Good News On Senator Kennedy

This is good news:

A spokeswoman for Sen. Edward Kennedy says he is conscious and talking to family after he suffered a seizure in his Cape Cod home and was flown to a Boston hospital.   [...]

Spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said he is "conscious, talking, joking with family."

His wife, children and niece Caroline Kennedy are among those with him at the hospital.

Here's to hoping that Ted is back soon, raising hell!

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Our "Intelligence" Agencies at Work

If the potential consequences for our Constitutional rights and national security weren't so dire, the level of incompetence displayed by our government might actually be funny. But this is just pathetic. Wired's Ryan Singel reports on the latest slip-up from the FBI:

Once again, supposedly sensitive information blacked out from a government report turns out to be visible by computer experts armed with the Ctrl-C keys -- and that information turns out to be not very sensitive after all.

This time around, University of Pennsylvania professor Matt Blaze discovered that the Justice Department's Inspector General's office had failed to adequately obfuscate data in a March report (.pdf) about FBI payments to telecoms to make their legacy phone switches comply with 1995 wiretapping rules. That report detailed how the FBI had finished spending its allotted $500 million to help telephone companies retrofit their old switches to make them compliant with the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act or CALEA-- even as federal wiretaps target cell phones more than 90 percent of the time.

This isn't the first time the Justice Department has made such an error. In 2007, a U.S. attorney referred to THREAT LEVEL's own David Kravets (then at the AP) as a hacker for discovering similar hidden information in a BALCO steriod case filing. As far back as 2003, a report on minorities in the Justice Department was also vulnerable. The gaffes may seem humorous, but tell that to confidential informants, for whom such a slip-up could be fatal.

Blaze was attempting to copy a table from the PDFed report to send to a student by e-mail. A simple copy and paste of the table into his e-mail program revealed the supposedly redacted material. That's pretty high level security you got there, FBI. To make matters even more ridiculous, the information they were trying to keep secret was ridiculously unimportant.

The FBI paid Verizon $2500 a piece to upgrade 1,140 old telephone switches. Oddly the report didn't redact the total amount paid to the telecom -- slightly more than $2.9 million dollars -- but somehow the bad guys will win if they knew the number of switches and the cost paid....

Other nuggets? Hidden info in a blacked out screenshot of the FBI's wiretapping help line complaint management software reveals that even wiretappers have IT problems.

Cops in Montgomery County, Maryland had trouble right after Christmas in 2007 getting wiretap info delivered. Not far away in Baltimore (the honorary wiretap capital of the U.S.), cops had problems just before Christmas using the FBI's database of cell towers, which help cops figure out target's location and movements. Kenner, Louisiana cops just wanted a user name and password to chat in the Law Enforcement forum on ASKCalea.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, one is sure to see a crime wave across the country.

These are the people we're supposed to trust with our safety.

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Limbaugh Burned By The Google: Uses 10th Graders
Essay To Attack Obama

It’s no secret that the right STILL hasn’t figured out how to effectively use the internets, so it comes as no surprise that the Grand Poobah of right wing radio douche bags, Rush Limbaugh, has made a complete fool of himself by using a 12 year old essay by a 10th grader to attack Democratic [...]

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http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/05/17/limbaugh-burned-by-the-google-uses-10th-
graders-essay-to-attack-obama/

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Tunnels of the Underclass

Edwards? most famous speech is his Two Americas speech. I listen to Edwards and it echoes through me and sets off resonances. My life is not his life?my parents were rich, then poor, then middle class during my life.When I think of class issues I think[...]

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http://firedoglake.com/2008/05/17/tunnels-of-the-underclass/

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Idaho Republicans in Disarray

When they're hurting in Idaho, you know they're hurting everywhere. We've already seen the grassroots revolt in the works on the part of Paul supporters. But the fissures in the Idaho party run deeper. At the core of the party split is a fight over Idaho's primary system between the state central committee and many elected officials.

The battle came to a head this week, causing one Idaho observer to take note of the strong contrast between a united Democratic party in Idaho, and the Republican infighting [sub. required]:

With Obama at the top of the ticket, Democrats head into what promises to be a very good year for their party in congressional and state races across the nation with reason for hope.

Meanwhile, Republicans are still feuding. Their state central committee, comprising people elected locally, finally succeeded in forcing the party to sue a state government dominated by Republicans to require voters to go on record as Republicans before voting in party primaries. Statewide elected officials, GOP Chairman Kirk Sullivan and legislators had resisted both closed primaries and the lawsuit.

Monday, it appeared that resistance had not been fully overcome. Although the suit was filed a month earlier, it turned out state government had yet to be served with the paperwork, which would begin actual legal maneuvering. Worse, party officials gave differing reasons for the delay....

Is this conflict surprising? Not really. When any party has as large a majority as the Gem State GOP currently has, factions are bound to emerge, and eventually to collide. But this year in Idaho, Democrats have reason to give thanks that their own unity is not reflected in the party whose hold on power they intend to weaken.

The Democratic party is unified in Idaho, with a slate of legislative candidates that could be larger, but is still respectable. More importantly, they have two serious federal candidates in Walt Minnick (ID-01) and Larry LaRocco (ID-Sen), both of whom have been busy over the last few months criss-crossing the state to reach out to voters. There's also the Obama factor--Idahoans turned out in historic numbers to give Obama nearly 80% of the caucus vote. With him at the top of the ticket in November, you'd think even Idaho Republicans would start paying a bit of attention to the mood of the populace.

Instead, the state's leading candidates for federal office are displaying a degree of arrogance that would be surprising if it were coming anywhere but from Idaho Republicans. That arrogance has the potential to bite them with their own base. Both incumbent Rep. Bill Sali and leading Senate candidate Jim Risch are refusing to participate in primary debates.

Sali has backed out of tomorrow's debate sponsored by the League of Women voters on Idaho Public Television--the only one broadcast statewide--because he "just couldn't make it work in the schedule." Likewise, front-running Senate candidate Jim Risch refused to participate in the primary debate on IPTV, because he "didn't like the format, which allows for interplay between candidates that he fears could become negative."

Instead, Risch chose to participate in a debate by the most favorable of Idaho's media outlets, the NBC affiliate. Not only did they promise a format that was more to his liking--he wouldn't be challenged by his challengers--they controlled the audience, keeping out other political reporters.

Among those barred were the Associated Press, an Idaho Statesman reporter and independent candidate Rex Rammell, who parked a campaign bus outside the 1,500-seat Swayne Auditorium.

Quary said KTVB News Director Jim Gilchriest told him to exclude from auditorium access anyone not the list. Quary said Gilchriest told him he was too busy to talk to a Statesman reporter, who arrived a half-hour early about covering the only scheduled debate featuring front-running Lt. Gov. Jim Risch.

So let's review. The Republican party apparatus is at war with Republican elected officials. There's a grassroots movement by Ron Paul supporters who feel shut out of the party to take over precinct committee seats. The two leading federal candidates have blown off their responsibility to their base constituents by refusing to debate their primary. For the icing on the cake, Jim Risch has made some powerful enemies by shutting out key Idaho political reporters.

The national Republican party in a microcosm, arrogant and out of touch. That's a deadly combination in the face of a energized Democratic party and an electorate that's demanding change. Even in Idaho.

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U.S. planning big new prison in Afghanistan.

In “a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come,” the New York Times reports today that “the Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex” at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan. As Justin Peters notes at Slate, the Times’ article doesn’t reveal until its final paragraphs that “some detainees have been held without charge for more than five years” at the current Bagram detention facility:

Military personnel who know both Bagram and Guantánamo describe the Afghan site, 40 miles north of Kabul, as far more spartan. Bagram prisoners have fewer privileges, less ability to contest their detention and no access to lawyers.

Some detainees have been held without charge for more than five years, officials said. As of April, about 10 juveniles were being held at Bagram, according to a recent American report to a United Nations committee.

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http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/17/us-planning-big-new-prison-in-afghanistan/

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The Lack Of Integrity Of The Pledged Delegate
System

As we have known for a long time, the Democratic delegate selection process is a travesty. Starting with the disenfranchising caucus system, which shuts out legions of voters from the process, to the unbalanced proportional system of awarding delegates by congressional district (which produces such perverse results like a candidate winning 60% of the vote in a district receiving the same amount of delegates and a different candidate receiving 60% of the delegates with a 50.1% of the vote in another district), to the overweighting of regions arbitrarily and haphazardly (for example, in Nevada rural district were overweighted, in Texas urban districts were overweighted), to awarding low turnout states disproportional representation to high turnout states, the entire system is a travesty of democracy.

Let me put it bluntly, anyone holding up the pledged delegate count as representing the "will of the people" is simply full of it. It does not. It thwarts the will of the people. BY DESIGN. Now we have the latest bit of evidence that the pledged delegate system is a total crock:

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama succeeded in driving more supporters to the Nevada state convention than his opponent U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, who had won the state in the Jan. 19 caucuses. Obama essentially reversed Clinton’s lead from the caucuses, capturing 55 percent of the state delegates to Clinton’s 45 percent.

Remember when the likes of Kid Oakland and TINS were screaming about voter disenfranchisement at the Nevada caucuses in January? How about this utter disregard for those votes? Will there be any honest person in the Obama supporters camp willing to address this disgrace? Of course not. They will whoop it up.

This is a disgusting spectacle. A travesty of democracy. And to hear Donna Brazile and her ilk justify their ego driven blocking of the seating of the Florida and Michigan delegations in the face of this incontrovertible evidence that the RULZ are a disgrace just burns me up.

In my opinion, Barack Obama will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. At this point I believe he is the choice, by a very narrow margin, of the will of the people as I believe he still leads in the popular vote. But never forget this, the Democratic Party has shamed itself with its disregard for democracy and voters.

This disgraceful system can not stand any more after this nomination process is over.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only.

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Six McCain Lobbyists Down...

In the past week, six lobbyists have resigned from the McCain campaign under questions about their ties to foreign regimes and corporate interests. Doug Goodyear and Doug Davenport - both high level aides - resigned over their ties to the Burmese junta.[...]

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Hillarys Gift to Women

Oh my: “It’s important–even kind of exhilarating–for women to embrace their inner bitch”©2008 Garling Gauge. All Rights Reserved..

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Was Gandhi an Anarchist

Was Gandhi an Anarchist?
Visionary promoted decentralized, direct democracy as key to peace; power resides in the individual and in self-rule

By Josh Fattal
(View Original)

Anarchy is about abolishing hierarchy. According to the original, Greek meaning of the word, Anarchy stands to create a world where there is no separation between the rulers and the ruled--a place where everyone rules themselves. (An-archy in Greek means without rulers.) An anarchic vision of society is nonviolent, self-managed and non-hierarchical, and Anarchist thinkers hold dear to the ideal of democracy--rule by the people. They suggest political confederations of local organizations; a "commune of communes" was how the 19th century Parisians Anarchists articulated it. Anarchists seek to dissolve power instead of seize it. Therefore, they seek a social revolution instead of a political one. The social revolution throws into question all aspects of social life including family organization, schooling, religion, crime and punishment, technology, political organization, patriarchy, environmental concerns as well as others. Anarchists are identified "as enemies of the State," because they do oppose the existence of a hierarchical, top-down State.

Mohandas Gandhi opposed the State. The State is the military, police, prisons, courts, tax collectors, and bureaucrats. He saw the State as concentrated violence. "The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence." Gandhi recognized that the State claims to serve the nation, but he realized that this was a fallacy. "While apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, [the State] does the greatest harm to mankind."1

According to Dr. Dhawan, Gandhi was a philosophical Anarchist because he believed that the "[the greatest good of all] can be realized only in the classless, stateless democracy."2 While Gandhi advocated democracy, he differentiated between direct democracy and western democracy. Commenting on the parliamentary system, Gandhi says, "If India copies England, it is my firm conviction that she will be ruined. Parliaments are merely emblems of slavery."3 He had no more appetite for majority democracy of America, "It is a superstition and an ungodly thing to believe that an act of a majority binds a minority."4 By centralizing power, western democracies feed into violence. Thus, he thought decentralization was the key to world peace.

In Gandhi?s view all the political power that was concentrated in the State apparatus could be dissolved down to every last individual. He stated "Power resides in the people, they can use it at any time."5 Reiterating the idea of Anarchy, Gandhi said, "In such a state (of affairs), everyone is his own rulers. He rules himself in such a manner that he is never a hindrance to his neighbor."6 Gandhi had no illusions about the enormity of the task, but he took it on anyways. He believed that by reforming enough individuals and communities, society at large will change. Gandhi?s concept of swaraj elucidates the connection between the individual and society.

Swaraj translates into "self-rule" or "autonomy". For Gandhi, every individual had to take steps towards self-rule in their lives; then India would naturally move towards self-rule as a nation. Gandhi insisted, "Everyone will have to take [swaraj] for himself."7 He continued, "If we become free, India becomes free and in this thought you have a definition of swaraj. It is swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves." 8

Gandhi angered some of his cohorts by extending his notion of power and swaraj to the history of colonization. While acknowledging the British Empire?s cynical intentions in India, he places the responsibility of the disaster of colonization on the India people. "It is truer to say that we gave India to the English than that India was lost... to blame them for this is to perpetuate their power."9 Because power resides in the people and they can only lose it by relinquishing their own power (often through coercion by others), petitions to the government get a new meaning with Gandhi. "A petition of an equal is a sign of courtesy; a petition from a slave is a symbol of his slavery." Gandhi will petition the government as an equal and he used love-force to back himself up. "Love-force can thus be stated: ?if you do not concede our demand, we will be no longer your petitioner. You can govern us only so long as we remain the governed; we shall no longer have any dealings with you.?"10

"The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence."
-Mahatma Gandhi

The principle of swaraj ultimately leads to a grassroots, bottom-up, "oceanic circle" of self-ruling communities. In 1946, Gandhi explained this vision:

"Independence begins at the bottom... It follows, therefore, that every village has to be self-sustained and capable of managing its own affairs... It will be trained and prepared to perish in the attempt to defend itself against any onslaught from without... This does not exclude dependence on and willing help from neighbors or from the world. It will be a free and voluntary play of mutual forces... In this structure composed of innumerable villages, there will be every-widening, never ascending circles. Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom. But it will be an oceanic circle whose center will be the individual. Therefore, the outermost circumference will not wield power to crush the inner circle but will give strength to all within and derive its own strength from it."11

In apparent contradiction to these ideals, Gandhi battled for national liberation and he expressed a lot of patriotism towards Indian civilization. He redefined the terms ?nationalism? and ?patriotism? to fit his vision. Nationalism, for instance, meant many different things. Gandhi said, "Every Indian whether he owns up to it or not, has national aspirations--but there are as many opinions as there are Indian Nationalists as to the exact meaning of that aspiration."12 Gandhi?s nationalism stood to disband the Congress Party upon independence, "Its task is done. The next task is to move into villages and revitalize life there to build a new socio-economic structure from the bottom upwards."13 He also understood patriotism differently than his contemporaries, "by patriotism, I mean the welfare of the whole people."14

But Congress did not disband after independence in 1947. Gandhi recognized that there would be a national government, and his anarchic, oceanic circle would not yet be possible. Nevertheless, he used the terms of nationalism to move towards the ideal of Anarchy. He advocated for a minimal level of State organization to fund some education programs and to promote his economic concept of trusteeship. Hence, Gandhi was a compromising Anarchist.

To Gandhi, ideas were worth having. He defended his vision of Anarchy in India on this point, "It may be taunted with the retort that this is all Utopian and, therefore, not worth a single thought... Let India live for the true picture, though never realizable in its completeness. We must have a proper picture of what we want, before we can have something approaching it."15

By trying to understand Gandhi?s worldview, certain questions jump out with contemporary relevance. First off, what is our culturally appropriate "utopian" picture of America or of the communities in which we live? Secondly, what practical steps can we make towards swaraj amidst the current global empire? Finally, if Gandhi is right that all power resides in individuals, and that power is derived from an "indomitable will" than how do we reclaim the latent power within us, both individually and collectively?

References:

Institute for Social Ecology: online library at http://tinyurl.com/8au7e

Guerin, Daniel. Anarchism. http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1931/guerin/contents.html

Bhattacharyya, Buddhadeva. Evolution of the Political Philosophy of Gandhi. Calcutta Book House: Calcutta, 1969.

Jesudasan, Ignatius. A Gandhian Theology of Liberation. Gujarat Sahitya Prakash: Ananda India, 1987.

Murthy, Srinivasa. Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy Letters. Long Beach Publications: Long Beach, 1987

Parel, Anthony (ed.) Gandhi: Hind Swaraj and other writings. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 1997.

1 Jesudasan, Ignatius. A Gandhian Theology of Liberation. Gujarat Sahitya Prakash: Ananda India, 1987. pp. 236-237.

2 Bhattacharyya, Buddhadeva. Evolution of the Political Philosophy of Gandhi. Calcutta Book House: Calcutta, 1969. p.479

3 Parel, Anthony (ed.) Hind Swaraj and other writings of M.K. Gandhi. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 1997. p. 38

4 Ibid. p. 92

5 Jesudasan, Ignatius. A Gandhian Theology of Liberation. Gujarat Sahitya Prakash: Ananda India, 1987. pp. 251.

6 Murthy, Srinivasa. Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy Letters. Long Beach Publications: Long Beach, 1987. p. 13.

7 Ibid. p. 112. 8 Ibid. p. 73. 9 Ibid. p. 41. 10 Ibid. p. 85. 11 Ibid. p. 189.

12 Murthy, Srinivasa. Mahatma Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy Letters. Long Beach Publications: Long Beach, 1987. p. 40.

13 Jesudasan, Ignatius. A Gandhian Theology of Liberation. Gujarat Sahitya Prakash: Ananda India, 1987. p. 225.

14 Parel, Anthony (ed.) Hind Swaraj and other writings of M.K. Gandhi. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 1997. p. 77.

15 Ibid. p. 189.

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