s North America branch said the U.S. stores get their meatballs from a U.S. supplier.

“Based on the results of our mapping, we can confirm that the contents of the meatballs follow the Ikea recipe and contain only beef and pork from animals raised in the U.S. and Canada,” Ikea North America spokeswoman Mona Astra Liss said in a statement.

Ikea is known for its assemble-it-yourself furniture but its trademark blue-and-yellow megastores also have cafeteria-style restaurants offering Swedish dishes such as meatballs served with boiled or mashed potatoes, gravy and lingonberry jam.

European Union officials met Monday to discuss tougher food labeling rules after the discovery of horse meat in a wide range of frozen supermarket meals that were supposed to contain beef or pork. So far those foods include meatballs, burgers, kebabs, lasagna, pizza, tortelloni, ravioli, empanadas and meat pies, among other items.

So not the drones you are looking for.

Robert Gibbs: I was told not to ‘acknowledge’ drones

By KATIE GLUECK, Politico

2/25/13 8:14 AM EST

“Here’s what’s inherently crazy about that proposition,” he said. “You’re being asked a question based on reporting of a program that exists. So you’re the official government spokesperson acting as if the entire program … pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. I think in many ways and I think what the president has seen – and I have not talked to him about this, I want to be careful. This is my opinion. But I think what the president has seen is our denial of the existence of the program when it’s obviously happening undermines people’s confidence overall in the decisions that their government makes.”

The Future of War in the Developed World

by Ian Welsh

2013 February 23

(T)he US military, the most expensive, most powerful military in the world, lost in Iraq (they had to pay bribes to leave). They are losing in Afghanistan.  In Mexico the state has been unable to control drug gangs.  In Lebanon, the IDF, the most powerful military in the Middle East, was defeated by Hezbollah. Hezbollah also won the e-lint war against the IDF.

Technology is not necessarily on the side of the great powers, of the big armies.  IEDs are cheap, any halfway competent mechanic can make them with materials that are readily available even in Afghanistan.

…

They are weapons whose widespread use can and will destroy nations by destroying the peace and stability required for prosperity and normal life.

But they are very, very effective.  They will work in virtually any nation if a large enough portion of the population wants them to work.

Do not think that the more intelligent members of current elites don’t know this. They understand what many on the left don’t: that first world militaries can be defeated, have been defeated, and that it can happen in their own countries.

And I suspect they are very very scared.  The surveillance state, routine assassinations by the executive, the loss of habeas corpus, and so on, are their response.  Total surveillance, and the ability to take people out anywhere, any time, is their answer, which is why I keep saying that I will know people are serious about revolution when they take out surveillance systems as a matter of routine, when surveillance becomes ethically anathema.

…

(M)ilitaries are very fightable, but such fights leave countries in ruins.  If the elites continue on their current course, in many first world countries, Iraq and Afghanistan and Mexico are the future.  People with no future will fight, and too many people now know how this form of war works.

This is the future of war.  If elites continue on their path of unaccountability, their insistence on destroying the future, and their crushing of prosperity, this is what will happen.

“The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.”- Mao Tse-Tung

Pentagon Orders F-35 Jets Grounded

By CHRISTOPHER DREW, The New York Times

Published: February 22, 2013

The suspension of flights comes at an awkward time for the military, which is facing automatic budget cuts that could slow its purchases of the planes.

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The Pentagon estimates that it could spend as much as $396 billion to buy 2,456 of the jets by the late 2030s. But the program, the most expensive in military history, has been plagued by cost overruns and delays, and it could easily become a target for budget cutters.

…

The F-35 was conceived as the Pentagon’s silver bullet in the sky – a state-of-the art aircraft with advances that would easily overcome the defenses of most foes. The radar-evading jets would dodge sophisticated antiaircraft missiles and give pilots a better picture of enemy threats while enabling allies, who want the planes, too, to fight more closely with American forces.

But the ambitious aircraft instead illustrates how the Pentagon can let huge and complex programs veer out of control. The program has run into other technical problems and nearly doubled in cost as Lockheed and the military’s own bureaucracy failed to deliver on the most basic promise of a three-in-one jet that would save taxpayers money and be delivered speedily.

Of course I stole it.  I believe in Capitalism!  And ‘Free Markets’!

Are you ready?  Here it is-

Watch CNBC like a hawk and whenever they mention a stock, short it.

I’ve cleaned the links up a little and added some emphasis.- ek

Yes, Katrina, Wall Street Won Again, and Progressives Need to Face Up to That

Dave Dayen, Naked Capitalism

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation, got very upset at my characterization of the task force (Residential Mortgage Backed Securities Working Group), and scolded me for taking a “victory lap.”

…

Vanden Heuvel closes by linking to reporting from The Nation that’s five months old and actually says nothing about targets of the task force, as she claims. My favorite statement of hers about the potential value of the task force is when she says it has a significant “pending congressional appropriation.” A pending appropriation! Because everyone knows that in an age of sequestration, where every federal line item is due for a 6% haircut in a couple weeks, this is the perfect time for new congressional appropriations to take root! Just ask the House Republicans!

…

I’m sure the Administration trembles at the pressuring from the groups that sent out glowing press releases a year ago about the “real leadership” shown by the President in announcing a task force that, by this own admission, carried no guarantee of resources or prioritization.

Look, nobody likes having to admit they’ve been duped. But I reject the assertion that there are only two courses of action here, that “we can either fight to see that this investigation is real or we can take our ball and go home.” That fight over the investigation is doomed. What would be useful is to examine the role of these DC progressive groups, who continue to build coalitions aimed at “pressuring” the White House and who continue to fail in spectacular fashion.

Well-meaning people all over this country concerned about any number of issues hand over their hard-earned money to these groups, and they aim to speak broadly for liberal values. The accountability doesn’t stop on Wall Street. It needs to be shared by the DC progressive community. I’ve gotten enough correspondence in the wake of my Salon piece to know that the majority of them now believe they were fooled, vanden Heuvel’s bravado notwithstanding. It would be incredibly worthwhile to exercise some self-examination at this point, to question the entire value of building these ad hoc organizations at the edges of the halls of power, and then working through polite channels and gentle nudges to get as much progress as possible, as long as it doesn’t disrupt being able to sit in on meetings with senior Administration officials and the like.

We talk a lot about broken models. The DC progressive model is broken. It does nothing but facilitate the injustices readily evident in this case. A good use of time at the next board meeting would consist of a moment of self-examination, and maybe entertaining a motion for dissolution. Those of us demanding justice and accountability will always have to fight for it, and maybe next time we could use some colleagues with more than a squirt gun.

Guantánamo trials plunged into deeper discord as confidence in court wanes

Chris McGreal, The Guardian

Sunday 17 February 2013 11.46 EST

In recent days, the commander of the Guantánamo prison, Colonel John Bogdan, was forced to admit on the witness stand that secret listening devices disguised as smoke detectors were installed in the cell where lawyers met their clients, and that he knew nothing about them.

…

“I said, Mr Guard, is that a listening device, and he said, ‘Of course not’,” she said. “Well, guess what, judge? It’s a listening device”

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The prison’s lawyer, Captain Thomas Welsh, told the court he discovered the room was fitted with hidden microphones early last year and reported it to the then warden, Colonel Donnie Thomas, to seek assurances that meetings between the accused and their lawyers were not being spied on.

Bogdan said he was not informed when he took over. He told the court that the FBI was in control of the room until 2008 and that he has since discovered that the bugs were accidentally disconnected in October during renovations but then secretly reconnected by an unnamed intelligence service two months later, suggesting they were still in use.

Bogdan denied that the microphones were eavesdropping on lawyers. “We understood that any listening to an attorney-client meeting is prohibited,” he said.

…

That followed a strange incident at a hearing last month when the audio feed from the courtroom to the public and reporters was suddenly cut when a defence lawyer made a reference to torture in an unclassified motion arguing that CIA “black sites” in Poland, Afghanistan and Romania, used to interrogate and torture abducted suspects, be preserved.

The judge, Colonel James Pohl, was caught unawares and demanded to know who had cut the feed. It transpired that an unnamed intelligence agency was monitoring proceedings from an unspecified location and decided to censor the hearing, a privilege Pohl said was reserved exclusively for him.

…

Defence lawyers also accused the prison authorities of using cell searches to seize confidential legal documents. Attorneys for three of the accused – Mohammed, Bin Atash and Ramzi Binalshibh – said that the men returned to their cells on Tuesday to discover that the bins they use to store documents had been searched and confidential papers removed.

…

The prison lawyer, Lieutenant Commander George Massucco, confirmed that the documents had been removed and said they would be returned shortly.

…

Eviatar said the military tribunal’s track record is already damaged by the use of torture and CIA black sites in interrogations, and the original Bush plans for the conduct of the trials which were struck down by the supreme court as unconstitutional.

“I think what’s happening really seriously undermines the credibility of the process,” she said. “These are new courts to begin with. The first version of these courts was struck down by the US supreme court so you’re already starting with a lot of scepticism. And this current version hasn’t been tested in the US supreme court yet. But there’s so many problems every step of the way that it’s going to be very hard for anyone to look back and say this was a fair trial.“

Yah think?