Rush to judgement

Last week Jon Stewart showed a clip of Rush Limbaugh hoping that President Obama will fail in his policies.  Stewart asked if Bill O'Reilly - according to his 'he's our President like it or not' attitude during the Bush years - would think Limbaugh un-American for not getting behind our President.  (This is really worth watching - a fantastic 4-minutes)

And in today's 'Comment is free' op-ed section of The Guardian comes an interesting piece on Obama calling Limbaugh out on this demagoguery.  It would be nice to think that not only are the Reagan-Bush years possibly behind us, but that with it might swill down the drain the obnoxious hate lines of Rush Limbaugh.  I know living in Texas with a reduction in his popular influence would make life a bit easier to take there...

Man or Superman (III)

The usually profanely mordant Charlie Brooker recently allowed himself to reveal his soft side when discussing the passing of British children's telly legend Oliver Postgate (responsible for such national treasures as Bagpuss, The Clangers, and Noggin the Nog).

Today, in his usual Monday column, Brooker again shows something of his underbelly, giving us a wonderful depiction of the global hopes and fears for President Obama.  I love his vivid analogy with Superman III.

Also in today's The Guardian is this item about Obama's upcoming CO2 moves - I'll keep you posted.

You Tube 'fireside' chat #1

President Barack Obama has posted the first of his weekly video addresses to the citizenry of America via You Tube.

On it drones

President Obama has okayed Predator drone unmanned planes bombings within Pakistan against supposed militants tied to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

On it continues.

Rolling...rolling back the Bush years...Rolling...rolling

On it goes - rolling back the Bush years:

President Obama has revoked the no foreign aid to family planning clinics (i.e., where abortion is even mentioned as an option) to return us to a sensible footing in terms of advocating reproductive health and family planning in the Third World / throughout the world.

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Also today, The Guardian's Charlotte Higgins brings us news of the quartet's pre-recorded performance for the inauguration (tiny echoes of the Chinese Olympics' opening ceremony 'fireworks' - I said TINY echoes).  There's nothing sinister to it, just meteorological - but an interesting titbit, nonetheless...

Plus, though Higgins finds the composition schmaltzy, it is great to see that she has even greater opprobrium for the 'poetry' from the inauguration.  It was like one of those cringy occasions where you're at a friend's wedding and they've let another of their friends air their 'poetic' skills to mark the blessed day... Usually a load of embarrassing crap issues forth and everyone has to act like it worked and was apposite and moving - ugh....

And so it begins...

Remaking America:

He's had to re-take his oath (to placate the Fox News crowd who would be happy to say that 2000 and 2004 weren't a stolen and a dodgy election respectively.  BUT would try to claim that the performative speech act of the Oath taking on Tuesday was what J.L. Austin might have termed 'an unhappy performative' - though to be fair, the Fox News crowd don't tend to be au fait with either Austin or Jürgen Habermas).

But our 44th President - Barack Hussein Obama - has already begun kicking out the jams!

- To close Guantanamo Prison Camp within 12 months at the latest

- To ensure while it is in the process of being closed that the Geneva Conventions are followed

- Suspend military tribunals for Guantanamo detainees

- To close the CIA's secret prisons around the world

- To stop use of torture

- Not to undertake illegal surveillance

- Wants troop withdrawal from Iraq within 16 months

- Wants a diplomatic relationship with Iran for talks without preconditions

- To lead bi- and multi-lateral disarmament for a 'nuclear-free world'

- To disallow the seal of ex-President's papers in perpetuity a la Bush

- To expedite the making public of official documents

- Wants to make the Israel / Palestine conflict top priority

- Wants to address immediately bailout funds and economic recovery plans

- Instituted a pay freeze for White House staff earning over $100,000 a year

- Is trying to distance the administration from the lure of lobbyists

- And might get a 'super encrypted' Blackberry after all!

Some of these are steps that will require congressional oversight and validation to become enacted, some are executive powers to be executed, most will have to be watched over to ensure they are not later reinstated when it becomes expedient or desireable (or if not when, then when it becomes expedient or desireable for someone - i.e., the who factor...).  These are not absolute victories - but of course what ever is?  We always must remain vigilant against the rolling back of gains and a regressive Draconianism reasserts itself.  But these are the kinds of CHANGE(s) we HOPE(d) for from Obama - long may it continue!

PS: President Obama's first proclamation was for a day of Renewal and Reconciliation does that mean that we could be due a Truth and Reconciliation Commission as in South Africa?  That would help with dealing with 9/11 and the Bush Administration and with race relations in the US.  Perhaps - who knows...

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The Dallas Morning News reports (excerpted):

By TODD J. GILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News 
tgillman@dallasnews.com

"WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama began dismantling the Bush legacy Wednesday, using his first full day to overturn an order that let ex-presidents seal their papers forever.

It was one of a number of big and small steps by the new president that, taken together, amounted to a slashing denunciation of his predecessor – from an order halting military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to one meant to make unclassified records more readily available to the public."

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The New York Times reports:

Obama to Shut Guantánamo Site and C.I.A. Prisons

By MARK MAZZETTI and WILLIAM GLABERSON

Published: January 21, 2009

"WASHINGTON — President Obama is expected to sign executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, government officials said.

The orders, which would be the first steps in undoing detention policies of former President George W. Bush, would rewrite American rules for the detention of terrorism suspects. They would require an immediate review of the 245 detainees still held at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to determine if they should be transferred, released or prosecuted.

And the orders would bring to an end a Central Intelligence Agency program that kept terrorism suspects in secret custody for months or years, a practice that has brought fierce criticism from foreign governments and human rights activists. They will also prohibit the C.I.A. from using coercive interrogation methods, requiring the agency to follow the same rules used by the military in interrogating terrorism suspects, government officials said.

But the orders would leave unresolved complex questions surrounding the closing of the Guantánamo prison, including whether, where and how many of the detainees are to be prosecuted. They could also allow Mr. Obama to reinstate the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation operations in the future, by presidential order, as some have argued would be appropriate if Osama bin Laden or another top-level leader of Al Qaeda were captured.

The new White House counsel, Gregory B. Craig, briefed lawmakers about some elements of the orders on Wednesday evening. A Congressional official who attended the session said Mr. Craig acknowledged concerns from intelligence officials that new restrictions on C.I.A. methods might be unwise and indicated that the White House might be open to allowing the use of methods other the 19 techniques allowed for the military.

Details of the directive involving the C.I.A. were described by government officials who insisted on anonymity so they could not be blamed for pre-empting a White House announcement. Copies of the draft order on Guantánamo were provided by people who have consulted with Mr. Obama’s transition team and requested anonymity for the same reason.

The executive order on interrogations is certain to be received with some skepticism at the C.I.A., which for years has maintained that the military’s interrogation rules are insufficient to get information from senior Qaeda figures like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The Bush administration asserted that the harsh interrogation methods were instrumental in gaining valuable intelligence on Qaeda operations.

The intelligence agency built a network of secret prisons in 2002 to house and interrogate senior Qaeda figures captured overseas. The exact number of suspects to have moved through the prisons is unknown, although Michael V. Hayden, the departing director of the agency, has in the past put the number at “fewer than 100.”

The secret detentions brought international condemnation, and in September 2006, President Bush ordered that the remaining 14 detainees in C.I.A. custody be transferred to Guantánamo Bay and tried by military tribunals.

But Mr. Bush made clear then that he was not shutting down the C.I.A. detention system, and in the last two years, two Qaeda operatives are believed to have been detained in agency prisons for several months each before being sent to Guantánamo.

A government official said Mr. Obama’s order on the C.I.A. would still allow its officers abroad to temporarily detain terrorism suspects and transfer them to other agencies, but would no longer allow the agency to carry out long-term detentions.

Since the early days after the 2001 attacks, the intelligence agency’s role in detaining terrorism suspects has been significantly scaled back, as has the severity of interrogation methods the agency is permitted to use. The most controversial practice, the simulated drowning technique known as water-boarding, was used on three suspects but has not been used since 2003, C.I.A. officials said.

But at the urging of the Bush administration, Congress in 2006 authorized the agency to continue using harsher interrogation methods than those permitted for use by other agencies, including the military. Those exact methods remain classified. The order on Guantánamo says that the camp, which received its first hooded and chained detainees seven years ago this month, “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.”

The order calls for a cabinet-level panel to grapple with issues including where in the United States prisoners might be moved and what courts they could be tried in. It also provides for a new diplomatic effort to transfer some of the remaining men, including more than 60 that the Bush administration had cleared for release.

The order also directs an immediate assessment of the prison itself to ensure that the men are held in conditions that meet the humanitarian requirements of the Geneva Convention. That provision appeared to be a pointed embrace of the international treaties that the Bush administration often argued did not apply to detainees captured in the war against terrorism.

The seven years of the detention camp have included four suicides, hunger strikes by scores of detainees, and accusations of extensive use of solitary confinement and abusive interrogations, which the Department of Defense has long denied. Last week a senior Pentagon official said she had concluded that interrogators at Guantánamo had tortured one detainee, who officials have said was a would-be “20th hijacker” in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The report of Thursday’s expected announcement came after the new administration late Tuesday night ordered an immediate halt to the military commission proceedings for prosecuting detainees at Guantánamo and filed a request in Federal District Court in Washington to stay habeas corpus proceedings there. Government lawyers described both delays as necessary for the administration to make a broad assessment of detention policy.

The cases immediately affected include those of five detainees charged as the coordinators of the 2001 attacks, including the case against Mr. Mohammed, the self-described mastermind.

The decision to stop the commissions was described by the military prosecutors as a pause in the war-crimes system “to permit the newly inaugurated president and his administration time to review the military commission process generally and the cases currently pending before the military commissions, specifically.”

More than 200 detainees’ habeas corpus cases have been filed in federal court, and lawyers said they expected that all of the cases would be stayed.

Mr. Obama had suggested in the campaign that, in place of military commissions, he would prefer prosecutions in federal courts or, perhaps, in the existing military justice system, which provides legal guarantees similar to those of American civilian courts.

Some human rights groups and lawyers for detainees said they were concerned about the one-year timetable. “It only took days to put these men in Guantánamo; it shouldn’t take a year to get them out,” said Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which has coordinated detainees’ lawyers.

But several groups that had criticized the Bush administration’s policies applauded the rapid moves by the new administration. Mr. Obama’s actions “reaffirmed American values and are a ray of light after eight long, dark years,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington, and William Glaberson from New York. Carl Hulse contributed reporting from Washington."

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The Guardian reports:

From Ewen MacAskill in Washington - The Guardian, Thursday 22 January 2009: 

"President Barack Obama yesterday devoted his first full day in office to ditching one discredited Bush administration policy after another - proposing the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison and offering a new relationship to Iran.

Sitting behind the desk at the Oval Office at 8.35am after a late night of inauguration balls, he set about trying to live up to the daunting expectations for his presidency both at home and abroad.

He gathered his military commanders to set new missions for Iraq and Afghanistan, and met his economics team to discuss a proposed $800bn spending package to combat recession. He also phoned world leaders to emphasise that a new president is in charge, with a completely different agenda and world outlook.

Although Obama's team is reluctant to be compared with Franklin Roosevelt's famous 100 days that brought in the New Deal - the measurement for all subsequent presidencies - it wants his 100 days to be just as historically significant.

Addressing assembled White House staff, he said he had been inspired by the estimated two million who gathered to watch him being sworn in. He told staff he expected a higher ethical code at the White House than had existed under his predecessor, and issued executive orders imposing strict rules governing dealings with Washington's lobbyists. "Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency," he said.

He also issued a pay freeze on staff earning more than $100,000. "Families are tightening their belts and so should Washington," he said.

In an unsual move - described by the White House as an "abundance of caution" - he was administered the oath of office a second time because a word was out of sequence when he was sworn in on Tuesday. Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath in front of reporters.

The most symbolically significant act of the day was to release a draft executive order to close Guantánamo within a year. The camp, site of torture and other abuses, came to define the Bush administration. The draft executive order which Obama is expected to sign today, says: "The detention facilities at Guantánamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than a year from the date of this order."

In two other executive orders, he is to ban torture by all US personnel and initiate a review of the cases of all those still held at Guantánamo. He ordered judges to suspend trials under way there.

The most important meeting of the day was the one with military chiefs. He wants to fulfil campaign promises to withdraw US troops from Iraq within his first 16 months in office, and to send new troops to Afghanistan. His top commander, General David Petraeus, flew from Afghanistan to be present.

On the international front, Obama's team posted on the White House website a new direction for foreign policy, of which the most startling was an offer to negotiate with Iran. Although such a policy was a prominent feature of his campaign message of engagement with America's enemies, the White House said such negotiations would be "without preconditions".

That could pose a problem for Hillary Clinton, who was confirmed as secretary of state by the Senate yesterday by 94 votes to two. She clashed with Obama in 2007 during her battle for the Democratic presidential nomination on this issue, saying it would be a mistake to sit down with the Iranians without first setting conditions.

The Bush administration had refused to negotiate with Iran until it first suspended its uranium enrichment programme, suspected by the west as a move to secure a nuclear weapons capability.

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Obama made a point of ensuring that his first telephone calls to world leaders were to key players in the region. He spoke to the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, and King Abdullah of Jordan. The fact that he called them first suggests the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be a priority.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said Obama "used this opportunity on his first day in office to communicate his commitment to active engagement in pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace from the beginning of his term".

Some members of Obama's team are known to be privately angry with Israel over the death toll and destruction in Gaza, despite Obama's expression of sympathy for Israel over Palestinian rocket attacks."

Radical Change? Yes, you can...

Today is the day - the eight years are over; the several post-election victory months are at an end: today is the inauguration of Barack Obama.  Understandably - much jubilation worldwide.  BBC24 is on with full coverage here in my London flat.  I have so many hopes for what Obama's change might bring.  I try to be realistic and look at the economic disaster in the middle of which America and the world find themselves - where we are all locked down in financial crisis.  Trillions spent on the two wars which continue.  The atrocities in the Gaza Strip and the UN hamstrung yet again.  So what can we hope for from Obama's presidency?  Well, here's what I would like to see.

Withdrawal from both Iraq and Afghanistan.  Insistence that a two state solution be immediately and actually pursued in Israel / Palestine.  Diplomatic engagement; no unilateral military adventures; active participation in the UN.  Address of Global Warming and Climate Change initiatives; real oversight and regulation on industry regarding environmental protection BUT ALSO real oversight and regulation on the financial / banking industries to disallow capitalism from eating itself yet again (of course, that's a tricky one for a number of reasons).  Address of universal healthcare needs and to buck the insurance lobby in favour of humanitarian care of all people.  Address of housing and education needs; tackling inner-city crime by addressing what life chances there are for young people (diverting them from gangs, etc).  Address of the 'food products' industry (a la Michael Pollan and In Defence of Food) and a real food revolution to help deal with the obesity and health crisis in the US.

End extraordinary rendition and use of torture; close Guantanamo Bay; revoke the PATRIOT act; restore / strengthen civil rights; sign-up to the International Criminal Court and revoke the idea that America is immune from its remit.  George W. Bush should be prosecuted as a war criminal for the invasion and occupation of Iraq (along with Tony Blair).  Ensure separation of church and state.  Allow for gay marriage or civil partnerships at the very least.  These are a few of the more radical, but just, moves which Obama should also undertake.

These are just the first few things which come to mind.  It's a large spectrum of issues, but all of them are achievable.  What Obama must remember is that he has a huge mandate specifically for change and progressive change at that - there is much ground to cover, but huge enthusiasm to see it through.

Don't be sheepish President Obama - yes, you can: now get down to business!

Obey Hope

Let me begin by saying that I am elated that Barack Obama is our new President (well, currently, President Elect). Let me also state emphatically: the man is neither the Second Coming NOR the Anti-Christ. Should it not be obvious, I'm originally from Texas - I suspect a fair few there harbour secret fear that our 44th President is in fact the harbinger of end times (and in such a scenario, does this cast Oprah as the whore of Babylon?). As I said on Wednesday to John, 'Ah, look, Texas didn't go for Obama.' John's reply: 'August, if Texas had gone for Obama, that would have been the headline.'

And he's right - Texas remains one of the most conservative states in the Union. There are many people in that state of many affliations and attitudes and I am not tarring 22 million people with the same brush. But even all the cool folk of Austin can't outweigh the predominance of Bible bashers (I should know - some of my nearest and dearest are; even if, as my friend Marc assures me, they are of the 'liberal' end of Evangelicals. And I suppose, as with my mother, it is rare to find Dorothy Parker fans who also believe in the literalism of the good book...).

So to the emotional histrionics: the Obama victory was so desired by so many of us. People who wanted to expunge the eight years under George Walker Bush. People who wished the illegal war in Iraq had not been waged as we had demonstrated in our millions on 15 February 2003. People who, post-9/11, had wanted justice not vengance. We see in Obama the potential for a President who has lived outside of the USA and grew up out of the contiguous 48 states (it was as if McCain felt - okay the PUMAs want a woman at all costs, hmmmm, and Obama grew up in Hawaii - aha! Palin - female and Alaska - that'll do!). Someone whose life experiences have shown him more than the internal myth-making machines any American child grows up shaped by: someone who sees America in relation to the rest of the world - not someone who sees America as the world.

We see in Obama, the potential for an intelligent, diplomatic engager who voted against attacking Iraq. We understand that he was running to be leader of a still highly conservative country and that concessionary postures would be forthcoming once the nomination was secured. But even for someone looking for a real Left to revitalise in the US, Obama promised a chance for a radical departure from the fascistic policies we'd faced under Bush (even if some of this radicalism was restricted to the level of identity politics; nonetheless, the thought that, after the poaching of the 2000 election by the Bush family, a non-dynastic mixed race new politician with roots as a lawyer who opted to work as a community organiser in the city of (the now late) Studs Terkel could be the head of our state was thrilling).

And yet. The hysterical response to Obama's victory has smacked of the verso to the Death of Diana as experienced in the UK. Or a positive verso to the recto of the witch-hunting over BBC presenters Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross and their upset to Andrew Sachs (who, as John said, is not a 'national treasure' as some have said, but an actor reknowed for playing a racist stereotype on 13 episodes of a 1970s sitcom!) over his 'Satanic slut' granddaughter. It's band-wagon emotionalism. Can't there be jubulation, relief, pleasure and rational thought all at once? Can't we be a nation that eschews the hooting and shouting of the football field or wrestling match when in the arena of politics?

I know emotions are manipulated and pursued throughout campaigns and have been for dozens of decades. But shouldn't we want to rise above the level of infantile attachments and remain at the level of considered thought? Must everything remain childish like never ending high school pep rallies? Does everyone want the tyranny of the Ballmer world of 'developers, developers, developers'? Where everyone's a cheerleader or vocally opposed to the baddies of the piece, as if the real world were one real pantomime? Why must everything become a performance? A comedy in which we are all the live studio audience?

Why must melodrama be our bathetic genre of choice when the going gets tough? Why do we need to amuse ourselves to death and reduce real issues to punchlines? Why must we engage with a politician's views - whether we identify with them or find them abhorrent - on the level of sexist or racist abuse couched as jokes and jibes and love nothing more than someone who can laugh at themselves? Why are we thrilled when politicians take a night off the stump and engage in a formal white tie and tails event where they mock themselves and each other? Is light relief that important? Must we tamp down our terror in the face of wars and economic collapse and global instability through limp satire and raucous laughter as we push further and further towards trivialising the world's most pressing concerns into a daily show of idiocracy?

Why do we find inspiration in Fairey's Hope Obama and Progress Obama posters? These are developed out of his Obey Giant programme. One developed from a 'They Live' John Carpenter film inspiration about manipulation and selling - combined with a wrestler's visage of Big Brother styled staring eyes - to create a purposefully enigmatic and compelling image. It is a provocation - and yet the Obama work is meant to be straight-forward, uncomplicated advocacy? How does that work within visual communication / cultural terms? Does no one find this troubling or worth discussion?

Obama's campaign made an emotionally manipulative / affecting music video which is on YouTube. It is called signs of hope and change. It is a montage of 'ordinary Americans' holding - a la Bob Dylan or Gillian Wearing - signs which simply say either Hope or Change. And it is set to a loop of the rousing instrumental opening to the song 'Fake Empire' by the band The National. Even the names of the band and the song seem pointed; yet not too didactic or polemical. It's a frustrating video because it sucker punches you on the level of the emotions.

After eight years of intensified imperialistic militarism and rampaging global greed for resources and power - Americans were desparate for precisely such signs of change and hope. Yet it feels so vapid - Change; Hope; Progress. Change we need. Yes we can. Can what? What change? Are we talking about African Americans finally reaching beyond the years of segregation and racist denial of their right to exist freely in their own country?

Are we talking about change from the fascism of surveillance and dirty wars and torture and extraordinary rendition and blacksites and Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and Kissinger leading the inquiry into 9-11 and Colin Powell (rewarded for helping to initially keep quiet My Lai by Nixon appointing him to a White House role and thereby launching his career via this nasty backhander) with his slideshow to the UN to push for the invasion and occupation of Iraq? Change what - hope for what - progress from what and towards what?

And then one day it struck me. I was reminded of a piece Fred Orton wrote on Jasper Johns (sic: actually, it seems it was Jonathan Katz on Johns and Rauschenberg; he's written several pieces on this). He said that Johns had to develop a kind of visual code within his work of the 1950s - that it was an encryption of real intentions and real meanings, tied up with his situation as a gay man in a world where such identities had to stay on the level of the hidden and merely hinted at; where overt expressions were physically and legally dangerous. And this is when all the euphemistic discourse came into focus.

It was not the vacuous talk of ad-speak - where new and exciting and improved are bandied about without concrete specifications so that we are bedazzled into opting for unnecessary purchases. It was the password at the door - it was the underground railroad in the world where Big Brother is watching and listening and the Patriots Act as though they'll round you up at any minute. Where everyone is insecure about what they can and can't say or do. Where overt expressions feel physically and legally dangerous. Where short story writers get detained at airports and Cat Stevens packed back onto a plane and disallowed entry to talk to Dolly Parton. Where people are deported and disappeared and no one talks about it: they just carry on shopping.

That's when I understood the need for signs of hope and change. Let's just hope that the change we need is what he delivers.

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PS - this is quite funny: Palin & Bush