Secrecy, Scandals, and Snowden

This is a bit contrary to the usual progressive stance on the latest NSA data collection revelations. Although I believe that the legal system that is in place might very well be infringing on our Fourth-Amendment rights, I don't see a major scandal here. Rather, I see an opportunity highlight the danger of excessive secrecy.

Back in September 2008, after giving birth to by book, No Stranger To Strange Lands, had sadly come to an end, I felt like the only way to rid myself of a sense of post-partum depression was to keep writing, indulging myself in writing an undisciplined screed titled Secrecy, Democracy,and Fascism: Lessons From History. Having been watching a lot of episodes of House, the theme was to discover the disease that was manifesting itself as through the unfortunate symptom of runaway conspiracy theories and, I was arguing, unwarranted distrust of the government. "Mis-diagnosing the disease, "I wrote, "can be as bad or worse than just ignoring it." I was deeply troubled by such issues as Karl Rove's plan to politicize the judiciary and create one-party rule, Dick Cheney's penchant for secrecy and his abuse of power in lashing out against Joe Wilson for outing the administration's flawed argument for going to war in Iraq, and George Bush's excessive use of signing statements, and I decided to take a look at what critical terms Like "tyranny" and "fascism" that were being bandied about really meant — what it was that our failing democracy was becoming. The issue of secrecy seemed to me to be one of the greatest forces eroding at democracy, which depends upon informed citizens to function properly. Secrecy also erodes trust, and a crisis in trust can turn into an earthquake, catastrophically tearing apart the foundation of democracy.

Barack Hussein Obama would soon be elected president, and I supported him, believing in his promise to do things differently. Of course, his decision, upon winning the Democratic Party primary, to eschew public financing, which was contrary to what he had previously said, was an early disappointment, but after all, the man would most likely be outspent by the Republican Party if he didn't. His cozying up to the banking community right out of the gate was the next sign that things would not be all that different, yet I rationalized that it was something President Obama had to do to gain the trust of the elites and show that he was not going to be a wild-eyed radical. Obama's June 2009 Cairo speech was inspiring, but then came the surreal moment in December 2009 of his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, where he rationalized expanding the war in Afghanistan rather than trying to put an end to it, at which time I went a little crazy trying to make defend him from so many people around me who felt totally betrayed by him. Obama refused to put the single-payer option on the table during the healthcare-reform debate, Guantanamo has continued to be a black stain on the idea of the United States being a shining beacon of freedom and justice, the prison-industrial complex has only grown more robust, and the president has continually disappoint progressives in many other ways, with the latest anger-inducing policies being the drone attacks and the Justice Department's aggression toward whistle-blowers and journalists... and yet... And yet, Obama remains a champion of many progressive causes.

Now we have the NSA spying story dropping like a bomb and blowing up in the face of any progressives still trying their best to find a way to defend Barack Obama against social conservatives and libertarians who long ago judged the president to be the enemy of Freedom and the "American Way."

Yes, the metadata collection is troubling for its scope and secrecy. Given the questionable constitutionality of the targeted killings that the Obama Administration and Attorney General Eric Holder claim are legal under the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists Resolution" passed by Congress shortly after 9/11, there are certainly grounds for concern about what the NSA is up to. However, I feel like the breaking stories in the Guardian and the Washington Post are a bit heavy on the hype and light on the context and possibly the facts – although this does highlight the problem of secrecy making facts hard to come by. I can't help but agree with David Simon, creator of The Wire, who posted an article titled We are shocked, shocked... on his blog, and his assessment of what the problems that need to be solved are, which I have bolded:

When the Guardian, or the Washington Post or the New York Times editorial board — which displayed an astonishing ignorance of the realities of modern electronic surveillance in its quick, shallow wade into this non-controversy — are able to cite the misuse of the data for reasons other than the interception of terrorist communication, or to show that Americans actually had their communications monitored without sufficient probable cause and judicial review and approval of that monitoring, then we will have ourselves a nice, workable scandal. It can certainly happen, and given that the tension between national security and privacy is certain and constant, it probably will happen at points. And in fairness, having the FISA courts rulings so hidden from citizen review, makes even the discovery of such misuse problematic. The internal review of that court’s rulings needs to be somehow aggressive and independent, while still preserving national security secrets. That’s very tricky.

The original breaking stories in the Guardian and the Washington Post did require some revision that removed a good deal of explosive power. Ed Bott at ZDNet has the details:

Crucially, the Post removed the “knowingly participated” language and also scrubbed a reference to the program as being “highly classified.” In addition, a detail in the opening graf that claimed the NSA could “track a person’s movements and contacts over time” was changed to read simply “track foreign targets.”

I also tend to agree with William Connolley's analysis:

I can’t tell where the truth lies, but I suspect that the Graun [Guardian] has indulged in what Wiki would call “Original Research”, which is to say connecting the dots a bit further than the sources permit. This is the key slide, and the key words are “Collection directly from the servers of…”. Weeell, its only a powerpoint slide, hardly a careful analysis. It looks like the real meaning of “directly from the servers of” is actually “we put in requests, following the law, and they comply with that law by providing data”. Which is a very different thing to direct access. The former is known and boring (even if you don’t like it); the latter would be new. The Graun knows about the distinction and is definitely claiming the latter (they have to be, otherwise there is no story): Companies are legally obliged to comply with requests for users’ communications under US law, but the Prism program allows the intelligence services direct access to the companies’ servers.

I especially agree with this science writer's assessment of whistleblower Edward Snowden. Although he is in favor of whistleblowers, he thinks praise of this one is premature, because "some of the stuff the Graun has him saying makes him sound rather tin-foil-hat to me." And John Michael McGrath at Hazlitt has a similar opinion.

There are real, heroic whistleblowers, like Joe Wilson, CIA torture whistleblower John Kiriakou, Julian Assange, and Bradley Manning, who have outed secrets that are secret because they are illegal and deplorable, and then there are fake whistleblowers, such as John Dodson, who engage in illegal and unethical acts themselves then pretend to be victims of government political persecution. I'm not saying that I think Snowden is as bad as Dodson... but I'm sorry; this guy's story just doesn't quite sit right with me, and I am very interested to find out if all of the claims he has made can be confirmed. He was a supporter of Ron Paul, which means he is not a fan of Big Government, even though he made awfully good money working in the spy business (well, according to his now-former employer, not as much as he claimed – so there's one possible crack in his story). Maybe he thinks he is another Bradley Manning, but all he actually did was out corporations for how they share data with the government, rather than proving the government to be acting outside of the given laws, which I don't believe are totally constitutional. Unfortunately, case law says otherwise. I would say that the massive amount of electronic data collected and stored by the government—at great expense—is rather scandalous, but that news doesn't seem to have made nearly as much of a splash.

And what does it say that we keep using Google and Facebook—by choice—despite all the grumbling about how the corporations are spying on us? The fact that it is totally and completely fine for corporations to collect this data is more maddening to me than that the government is doing it, because of the two, I believe it is easier to hold the government accountable. In fact, it is the government that is charged with keeping corporations from invasions of privacy, such as when Google got carried away collecting information for its Street View mapping project.

Although the NSA disclosure is probably a good thing for bringing about a national conversation about how the agency gathers information, this isn't warrantless wiretapping, which is what the G.W. Bush Administration was up to with the President's Surveillance Program under the legal guidance of Office of Legal Counsel Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo. According to a 2009 report by the Office of Inspectors General, James Comey, Patrick Philbin, and Jack Goldsmith eventually challenged this legal counsel, concluding that "Yoo's memoranda did not accurately describe some of the Other Intelligence Activities that were being conducted under the Presidential Authorizations implementing the PSP, and that the memoranda therefore did not provide a basis for finding that these activities were legal," which led to a dramatic hospital-room standoff pitting Andrew Card and Alberto Gonzales against the three DOJ challengers to the program followed the next day by the threat of mass DOJ resignations.

Until we hear of this kind of internal dissent, I am not sure that it is true that the United States is on a "slippery slope to totalitarianism," as many have been claiming. And I really resent all those "Orwell: I told you so" slogans I am seeing, because George Orwell's dystopia was far more fucked up than this. The spying was total and complete. Judging by all the crazy shit that is allowed to be said about the president and the government, there is nothing close to the Thought Police in the United States. The Cult of Personality thing hasn't exactly panned out like fearmongers have said it would during the 2008 elections... and nobody has come after anybody's guns.

I suggest we talk about strengthening the safeguards in the system, try to remove some of the unnecessary layers of secrecy and wait and see just how our government deals with this individual before assuming that a vicious attack or smear campaign takes place.

Richie Haven's Magic Lives On

Sad news: Richie Havens died yesterday, 22 April, 2013. I am so glad to have had a chance to see him perform. I can truly say that Richie Havens touched my life deeply with his passion and beauty. Here is an article I wrote about the experience, which was about a month before Jamie and I flew to Buenos Aires to begin our South America adventure.

Richie Havens Magic

March 2009
Valdosta, Georgia, USA

Richie Havens performed along with an accompanist on guitar at the Suwannee Springfest back in March 2009, and I was lucky enough to get to see him. What a beautiful, shining example of a Wonderful Human Being he is! Jamie and I were standing together down in the amphitheater, and a good friend came and enjoyed the show with us, and then another beautiful friend found us, too. The whole incident was about peace and love and compassion, and was truly a moving experience.

I hadn’t previously known who Richie Havens was. Our young friend knew because of her parents’ record collection. All the older hippie types at the festival knew very well who he was – Jamie had been very excited to see him. He had explained to me that Richie Havens is the guy who sings, “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” I didn’t know what that was all about, but as soon as the man started strumming his guitar with his intense energy, and then singing with his unique voice, so urgently insistent upon empathy and caring, I was very happy that he had come to our sweet little music festival there under the live oak trees, all decorated with Spanish moss, amidst the sand and fine black dirt, the results of the same dark leaf matter that stains the meandering Suwannee River black as tea, while a gentle rain did little to dampen the air of wonderment that enveloped us all – a subtle reminder of the power of our gathering to part the clouds and send the majority of the Lioness’ March Furies around us – quite rain that cleanses our hippie-camp sweat and dirty-sand feet, then seeps underground to the river – nourishing spring waters that hearty music lovers know will likely rain down upon us, so be ready to get wet. And then, after the rains move out during the night, the haunting morning mist starts the new day with yoga and hungry children and up-all-night seekers of coffee, and as the day progresses, the hot Florida sun burns the mist away, high clouds fly overhead, sudden, wild gusts of wind steal unsecured hats, and then the evening brings back the calm, the moisture, the changing of the seasons nighttime chill.

The two annual Magnolia Music events at the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park display the very best qualities inherent in the United States of America – they move beyond the realm of the enjoyable and into that of the life-changing experience. They are a coming together of the most amazing community of music lovers in a sacred place, gatherings of just the nicest people you would ever want to meet – a few thousand of them, all happy to be there, sharing the love all around. I am sad if anyone thinks that this lovey-dovey-ness sounds corny, but a good dose of it makes those of us who have been there wish that the whole world could be like this, with everybody friendly and happy and at one with the enjoyment of the whole experience. It works nearly perfectly at the Magnolia Music festivals, similar to how it worked at Woodstock, the original, minus all the chaos of the new and the overwhelming masses, and as it often works when people gather together for something that they enjoy – except that Magnolia Music has the concept down to a fine art, a well-established musical phenomenon and an all-around dependably good time. It’s like going to worship at our lovely, outdoor church, complete with shrines to Bill Monroe and Vassar Clemens, where we camp, relax, and commune with each other and with nature, engaged in long days and late nights full of great performances and campfire gatherings by the most excellent, down-to-earth, heartfelt musicians that few have ever heard of, unless someone previously dragged them to a similar Americana music festival or they happen to be the festival headliner on Friday night, and celebrating the best qualities that humanity has to offer, all without suffering very much beyond maybe some wet clothes, a stubbed toe, lack of sleep, or the pain of having had too much fun the night before.

Literally everyone who is there is happy to be there. The kids love it. The parents love it. The young adults love it, the old hippies, and everyone in all the generations in between love it. The performers love it. Everyone, save perhaps a contrarian or melancholy teen-ager and the local and largely unnecessary security guys, loves it. It refreshes our souls and our very faith in humanity to be there. It is something that a bunch of human beings are actually doing right on this planet. We all gather and have a wonderful time, and then we scatter to the winds and return to normalcy, to the black and white reality of the Kansases we call home. We go back to our own welcoming kitchens and our private bathrooms and our comfy beds and our daily routines, and I know that we all try to live lives that carry out the Spirit of the Suwannee to the rest of the world, to whatever degree we can – the love, the kindness, the all getting along – and that is, indeed a wonderful thing.

But this March 2009 festival was different for Jamie and me, and I have been extra-inspired, partly by Richie Havens, but also by the freedom of not having to depend on making money in the booth that we have had there for the past eleven years (having missed only the very first Springfest). We were free, free, free little birds at this festival, just as we are soon to be expressing the ultimate freedom with our move to Uruguay. We are freeing ourselves from the burdens of possessions. We will be free to make of our lives something different, free to reinvent ourselves, free to truly express ourselves in a way that we have not been free before. For, although those who know Jamie and I well know our general opinions and outlooks, we have been silenced by our need to make sales in our booth, our sole means of income, and even at events like the Magnolia Music festivals, we have only whispered our true feelings. We have been silenced by the unspoken agreement that these festivals are not the place to talk about anything that might cloud everyone’s sunny day with thoughts that are not so happy. It’s not that we don’t know how to have a good time – Jamie is always having a good time, even when he’s not. It’s just that I cannot separate my different experiences of life. I refuse to ignore certain realities that exist. Good times can be had, with the understanding that we must not take those good times for granted, that such good times are not sub-realities of some larger reality, but rather are a part of the continuum of our lives. When we attend our outdoor musical gathering church, we must recognize the healing energy that is generated there, energy that could serve a larger purpose outside the festival bubble, if we would only allow the entirety of life to accompany us inside, if we would learn to connect all of our experiences instead of compartmentalizing, if we could see that the problems of inequity and violence around the world exist, even as we are enjoying our fleeting moments of joy and happiness, even if we choose to ignore it all, and so the way to make the world a better place is not to banish, but to acknowledge all of the world’s suffering by dedicating our celebrations to healing the pain of others as well as of ourselves. I believe that we can change the world with empathy, by being connected, by finding room in our hearts for all of reality simultaneously, by seeing our festivals not as a protective bubble of contentment and good weather amidst the world’s storms, but rather as a generator of energy that emanates from the banks of the Suwannee River up into the atmosphere and interacts with all the other energies that are constantly swirling around the planet Earth.

Richie Havens very much impressed me with his demonstration of our human connectedness, and he also did not shy away from the reality of politics. He was, I now know, a vanguard of the sixties social movement, whose gentle persona still has the power to awaken the soul. He appeared as a mystic, all in black, upon the scenic, beloved, lit-up-at-night amphitheater stage, transforming us all as if with a whisper of wise words and mesmerizingly energetic songs of peace, love, and action. Just seeing him there, still kicking – literally, as in his amazing karate kick at the end of the performance, to prove that he really is a master of great strength and beauty – his spoken words reminded everyone there that he had been a member of the Greenwich Village scene, along with other poets like Bob Dylan, and that along with the feelings of love and peace that we all experienced in those magical moments when he was on stage comes the work of utilizing that energy to change the world around us in a significant way. That is what the sixties social movements were all about, motivated by music and art and drug-induced awakenings of the soul and the exploration of true freedom, with the focus on building more peaceful and open societies, not just engaging in hedonism, as those who are too resistant to all that strangeness and change to actually listen to the deeper message believe.

I felt changed after that performance. Richie Havens lifted away a cloud of concern that I have carried with me at the Magnolia Music events, the troubled feeling that all the magic and wonderment of the festivals was simply a far-too-well-kept secret, a bubble to remain un-popped, to which those of us in the know could turn to for comfort and a little taste of Heaven on Earth. Indeed, especially for those of us who have been living in the Deep South, this has been an oasis in a desert of closed-minded colloquialism and unacknowledged fear of real freedom. And while it has always felt good to recharge the old “soul-ar” battery, to participate in such a harmonious happening, to see that not everyone in this country is brainwashed by the militaristic, exceptionalistic national narrative that the entrenched powers constantly disseminate in order to hoard their power, it has also always bothered me that the bubble has remained so closed, that that glorious energy has not translated into any kind of momentum for wider social change. Even as music festivals have proliferated over the past decade, each one is its own bubble of joy through music, all of them isolated, each its own separate over-the-rainbow, Techni-Color Oz, just dreams to be awakened from to our regular daily grinds, and none of them motivating anyone to do anything social or political, once we drive out the gates and onto the highways with all the other traffic of the world. There has been no call to social action, only murmurs of “Can’t we all just get along?” tucked into sweet love songs and bouncy Donna Cajun rhythms that are impossible not to dance to and be cheered by.

Sweet Magnolia, where everything IS beautiful and we CAN all get along, was the setting for one of the most poignant and bittersweet moments of my life: when the United States began bombing Baghdad, on the eve of Springfest, 2003. I stayed up nearly all night on the eve of the destruction, distraught, wondering how it could come to this, a nation of free people, a supposed democracy and shining beacon on the hill, nearly all of its citizens falling in line behind the unsubstantiated statements of our so-called “leaders,” in reality, fear-mongers, oil and other big industry representatives, war-profiteers, capitalist empire-builders, one and all. If I had learned from reports by experts in the field that the aluminum tubes that were being claimed to be part of a secret, mobile, as-of-yet undetected nuclear bomb factory were actually the wrong kind of tubes for nuclear bomb making, then how did the president of the United States of America not know that? If that president had already been caught red-handed, lying to the world through the mechanism of his hyper-marketing message machine, then how could he be trusted by anyone at all? And when I heard Bill Bennett incredibly, disturbingly, disgustingly, mangle the words of John Lennon, stating that we needed to “give war a chance,” yet there was no outcry of righteous rage that I could register, beyond the knot that tied itself up in my own gut, I became so grief-stricken, so disparaged, that I had looked toward the Springfest with a glimmer of hope that my feelings would be widely expressed and that the missing outrage would materialize in an explosion of anti-war activism that might stop the madness from unfolding.

But, alas, no such thing happened. My heart ached upon hearing people state that this attack may well be all for the best – those were the high times of the “it’s all good” mentality, after all, a mentality that drove inaction and a live-your-own-life sentiment, so that the Bush administration was enabled to get away with all of the undemocratic pillage that they wreaked upon the planet for eight excruciatingly long years. I, too, had participated in not raising a ruckus in the months leading up to then. I had emailed my government representatives, and sent a little bag of rice to the White House along with others who were registering our plea to send food, not bombs. Jamie and I had continued to set up our life-sustaining “magic stand” at those early spring festivals in Florida, where the theme was always fun and sun and good times, and there was no room for ruckuses amongst our slowly declining sales figures, nor for dissent amongst the unabashed Bush administration supporters, confidant that the forces of good inherent in our nation’s character would prevail. My tiny little protests did not make me feel very good about myself, and then I remember driving north past Tampa to Live Oak, and hearing that the student activist, Rachel Corrie, a U.S. citizen, had been run over and killed by an Israeli bulldozer while she was trying to prevent the destruction Palestinian homes and water wells and gardens – my rude awakening to the plight of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government, with the aid and support of the United States of America, home of the free, land of the brave, world leader in the gobbling up of natural resources, and glaring example of what happens when the citizens of a democracy fail to participate in their governance, thus becoming complicit in the running roughshod over poor and beleaguered people all over the world by that same government due to sheer complacency and ignorance of happenings of the wider world.

And so, my solace, the Suwannee Springfest, was a painful disappointment to me that year, when we all only whispered in dark corners about what our nation was doing, largely divorcing ourselves from the reality of the lives that our bombs were destroying. No outcry was heard, at least that I was aware of from inside my little booth/cage, inside the festival bubble, inside the surreality of a country that thinks that it can do no wrong. That dark cloud has haunted me and made me angry from the inside out – to the point that Jamie and I have finally broken free of our gilded cage; free of our cycle of money in, more money out; free of the vast circles driven in pursuit of our own American Dream; free of the necessity for limits on our self-expression; free of the society that has so foiled my visions of what the promise of progress and social change was supposed to entail. I speak out now, inspired by Richie Havens, and by his call, not only for “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” but also for strength of character and purpose, for speaking truth, and for connecting with the larger world around us. We are all connected, as individuals, and we need to all take responsibility for what our government does, because we are our own government. We all must remember, as was the whole point of the emergence of prophets like Richie Havens back in the day, to embrace the political as the personal, because just living our lives in peace and harmony isn’t getting the job promoting peace and preventing wars done. And just watching passively to see what happens won’t help our new president to achieve all that he can. Connect. Engage. Join with Richie Havens, and now the Greatful Dead, and everyone else who is voicing the need for us to keep alive the flame of social change that Barack Hussein Obama’s election ignited.

This final Springfest marked the end of a beautiful thing for Jamie and I, and we both thank everyone who supported our business at the Magnolia festivals through the years – we truly think of everyone at the festivals as our family, and we consider the festivals themselves to be our real “home,” whether we were living in a house somewhere or in our vehicle nowhere in particular. We will very much miss the Spirit of the Suwanee, as expressed by everyone involved in the Magnolia Music events. But we are travelers who must move on or be consumed with the despair of stagnation. We are just wired that way – wired to move on, to explore new horizons, to visit far corners of the world, to detach ourselves from the comforts of a home and the blessings of being surrounded by friends and family. Without such movement, the weight of our world becomes unbearably heavy for us and crushes our souls. But the vacuum of our physical presence amidst the familiar will quickly be filled with a new opportunity for me and Jamie to entertain you all not with personal adornments, the wonders of nature’s artifacts, and other colorful mementos to take home from festivals, but with some of our other skills, such as my writing, and Jamie’s photography. For those of you who don’t know, I actually have a degree in Philosophy: Values and Social Policies, and I guess I have been a frustrated writer for long enough, now – time to de-frustrate myself and open up that proverbial philosophy store I have always dreamed of. Through the wonders of the Internet, we can maintain contacts and remain connected. I am planning to try to keep a journal here of our activities in South America, something along the lines of “Lo Que Pasa en Sudamerica – What’s Up in South America,” just little reminders that “America” encompasses more than just the United States; and that the world is big and diverse and interesting and interconnected; perhaps a little musical reportage; possibly some interviews with people we meet; certainly quite a bit of expatriate gadfliery. We will not be absent, just down south a bit farther, and I am looking forward to sharing the view from there. This is not an act of disconnection so much as it is a reconnection with life’s vital forces, a realigning of our fates, a revival of our spirits. Viva la Vida!

See these sources for information and commentary about Richie Haven and see some of his performances:

Rolling Stone, 22 April, 2013

Richie Havens, Folk Icon, Dead at 72

Brooklyn native opened Woodstock in 1969

Why Evolution is True, 23 April, 2013

Richie Havens died

Singer Richie Havens (b. 1941) died yesterday of a heart attack at age 72. 

 

Overcoming Inertia

Note: This article was written a few weeks ago, but due to some engrossing assignments, I haven’t had time to clean it up and post it. So please accept my apologies for lagging a bit behind in the national conversation. I feel that the main ideas discussed are important, despite this. Thanks to all my readers, Julie


Pre-script: So this commentary is not so out of the loop after all: 
US Aids Honduran Police Despite Death Squad Fears
Urge the Obama Administration and Congress to end all U.S. aid to the Honduran National Police: Just Foreign Policy Action Alert, No Aid to Honduran Death Squads

A report published 30 January 2013 by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that during fiscal years 2008 through 2011, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Aid spent $97 million of the allocated $350 million in support of the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), a spinoff of the 2007 Mérida Initiative that was aimed at fighting drug crime in Mexico and Central America. The funds were funneled through four foreign assistance accounts into programs to “strengthen law enforcement and maritime interdiction capabilities, support capacity building and training programs, and deter and detect border criminal activity,” according to the GAO.

The reaction to the report has ranged from alarm about the amount of money being spent in terms of the difficulty of keeping track of all those resources to alarm about the amount of money being spent in terms of Obama’s “exploding government debt” and his alleged aiding and abetting of corrupt leftist governments that are hostile to the United States. There seems to be very little public support for this kind of foreign drug interdiction, other than from within the agencies involved.

There are, of course, those who are suspicious of everything Obama does for reasons of racism/conservative paranoia who point to the False Flaggy Fake Whistleblowery that is the perceived Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal as proof of the administration’s evil intentions to sell arms to the world’s most dangerous criminals in order to create a situation where they can call a national emergency, swoop in and take away everyone’s guns, and install martial law.

As opposed to the ideology of the right that believes government to be inherently evil and that less government is the best government, there is another view that does not distrust all government, only those aspects of government that act undemocratically, in ways that belie the principles of freedom and human rights. Thus, my reaction to the report was also alarm – about not only the amount of resources being expended but, more deeply troubling, about the militarized response to a social issue and the export of U.S. militarism to this particular area of the world. These Latin American countries have long suffered from social strife due to the underdevelopment caused by exploitation on the part of anyone, foreign or domestic, who is able to manipulate chronically unstable political situations to their own benefit.

Real corruption in Latin America

The social problems faced by nations throughout Latin America are daunting, with deeply ingrained corruption of governing bodies being among the biggest hurdles to improving society. This is corruption of a different magnitude from what goes on in the United States, as the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores set the standard beginning over five hundred years ago, enslaving large populations of indigenous people and creating a system of cruel but not unusual plutocratic rule that would have made even the Robber Barons blush. Things did not change much when the European monarchies were rejected, as the well-entrenched plutocracy, aided, of course, by the Catholic Church, lived on through uprisings and infighting and regional warfare and foreign manipulation – right up to the present.

One indicator of the extent of corruption today is the World Economic Forum’s recently published Global Competition Report for 2012-2013. It provides a thorough analysis of many factors that make for an economically strong nation from the point of view of business executives who are surveyed for much of the information used to compile the report’s index. The health of public and private institutions as perceived by the executives surveyed is the first of the “12 pillars of competitiveness.” Of the Latin American countries included among the 144 nations profiled, only Chile, Uruguay, and Costa Rica achieve overall rankings in the top half of the index, while Panama tops the bottom half at #73. Key to dealing with the crime and corruption caused by the Drug War is the judiciary, and in the subcategory of judicial independence from pressure by politicians, business, and individuals, again excepting Chile, Uruguay, and Costa Rica, Latin American nations do not place well. Even more telling are the subcategories of business costs of crime and violence and business costs of organized crime, where the drug-trade nations of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and several Caribbean nations plus Côte d’Ivoire in Africa make up a solid block at the bottom of the lists. These costs do not harm the businesses as much as the end users, as they are folded into the general costs of doing business and passed on to the consumer – as seen by the fact that Mexico and Colombia, over the past several years, have constantly been touted as having growing investment opportunities and good business environments. Imagine the possibilities for everyone if such costs weren’t simply an assumption for businesses in these countries!

The United States is well aware of the importance of strong government institutions, as recognized by this State Department fact sheet:

Developing Institutional Capacity

One of the key objectives of CARSI is supporting the development of strong, transparent and effective Central American governments and institutions. The violence and impunity of the region’s drug, gang, and criminal organizations present overwhelming challenges to governments already struggling to develop and maintain effective institutions. Central America needs greater investment in rule of law institutions, sufficient government revenues to support social services for the citizens of the region, and the creation of a culture that resists corruption. These investments will build confidence in public officials and government institutions by Central American citizens.

Policy drift

The question is, how effective could whatever these investments are possibly be? I suspect that the emphasis is on training police and prosecutors rather than strengthening the judiciary. The truth of the matter is that changing the culture of corruption of the elite institutions of any country in the world is not something that can be done from the outside, and thinking that pouring money into this kind of oblique effort is exactly what has been going on in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as Mexico and Colombia – to no avail – for several decades, in the latter case. And failing to solve this pernicious problem deems any other improvements in law-enforcement tactics irrelevant.

In fact, a close look at Colombia will deem the notion that this country can be held up as a big-spending Drug War initiative success story to be a total fabrication. From an AP report on what it sees as the U.S. military expansion of its Drug War in Latin America:

U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, pointing to dramatic declines in violence and cocaine production in Colombia, says the strategy works.

"The results are historic and have tremendous implications, not just for the United States and the Western Hemisphere, but for the world," he said at a conference on drug policy last year.

If it is from former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Velez that Kerlikowske gets the idea that the Drug War in Colombia was a success, then he might want to find a second source to base upon which to base his assessment. Uribe may soon be under investigation by the International Criminal Court for not only his role in “the extrajudicial killing of 3,000 innocent civilians who security forces presented as left-wing rebels killed in combat,” but also for “allegations that he was integral in forming a paramilitary bloc while he was governor of the Antioquia department.” Meanwhile, the trial that is taking place in Colombia right now that may send a group of Uribe’s political allies to jail for fraud in the attempt to allow the two-term president to run for office once again in 2010 is keeping alive the back-story about how Uribe’s 2006 re-election had been made possible through bribery and death-squad intimidation of voters. Uribe is the man who escalated the Drug War in Colombia with his hard-line security stance and launched a military assault against the left-wing guerrilla forces FARC and ELN, even going so far as to suggest, after 9/11, that the United States should send troops to Colombia to fight these forces in the name of the “War on Terror.”
 

Well, it turns out that the United States did train Colombians who ended up fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq under the auspices of the hailed Plan Colombia, although it was done by private contractors Blackwater and Halliburton in violation of regulations. The United States does have an official policy prohibiting the “Unauthorized export of technical data and provision of defense services involving Military/Security training” conducted internationally. But just like with the criminal bankers who are “too big to prosecute,” these military contractors are able to act in chaotic war situations with near-impunity – in the Blackwater case, a $42 million fine, small change for a company that raked in billions in no-bid contracts during the height of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. This is “disaster capitalism” to the tee, and the key is for companies to be able to make their huge profits with little oversight or accountability. The effects of this war profiteering are not merely that tax dollars are spent on hugely inflated contracts that often go toward criminal activities, but even worse, they are immensely destabilizing to the regions where these mercenary armies operate, as they inevitably enable ugly and destructive politics, undermining democracy and good governance, and vastly exacerbate the complicated social issues underlying the organized crime that they purport to be fighting.

Of course, the head honchos at Blackwater were quite aware that what their company was doing didn’t look good, when they first changed its name to Xe, and then to ACADEMI. But what really doesn’t look good is, as Matt Taibbi has pointed out, that it is difficult to believe that the Drug War is anything but a joke when banking giant HSBC gets caught laundering drug money, but gets nothing but a slap on the wrist:

If you've ever been arrested on a drug charge, if you've ever spent even a day in jail for having a stem of marijuana in your pocket or "drug paraphernalia" in your gym bag, Assistant Attorney General and longtime Bill Clinton pal Lanny Breuer has a message for you: Bite me.

Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person who's ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a "record" financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank.

As to Kerlikowske’s assertion that Plan Colombia was a success, it is directly contradicted by InSight Crime’s September 2012 profile of Colombia:

In sum, Colombia remains the epicenter of drug production, drug processing, drug storage and drug trafficking in the Americas. Some aspects have evolved, in particular the ability of the Colombians to produce high yield coca and the means by which the Colombians and their partners move their finished product, which now includes a fleet of semi-submersible (submarines), some of which can dive up to 30 meters below the surface. But other aspects have remained remarkably static, like the use of remote, unpatrolled areas to process coca into cocaine hydrochloride; the need for large armed groups to control territory for the production, storage and distribution of the HCL; and the ability of these criminal organizations to coopt local authorities to move large quantities of drugs, bring in large quantities of arms and launder heaps of money throughout the world.

Perhaps what Kerlikowske was referring to was what Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield, head of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, revealed in the same AP article about the real goal of the Drug War, when he spoke of allowing the “balloon effect” (if you press on one part of the balloon, the air will move to another part of it) to play out in Central America, then move on to the Caribbean - where militarization is also being ramped up.
From AP:

The goal, he said, is to make it so hard for traffickers to move drugs to the U.S. that they will eventually opt out of North America, where cocaine use is falling. Traffickers would likely look for easier, more expanding markets, shifting sales to a growing customer base in Europe, Africa and elsewhere in the world.

Brownfield said almost all Peruvian and Bolivian cocaine goes east through Brazil and Argentina and then to Western Europe. Cocaine that reaches North America mostly comes from Colombia, he said, with U.S. figures showing production falling sharply, from 700 metric tons in 2001 to 195 metric tons today — though estimates vary widely.

When the drug war turns bloody, he said, the strategy is working.

So, there you have it. The objective is not actually to stop criminal activity and violence from happening, but to put pressure on it so it will be redirect to where it doesn’t affect the United States anymore. And I just love the part about the strategy working when things get bloody. Dick Cheney said just about the same thing about the Iraq War back in June 2005, when the war was just two years old and he told Larry King, “The level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.” Here is the context of that statement, according to Wikipedia:

Hopes for a quick end to the insurgency and a withdrawal of U.S. troops were dashed in May, Iraq's bloodiest month since the invasion. Suicide bombers, believed to be mainly disheartened Iraqi Sunni Arabs, Syrians and Saudis, tore through Iraq. Their targets were often Shia gatherings or civilian concentrations of Shias. As a result, over 700 Iraqi civilians died in that month, as well as 79 U.S. soldiers.

So according to Brownfield’s rubric, the efforts in Colombia were successful and the War on Drugs is working. There are a number of reports that seem to support the assertion that cocaine use in the United States has dropped sharply in recent years, and that is a very good thing. But even this good news comes with the caveat:

Whatever the case, cartels appear to be adjusting their business model in true corporate fashion by adding new revenue streams. Methamphetamines, for instance, are now part of the traffickers' inventory. While seizures of cocaine along the border were in decline, those for methamphetamines (as well as the cartels' traditional cash cows, marijuana and heroin) went up.

In addition, the cartels are diversifying into counterfeit computer software and pirated DVDs, as well as stolen car parts and human trafficking, including for sexual exploitation.

It is also true that Brazil, with its newly expanding middle class, is the new target for cocaine coming through Bolivia and Peru. And let’s not forget that Brazil will be hosting the 2014 World Cup as well as the 2016 Summer Olympics, which will be a magnet for sex and drug dealers galore. So not only is the United States exporting its militarism, but it also has a policy objective of exporting its drug problem elsewhere. Problem solved.
 
Inertia

Given the growing level of skepticism of U.S. drug policies, both domestic and foreign, we should be looking closely at what it is that continues to drive these policies.

Starting with the domestic policy, the answer seems to be, essentially, inertia. The DEA Position on Marijuana, from January 2011, like every other federal government position on marijuana, is an affront to the intelligence of anyone who knows anything about the drug other than the characterizations that are attributed it by those who oppose marijuana legalization based on little more than perceived, cultural factors.

The DEA’s official position, assuming that this document remains current, is based on the spurious arguments of “evidence that smoked marijuana has a high potential for abuse, has no accepted medicinal value in treatment in the United States, and evidence that there is a general lack of accepted safety for its use even under medical supervision.” While all of that may (or may not) be true – as the policy statement depends on scientific studies focused on these factors alone from no later than 2009 –the very same could be said about alcohol. These arguments are completely missing the point that marijuana use is less harmful to society than its prohibition. Furthermore, the document is grossly propagandistic – what, pray tell, does the fact that George Soros helped fund a medical marijuana initiative have to do with the facts about marijuana or why it should not be legalized, when the backers of every other policy decision, from financial and auto industry regulation to voter ID laws, are influenced by often-secretive organizations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, a truth that is never, ever included in official policy statements!

What this discussion really needs to focus on is the inertia of the nation’s law enforcement and security organizations, both domestic and foreign. They are immense and unruly, and staffed by career employees whose personal ambitions often are at odds with the aims of the organizations they work for (see Fast and Furious “whistleblower,” John Dodson). In combination with the State Department, which I once naively believed was supposed to be the segment of the U.S. government that specializes in diplomacy, only to awaken to the reality, starting with the 2009 coup in Honduras, that it is focused more on securing U.S. business and political interests, these organizations are adrift, off in the wilderness, far, far away from legitimate national interests or democratic ideals. This is the key problem that the United States needs to come to terms with, if ever this tragic War on Drugs is to be brought to an end.

This fellow, Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield – who believes that a bloody Drug War is a good Drug War – is the man who is in charge of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. Having been the U.S. ambassador to Chile, Venezuela, and Colombia, one has to wonder what his priorities were in those positions (the fact that Chavez twice threatened to expel him doesn’t speak well of diplomacy) and why he would be so dismissive of the fate of countries other than the United States. He was also involved in the U.S. occupation of Panama in 1989-1990 and was trained at the National War College, which offers a clue as to the priorities of the United States in relations with Latin American countries.

This attitude has to change, and the U.S. government needs to listen to what the leaders of Latin America and many others are telling them about these Drug War policies. Former Mexican President Felipe Calderón, current Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina, and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos have all called for taking a serious look at decriminalization or legalization of drugs, most recently, at the United Nations. This is crucial, because one major block to legalization is an international treaty called the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs that is overseen by the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs. There is also the Latin American Initiative on Drugs and Democracy, representing still more Latin American political and cultural leaders, and the Global Commission on Drug Policy, a panel that included such dignitaries as former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz, among many others. Both of these bodies issued reports that concluded that the United States’ War on Drugs has failed.

Push back

A 14 February post on Office of National Drug Control Policy’s blog titled, Toward a Smarter Drug Policy is encouraging. It reflects a push coming from the White House to overcome this inertia, a push toward changing policies to focus more on drug addiction treatment rather than dealing with the problem through stronger law-enforcement and more arrests.

In Congress, representatives from Oregon and Colorado have introduced legislation that to end marijuana prohibition. These are smart measures that will treat marijuana like alcohol, and they give citizens a chance to show their support by contacting their legislators and encouraging them to vote for these measures.