An example:

There‘s a lot of talk about existential risks. I worry that painful episodes are even more likely. You know, 60 million people were killed in WWII. That was certainly exacerbated by the powerful destructive tools that we had then. I‘m fairly optimistic that we will make it through. I‘m less optimistic that we can avoid painful episodes. I do think decentralized communication actually helps reduce violence in the world. It may not seem that way because you just turn on CNN and you‘ve got lots of violence right in your living room. But that kind of visibility actually helps us to solve problems.

I’m not entirely sure that’s a convincing argument right there. The broader idea that decentralized media is an improvement, a catalyst for problem solving and violence reduction is one that I tend to buy into, and have acted explicitly to support.

But, CNN is not a great example – nor does most of the blogosphere seem to be at any given point. There are obvious notable exceptions. Maybe the Enough Project, to pick an example that is reputable and focused on informing about a certain kind of catastrophe the rest of the world is nominally aware of.

CNN is neither decentralized (I suppose it may be more so, technologically, than before) and certainly could be doing a better job, if we think its mandate is to report on global problems and inform its audience enough for them to understand who the stakeholders are and what the possible motivations and causes are.

We need media that less habitually cites mostly official sources, and that constantly questions ostensible motivation and intent, that keeps track of credibility and gives credit where credit is due, rather than to the bearers of titles, and rather than accepting what is given as a reason or goal or assuming such without evidence. The individual reporters (both independent and within large commercial institutions), certain non-profit institutions, activist-journalists, and other media makers who do this consistently seem hardly visible to the general population at the same level as entities like CNN. I only hope that they do catalyze attention and informed change enough to be helpful.

Some of my contributions in his aid were inadvertently syndicated here, with HTML not escaped properly, etc. I’ve removed those posts.

To abuse a cliche: After I got a full night’s sleep, it seemed like a bad dream. But another YouTube clip gone up overnight from my friend and past collaborator Robin Bell corroborates the reality of it all.

Yesterday DC was hit with a snowstorm that we’re now told ranks higher than anything in 70 years, and which brought the most snowfall in December in the city ever. Grocery stores were emptied, places shut down, people were forced to stay home or into the streets (so few sidewalks were even given one attempt at being shoveled), bars were packed with snowbound locals. It had the air of a “snow day,” an extra day off because of the weather, even though it was a Saturday. The city went a little nuts.

But apparently no-one could out-do a certain Detective Baylor of the Metropolitan Police Department.

Now I don’t know all of the details, I never actually saw an announcement first-hand, but I hear that some of the same folks who’ve organized some past public group activities in good fun — a public pillow fight, the “Tweed Ride” perhaps — were also involved in organizing a snowball fight at 14th and U Streets yesterday. (Update: The Washington Post appears to have found the original organizer. Where the Post story differs significantly, I hold to what I saw or didn’t see.)

I had prepared to haul a large tripod down into Rock Creek Park and to the National Mall; my own sort of expedition, with a friend playing chauffeur and photographer’s assistant, to capture the blizzard conditions. We invited a third videographer friend along who told us of the snowball fight. After reassessing the roads and finally realizing the little 2-wheel-drive hatchback we had might not really make it out of the park, we went to see the snowball fight instead.

When we got there it was well under way. Two factions like opposing 19th Century armies were lined-up along 14th Street just north of the intersection with U. From what I could see, when the rare vehicle made it through the intersection, snowball fire died down or it was purposefully arced up over the cars and thrust to the other side of the street.

Most battle techniques seemed to involve small vanguards surging forth from one side or the other and attacking at closer range — something not palatable with the threat of a car bearing down on you.

It looked like a mess, it looked like fun, it looked like a small faction of anarchist anti-war protesters had joined-in and tried to make a point with their banner “no war but snowball war.” At one point some of the participants stopped to help a police car trying to make a u-turn.

Now with every event, there are some tone-deaf participants and maybe the people who inadvertently helped change the course of the afternoon were such: At some point a small group of people, mostly on the east side of the street, mostly on the south end of that stretch of people, decided to throw a few snowballs at a maroon Hummer stopped at the intersection.

Snarky? Yes. Constructive? Not if you’re looking for a dialogue between the driver and the crowd that would result in world peace and less carbon emissions. Stupid? It’s harder and harder for me to say it wasn’t, but I’ll stick with maybe. Dangerous? Well, in hindsight… but no. There’s no way the Hummer was being hurt by snowballs. I think whatever groupthink was behind this forked-off action also expected the driver to leave, pissed-off, and they’d have their laugh.

But that’s not what happened. The driver got out yelling, gesticulating wildly, waving a walky-talky and you had to wonder, who was he? He didn’t say. He pointed into the crowd, which shouting and laughing back at him, a couple more snowballs might’ve taken flight in his direction. He gets hit. Suddenly, he’s waving a gun. Still no one knows who he is.

What I overheard from a cop later is that someone called 911 about a man with a gun at this point, and this is why more police soon arrived. Video I’ve seen and reporting by Jason Cherkis at the Washington City Paper seems to corroborate what I’ve overheard.

At this point the mood has changed. Everyone knows there is a man with a gun and the snowball fight is now an asymmetric battle of sorts: The man with the gun weilds deadly power and the crowd knows that, whatever and whoever started the confrontation, this is wrong and they maintain resistance. They won’t be cowed.

By the time more police arrive, the gun as been reholstered, and an officer — who responded with his own gun drawn (given the context, that made a little more sense) — is directed to the big man in the big coat with a gun on his belt, it is revealed that he is Detective Baylor. The officer seemed confused and defensive, in an obligatory sort of way but tries to de-escalate things. He’s more civil and more even-toned, if a little clueless about what just happened.

But Detective Baylor isn’t satisfied, and doesn’t see cause of the indignance on the side of the snowball fight participants — even if some of them started it. He keeps yelling, he gets up in peoples faces, and he lunges into the crowd — going in many feet, through many ranks of people — to yank out someone he thinks threw a snowball at him. The man is dragged out to the hummer and people shout “he didn’t do it!” The crowd rallies and the chants become political. Somehow DC Mayor Adrian Fenty gets pegged for all of this, “Fenty killed Christmas!” shout some in unison.

It’s fuzzy what happened next, but I don’t think anyone got arrested, just detained briefly. The detective drives off to shouts of good riddance and victorious chants by some of the snowball fight participants — but the event is over, the crowd has lightened some. The word goes out that there was another snowball fight in Dupont Circle, which seems like a better venue anyway, but few seemed to go. (Eventually my fellow photographers and I headed over there to find it had died-down by that point.)

As I wandered around, trying to get my bearings on what, if anything, was still happening, I heard one uniformed officer say that whoever threw snowballs at the Hummer was stupid, but the detective was too. “He sounds like an ass,” he said.

On a radio on a uniform’s belt I heard Detective Baylor’s name, and someone say “they hit his car with snowballs and now they’re trying to blackmail him,” presumably a reference to those who angrily declared they wanted to see Baylor fired.

I’m not sure how everything ended — as of this writing, I’m not sure it really has yet.

A sort of FAQ about what I observed

These are brief responses to rhetorical questions I’m setting-up for myself based on what I’ve actually been asked and see in comments through the media that have reported this.

Were you a participant in the snowball fight?

No. I went to observe it, photograph it, on my way to other activities.

Were the participants “kids?”

Maybe some, if you mean people under twenty-one or under eighteen. But it looked like a twenty-something crowd and some people could easily have been bracketing thirty years old. These were mostly adults.

It was a bunch of white people, wasn’t it?

No, the crowd was not that homogenous. I don’t think it is as simple a black vs. white. But I do see how the general nature of this event and the relationship between most of its participants, the rest of the neighborhood, and the police is a dynamic of gentrification and all of the issues tied into that — among such issues, I’m sure, are some identity politics.

Were they throwing snowballs at random cars?

Not as far as I could tell. I did not see the beginning of the snowball fight, but from what I saw the crowd over all was pretty civil, while engaging in the fun they publicized well. Only a small group of people chose to target this particular maroon Hummer.

Were they throwing snowballs at random strangers?

Again, not that I saw.

They were having a snowball fight at a busy intersection?

The intersection of 14th and U Streets NW is typically busy and I also wonder about the choice of location. The other, unrelated, snowball fight that was happening in Dupont Circle seemed to be better placed: an accessible and central location with its own space to contain the battle. But the intersection really wasn’t all that busy given the weather conditions. It seemed its busiest after police vehicles arrived, responding to a call about a “man with a gun” (the unidentified detective).

Update: I corrected this post on 21 Dec 2009 to reflect that the source of the snowballs aimed at the Hummer came from the east, not the west, side of the street.

Long out of practice in even attempting to write, I am reading a selection of Orwell’s essays (both the polemic and the trite review and in between) rather than expanding on my own declaration of opinion. Maybe I will learn something. The two volumes are what I might’ve once called provocatively titled: All Art Is Propaganda and Facing Unpleasant Facts. But now they’re just remedial guides for dealing with the world.

In the meantime, I share these selections from contemporary polemicists who I think did a good and more timely job: challenging both the silly dismay of some Democrats in what they seem to perceive as Obama’s betrayal (it isn’t one, he campaigned on escalating the Afghan war) and the others who find Obama’s justification of escalation as a proper way to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, consistent with what he cited himself in the course of his speech.

• From Consortium News, an online publication whose cornerstone is Bob Parry Whatever Mistakes We Have Made by Nicholas J.S. Davies)
• From Jonathan Schwarz’s Orwell-inspired A Tiny Revolution a brief observation: Going Backwards
• ‘Just War’ is Just Words by Ralph Nader

I collaborate with Husseini, providing technical support, and I also watch the shows. This morning I noticed that Clinton repeated a myth about the start of the Afghan war that the Institute for Public Accuracy, where Sam is the communications director, called-out in a press release earlier this week.

The appearance of both Clinton and Gates was pre-taped earlier in the week, otherwise I’m sure Sam would have tried to question her on it if she stopped for the press gaggle.

Sam did have some interaction with Senator Feingold which is now posted at The Washington Stakeout.

Husseini asked Feingold about the legitimacy of the Afghanistan war, Israel’s nuclear weapons (of which official acknowledgment might catalyze a different calculus in the US’s non-proliferation actions with regards to Iran, India, as well as, of course, Israel), and, in essence, how much due diligence was actually done in exploring the feasibility of Single Payer health care.

Are Obama and Clinton Being Honest About How Afghan War Began?

…

RAHUL MAHAJAN: … It’s not clear how well President Obama and his advisers know this history, although it was all documented in Western newspapers at the time; what is clear is that his suggestion that the Taliban refused to negotiate is not primarily about justifying the war post-9/11 — that still remains unquestioned in mainstream U.S. politics — but rather about justifying his current position that strenuous anti-Taliban efforts in Afghanistan, including the recently announced surge, are a necessary part of ensuring U.S. national security.

“The residents in the District have a right to know exactly who is operating on their streets, under what authority, and who is authorized to use force,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a co-founder of the group.

Verheyden-Hilliard and the Partnership gave myself and a colleague at the time some initial consultations when we were considering pursuing legal action against the city (we ended-up working with ACLU-affiliated representation). The Partnership for Civil Justice seems to have fought a long-standing and principled battle for civil liberties in the District of Columbia, where Federal powers seems to trump local power, and local power seems to think it is bigger than it is — with the a frequent effect of constricting movement and speech of civilians. She, as it seems everyone at the Partnership is, is also involved in the activist group ANSWER, whose tactics and tone I’ve found myself disagreeing with (while sharing many overlapping issues of concern).

Colin Powell was on Face The Nation today. Bob Schieffer lead the interview by asking him first about a recent volley of remarks that one might say started with Powell critizing conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh during Q&A at a cybersecurity conference, as reported by Chris Strohm of Congress Daily. Then Cheney went on the record, also on Face The Nation, after being asked by Schieffer, saying he’d pick Limbaugh over Powell. Powell’s response this morning was, in part, to affirm he still saw himself as a Republican and to invoke Jack Kemp as an example he admired.

Washington’s stenographers must’ve started scribbling as soon as they heard this because that has become the headline of the day at both the Washington Post (“Still a Republican, Powell Urges Party to Become More Inclusive“) and the New York Times (“Powell Still a Republican, Despite Party Differences“).

But Schieffer also asked Powell if he agreed that EITs were effective and when he knew about them. Powell claimed to have been kept apart, without direct knowledge, and that the CIA “had to be given some room” (really, given their history of abuse?). Schieffer didn’t ask Powell why he didn’t insist on knowing the nature of the elicitations in which were given to him and his aid, Lawrence Wilkerson, as evidence for claims he had to make to the world.

While admitting being party to some discussions, Powell pleaded ignorance, saying “I don’t know know what I don’t know.” Logic hard to deny, but he’s really not saying anything there. Almost Rumsfeldian.

At the same time, in saying “we” used “EITs” — a pseudonym for torture — he admits to his complicity in human rights abuses. He seems to think it was OK to do that, but maybe just for a year or two. “It’s easy now to look back … to say … you shouldn’t have done anything. … Now we see that these [tactics] are not appropriate,” Powell said.

The Geneva Conventions didn’t make that clear before? Isn’t there some contradiction suggested in what Powell admits being a party to and what he says he didn’t know at the time? Such questions were not pressed in the studio.

If we take Powell at his word, he seems to have conveniently not known and not asked (and if he asked and got no answer, still proceeded in his role as an apparent cog rather than a principal), despite his responsibility.

The importance of this issue and the overall shallowness of Powell’s replies, as a one-time “principal,” seems more critical to me than his political affiliation and political name-calling. To me this subject of national security, the answers, the questions and the un-asked questions would make a more substantive lead.

Isn’t it relevant to ask why Powell was making claims apparently based on assertions with little context from an agency (CIA) with a known track record of lying? An agency whose other primary source for other claims (“Curveball”) was challenged by the Defense Intelligence Agency? This was when Powell was Secretary of State and reports say that the State Department’s own Bureau of Intelligence and Research was skeptical of these claims.

My friend Sam Husseini was outside Face The Nation, and followed-up to ask Powell about torture that produced lies used in support of the specious claims Powell made before the United Nations. Jonathan Schwarz sees a disparity between Powell’s comments now and what he said before the UN.

Ray McGovern, an ex-CIA analyst (who once had a sting briefing the first President Bush) and Catholic activist, has written a piece based in part on an email interview with Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell’s chief aide during his reign over the State Department, that should leave even more questions in your mind. One might even wonder if Powell is leaving Wilkerson out to dry.

Updated (26 May 2009): Robert Parry at Consortium News follows-up on Powell’s Face The Nation appearance and Sam’s question, bringing along analysis that goes deeper into Powell’s career.

This news struck me as I recall when investigative journalist Allan Nairn shared some recent history with the audience of Democracy Now! about how the Clinton administration continued George H. W. Bush’s policies and backed a CIA effort that supported the military junta there (see some of his reporting from then). These were thugs and rapists (those were Clinton’s own accurate labels for them) which Clinton ironically now takes some credit for opposing — but only after years of paying them, and perhaps with much more effort than was necessary, if he hadn’t supported them to begin with.

Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, the founder of a paramilitary group that came be known as FRAPH, and whose activities were supported by Bush and Clinton administration officials, is now in jail in the US. He’s spent the better part of the last decade living in New York City, where the US once tried to deport him on immigration charges — except to let off the hook by Clinton while he was still president. Later, when Haiti requested his extradition, the US, under George W. Bush, refused to comply. Constant has threatened to expose his CIA connections. He’s in jail not for human rights violations, but for being recently convicted in a fraud scheme.

Noam Chomsky recounted some of the same history at the same time, during the 2004 coup, and drew a comparison between the history of US involvement in Haiti with the US occupation of Iraq that was taking just taking hold then.

This is history Bill Clinton is entwined with, of which I’ve seen no refutation that extracts him. It should put into question the credibility of putting him in this position, however you weigh his current efforts of doing good — efforts which are now politically convenient. Their efficacy and their function, latent or otherwise, to whitewash this past need to be considered.

Updated: Jeremy Scahill has compiled his own sense of this history and accounts of first-hand reactions from journalists and activists working in Haiti during the Clinton era.

In January of 2003 I attended a press conference held by the Joe Foss Institute, commemorating the recent passing of their namesake and announcing the launch of a program where veterans were to go to schools and talk of their service in hopes of inspiring children to want to join the military. Foss was concerned that “there might be an exodus of draft age Americans in the event of war,” according to literature being handed out at the time.

The event, which included a luncheon that I missed, was reportedly attended by then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Representative William Janklow. I saw neither Wolfowitz nor Janklow; it is my understanding that Wolfowitz left before I arrived and I don’t know about Janklow. Honorary spokespersons for the effort included John Glenn and Oliver North, as well as Jack Kemp. They were made available to the press for a question and answer session.

The backdrop was a specious drumbeat for war with Iraq and I was skeptical of the most of the named figureheads of this organization’s effort. So were my producers, who worked daily to surface news about Iraq and policy critiques to widen the debate on the prospect of a war which had not yet started but seemed fated to some. (An aside: The body of work aggregated and produced by Peace Watch and others, including the Institute for Public Accuracy, where I also once worked, is evidence to me that there was reason to be unconvinced of claims before the war and that the lack of persistent skepticism in some media and on the Hill wasn’t merely a case “if we knew then what we know now.”)

When the press conference opened-up, I was allowed the first question.

I was already nervous and uncomfortable under hot lights in a black turtleneck and was now caught off guard at the invitation to be the first voice heard from the scrum. I squawked out my question, “What confidence should American youth have in these individuals, when it comes to examples of matters as far as life and death go….” I went on to paraphrase my understanding of Wolfowitz’s, Kemp’s, and North’s seemingly hypocritical relationship to the concept of honor-bound volunteer service to one’s country in wartime. I didn’t even touch the veracity of the claims behind the current push for war and the endorsement some had given it.

I didn’t say it so well, and I couldn’t have said it all, but this is what I had stacked-up as the evidence for my question:

My attention was primarily on the invited attended of Paul Wolfowitz, who reportedly attended and probably did so in his capacity as a DOD official, who was also among the vanguard of the neoconservative movement, who never served in war but was an architect of the looming war from his early participation in PNAC.

Then we had Oliver North, a man who had been convicted of crimes with regards to the Iran-Contra scandal, which reminded us of the government’s potential to institutionally deceive the public about its foreign policy and military activities. The convictions against North were later overturned on technicalities, not for lack of evidence, but for the eerily convenient inability of the DoJ to execute a prosecution of a White House official by the book.

And Kemp, to me, had a George Bush-like track record in the military. Serving in the reserves he had a relatively easy burden compared to those activated and later drafted as the Vietnam War began to heat up; it seemed convenient that he was dismissed from service for having a bad knee. No risk of being activated, excluded from being drafted.

That might have been unremarkable, except that he then went on to play professional football while the war raged, before running for Congress. Now here he was, riding on that credibility as part of an effort to encourage others to join the military as a war built on even more transparent distortions and lies than Vietnam was looming, while the largest popular protest against an American war was shaping-up before it was to start.

It didn’t come out of my mouth that well, but that was where I was headed.

The room fell silent for an awkward moment.

Gus Grant, the chairman of the Foss institute, was MCing the event and responded with a coverall response, trying to save anyone from feeling obligated to directly answer my question. “Let me say I’m very proud of everybody at this table and all of their achievements.”

The luncheon attendees clapped in praise of this retort.

I was taken aback — had Grant just lumped John Glenn in with Oliver North? (I wasn’t thinking of Jack Kemp much.)

Glenn seemed amused, possibly by my obviously nervous question and by the response as well.

North just turned red and pursed his lips for a moment.

And I felt like I was about to collapse.

But then Kemp bit.

He spoke up and spoke directly to me and said he’d like to answer my question, but after the press conference. He said he’d like to talk to me directly, he’d be around. It almost seemed friendly, but with a look as if to say “you’ve got it all wrong, son.”

Now my focus was exclusively on Kemp. My actual question had not been answered, and they had moved on, but Kemp had promised to be available. I was still nervous, but looking forward to him sharing his point of view.

But then half-way through the press conference he got up, he said he had to leave for a prior engagement or something like that. He apologized to Grant with nary a glance towards me and he hurried out. I chased him through the lobby of the Press Club as he walked briskly to the elevators. I asked the question of his military service again, if he’d clarify. As I caught-up he simply said “I served. I served, I served in the military.” You can hear the elevator chime on the tape. Kemp stepped into the cab and the elevator doors snapped behind him.

“But not on active duty, and how could you go on to play pro football if you weren’t fit for war?,” I should have asked.

Just as I could’ve been sharper in expressing my grasp of the facts and the rationale of my query, the original question as asked might have been disarmed completely by Kemp. If only he weren’t running away from me hadn’t been apparently disingenuous about his availability and wanting to set the record straight.

It was surely “gotcha” journalism, but I think it was an appropriate attempt to sting — risking being proven remarkably wrong with a direct and detailed answer from the very subjects of my inquiry — and current events further justified challenging the qualifications of advocates of militarism.

At the time of my questioning we had just seen Kemp’s alma mater, the US House of Representatives, forfeit their power and responsibility to declare war and hand it over to President Bush. The same broadcast that aired my encounter with Kemp also included Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee talking with Peace Watch about her attempt to repeal that move, but barring a miracle cross-aisle flip (which did not happen), we had seen the majority of this body join the ranks of the “chickenhawks.” Kemp, North, and Wolfowitz simply seemed way out ahead of them.

For a public figure to advocate a path others should take, his own fidelity to that idea, particularly when he had opportunity to demonstrate it, is fair game for inquiry and challenge. Kemp did not seem to think so that afternoon. Those who don’t demonstrate such action when it comes to war, but advocate war and others to fight are what some call “chickenhawks.” On that day Jack Kemp appeared to be trying to outrun that label rather than face it straight-on.

How could this be?

The article describes Schumer offering a limit to the proposed public national health insurance plan so that it can’t compete with private health insurance companies to the best of its ability. The effort for national health insurance is ostensibly beneficial because it could compete with private insurance plans, but would still be an insurance effort that wouldn’t promise complete coverage. Senator Schumer’s idea is not a “middle ground,” it is a move to defend an industry most are discontent with. It is a further push right of an already compromised position from the point of view of public interest.

Today doctors with PNHP and other activists were arrested in a coordinated protest that disrupted the start of a Senate Finance Committee hearing that further demonstrated the degree to which serious consideration of single-payer health care has been and is being avoided by politicians. Democratic Senator and Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus both declared “we need more police” and that he respected the views of all Americans — but apparently not enough to include the options quite possibly preferred by a majority of them in his committee hearing. Senator Schumer also sits on this committee.

Single-payer health care, a concept that excludes the middle-man layer of insurance entirely, which Physicians for a National Health Plan (PNHP) says polls show most Americans want, and which most of the western industrialized world has successfully adopted, is seemingly excluded from both political debate and factual scrutiny and reporting by commercial media.

There has been no exhaustive political or media effort to reconcile what most of the western world has done to provide far more health care per dollar to its citizens than the United States has via its private system with the veracity of the positions favoring maintaining an insurance-based system that has failed Americans through under-coverage and complete lack of coverage for 40 million or more Americans. Surely foes of such a system who feel they’re in the right could provide a thorough debunking of PNHP’s resources, including highlighting polls that seem to demonstrate political viability? 

I admit heavily linking to them here without providing much balance, as PNHP does a convincing job of demonstrating both support of practicing doctors and aggregating the spare reports of widespread small-d democratic support for their views. In my spare time, I’ve yet to see any criticisms that reconsile their assertions and evidence or thoroughly debunk them. Please share any such challenges you find so well formed.

In related news, my friend Sam Husseini was the originator and a writer in the creation of ads starring Mike Farrell (of M*A*S*H fame) advocating such a plan. That disclosure no doubt indicates a bias on my part to many, but such associations are not the real root of my bias. Rather, it is the acceptance of the stance that health care is a human right. From that position comes my skepticism regarding most political and commercial offerings on the issue (and to me there is no such thing as no bias or individual objectivity for anyone in matters of such broad potential effect). This shouldn’t weaken the observations with regards to apparently non-existent, or at best — disingenuous and weak, public debate on the issue in the Congress.

So it was today when we stumbled upon the 100 Days Campaign’s civil disobedience in front of the White House with only our iPhone.

Reportedly 60 people were arrested (this reporter witnessed what he can most precisely say was many or several tens of people, so that jives). As Obama gave remarks in the main foyer of the White House about the Chrysler bankruptcy, just yards away dozens were being arrested in the midst of a peaceful protest of conscience on a matter of human rights.

Members of this group have been holding vigil outside the White House every day for the past many days, presumably all of the previous 100 days of Obama’s term. They’ve highlighted the plight of Uighers and others who have been held without charge or cleared for release, or both — and those who have died in custody.

While Obama has promised to close the detention facility, the group takes issue with all such facilities (including Bagram, Afghanistan) and joined literally behind the banner “justice delayed is justice denied”; they do not believe action is being taken fast enough.

Hundreds of tourists and local office workers, many likely administration employees, gathered around or witnessed the proceeding as they passed by.

You might also want to see Jeremy Scahill’s post of material he aggregated about and related to this demonstration.

Protest season has started in Washington. Earlier this week, in addition to the 100 Days Campaign’s vigils, one could witness other protests:

• ADAPT set upon the White House, in what sounded like an angry challenge or rebuke to Obama regarding his support (ABC News)
• Some members of the House of Representatives joined Darfur activists in what seemd to be a scripted civil-disobedience action at the Sudanese Embassy to protest human rights violations (Huffington Post)
• Greenpeace scaled a crane near the Department of State, dropping a banner with an image of the earth and the words “Too big to fail.” (Washington Post)
• SEIU’s nationwide protest against Bank of America included a picket line at the BoA branch just down the block from the White House.

Click through to view the set at Flickr, with captions. Also see these photos by Jake Cunningham, some of which more closely show demonstrators being pushed into the police car by police.

The sun is hitting DC hard this morning. It’s going to be another hot one.

Another day of protests against the World Bank and IMF is planned. I hear that last night some activists took to the streets of Georgetown in the wee hours of the morning.

I’ve got a lot of questions about the choices made by some to use certain tactics and the posturing of some of these activists — but analysis and judgement of that seems irrelevant to what I witnessed Saturday morning. I went out as an independent photographer, a role I have played for years here in DC.

I saw it get ugly in Foggy Bottom.

Whatever relevance you thought the demonstrations had to the issues they were ostensibly protesting, I don’t think it was their fault that it got ugly.

Captain Herold, of the DC MPD, who appeared to be the officer in command, and who is known to activists as being in charge of the political unit — police intelligence on activists — is attributed in the Washington Post for most of their description of what took place. Herold says “the police were put in danger when they were surrounded as the crowd turned” — this is not true. If the police were put in danger or were surrounded, it is only after they surged into the crowd after an awkward and sudden attempt to stop a crowd that was, in fact, mostly surrounded by police.

If it wasn’t for a key moment where one officer came to the fore, the morning easily could have been forgettable.

I know a PNC bank branch had its windows smashed-out earlier — but that was a different time, a different neighborhood, possibly by entirely different people. I saw no behavior of that sort down around the bank.

The street protests against the Washington Consensus have died down in DC over the years and the tactics haven’t changed much. When something dramatic happens on the part of some activists, it usually is clearly an edge case.

When some of these anti-capitalists took to the streets Saturday morning, it was a toss-up as to whether it’d be worth seeing. But there’s something to be said for documenting, for posterity, that yes, there are some out there in the streets representing the rejection of top-down undemocratic global economic policy. Still, the demos seemed like the same-ol’-same ol’.

It was tedious chasing the roving factions about town. We observers checked their Twitter posts and dashed about, following the sirens to the next intersection that was allegedly locked down, only to find it had been cleared and that the cops were playing catch and release with the black clad rebels.

Seemed kind of, dare I say it: Stupid. On all sides.

But some were having fun and were even approachable — perhaps they were getting across to the few pedestrians they encountered on the nearly empty streets. Some shunned the black-clad uniform and put on their sweats. They stretched and flexed and rocked out to some cheesy music and overtly declared they intended to cooperate with the cops. Their biggest crime? Running a couple red lights on streets already blockaded by cops seemingly parking police cars perpendicular to traffic while in donut comas.

The different factions eventually gravitated towards each other and merged into a “superbloc” and paced about Foggy Bottom some more. The police that had been chasing them turned into a de facto escort. There seemed to be a rapport between the two sides.

Things were pretty mellow, even if you didn’t “get it” or think it was worth it.

But then there was this moment, and from the point of view of this writer, it was when an order was acted out or maybe a cop got impatient, but somewhere in the chain of command a fuse blew and the ugly State these kids keep talking about crept out from beneath the bed and showed itself in broad daylight.

The march had been parading about the neighborhood, and while maybe it looked ugly and nonsensical to Ma and Pa from Minnesota, things were pretty chill. It was coming down Pennsylvania Avenue, heading Southeast on the diagonal street towards the bank when, at 20th Street and Penn NW, it decided to turn — and to turn again — with several feet, tens of feet even, between it and the barricades. Not a threat and it was ultimately heading back the way it came — and away from the Bank.

A couple of police vehicles where behind the march and so now they were in front of it — and they were spread out, and given how the march had navigated the sparse traffic of the neighborhood earlier in the morning, one would think they’d walk right through.

This would be a mildly positive development from the cops point of view, one might think. I thought so.

But this one MPD officer on a bike seemed to think enough was enough. Maybe he wanted to get home and watch the NFL draft. Maybe he had someone talking in his ear — a superior officer or God, who knows.

This officer dismounted his bike and tried to use it as a blockade. He yelled something that I heard as “Let’s go! Right here. Let’s bottle this up!” and a few more euphemisms for stopping the march – but it was just him and this was a sudden move and the crowd had momentum, so they kept going, they could go around him after all; the march had flowed through narrower spaces with implicit police support previously that morning. It was an odd-looking effort on the part of the officer, considering the police had a perimeter of sorts established on 2 or three sides of the space the demonstrators occupied and the march were moving away from what they were protecting.

But then a few more officers moved in and grabbed hold of the anarchist bamboo-framed banners that were the physical vanguard of the march. Now the head of the march is pinned against the adjacent police car. People told me they felt trapped from pressure from those coming up behind them. At the same time, as I’ve moved to photograph this police movement, I hear from behind me some officers saying “pull back!”, “back off!”, “form a line!” But this first wave of cops was not immediately responsive to these calls.

Now more police move in, the press are dispersed for a bit, there’s some more confusion. At this point, with people being pushed back but having no physical space to move to, physically they’re pushing back whether they intend to or not: this is physics. And people are angry and defensive: this is human nature. Whatever happened at this point, it is the genie let out of the bottle by the previous actions of the police. No doubt it was ugly. By this point was moving out of the way and didn’t see much directly for a couple of minutes.

Maybe at this point a police line was formed, maybe at this point some of what Captain Herold alleges happened. But this is all after the apparent provocation of a peaceful march.

I do know pepper spray was used — I tasted it, my eyes burned a bit. I was coughing and so were cops, other press, and bystanders around me.

When the melee subsided, some people were down on the ground. Personal effects were strewn about. I saw a girl on her side on the sidewalk near the intersection where the action happened. She couldn’t move without help. I later saw a young man with a leg splint put together by the activist medics. He was later hauled away by an ambulance and city paramedics. Others were scraped and bruised. Some tried to wash the pepper spray out of their eyes in the dingy pool of the fountain the park. Many seemed angry — personally angry. Threats were shouted at the police. (Before the only real threats I heard that morning were from police, with one in particular throwing jingoistic taunts at demonstrators on I Street a couple hours before.)

No one was blocked off at this point, the marchers in the park could have dissipated at any time and I think they eventually did without further incident — but I left before then, at around 10:35. Irritated by both what I saw and the pepper spray, and tired.

I’m looking at a copy of the Senate Armed Services Committee report entitled “Inquiry Into the Treatment Of Detainees In U.S. Custody, November 20, 2008 (Released, April 22, 2009).

I’ve read some passages near the end about Captain Donovan’s protests within the chain of command, it seems, against the justifications and just of certain tactics. It was his opinion that it would threaten the very programs seemingly used to justify the tactics. The implication as I read it, is that these tactics threatened the safety of U.S. troops in more than one way: by invalidating the programs the tactics evolved out of, which were meant to protect U.S. personnel, and by threatening U.S. personnel in that such tactics might be more likely to be used against now that the U.S. was applying them to perceived and alleged enemies.

This was in 2003.

Now, others have read much more of this report and are doing much more thorough reporting. This is where the New York Times shines, relatively, and the sort of subject McClatchy (and the spirit of Knight-Ridder) does well. Salon is on it… it’s all over. Go read.

• McClatchy: Abusive tactics were used to find Iraq-al Qaida link — a link that did not exist until after we showed up.
• NYT: Report Gives New Detail on Approval of Brutal Techniques
• NYT: In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into Past Use
• Salon: Rumsfeld: Architect of torture

A lot of it seems to be tied to Rumsfeld in ways some might not have imagined, unless you were saved from typical American amnesia and recall Rumsfeld’s writing in the margins on directives regarding Abu Ghraib.

I’m stretched a bit thin with interests and obligations, otherwise I’d be digging into this. But others certainly seem to be on the ball. Looking at the time stamps on the RSS feeds that pushed some of these articles to me and at the embargo time on the paper copy of the report in front of me, I would say that these articles have been waiting in the wings and their authors have been reading this report all day.

From the point of view of this writer, who witnessed the Washington, DC gathering near the White House, it was both muddy and a muddled thunder.

• The original Boston Tea Party was as much about representation as it was about taxes. Most of the folks in attendence in DC were from out of town; from actual states where they have representation.There may be a broader point to be made about government responsiveness, but that appeared to be lost here.
• A friend pointed out an interesting fact: that the colonists’ taxes sky-rocketed after the American revolution. They had war debt to pay for and representation didn’t help them much there. Truly, that is a significant part of the problem here too, and it seems that those protesting both taxes and the budget overall would protest a deescalation of US militarism.
• It seems to be an uncontroversial point of fact that most of these folks in fact will likely see a decrease in their taxes, as few are likely part of the single digit percentage that make enough to be subject to tax increases (no, I’m not counting the nicotine tax).
• In general the protest seemed to be aimed at straw men, built up by the organizers backed by lobbyists and certain Republican politicians and aimed at the Democrats. Unfortunately this seems to serve long-standing interests and doesn’t really threaten anyone, whoever you thought was responsible for whatever you thought you were protesting if you were a participant.
• With regards to the tea party theme, the unfortunate choice to announce use tea bags as part of the protest, and to use the phrase “tea-bagging,” further alienated this particular exercise from the mainstream.

Still, they stood in the rain, proud to exercise their right to redress their grievances — so long as they were at a certain distance (I’m told they intended to be in front of the Treasury, and got moved to Lafayette Park where I witnessed them later). They were reportedly cleared out of the park when someone threw something (tea bags?) over the White House fence. I’d argue this was largely ineffective, at least in terms of the best ostensible intentions of the participants, that their indigence was used — maybe even against their own interests.

Don’t read these observations as implicit support for Obama’s overall economic policy, or for the nature of the corporate media, this writer is a critic of both. Still, there was also a chuckle or two when viewing this clip from last night’s “Countdown” on MSNBC :

We could probably do with some links and other direct citations here, but this is literally a passing observation written down as both the event and the media of it was absorbed in the course of other business.

CIA, as always, used very careful language:

CIA no longer operates detention facilities or black sites and has proposed a plan to decommission the remaining sites…

This seems to make it clear that there remain such sites, that the CIA doesn’t believe it is the operating authority of them, but they do seem to believe they have the authority or at least influence to decommission them (this may be a red herring). It seems notable to mention that it has been a long-standing practice, before these apparently post-9/11 black sites, for the United States to hand-off prisoners to other countries who have widely been understood to use torture. They’ve always used the language of plausible deniability with regards to these relationships, so there is no reason to believe any similar language now.

When asked by Hatch, Panetta seemed to confirm an assertion by Senator Hatch (to quote a reporter paraphrasing the exchange) that “all major countries and intelligence agencies believed Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction.” (We don’t have But this is plainly not true. We can start with the Downing Street Memo and demonstrated that the British were skeptical, but of course their political leadership was playing along. Even the Washington Post, in the lead-up to the war, published the news of leaks that were were internal arguments at CIA.

Charles Davis noted that Panetta (and Senator Evan Bayh) misrepresented a National Intelligence Estimate with regards to Iran.

This is just like the Clinton and Bush administration habits of mis-stating how and when UN weapons inspectors left Iraq, of ascribing motivation without providing evidence, and of ignoring past admissions by the government that debunk prior false statements.

If we were there, we would have liked to ask some follow-up questions and have these statements directly reconciled with the public record.

It turns out Panetta doesn’t like those either.

Whatever solace you choose to take from vague but perhaps seemingly more progressive statements by Panetta on torture tactics, we remain worried that he doesn’t know or has chosen to deny the actual facts of recent history. Even if given the benefit of the doubt, we believe clear language and contribution of additional hard fact to eliminate controversy is the way to go. A confirmation hearing would be the place to demonstrate this skill.

We’ll know if it is Bamford, and presumably more context and details, tonight.

It’ll be curious to see how far the Obama administration’s transparency schtick sticks when it comes to dealing with these allegations.

Updated: Long confirmed it is Bamford and has noted that a NOVA documentary, “The Spy Factory“, that Bamford was involved in is being broadcast on PBS tomorrow (similar in name to Bamford’s latest book, “The Shadow Factory”). We kind of feel like shills here, but while we’re at it: We’re waiting for another documentary to become available on Netflix, Secrecy.

Added on the evening of 15 April 2009: In the New York Times, the article “NSA’s Intercepts Exceed Limits Set By Congress” seems to reinforce the hearsay I quoted in this post.

Reportedly overheard by a reporter at a pre-inauguration party laden with Homeland Security lobbyists and contractors last night.

Public Knowledge has blogged about this tonight.

I had the privilege of speaking with Sherin Siy earlier today and I appreciate Sherwin Siy’s point of view and his critique of both the situation as we understand it, and of my take on the situation.

I tend to agree with the paraphrasing of Lawrence Lessig that it doesn’t make sense to press copyright too far or all the time when it comes to political speech. But, as it was also noted, my particular photo is not essential to the “dialogue” happening here. It doesn’t make sense to abuse the terms that I’ve willingly shared this work under. And I feel I’ve been deprived of the reserved right to grant permission under other terms to use it further than the chosen Creative Commons terms allow.

I am trying to practice my belief in a “tool” that actually factilates sharing, that strikes a balance so that political speech and other dialogue can benefit from shared culture, from reuse and remixing and inherently maybe even be more constructive when the rules of the Commons are followed. I am trying to strike a balance between that and developing and sustaining my photography.

As I inspect my images closer, and the ads, it appears they may be using one or a couple similar images of mine taken from the same vantage point at about the same time. But that they are my images, unique to this event, remains clear – the angle of the photo, the angle of light, the apparent focal length, the basic nature of the exposure, the matching of key features of the expression, is all consistent with this event and my unique point of view.

The photo is one of several I took of Murtha in profile at a town hall in Virginia in 2006, listening to the public talk about the Iraq war and the Bush Administration. The scene was a packed room, full of people with 9/11 memorial t-shirts, American flags, comprising of local constituents that included veterans and Defense Department employees. There were peace activist veterans and veteran peace activists alike. Murtha’s scrunched facial expression as depicted in my photo is one of concentration and attentiveness (something you might derive from seeing the whole set and knowing about the event). In the ad it is reduced to a context-less scowl coupled with something else entirely.

I share many photos on Flickr under Creative Commons licenses and this photo is one of those. The Creative Commons is a way of using copyright to share material while retaining rights as one sees fit. It is a philosophy for using copyright constructively.

The license I chose was the “Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic” license, and the conditions are boiled down to the following points:

• Provide attribution
• No commercial use
• No derivative works
• And, of course, make clear the terms under which the CC-licensed work being used is available to others as well.

It seems obvious to me that the Russell campaign’s production people didn’t give proper attribution in the video or elsewhere, nor did they make the terms of the license clear in redistributing my work. They’ve manipulated the background of the photo further taking it out of context, which I believe constitutes a derivative work, and while this isn’t commercial speech, they did use the ad as fodder for fundraising. Depending on how the ad was created and the relationship between the producers and the campaign, I kind of wonder if the “commercial use” restriction wasn’t still violated (but that is speculation).

I don’t like the implication that I gave the Russell campaign permission beyond the limitations of the license I gave to the public. I’m trying, whenever I feel it appropriate, to share my photos with the commons to support the kind of substantive media and dialogue I believe in (even if I disagree with a given argument) and I am trying to be able to do more media making. Inappropriate use of my work undermines this.

This morning I woke to see, upon closer inspection of the web site, that my image is being used in other promotional content on the campaign site and in another spot, “The King of Pork” ad.

I didn’t react publicly right away last night because I reached out to friends who know lawyers and to Public Knowledge for advice first. I got the beginnings of advice this morning. I’ve written Russell’s campaign to ask them to stop using my work beyond the bounds of the Creative Commons license and I’m interested in finding out what more I can do.

I feel like I should say I am also all for fair use (an implied right that long precedes the Creative Commons) but I don’t think this fits. Others have agreed.

I don’t know yet if they’ve run these ads on TV, but they appear to want to and they have gotten a sizable enough views on YouTube for a congressional race.

I would hope that when Creative Commons works are used properly in any kind of speech the public would understand such use is not the same as endorsement by the original creator. By not following the rules of the Creative Commons license, Russell’s ad leaves people to reasonably conclude an endorsement by me if they happen to recognize the photo or find it elsewhere, properly attributed. Ben’s message to me last night was an example of such an inference – that I had somehow collaborated with this campaign – being drawn by a complete stranger.

I could imagine Creative Commons-supplied works figuring into constructive mainstream political volleys some day. Where dynamic and well-attributed and linked remixed works themselves could be maps to the nuance and reality of the political scene, via which deceit and inaccuracies could be routed out by tracing the component parts of these works.

This misuse is an example of diminishing the productive uses of copyright, of the commons and I find this a threat to democracy (however important this small example is or is not). The consequences of stomping across the commons could become quite significant if people become afraid to share their work, particularly if like much of mine it is documentary in nature, because they’re afraid it will be unattributed, taken out of context, or worse.

By documenting this publicly, I’m not implicitly defending the comments by Murtha that the first ad is ostensibly criticizing. I personally have fundamental disagreements with Murtha’s hawkishness, nevermind the pork end of his role in defense spending. To be frank, I doubt I agree with much of Murtha’s or Russell’s stated positions or their track records overall.

In more ways than one.

Inskeep at one point does mention that “we’ve had our share of critics” (ah, yes, “one’s share” again — meeting some minimum obligation to defer to the minority view that doesn’t fit conveniently in the two sided volley that they’d prefer, I guess) in questioning the Republican guest who voted against the bill.

But the critiques Inskeep has apparently been informed of (I am most familiar with those of Dean Baker, not sure if he was a guest) do not seem to inform the questions. Shouldn’t they? Shouldn’t Inskeep ditch the verbage that defers to Capitol Hill back rooms and actively try to reconsile all the assertions, including those beyond the default false dichotomy?

If there is a bias, shouldn’t it be towards those who don’t have a vested interest in the power structure and who have a track record of getting things right? Shouldn’t there be less deference for those who have been repeatedly wrong or massively inconsistent without rationale?

Instead Inskeep sounds like he is play-acting sounding puzzled that the two party machines could not keep the game playing the way the normally do and making little effort to go much further. Backroom tactics can be news but they should either be equal or second to routing out the facts of the issue, reconsiling the assertions about the public policy and the problems.

That most Americans opposed the bailout seems to be a footnote: often mentioned as an aside, never explained in as many words are given to all the tactical explanations.

Much emphasis has also been given to Wall Street’s reaction to the vote — but what do we expect? It is the trader’s own industry that is affected, whatever the real meaning for the rest of us is. I know so many have their futures tied-up in mortgages and investments, and this is real for a lot of regular Americans, but it seems like the casino of Wall Street is prone to manic behavior. Perhaps Wall Street isn’t unlike a three year old who just ate all the cake, is sick, wants more cake still, and is throwing a tantrum of impatience because typically capitulating parents can’t come to any other agreement as to how to handle the infantile beast.

A rough metaphor perhaps. But what I mean to say is that Wall Street is not a purely rational actor in this case (if it ever is), as it is not remotely observing other parts of the system and then making projections based on it. Its own profits, treasure, is at stake, and whether or not things could work without a bailout of this sort, the analysts and traders seem to have an incentive for the market to behave “badly” at worst and little perspective to be level-headed at best. The stock market cannot be relied upon — again — this is problematic for a lot of people who are tied up in it as other guaranteed benefits have been stripped away (by bought lawmakers and Wall Street lobbyists). If help should get to anyone, perhaps to them.

But let the traders thrash about a bit more. For all those who need real help, let us consider other ways for the State to spend $700 billion, so long as it can be done and we still have this state around to cajole into helping the people it allegedly exists to serve.

One was a report by David Kestenbaum about the tricky politics of inviting the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to perform a “check-up” on U.S. government economic policies and practices.

The ostensible rationale behind such an inspection seemed sensible to me, a layperson. There is merit in the idea of collaboration to facilitate the implied goal of transparency for stability and accountability. But that would be granting too much on the face of things, and there is cause for skepticism (though likely not the same flavor of skepticism and resistance that might come from Bush’s economic advisers).

The IMF is not known for being at the vanguard of sustainable development. The report cites Argentina as an example where the IMF has come to “help,” and, well — that appears to have been a complete failure until Argentina rejected IMF policies.

The IMF’s most influential practices are not that far away from those that helped cause the housing bubble and the credit crunch in the U.S. to begin with. In fact, there seems to be significant overlap in the global private institutions that have exploited the domestic situation and who also invest in IMF-led “development.” Additionally, the U.S. is a major influence on the governance of the Bretton Woods institutions (it gets more explicit control over the IMF’s sister institution, the World Bank).

If your general understanding doesn’t extend that far, then you might not have laughed until you heard the end of the report. Someone is quoted, summing up how simple it would be for someone to spot the impending housing crisis, as saying my 6 year old daughter knows you don’t lend money to people who can’t pay you back.

This is exactly what the World Bank and the IMF are infamous for: lending money to dictators of poor nations, or muscling its way into vulnerable economies, and then as some see it, extorting payback at the expense of sovereignty and development of resources essential to human rights in favor of projects that involved multinational corporations cosy to the largest investors in the WB/IMF regime. Not too much unlike a family feeling forced to pay back a loan shark at the expense of medicine or food.

The funny thing is, this is all tacitly acknowledged earlier in the piece when Kestenbaum refers to the IMF as a global loan shark.

Again, this is not to disparage the entire rank and file of these organizations, of which I know little about, and among which — I presume — there are those who are passionate about solving real problems. But these are for-profit institutions, and the associations of their power brokers along with the general record of these organizations are so conflicted as to not warrant placing faith in them, and to highlight the irony when it is suggested they advise the U.S.

The so-called “Beijing 6″ were ultimately sentenced, through an extrajudicial proceeding (they did not get to go to court), to 10 days of detainment. As some of us guessed, it turned out to be shorter, with the end of the Olympics.

I received a message via Facebook that one of Brian’s colleagues, Jeffrey Rae, called his father to say he and others were being put aboard an Air China flight to Los Angeles.

I haven’t had the time to summarize and annotate my thoughts on the media coverage of the detainments. I’ve been trying to help make some connections between Brian’s family and the media, and hold down the day job as well.

I suppose the short version of such thoughts would be this:

The articles I’ve seen in the New York Times, Agence France Presse, the Associated Press, and elsewhere have not given much space to the broader context of the Students for a Free Tibet actions, or other protests, and have not bothered to acknowledge the different roles of some of those detained. Not all were participants in the protest. Brian, Jeffrey Rae, and others are asserted to have had a purely documentary role (and my personal knowledge inclines me to believe this). No evidence has been presented to the contrary and yet they’re all implied to be people who knowingly broke the law (however unjust it may be). That may be true for some of them, but some were not even breaking the law as best we can tell.

While what these detainees have suffered is far less than what Chinese dissidents have suffered, the “Beijing 6″ and a couple others have received special treatment with respect to the precedent set in handling previous alleged disruptions during the Olympics.

The former has only been glazed over throughout the Olympic coverage and the latter only mentioned in passing in a couple of reports so far. The facts are lightly reported and the context only exists for those of us who read voraciously and cull as much we can. The papers and the wires have done the public no favors in understanding this situation.

Eowyn, Brian’s wife, shared this thought with many of us overnight:

I’ve spent a lot of today pondering a question that came to me sometime last night — If this is how the Chinese government treats US citizens when the eyes of the world are focused on China, what do they do to Tibetan and Chinese activists, who have no real rights, when no one is watching? I can’t even imagine.

Update: This evening I heard of a report on NPR yesterday, and heard another for myself today that actually distinguished the two different groups of detainees related to the Students for a Free Tibet incident — using the terms “activists” and “citizen journalists.” An improvement in accuracy.