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I began realizing how wrong I was the day of the invasion.  One of my main reasons for supporting the war — after initial skepticism — was Iraq’s alleged stockpiles of chemical, biological, perhaps even nuclear “weapons of mass destruction” in the hands of a ruthless dictator and in defiance of UN resolutions.  Yet now that Iraq was being invaded, where were they?  So my support for the war was decaying from the outset, despite a rather elaborate set of arguments for the war — often merely counterarguments to peace, really — that I now see I was using as hedges.  Having made the leap to the “other side” of the argument, though, I was stubbornly unwilling to go all the way back; that seemed dishonest.  Yet over time new doubts reached a crescendo, from the uncontrolled looting after the fall of Baghdad, to the Shia uprisings of 2004 in a supposedly mending Iraq, to finally, irreconcilably, Abu Ghraib,which left me literally immobilized with shame, fury, and regret the morning I heard about it.  All of these things, but especially Abu Ghraib, convinced me I had nothing in common with the people who commanded and countenanced any of what had been done, by omission and commission, in Iraq, and by extension the policies they supported.

All I can say is: I’m so very, very sorry.  I’ll never do it again.  That’s no consolation whatsoever to the thousands of US soldiers who died, or the tens and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who died, so I don’t say it much, it’s inadequate and weak.  What is it I’ll never do again?  I’ll never accept at face value any administration’s claims for the need for war: given that there were no WMD to disarm Saddam of, the evidence for them should not have been accepted.  I’ll also never accept at face value again the idea that there’s an effective political opposition in Washington, or that the Beltway consensus represents some wisest possible sifting of the evidence, at least when things are as deadly serious as going to war.  In this respect, it was nearly as unforgiveable for Senators like Clinton, Edwards, or Kerry not to even look at intelligence estimates doubting Iraq’s WMD program as it was for Bush and Cheney to go to war.

And if I ever again find myself writing  — or reading — elaborate, hedging arguments for a war of choice, with pompously unforgiveable phrases like “come what may,”  I’ll remember 2003 and think: please, stop. Just stop.  Just shut up. Right now.

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UPDATE, 3/21: crossposted at Aziz Poonawalla’s “City of Brass” blog; his prior post, “Iraq War retrospective: the liberal case for war #iraq10,” sets up the crosspost: “The debate over the Iraq war was not polarized according to liberal/conservative fault lines, but stretched across them. In fact, many liberals found themselves reluctantly swayed by the arguments for war, especially after Kenneth Pollack’s book “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq was published in September 2002, roughly the one-year anniversary of 9-11 and 6 months prior to when the actual invasion began. In a nutshell, liberals were convinced by fear over the threat of Saddam Hussein possessing WMDs – nuclear and chemical; as well as humanitarian concerns. Both of these issues are still relevant in the recent and ongoing debates about action towards North Korea, Iran, Syria and Libya.  [...] Far from being reflexively anti-Bush, or as warblogger Steven den Beste claimed, “wanting America to lose“, liberals were genuinely driven by patriotism and humanitarian concern for the muslims of Iraq under Saddam’s rule. The betrayal of that trust in authority, exemplified by Colin Powell’s presentation at the UN, has led to a deep-seated skepticism on the liberal left against Barack Obama’s policies. Liberals such as Glenn Greenwald are far more critical of Obama than they ever were of Bush, in part because of their experience a decade ago.”   Aziz’s entire “#iraq10” series is well worth any reader’s time; I thank him both for that series and for his kind words about me.

This has saddened the whole world. Today, UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon released this statement, and bless him for it:

The Secretary-General expresses deep sorrow at the death of the 23-year old Delhi student who was gang-raped by six men in a moving bus in New Delhi on 16 December. He offers his sincerest condolences to her parents, family and friends, and utterly condemns this brutal crime. Violence against women must never be accepted, never excused, never tolerated. Every girl and woman has the right to be respected, valued and protected.The Secretary-General welcomes the efforts of the Government of India to take urgent action and calls for further steps and reforms to deter such crimes and bring perpetrators to justice. He also encourages the Government of India to strengthen critical services for rape victims. UN Women and other parts of the United Nations stand ready to support such reform efforts with technical expertise and other support as required.”

This, from a Wall Street Journal article, was heart-breaking:

A 12-year-old girl wrote a message to the deceased rape victim in black crayon: “You are lucky. Many people pray for you.” The girl said there were countless women in India who get raped and assaulted daily, but few get any attention. She said she wanted to grow up in a society that is safe for women.

I hate for 12 year olds to need to know and worry about such things, let alone be surprised that a victim is even noticed and remembered.  I hate for 14 year olds to, too; I need to talk with ours, she’s been following the story and is of course upset by it.  I don’t know what we’ll tell her exactly, I guess I’ll wait to see what she wants to ask and say.

In the last few years I’m more reluctant than I used to be to be judgmental about other countries’ shortcomings – we have quite a lot of our own.  But like the Secretary General suggests, I think it’s fair to guess that more rapes happen the more women are disrespected, not valued, considered lesser human beings; we can try to resist that everywhere.  Things may (well) be worse in India than they are here, but it’s not the only place where there’s violence against women, or inadequate pursuit of justice against their assailants; yesterday, NPR reported “Years Delayed, Detroit Starts Testing Rape Kits For Evidence.”

UPDATE: Also, what many Indian women are saying is no different from what any of us anywhere can agree with.  Via The speech that explains India’s outrage over a gang rape—and how women are treated every day (S. Mitra Kalita , Quartz.com),  here’s just part of what Kavita Krishnan, secretary, All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA) had to say:

…I believe even if women walk out on the streets alone, even if it is late at night, why should justifications need to be provided for this, like ‘she has to work late hours’ or ‘she was coming home from a BPO job or a media job’? If she simply wants to go out at night, if she wants to go out and buy a cigarette or go for a walk on the road — is this a crime for women? We do not want to hear this defensive argument that women only leave their homes for work, poor things, what can they do, they are compelled to go out. We believe that regardless of whether she is indoors or outside, whether it is day or night, for whatever reason, however, she may be dressed — women have a right to freedom. And that freedom without fear is what we need to protect, to guard and respect.

I am saying this because I feel that the word ‘safety’ with regard to women has been used far too much — all us women know what this ‘safety’ refers to, we have heard our parents use it, we have heard our communities, our principals, our wardens use it. Women know what ‘safety’ refers to. It means – You behave yourself. You get back into the house. You don’t dress in a particular way. Do not live by your freedom, and this means that you are safe. A whole range of patriarchal laws and institutions tell us what to do in the guise of keeping us ‘safe’. We reject this entire notion. We don’t want it.

Read it all — but listen to her too, even if like me, you don’t speak Hindi. You can hear her meaning every word of it, you can feel her wrath and power.  Maddie, this is what you do, this is how you fight back.

Last week, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) reported:

FBI documents just obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) pursuant to the PCJF’s Freedom of Information Act demands reveal that from its inception, the FBI treated the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat even though the agency acknowledges in documents that organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did “not condone the use of violence” at occupy protests.

At the time of the wave of crackdowns against Occupy Wall Street (OWS) encampments around the country, some writers — most prominently Naomi Wolf (“The shocking truth about the crackdown on Occupy,” 11/25/11) — argued that events showed “coordination against OWS at the highest national levels,” while others like Joshua Holland felt the “word “coordinated” is too vague to offer any analytic value.” 

In followups, many progressive commentators joined Holland in minimizing the federal role in the crackdowns.  First relying on Holland’s rebuttal, and later focusing on reports from Portland exonerating the Obama DHS in that city, Corey Robin, for instance, argued that the “Crackdown on Occupy [was] Probably Not Organized by the Obama Administration.”  To be clear: the motive wasn’t to minimize the crackdowns, but to question the need to invoke a driving federal role in them.*  As Scott Lemieux (“Lawyers, Guns & Money”) put it mockingly — he seems not to be able to help himself — Wolf’s position implied that “authoritarian actions could not be the result of our benevolent local overlords but must be the work of the big bad feds.    History does not provide much support for this assumption.”  Robin’s analysis was the same, if more circumspect: “political repression in the US tends to be decentralized and local.”  Call it the “They don’t need no steenkin’ federal badges” analysis.

The documents obtained by PCJF — in this “production” and previous ones throughout the year — make that view not wrong so much as uninteresting, even beside the point.

True, there’s no smoking gun directly tying the DHS or the FBI to the violent evictions or the decisions leading to them.*  But the documents show that focusing on the evictions per se was an analytic mistake of its own: federal agencies from the FBI to DHS to the National Park Service had laid the groundwork well before then.

A Democracy Now! segment summarizes the news of the document release:

…the FBI monitored Occupy Wall Street from its earliest days and treated the nonviolent movement as a potential terrorist threat. Internal government records show Occupy was treated as a potential threat when organizing first began in August of 2011. Counterterrorism agents were used to track Occupy activities, despite the internal acknowledgment that the movement opposed violent tactics. The monitoring expanded across the country as Occupy grew into a national movement, with FBI agents sharing information with businesses, local police agencies and universities.

Among the examples PCJF highlights:

• As early as August 19, 2011, the FBI in New York was meeting with the New York Stock Exchange to discuss the Occupy Wall Street protests that wouldn’t start for another month. By September, prior to the start of the OWS, the FBI was notifying businesses that they might be the focus of an OWS protest. [...]
• The FBI in Anchorage reported from a Joint Terrorism Task Force meeting of November 3, 2011, about Occupy activities in Anchorage.
• A port Facility Security Officer in Anchorage coordinated with the FBI to attend the meeting of protestors and gain intelligence on the planning of the port actions. He was advised to request the presence of an Anchorage Police Department official to also attend the event. The FBI Special Agent told the undercover private operative that he would notify the Joint Terrorism Task Force and that he would provide a point of contact at the Anchorage Police Department.
• The Tampa, Florida FBI “Domestic Terrorism” liaison participated with the Tampa Police Department’s monthly intelligence meeting in which Occupy Lakeland, Occupy Polk County and Occupy St. Petersburg were discussed. They reported on an individual “leading the Occupy Tampa” and plans for travel to Gainesville for a protest planning meeting, as well as on Veterans for Peace plans to protest at MacDill Air Force Base.
• The Federal Reserve in Richmond appears to have had personnel surveilling OWS planning. They were in contact with the FBI in Richmond to “pass on information regarding the movement known as occupy Wall Street.” There were repeated communications “to pass on updates of the events and decisions made during the small rallies and the following information received from the Capital Police Intelligence Unit through JTTF (Joint Terrorism Task Force).”

Note the very real institutional linkages between federal and local agencies via the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) — and ponder the all but indestructible fate, going forward, of all the data collected and shared that way.  As PCFJ executive director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard told Amy Goodman of “Democracy Now!”:

…you can see, through these documents, the FBI is collecting a lot of information on completely lawful activities, on the activities of people who are not alleged to have committed criminal acts, are not planning criminal acts, who actually are engaged in cherished, First Amendment-protected activities. And yet, it’s being collected under the imprimatur of domestic terrorism or criminal activity and being entered into these mass databases, which have a huge level of dissemination and access and which are virtually unregulated.

Many of us have been deeply concerned about things like the Maryland State Police’s mid-2000s-decade infiltration of anti-death penalty, peace, and environmental groups (with some names shared to a federally maintained database as “terrorists”), or the FBI’s September 2010 “material support” raids on labor and peace solidarity activists in the Midwest.  This nationwide effort may have resulted in the FBI’s biggest haul of activist names in decades.  You never know when that will come in handy.

Let’s also return to the violent OWS crackdowns in November 2011.  Here’s a question for theorists like Lemieux or Robin: is there any point at which the sheer churn of federal OWS  information sharing or the constant characterization of OWS activities as “potential criminal activity” — even maybe “terrorism” –becomes encouragement of crackdowns against them? (Call this the “Who will rid us of this troublesome protest group?” analysis.)  What are local police or political officials to think if they get repeated phone calls from the FBI about Occupy, are told how to prep HAZMAT teams, and in some cases get second streams of information from Joint Terrorism Task Forces?

Whether you’re Mayberry RFD or, God forbid, the NYPD: if you’re getting stuff — day in, day out — about OWS in your inbox with a an “FBI” or “DHS” return address, then the “subtext”, the fundamental message you’re getting is not “hey, whatever, do what you think best, guys.”  It’s: “finally! some work to do — and something to brag about in next year’s budget request.”

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* True also: these documents were heavily redacted, but suggest there are meetings and correspondence still relevant to the FOIA request; PCJF is appealing for more materials to be released.
EDIT,  12/30/12:”a driving federal role in them” for “a federal role” at Mr. Robin’s request.
UPDATE, 12/30/12: Mr. Lemieux writes briefly on the PCJF’s most recent documents.  As the “Crying Wolf” title suggests, he mainly reacts to Ms. Wolf’s summary, recycling his “benevolent local overlords” straw man line, but also summarizing the documents obtained by PCJF as simply a “description of planned Occupy protests followed by a lot of redacted material.”
UPDATE, 12/31/12: Marcy Wheeler (“emptywheel”) already had more and better on this on the 26th (Dear FBI: Show Your Work); she says the documents reveal prior FBI deceptions and misstatements about its own practices (e.g., its “Domain Management Programs”), and that the FBI’s “(b)(7)(E)” “investigation technique” redactions may have merely removed the URL(s) of  Occupy web site (s) allegedly recommending protesters bring tasers and billy clubs.  Wheeler makes a reasonable guess about the motive: “…because that would show that FBI is using the timeworn “investigation techniques” of “drawing illogical conclusions from public claims” and “just making shit up” to invent the reason to use First Amendment activities as the predicate for an investigation.”

…followed by the highest-grossing propaganda effort in history?

The makers of “Zero Dark Thirty” may have just learned that there is such a thing as bad publicity.  Peter Bergen (CNN) reports:

On Wednesday, three senior U.S. senators sent Michael Lynton, the CEO of Sony Pictures, a letter about “Zero Dark Thirty,” the much-discussed new movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, which described the film as “grossly inaccurate and misleading.”

The letter, co-signed by Senators Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Carl Levin (D-MI), and John McCain (R-AZ), states:

…We understand that the film is fiction, but it opens with the words “based on first-hand accounts of actual events” and there has been significant media coverage of the CIA’s cooperation with the screenwriters. As you know, the film graphically depicts CIA officers repeatedly torturing detainees and then credits these detainees with providing critical lead information on the courier that led to the Usama Bin Laden. Regardless of what message the filmmakers intended to convey, the movie clearly implies that the CIA’s coercive interrogation techniques were effective in eliciting important information related to a courier for Usama Bin Laden. We have reviewed CIA records and know that this is incorrect.

Zero Dark Thirty is factually inaccurate, and we believe that you have an obligation to state that the role of torture in the hunt for Usama Bin Laden is not based on the facts, but rather part of the film’s fictional narrative….

LA Times reporters Zeitchik and Keegan cut to the chase as far as Hollywood is concerned:

…a bipartisan thumbs-down from Washington may dim the once-bright Oscar chances for Kathryn Bigelow‘s fact-based thriller about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.  “You believe when watching this movie that waterboarding and torture leads to information that leads then to the elimination of Osama bin Laden. That’s not the case,” McCain said on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” adding that torture had yielded false information from detainees. The former prisoner of war explained that he was speaking out because “movies, particularly by very highly credentialed producers, directors and cast, [do] have an effect on public opinion — not only in the United States but around the world.”

Zeitchik and Keegan continue, apparently not ironically,

The slam — and on a subject as provocative as torture — is part of a public relations nightmare in an industry where perception often trumps reality.

…by which they seem to mean criticisms from the news cycle trumping box office receipts and cinematographic artistry.  If so, karma may be a bitch in this case, given that “perception trumping reality” is what the movie makers (arguably) did to position their movie as an Oscar-bait, kinda-sorta-documentary “based on first-hand accounts of actual events,” mainly-sorta-blockbuster in the first place.

Yet there’s something that doesn’t sit well about the senators’ position here either.  I don’t agree with the Washington Post’s  David Ignatius, who clutches at his pearls and calls  the senators’ letter “intemperate” and suggests the senators’ position “sounds like censorship.”  As to the former: good grief, who cares?  But as to the latter: first, “sounds like” ain’t “is.”  Second, it doesn’t even sound like it: the senators suggest setting the record straight — no more — about the movie’s lack of veracity, as they rightly (I suspect*) see it, on the subject of the paltry role that CIA depravity ultimately played in locating Bin Laden.

No, far from censorship, “sounding like censorship,” or infringing Kathryn Bigelow’s constitutional right to an Oscar, what we’ve got here is an inter-branch propaganda battle: over here a blockbuster movie whose authenticity is brought to you by copious access to and capture by the CIA, over there the leadership of a congressional committee equally eager to shape the public’s understanding of the events — and, so far, equally unwilling to divulge any more basis for believing them than the implied parental “because we tell you so.”

I say this because the Senate Intelligence Committee recently (December 13) adopted a 6,000 page report detailing the findings of what the ACLU describes hopefully as “an exhaustive three-year review into the CIA’s interrogation, detention, and extraordinary rendition program.”  But even the ACLU doesn’t really know that, because the report remains classified:

“The next step, of course, is for the report to be made public, so that all Americans can understand the harm that the CIA’s use of torture caused to national security, American values, and to its often innocent victims,” said Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “Nothing good, and only bad, came from the torture program. But until the report is made public, most Americans will hear about the CIA and its torture program only from fictionalized movies and television shows, and not from this still-classified 6,000 page report on the actual facts.”

Maybe Ignatius is right to suggest that the three senator’s real target with their letter was “the intelligence community — and beyond that, the kind of public discussion that leads to good policy decisions.”  My initial guess is simpler and perhaps less ominous than that: this is a committee that had done years of work studying a hugely important issue, only to find itself upstaged at the last minute by Hollywood and a rather nimble CIA P.R. effort.  Yet it’s also true these are people generally no more interested than the CIA in actually leveling with actual American people about these policies.

The Senate Intelligence Committee should not have a monopoly on the truth about torture.  If Feinstein, Levin, and McCain really believe that SONY and Bigelow have a “social and moral obligation to get the facts right,” they needn’t waste their time now moonlighting as film critics or culture scolds.  Instead, they themselves now have the very same social and moral obligation to make those facts available — to the greatest extent possible — by making their committee report public.

That would do far more than a one-off letter to SONY to help the country determine for itself whether “Zero Dark Thirty” is largely fact or largely fiction.   It would also show far more respect to the people of the United States.

—–

POSTSCRIPT: For an excellent discussion of “Zero Dark Thirty”, here’s a segment on “Up with Chris Hayes” featuring Glenn Greenwald, Spencer Ackerman, ACLU’s Hina Shamsi,  and CBS correspondent Nancy Giles, and FBI interrogator James Clemente.  Hayes didn’t mince words, calling the movie “objectively pro-torture” and saying it “actively colludes with evil.” (That said, Ms. Shamsi disagreed because “it doesn’t pull any punches.”)  The clip below is the first of five.   To see all five most conveniently, go to this playlist which plays each clip in sequence.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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* I base this on my own reading of the same document Ignatius cites: Leon Panetta’s May 16, 2011 letter to John McCain, and my current understanding of the movie’s plot.  POSSIBLE SPOILER, highlight to read: As I understand it, the movie suggests that a person who had been subjected to frequent torturous interrogations provided a crucial clue about a Bin Laden courier — not during such an interrogation, but because he was threatened with one.  The clue was then corroborated with documentary evidence already available.  So the movie says: no torture, no Bin Laden.  END POSSIBLE SPOILER. Panetta, by contrast, wrote this:

Nearly 10 years of intensive intelligence work led the CIA to conclude that Bin Ladin was likely hiding at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. there was no one “essential and indispensible” key piece of information that led us to this conclusion. Rather, the intelligence picture was developed via painstaking collection and analysis. Multiple streams of intelligence — including from detainees, but also from multiple other sources — led CIA analysts to conclude that Bin Ladin was at this compound. Some of the detainees who provided useful information about the facilitator/courier’s role had been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. Whether those techniques were the “only timely and effective way” to obtain such information is a matter of debate and cannot be established definitively. What is definitive is that that information was only a part of multiple streams of intelligence that led us to Bin Ladin.
Let me further point out that we first learned about the facilitator/courier’s nom de guerre from a detainee not in CIA custody in 2002. It is also important to note that some detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques attempted to provide false or misleading information about the facilitator/courier. These attempts to falsify the facilitator/courier’s role were alerting.
In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier’s full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means.

Reasonable people can differ, but to me this suggests a paltry, happenstance role for torture in locating Bin Laden, not the central, necessary one the movie seems to suggest.  In this connection, it’s inaccurate to suggest, as Ignatius does, that the senators or other serious analysts of the issue make the absurd claim that torture never, ever results in true information.  As Senator McCain wrote in a May 11, 2011 op-ed,

I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering. Often, information provided to stop the torture is deliberately misleading.

I’ve rarely been as upset by an event as by the Newtown killings; the only similar thing I can think of right now is 9/11.  On learning of the massacre on Friday, I’d thrown my papers at my computer screen, walked out of the office about for a minute, came back, angrily typed “FUCK THE GOD DAMNED NRA” on my Facebook page, hesitated for a moment, and posted it.

Deciding to go
Amid a variety of responses (mostly positive), one friend supplied some more coherent words to go with the sentiment:

“It’s like with the weather and global warming: We can’t say for certain that the NRA’s tooth-and-nail opposition to any sort of reasonable gun regulation anytime anywhere led directly to this particular incident. But we CAN say for certain that the NRA’s tooth-and-nail opposition to any sort of reasonable gun regulation anytime anywhere makes incidents like this one much more likely to happen. So, yes: FUCK THE GOD DAMNED NRA.” 

That’s it. This country has half the world’s firearms and 80% of the gun deaths among the 23 richest countries. Either we’re genetically crazier and meaner than anywhere else, or something else is going on.  I think it’s the militancy of the NRA, a combination lobbyist/chamber of gun commerce organization that helps make owning even the most absurdly overpowered gun seem virtuous to zealots, and that helps oppose even the most minimal of regulations.

So when I saw there was a plan to march to a DC office of the NRA, I felt like I had to join it or feel like I’d let myself down, even if it was during work hours.  I did so despite some misgivings: would this event become Exhibit X in gun advocates’ case that they’re the ones being persecuted?  Might it be better to just ignore the NRA and take our signs and demands elsewhere?  I decided I was overthinking it — especially once I saw the online gun nut hordes descend on the Facebook event page, sneering, jeering, and (I think) strongly suggesting to anyone else “wow, Adam Lanza probably thought all of this crazy stuff too.”

The event
I ducked out of work at 11:30*, and arrived at the gathering place at New Jersey and D Street, SE around noon — a few blocks from the Capitol Building, with its “in session” light on.

I found a crowd of maybe a couple hundred people and what seemed like a couple of dozen newspeople and professional cameramen and -women.  (As ever, everybody had a camera or smart phone and was busily snapping pictures or recording the scene.)

An organizer reminded the crowd, perhaps unnecessarily, that “this is a solemn occasion,” and urged us not to get into confrontations with any counterprotesters.We then took the short, two block walk to the NRA Federal Affairs Division at 410 1st St SE — apparently in the same building as the popular “Bullfeathers” pub.  Either the  “Shame on the NRA!” chant felt a little too confrontational at first, or I’m not the only one who just doesn’t like chanting in unison in the first place.  But then a guy who turned out to be a Republican media consultant leaned out of his office window above a neighboring Subway store, and yelled “Arm the teachers!”  After that most of us were just fine with “Shame on the NRA.”

The rally itself was a little awkwardly staged, but served the purpose of learning just what the NRA’s many absurd legislative priorities and views are.  Organizers read each item in the 2012 NRA House Candidate Survey to the crowd — each paired with the name and age of one of the little victims in Newtown — and then we all answered together “NO we disagree about [lengthy NRA candidate survey position]!  Shame on the NRA!”  Since some of the items ran to forty words, this made for a slightly tedious demonstration experience, but whatever.  Here are the crowd responses prompted by the organizers, numbered to correspond to the NRA survey:

1. I disagree with the NRA and would support legislation to ban the manufacture, sale or transfer of semi-automatic firearms and ammunition magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds of ammunition.
2. I disagree with the NRA and oppose national Right-to-Carry reciprocity legislation.
3. I believe that all firearms transactions — including private transfers between non-licensees, such as family members and friends — should be federally regulated, and I support additional legislation to require the federal government to approve all private firearms transfers.
4. (NRA item skipped in rally list: Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, Tobacco firearms sales reporting requirements in Southwestern states)
5. I disagree with the NRA and believe imported firearms should be treated differently than identical American manufactured firearms.
6. No, I disagree with the NRA [that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees a fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms and that it applies to all Americans regardless of where they live in the United States.] **
7. I disagree with the NRA and oppose protection from disclosure of firearms trace data.
8. I disagree with the NRA. All firearms should be banned.**

About halfway through the items, a lone heckler piped up with the best thing she could think of, and I quote: “blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah.” Then she left to universal shrugs.

After the NRA survey part was over, there was also a “Citizen Questionnaire for the NRA.” The paper document I got providing the link to that “half the world’s firearms” item above, and other useful information, such as the NRA’s ties to the gun industry, and the fact that a recent poll by Frank Luntz found that many common sense gun control laws are supported by a majority of NRA members — including criminal background checks on all gun owners.  It also noted that the NRA has opposed limits on combat-style semi automatic assault weapons, measures to prevent people on terrorist watch lists from obtaining weapons, measures to limit high capacity magazines, and even measures to maintain records of gun purchases.

US assault deaths by race, 1999-2009, analysis by Kieran Healy.  Click image for
additional charts of US assault deaths by region (South is highest), OECD assault
deaths by country (US far and away highest).  UPDATE, 12/22: about 2 out of 3
homicides have been due to guns since the 1990s, according to data from the
Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Talking with participants
Then the rally disbanded.  On my way out, I stopped and talked with two other rally goers on video (see above).  Deb Morris pointed out that this was “her issue too”, a diplomatic way of pointing out that she was one of the few persons of color on hand.  She explained that she had a nephew who had been paralyzed and then died too young as the result of a gunshot.  It’s true that events like Newtown, Aurora, or Virginia Tech galvanize people, including me, yet they’re the tip of the iceberg compared to “everyday” gun-related deaths, particularly among minorities.  Ms. Morris continued:

I don’t understand the people who feel the necessity of having guns to protect themselves from … whom?  I mean they always say they’re going to protect themselves from some outside force, but they always seem to end up killing family members or friends or a child gets a hold of a gun and shoots somebody or shoots himself.  [...] Part of the reason I also came is there’s so much gun violence in African American communities, I think it’s really important that we also be a part of this because guns are going into the hands of people of all colors.  I saw an article the other day about Black Friday where 115000 [ed. - actually 155000!] gun permits were sold.  I mean that’s insane.

Mary Ester was less completely anti-gun than Ms. Morris, but wanted to take steps to prevent mass murders like Newtown:

…I believe we’re making it too easy for dangerous people to get dangerous weapons.  And I think that we can do things that will help prevent tragedies like this, like closing the gun show loophole, like banning assault weapons, but more importantly, banning the high capacity clips that go with assault weapons.  [...] I think that as the President said, we can’t stop tragedies like this all the time, because there is the Second Amendment, and there’s a right to bear arms, however, we can make it more difficult for the wrong people to get guns.

Afterwards, she also said that the NRA actually didn’t do very well in the past election, with just a ten percent win rate; she also questioned the organizers’ decision to advocate a complete firearms ban, saying that just wouldn’t happen and (if I recall correctly) that it might make any progress more difficult.

The upshot
I came away a little more hopeful than when I went.  The protest was bigger than I had pessimistically estimated.  And the counterprotest was much, much smaller than I thought it would be — especially after the late-night sparring with online gun advocates on the event’s Facebook page.  I think “Stop the NRA” is a better message than my original one, and I think it just might be possible this time.

Tomorrow, the same people from CREDO will deliver petition signatures to the NRA at its press conference and will hand out their “Stop the NRA” signs to all who want them.  I don’t think I can join in this time, but I’m glad I was there on Monday.

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* I was back by 1:30, and worked late to make up the time.
** I wasn’t sure I disagreed on all seven statements in the way the organizers wanted me to. I don’t think all firearms should be banned, and I guess I think there is a right to have one in the home for self-defense. I just don’t locate that right in the Second Amendment, but in the 9th Amendment about otherwise unenumerated but real rights. The 2d Amendment in my view doesn’t even ensure concealed carry except as a state or local militia, and I think its properly understood wording overrides the full faith and credit clause in that regard as well — one’s permission to do so in State X does not extend automatically to State Y. States can decide how to govern their own militias – but they have to be militias, at least they ought to be: the amendment doesn’t extend to random zealots wandering around with assault rifles slung over their shoulders.

Children led from Sandy Hook ES in Newtown, CT after shooter rampage, told to keep their eyes shut on their
way out to keep from seeing blood and dead victims, and still following those instructions in the parking lot.
Because, I think, they’re (1) very, very good kids, and (2) they’re scared and in shock because (3) their country
and you and I have screwed up so very badly that we let this happen to them.

There have been so very, very many of these mass killings. Each time, practiced, sneering gun advocates emerge from the woodworks, explaining how it was the shooter, not the gun; any idea you have wouldn’t have prevented this particular crime; any idea you have would have just caused the crime to happen with a different weapon; shame on you for politicizing the tragedy; now is not the time to politicize the tragedy; the Second Amendment is all and only about what they say it’s about; etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

So fondly do I hope, fervently do I pray that this photograph shuts them the fuck up, even just for a merciful hour or two.

It cuts through the bullshit like nothing else I’ve seen since Napalm Girl.  People are good natured and generally retreat from vociferous advocates who are very sure of themselves.  But when you see this, you don’t want to retreat any more.  At least that’s how I feel when I see this.  We are such a failure of a country that these kids had to be led out howling and blind from a scene of horror.

People hate guns when they see this photograph, they hate the NRA when they see this photograph, and they hate people making excuses for guns and the NRA when they see this photograph.  They remember, sure, anyone who would do this is crazy somehow, but he’d have had a tougher time without a Glock, a Sig Sauer, and an M4 carbine.  And while they always kind of knew that, that howling girl and that blind leading the blind chain of good, scared little kids kind of makes you want to NEVER EVER LET THAT HAPPEN AGAIN and cheerfully deck the next person who comes along with sneering, pat argument number 19.  At least it does me.

Maybe this is all a long winded way of saying that photograph has me crying tonight, again, for the fourth or fifth time.

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VARIOUS RELATED: Fuck You, Guns (Baker, Jezebel.com via Gizmodo); “The NRA is the enabler of mass murderers” (Seitz-Wald, Salon.com); Five Lies The Gun Lobby Tells You (Beauchamp, ThinkProgress); Now’s the time to talk guns (Walsh, Salon.com); NRA Twitter goes silent (Daley, Salon.com); Fuck Everything, Nation Reports. Just Fuck It All To Hell (Onion)

But yeah,  maybe Greenwald jumped the gun a bit by foolishly taking many reviewers at their word instead of waiting to see the movie for himself.  So did I, maybe: I set up a “Boycott Zero Dark Thirty” Facebook page before learning that Spencer Ackerman — a reporter for Wired who has seemed like a straight shooter over the years — argues the movie says that torture wasn’t the “silver bullet” but “the ignorant alternative”  to the kind of detective work that actually did find Bin Laden.

But this is the part of Roy’s piece I want to discuss:

“This is still more proof — as if more were needed — that you shouldn’t bring your political obsessions to the temple of art. It is both more personally edifying and more pleasing to the Muses to approach a work of art as a work of art, however obnoxious it may be to you on other grounds, than to approach it as a political phenomenon.”

Honestly, Roy, I’m sorry: baloney. I don’t have to see Zero Dark Thirty to know — OK, very, very strongly suspect — that it’s “art” the way the Roman Colosseum is art, or the Arc de Triomphe is art, or “Triumph of the Will” is art.

That is to say, OK, sure, it’s a kind of art — but it’s a kind serving to glorify the victories and rulers of the day and validate their people’s faith in them, and it’s fully intended to do so. Such art, unlike, say, “Little Miss Sunshine,” is therefore a political phenomenon too, and is completely fair game for political discussion. For that matter, so is a hell of a lot of the rest of the uplifting artstuff hanging on museum walls or flickering on screens for that matter: it’s what those who are good at saying well-compensated uplifting stuff say or have the power to say.

What is it Bigelow and Boal have the well-compensated power to say? E.g., how do Bigelow and Boal know what they think they know, how does it get that authentic, documentarian feel cinematic art consumers today crave?   Not just “the illusion of real time” in exciting night time raids but the ‘ripped from the headlines’ “faithful[ness] to the material’’?  Oh, right: they got it spoon fed to them — back when the prospective opening date was apparently advertised as October 12, not December 14.  Do the math.

Greenwald (and I for that matter) may have swung early and missed as far as ZD30 goes, but I’m betting there’s plenty there to hit. One way or the other, we’re on the cusp of our “pass the popcorn” phase of our national dialogue, such as it is, on torture.  Not every story at the intersection of art and politics is “Piss Christ” revisited, or about whether government should pay for controversial art or monitor its content.  Bigelow and ZD30 chose the kitchen, they can’t complain about the heat.  As long as the word “disingenuous” is floating around, it also seems a little disingenuous to claim the most highly anticipated political snuff movie ever is in the  “temple of art,” so leave it aloooooone.

On the other hand, though, I’m not sure about boycotting the thing any more.  It’s probably best to go ahead and see it if you’ve got to scratch that itch, or just to judge what, if anything, is wrong with it exactly.  I guess I do hope many, many Americans don’t enjoy it.

Screening the rushes for Zero Dark Thirty (and making sure there was a group photo).

Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, plans to begin denying health insurance to newly hired employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week, according to a copy of the company’s policy obtained by The Huffington Post.

Under the policy, slated to take effect in January, Walmart also reserves the right to eliminate health care coverage for certain workers if their average workweek dips below 30 hours — something that happens with regularity and at the direction of company managers.

As several experts contacted for the story noted, the story is of a piece with other corporate actions responding to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with labor cutbacks, such as the Papa John’s, Applebee’s and Olive Garden/Red Lobster announcements (discussed a couple of weeks ago on this blog) that the companies intended to move workers from full-time to part-time status to take advantage of provisions in the ACA.

“Walmart likely thought it didn’t need to offer this part-time coverage anymore with Obamacare,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “This is another example of a tremendous government subsidy to Walmart via its workers.”  [...] 

For Walmart employees, the new system raises the risk that they could lose their health coverage in large part because they have little control over their schedules. Walmart uses an advanced scheduling system to constantly alter workers’ shifts according to store traffic and sales figures.

[...] in recent interviews with The Huffington Post, several workers described their oft-changing schedules as a source of fear that they might earn too little to pay their bills. Many said they have begged managers to assign them additional hours only to see their shifts cut further as new workers were hired.

The new plan detailed in the 2013 “Associate’s Benefits Book” adds another element to that fear: the risk of losing health coverage. According to the plan, part-time workers hired in or after 2011 are now subject to an “Annual Benefits Eligibility Check” each August, during which managers will review the average number of hours per week that workers have logged over the past year.

As Marcy Wheeler (“emptywheel”) pointed out, she had already seen in late 2009 that “incenting s#!t plans” was an advertised feature of the developing health care “reform”, not a bug.  Writing that the proposal was “a Plan to Use Our Taxes to Reward Wal-Mart for Keeping Its Workers in Poverty,” she explained in 2009,

…if Wal-Mart wanted to avoid paying anything for its employees under MaxTax, it could simply make sure that none of them made more than $14,403 a year (they’d have to do this by ensuring their employees worked fewer than 40 hours a week, since this works out to be slightly less than minimum wage). Or, a single mom with two kids could make $24,352–a whopping $11.71 an hour, working full time. That’s more than the average Wal-Mart employee made last year. So long as Wal-Mart made sure its employees applied for Medicaid (something it already does in states where its employees are eligible), it would pay nothing. Nada, zip. Nothing.

The upshot?  Congratulations, America: you’re “subsidizing the gutting of our local economy so that the descendants of Sam [Walton] could continue to get disgustingly rich.” 

Part time employed persons as percent of employed persons, Jan 2002 – Oct 2012. Bureau of Labor Statistics data series LNS12005977, LNS12032194, LNS12000000, http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab1.htm, cpsatab8.htm. Data available here.

Employment-Population ratio 2002-2012 (Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12300000)

Jeannette Wicks-Lim: The possibility of educating one’s way out of poverty is
getting dim as most new jobs only require a high school education (RealNews).

Corporate profits (red), wages (blue) per GDP, 1947-present. ( FRED St.Louis Fed data series WASCUR, CP, GDP. http://research.stlouisfed.org/)

Meanwhile, more and more Americans are forced to settle for jobs that keep them in poverty.  First, more and more have to settle for part-time work.  I had a look at part-time labor trends over the past 10 years, and the results are sobering. Between January 2002 and October 2012, the economy put about 4 million additional people to work with part-time jobs — well over half of the (inadequate) overall increase  during this time.

Nearly all of those added jobs were taken by workers for economic reasons (red line: slack work, can’t find other work) rather than convenience — more than doubling the number of such workers and raising part time work overall to nearly one in five (19%) of all employed persons.

And while the move to part-time work leveled off after a surge in 2008-2009, the rest of the story is that’s just part of a shift to low-paying, low educational needs jobs.  Yves Smith at “naked capitalism” recently pointed out

While there is still an upper tier of positions that require a college education and in many cases, advanced degrees, the bulk of employment growth in this economy is in badly paid service jobs.

Her source: Jeannette Wicks-Lim, assistant research professor at U.Mass Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute and author of the recently published “The Working Poor: A Booming Demographic.”* In that paper, Wicks-Lim points out that the Department of Labor reports that about 70% of jobs require a high school degree or less, and that this figure is not expected to change over the next ten years.  She goes on: 

“We can dig a little deeper and compare the top thirty occupations that the Labor Department estimates will have the largest growth between now and 2020 to the top thirty occupations most commonly held by the working poor in 2010.  These occupations broadly overlap: seventeen out of the thirty occupations are the same.“

The list includes occupations like elementary school teacher, home health aides, nursing aides, janitors, security guards, waiters/waitresses, and groundskeepers.  But as Wicks-Lim told Paul Jay of RealNews:

The other interesting thing to point out is that a lot of these low wage jobs that are this large share of the workforce, these are jobs that are not going to be, you know, pushed offshore. You can’t replace them easily with machines. So you know, jobs like a childcare worker or a home health aide, these are jobs that need to be done by people within the US border. [...]

These are jobs that have the potential to become better quality jobs. But you do need a stronger labor movement.

Either we raise the minimum wage, we build an economy that provides different, higher paying job mix — or workers take things into their own hands and demand higher wages.

It’s great that workers are beginning to do just that.  The Thanksgiving weekend “Black Friday” actions by Walmart workers and supporters were the next step in organizing and agitating for better wages and — almost as crucially, given the needs of many part time workers to hold multiple jobs — more predictability and control over work schedules.

Workers in and organizers of other classic low wage sectors are following suit.  with the Fast Food “Seven Twenty Five: Not Enough to Survive” campaign in New York City as the prime example.  Labor and social justice reporter  Sarah Jaffe, writing for the Atlantic, points out

Yum! Brands, which runs Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC, saw profits up 45 percent over the last four fiscal years, and McDonald’s saw them up 130 percent. (After Walmart, Yum! Brands and McDonald’s are the second and third-largest low-wage employers in the nation.)

Those aren’t the only companies doing quite well these days.  As Federal Reserve Board data show, corporate profits are at an all time high and wages at an all time low (since 1947) as a percentage of gross domestic product.   There’s more than a little room for sharing more of America’s  economic activity — and that’s not just in the interest of low wage workers, it’s in everyone’s interests  to have a stronger, fairer, more resilient economy.   This time, though, let’s not support half measures that entrench and exacerbate a low wage, unsustainable economy.

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* Wicks-Lim bases her poverty definition on the Economic Policy Institute’s “Basic Family Budget,” which averages about 2.4 times the Census Bureau’s official poverty line.  Ms. Wicks-Lim studies the effects of raising the minimum wage; she notes that “There are now over 100 living wage policies in effect. So a rich set of information is developing on how living wage laws work and we need to take the time to evaluate their outcomes. From what I’ve seen so far, the predictions of large disemployment effects from living wage laws have not been borne out. We should look at what has actually happened to understand why.”

I think there are other things you can do — look, I’m open to a conversation about this. I think when it comes to things like Social Security, again, you’ve got to take a mixed approach. I mean if you look at Simpson-Bowles or other plans, again, they have a combination of additional revenue along with spending reform. — [Alan Murray, Wall Street Journal: But you're willing to at least look at that?] — I’m willing to consider all these ideas as part of an overall plan. I don’t think we should jump to the solutions which simply … especially in Medicare, which simply transfer costs, and within Social Security, I think there are actually other ideas, some of which some of us discussed in the SuperCommittee, but unfortunately to no avail.

As ranking member of the House Budget Committee and a key Democratic Party functionary (e.g., ex-DCCC chairman), Van Hollen’s views on budget matters are a fair indication of the Democratic position on issues like these.  So I wrote Van Hollen’s office, laying out my concerns and then inquiring, about the the above quote,

My first question: doesn’t that amount to being open to a Social Security benefit cut?  (Perhaps via what I think are called “chained cost of living adjustments”, i.e., a way of decreasing the adjustment for inflation?)  If not, why not?

My second question: Rep. Van Hollen then says, “I don’t think we should jump to the solutions which simply … especially in Medicare, which simply transfer costs, and within Social Security, I think there are actually other ideas, some of which some of us discussed in the SuperCommittee, but unfortunately to no avail.”  What were those “other ideas”?

Late last week, I got an answer from Congressman Van Hollen’s press secretary Bridgett Frey, referring me to a Huffington Post article by Zach Carter, featuring the video embedded below in which Van Hollen said,

“With respect to Social Security, I agree with what the president has said and what [Rep.] Peter DeFazio said, Social Security is not part of the deficit and debt problem and we’re not going to raid Social Security in order to balance other parts of the budget. As the president has said you can deal with Social Security and try to strengthen it on its own terms but it should not be part of these other conversations.”

The video also shows a clip of Van Hollen refusing to go along with FOX News’ Martha Macallum’s suggestion to raise the Medicare eligibility age:

No.  There are much better ways of dealing with Medicare costs. Why wouldn’t people say, let’s look at ways where we can reduce the cost of Medicare without simply transferring rising health care costs?

Now both of those statements are great, and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee is urging supporters to thank Rep. Van Hollen for saying so.

So I did — in person, at a Saturday night fundraiser/birthday party for our State Senator Jamie Raskin — thanking my representative both for his opposition to raising the Medicare eligibility age and for decoupling Social Security from the immediate ‘fiscal cliff’ negotiations.  I also asked about the ‘spending reforms’ Van Hollen had mentioned to the Wall Street Journal symposium — but unfortunately, all he had time to answer was that he felt Social Security would need to be addressed later.

How much later? I wondered, as Mr. Van Hollen headed off to the dais to praise our excellent State Senator.  While both Van Hollen’s statements are welcome, they don’t actually take Social Security off the table altogether, they simply postpone its consideration.  That may well be a win for now (in which case: thanks, for now), but it left my questions unanswered about what specific kinds of “spending reforms” Van Hollen is hinting he might support later on — and it doesn’t answer just how soon that might be.

As one might expect, Van Hollen is very much on the Obama White House’s wavelength in this.  On “This Week” the next day, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was also talking about a separate Social Security process.  After Geithner pointedly did not rule out the “chained CPI” approach to reducing Social Security benefits, Stephanoupolous probed:

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you’re even willing to consider new restrictions on Social Security, because people like –GEITHNER: No. I didn’t say that. Let me clarify that. Thank you for asking me that.

What the president is willing to do is work with Democrats and Republicans to strengthen Social Security for future generations. So Americans can approach retirement with dignity and with the confidence they can retire with a modest guaranteed benefit. But we think you have to do that in a separate process, so that our seniors aren’t — don’t face the concern that we’re somehow going to find savings in Social Security benefits to help reduce the other deficits.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So to be clear, that is one thing that is clearly off the table. Social Security is off the table in these negotiations.

GEITHNER: We are prepared to, in a separate process, look at how to strengthen Social Security, but not as part of a process to reduce the other deficits the country faces.

Translation: we’re going to “find savings in Social Security benefits” all right, just later on.  As the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) points out, the “chained CPI” mechanism Stephanopoulos refers to

will cut the COLA by 3% for workers retired for ten years and 6% for workers retired for twenty years. This translates to a benefit cut of $130 per year in Social Security benefits for a typical 65 year-old. By the time that senior reaches 95, the annual benefit cut will be almost $1,400. This COLA change would also take effect immediately, impacting retirees now and in the future.

The “fiscal cliff” fight will only be half the battle; Social Security advocates should brace themselves for a long 2013 making sure that Geithner’s “modest guaranteed benefits” are defined beyond recognition.   Meanwhile, NCPSSM is calling for Wednesday, December 5th to be a national “call in” day: “Our goal is to flood Congress with calls reminding them that Americans of all ages and political parties do not support cutting middle-class benefits to pay for deficit reduction.”

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu told us once Israel wants peace:

“The truth is, Israel wants peace, and the truth is, the Palestinians are doing all they can to torpedo direct peace talks,” Netanyahu told his weekly Cabinet meeting.
(AP via Politico, 9/18/11)

If so, he’s got a funny way of showing it.  First he has a Hamas leader killed who was negotiating with Israeli officials.  Then: a massively disproportionate attack on Gaza — following a history both in the past year and the past twelve years of the same.  And now, after Palestinians gained a limited measure of formal recognition at the U.N.,

Israel plans to build some 3,000 new housing units in East Jerusalem and West Bank settlements in response to the Palestinians’ successful bid for recognition at the UN General Assembly this week, a senior diplomatic source told Haaretz on Friday.

According to the source, Israel also plans to advance long-frozen plans for the E1 area, which covers an area that links the city of Jerusalem with the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.

If built, the controversial plan would prevent territorial contiguity between the northern and southern West Bank, making it difficult for a future Palestinian state to function.…
(In response to UN vote, Israel to build 3,000 new homes in settlements; Ravid, Haaretz, 11/30/11)

The truth is, Israel doesn’t want peace — at least its government and those who will probably re-elect it don’t.  Judging by its actions, the Netanyahu administration wants conquest, occupation, blockade, and humiliation of Palestinians in their territories.

That’s nothing new, but it’s important to see the plain truth and I think it’s important to be willing to say so.  Because of our nation’s nearly unconditional support for Israel, Americans don’t have right to just claim this is an intractable problem or say a pox on both their houses.  We need to look at facts like those in the map or in this chart, prepared by “Visualizing Palestine“:

Palestinian and Israeli deaths since September 2000
via Visualizing Palestine)

The chart plainly shows an Israel far too interested in just killing alleged enemies (and anyone in the vicinity) — and not interested enough in preventing enmity by not killing first so often.  The same could be said of the U.S., unfortunately.  Yet both countries might actually be more safe the less often they kill in the name of safety.  From a BBC report centered on a Gazan colleague’s loss of a baby boy:

Before I left Jehad’s house, leaving him sitting round a camp fire with other mourners, I asked him – perhaps stupidly – if he was angry over Omar’s death.

“Very, very angry,” he said, his jaw tensing as he glanced at the photos on his phone.

Jehad may well not look for revenge, but other Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank will.

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EDIT, 12/1: “–following..” clause and links added.