Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1338

Study: Media Bias About Fukushima & Radiation

stuartbramhall:

 

 

Corporate media lies and distortions about radiation leakage at Fukushima. This is global health emergency affecting all of us.

Originally posted on Political Film Blog:

“The mainstream media — in print and online — did little to report on health risks to the general population or to challenge the narratives of public officials and their experts,”

News coverage of Fukushima disaster minimized health risks to general population

“It’s shocking to see how few articles discussed risk to the general population, and when they did, they typically characterized risk as low,” said Pascale, who studies the social construction of risk and meanings of risk in the 21st century. “We see articles in prestigious news outlets claiming that radioactivity from cosmic rays and rocks is more dangerous than the radiation emanating from the collapsing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.”

Also see: The Children of Chernobyl

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The Global Refugee Scandal

Europe or Die

VICE News (2015)

Film Review

According to UNHCR (the UN High Commission for Human Rights), more than 50 million people have been permanently displaced through wars in the Middle East, political persecution, climate change and grinding poverty. Of these, hundreds of thousands face such life threatening conditions at home that they risk death by crossing the Mediterranean in rusty, leaky, overcrowded boats.

Refugees typically take one of four routes in their desperation to reach Europe: illegal entry into one of the two Spanish enclaves in Morocco, a short choppy boat trip from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos or across the Avros River into mainland Greece, jumping a wire fence from Greece into Bulgaria or crossing the Mediterranean from Libya to the Italian island of Lampedusa.

Europe or Die is a four part documentary follows some of these migrants on their dangerous voyage and closely examines their treatment by EU countries on their arrival.

This documentary was a real eye opener for me. Given the majority of these refugees are the helpless victims of proxy wars started and funded by the US and wealthy EU countries, their refusal of to adopt consistent and humane immigration policies is clearly a crime against humanity under international law.

Part I: For most sub-Saharan refugees seeking illegal entry to Ceuta and Melilla, the two Spanish enclaves on the Moroccan coast, the best option is to jump three high razor wire topped fences. Under EU law, the first fence demarcates the Spanish border. Refugees who make it past the first fence (it’s really a kind of game) are home free and must be given the option of moving to mainland Spain. They’re also entitled to legal assistance and an interpreter to help them apply for asylum.

The most common is for thousands to storm the fence simultaneously and overwhelming the border guards. Typically two out of 1,000 will get through. It’s illegal, under EU law, for Spanish police to forcibly return them. However “pushbacks,” as they are called are common. As is shooting their hands and feet to make it harder to climb the fence. This is also against the rules.

Part 2: A second common route for migrants is to take the “death boat” from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos or across the Avros River to mainland Greece. Refugees can pay smugglers several thousand dollars to cram them into shabby, overcrowded boats that frequently capsize.

Greece is experiencing a five-fold increase in illegal migration as a direct result of the civil war in Syria. Recently they have experienced a big influx of Iraqi refugees (mainly Yazidis*) with the rise of ISIS. As part of the game, the EU has another law, called the Dublin rule, that political refugees become the responsibility of the country where they are first picked up, irregardless of the country’s ability to provide jobs or social services.

Part 3: A third route is to cross the razor wife fence separating Turkey from Bulgaria, the poorest country in the EU. Bulgaria keeps political refugees in unheated tents without access to clean water. Once they are granted asylum they are forced to leave the camp and end up homeless on the streets.

Part 4: The final, most common method of reaching Europe is to cross from Libya to the Italian Island of Lampedusa. Up until a few months ago, the Italian Navy operated the only search and rescue mission in the Mediterranean. Called Mare Nostrum, it was made up of 900 personnel and 26 naval vessels – at a cost of $9 million euros a month.

In 2013, Mare Nostrum saved 150,000 migrants from boats that had capsized. Owing to the refusal of the EU to support this fantastically expensive program, it had to be cancelled in 2014.

It’s been replaced by Triton, an air surveillance program that requests nearby merchant vessels (if there are any) to rescue migrants in leaky votes.

In 2014, 170,000 migrants made it safely to Italy and 3,000 drowned.

*Yazidis are a Kurdish ethnic group ISIS attempted to exterminate in August 2014.

Presidential ‘Hopeful’, H. Clinton Gold Digging on 100,000 Haitian Deaths*

stuartbramhall:

 

 

More evidence that Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton is ethically challenged. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, with millions of residents still homeless, jobless and sick since the earthquake. If Haiti has gold resources, that wealth should be used to rehabilitate the country – not to line the pockets of Hillary Clinton and her family.

Originally posted on Hwaairfan's Blog:

Presidential ‘Hopeful, H. Clinton Gold Digging on 100,000 Haitian Deaths*

By Andrew Topf

The presidential ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton have become ensnared in an obscure gold-mining project in Haiti, as the Democratic favourite for the presidency begins her second run for the White House.

In a story that suggests cronyism, questionable ethics and a blurring of the lines between charity and profiteering, The Daily Mail reported on Sunday that Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, sat on the board of VCS Mining when the unlisted, Delaware-based junior was granted a permit to mine gold in Haiti following a massive earthquake on the impoverished island nation in 2010. The permit was the first to be granted in over 50 years, VCS Mining wrote in the press release announcing the awarding of the 5-year exploitation permit.

While Rodham’s involvement in the gold project, called Morne Bossa, would normally be of little cause for concern, what…

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Goldman Sachs the Vampire Squid

The Secret is Not Getting Caught

The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming it’s blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone 2009

In his classic Rolling Stone article, Matt Taibbi blames Goldman Sachs for causing the Great Depression, the Internet bubble and the skyrocketing price of gasoline. Author William D Cohan dismisses the article as a “screed” and “conspiracy theory journalism.” Yet after reading Cohan’s 604-page Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World, I have to agree with Taibbi. For over 133 years, the secret of Goldman’s success has been an uncanny ability to extract a fee from any transaction involving human need.

It’s hard to read a book like this without understanding the complicated derivatives trading responsible for the 2008 Wall Street crash. Cohen does a credible job of explaining these complex financial trades. What comes across loud and clear is that derivatives trading is merely a sophisticated form of gambling. Like the owner of a Las Vegas casino, Goldman knows exactly how to turn the odds in their favor. This almost always entails unethical and illegal conduct. Goldman executives excel at not getting caught, which seems to be the main reason they receive such massive bonuses. They’re also really good at maximizing their high level connections in the federal government.

After reading Money and Power, I’m more convinced than ever that the only way to end Wall Street corruption is to break up the big banks by ending their ability to create money out of thin air. Once the creation and control of our money supply is rightfully restored to public control, no bank will ever be too big to fail.*

US Justice System Too Slow and Cumbersome

Goldman’s history is filled with a litany of criminal indictments and civil lawsuits stemming from unethical and illegal activities. Although both federal and state government’s have a wealth of anti-corruption laws they could use to prosecute Goldman and other Wall Street banks, the American criminal justice system is far too slow to inflict severe enough penalties the criminal activity. The close involvement of Goldman chief executives in federal government (which Cohan refers to as “government Sachs”), most notably Robert Rubin in the Clinton administration and Hank Paulson in the Bush junior administration, is also be a major factor in the bank’s enduring financial success. Remaining limited Goldman partners while holding cabinet appointments, both men were responsible for a range of federal initiatives favorable to their “former” employer.

Goldman’s Role in 1929 Crash

The first federal indictment against Goldman was lodged in 1947, an antitrust lawsuit related to the fraudulent and speculative activity by Goldman and sixteen other Wall Street banks which caused the massive 1920s stock market bubble and 1929 crash. In 1929 alone, Goldman created $1.7 billion of market value through a pyramid scheme in which they resold the same shares of stock seven times. The lawsuit was dismissed in 1950 – the Department of Justice couldn’t produce convincing evidence the seventeen banks actively colluded.

Finding Charges that Would Stick

In 1970 Goldman faced over twenty lawsuits and a SEC complaint for selling commercial paper (from Penn Central Railroad and Mill Factors Corporation) when they knew it was worthless. This time the court found for the SEC and Goldman was forced to settle the civil cases.

In 1986 two Goldman vice presidents pleaded guilty to insider trading.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Goldman lost a series of sexual discrimination suits by female traders.

In 1994, two pension funds sued Goldman for disposing of Maxwell Communications Assets and disturbing the proceeds to Maxwell’s estate rather than the pension funds. Goldman settled for $400 million after the Justice Department threatened them with criminal charges.

Enter Eliot Spitzer**

In 2002, Goldman faced a series of federal and state indictments related to their role in the dot com bubble. Specifically the SEC and New York attorney general Eliott Spitzer charged them with bribing independent analysts to issue favorable reports on worthless Internet stocks, as well as with “spinning and laddering”*** to drive up the share price. Goldman eventually settled with the SEC for $40 million and with the state of New York for $110 million.

The following year Spitzer charged them with fraud and “front running” (ie insider trading) in trading in non-traditional insurance products and reinsurance. Goldman settled for $800 million.

Goldman faced a rash of new indictments and lawsuits stemming from the 2007-2008 crash. In December 2007 the Massachusetts attorney general cited Goldman for selling mortgage backed securities without informing them that the mortgagees were at high rate of delinquency. Goldman settled for $10 million, as well as spending another $50 million to alter the terms of the mortgages to reduce the risk of default.

Later in 2007, a Mississippi pension fund (representing 300,000 pensioners) sued them for knowingly selling worthless mortgage backed securities.

The 2008 Wall Street Collapse

In 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Goldman for incorrectly forecasting the performance of mortgage backed securities they sold to clients while betting against the MPS’s by purchasing credit default swaps (CDS)**** on them. Goldman began purchasing credit default swaps in February 2006 as soon as they realized the mortgage market was unraveling. Goldman settled this suit for a record $800 million.

Goldman was the only Wall Street bank not to suffer major losses in 2007 and 2008. Because of their massive holding holdings in credit default swaps, they easily absorbed losses from mortgage backed securities that became worthless when real estate values crashed and mortgages became delinquent.

In 2007 they had a net profit of $11.4 billion, despite a $1.2 billion loss in their mortgage backed securities. In 2008, their net profit was $2.3 billion, despite a $1.7 billion loss in their mortgage division.

Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein argued against receiving a TARP bailout because they obviously didn’t need it. Treasurer Secretary Hank Paulson insisted they take a $10 billion bailout anyway to “inspire investor confidence.” Goldman repaid it with a 23.5% annualized dividend in July 2009 – banks with outstanding TARP loans were restricted in the size of CEO bonuses they could pay.

Goldman would also receive $14 billion of the bailout AIG insurance received. This covered the credit default swaps AIG had sold them.

*See An IMF Proposal to Ban Banks from Creating Money

**Eliot Spitzer was one of the few government prosecutors willing to go after Wall Street banks for white collar crime. His popularity resulted in his election as governor of New York in 2007. The banks fought back behind the scene and forced his resignation in 2008 by exposing his involvement with a high end prostitution ring. This is described in the 2010 documentary The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer

***”Spinning,” which is illegal, is defined as the offering of free or discounted IPO (initial public offering) shares to executives of an outside company, in the hope they will influence the company to buy additional shares at an inflated price. “Laddering” is another illegal practice in which underwriters and clients collude to drive up share prices (by trading them at inflated prices) and selling them once they hook in enough suckers. Many analysts suspected laddering occurred in the Amazon initial public offering (IPO), with the share price bottoming out when all the insiders sold their shares.

****A credit default swap (CDS) is a type of insurance, a bet that pays off if a particular security goes belly up. CDS’s are traded like other derivatives and you don’t have to own the security for the CDS to pay off.

Also posted at Veterans Today

Fresh Water Shortages

stuartbramhall:

 

 

Meanwhile the oil and gas industry wastes 5 million gallons of water for every fracking well. At the end of 2014, there were over 1 million fracking wells in the US alone.

Originally posted on auntyuta:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/08/how-water-shortages-lead-food-crises-conflicts

Water    The Observer

Why fresh water shortages will cause the next great global crisis

Last week drought in São Paulo was so bad, residents tried drilling through basement floors for groundwater. As reservoirs dry up across the world, a billion people have no access to safe drinking water. Rationing and a battle to control supplies will follow

Sunday 8 March 2015 11.05 AEDT Last modified on Monday 9 March 2015 07.12 AEDT

Water is the driving force of all nature, Leonardo da Vinci claimed. Unfortunately for our planet, supplies are now running dry – at an alarming rate. The world’s population continues to soar but that rise in numbers has not been matched by an accompanying increase in supplies of fresh water.

The consequences are proving to be profound. Across the globe, reports reveal huge areas in crisis today as reservoirs and aquifers dry up. More than a…

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Iranian “Terrorist” Commands Assault on ISIS

Our Man in Tikrit

According to Reuters, Iraqi security forces and Shi’ite militia fighters (with the support of Canadian special forces and US weapons, trainers and air strikes) are presently engaged in a major assault to retake the Iraqi city of Tikrit from ISIS. Until recently, the western media rarely mentioned the figure commanding these forces.

His name is Major General Qasem Soleimani, and he’s the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds Force. This creates an embarrassing situation for Obama because the US still officially designates Soleimani as a terrorist for his alleged role in a 2011 plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US

Given all the saber rattling against Iran by congressional Republicans (cheered on by Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu), the US media has been loathe to acknowledge that Iran has been spearheading the offensive against ISIS in both Iraq and Syria. In Syria, Soleimani is widely credited with helping President Bashar al-Assad turn the tide against rebel forces and recapture key cities and towns.

The US political elite prefers to spoon feed Americans the cartoon version of US foreign policy, in which Americans only go to war against evil doers. For this reason, they have greatly downplayed the role of Soleimani and other Iranian military “advisers” in the battle against ISIS. A recent explosion of interest in General Soleimani on Twitter and Facebook has forced them to come clean.

According to the BBC, this isn’t the first time Soleimani has aided US military efforts in the Middle East. In 2001, he provided military intelligence to the US to support its invasion to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan, and in 2007 in participated in US-led talks in Baghdad over the deteriorating situation in Iraq.

As best I can ascertain, Soleimani has been a prominent figure in containing Iraqi sectarian violence since 2011

He has commanded Iranian forces active in the Syrian civil war since the latter half of 2012.

photo credit: www.yjc.ir

Also posted at Veterans Today

A Glorious Past Before Colonialism and the Oppression of African Women*

stuartbramhall:

 

 

Unbeknown to many, for the vast majority of human history, which took place in Africa, women have been equal if not superior to men. Happy International Women’s Day.

Originally posted on Hwaairfan's Blog:

A Glorious Past Before Colonialism and the Oppression of African Women*

By Garikai Chengu

Sunday marks International Women’s Day, which was founded in 1908 by the Socialist party of America in order to promote the struggle for women’s equality. Unbeknown to many, for the vast majority of human history, which took place in Africa, women have been equal if not superior to men.

“I want to show warriors from ancient times; revolutionists, anti-colonialists, intellectual women who have written the story of Africa. We need figures to be proud of our roots, to keep fighting for our rights, and to write the story of tomorrow.” – YZ (French artist)

The world’s first civilizations arose from the spiritual, economic and social efforts of African women and African women in turn went on to lead those Matriarchal societies.

Matriarchy in ancient Africa was not a mirror image of patriarchy today, as it…

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America’s Favorite Billionaires

The Koch Brothers Exposed

Robert Greenwald (2014)

Film Review

The Koch Brothers Exposed examines the myriad of ways America’s favorite billionaires are using their inherited wealth to make themselves the dominant players in the US political system.

Their father Fred Koch made his fortune in the 1920s by helping Stalin establish the Soviet oil industry. On his death, Charles and David Koch used their inheritance to found Koch industries, the second largest privately* held corporation in the US. It has holdings in oil and gas, coal, paper products, plastic and consumer goods.

Koch Industries is notorious for breaking environmental laws (and other crimes, such as stealing 2 million barrels of oil from Indian reservations**). They have paid millions in fines seven states for criminal pollution. Thanks to their generous campaign donation, George W Bush reduced the 97 counts in one federal indictment to one count – lowering their fine from $370 to $20 million.

Their Georgia Pacific plant in Crossett Louisiana, which discharges toxic chemicals to natural streams (illegal under the Clean Water Act), is responsible for more than a dozen cancer deaths. Yet instead of stopping the toxic discharges and cleaning up the streams, the Koch brothers bribe Republican politicians (through campaign donations and other perks) to weaken and discredit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the entity responsible for enforcing the Clean Water Act.

Determined to roll back the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the minimum wage, labor rights, electoral financing reform, environmental protection laws and federal and state workplace safety laws, the brothers have spent more than $80 million creating and funding conservative and libertarian think tanks and Astroturf organizations – such as Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party. They are also the primary funders, along with Exxon, of the climate denial movement.

They provided the financial backing in the Citizens United case***, in addition to sponsoring the attendance of two Supreme Court justices at an Americans for Prosperity conference. The prior involvement of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia in this Koch brothers group posed a clear conflict of interest. Both had an ethical and legal obligation to recuse themselves. Obviously they didn’t.

The Koch brothers are also major funders and backers of Canada’s tar sands industry and the Keystone pipeline, as well as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The latter writes model legislation for state legislators to use in creating vote suppression, labor rights and workplace safety legislation, as well as laws promoting anti-immigrant campaigns and prison privatization.

Meanwhile the Koch Foundation uses educational grants to over 150 cash-strapped colleges and universities to influence their educational policies. The grants are always conditional, ie dependent on hiring professors who share the Koch brothers conservative philosophy.

*A privately owned corporation is one in which partners provide the capital and share the profits, as opposed to publicly owned corporations in which shareholders provide the capital and share in the profits.

**Charles and David’s younger brother Bill blew the whistle on this operation in 1999.

***Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was a constitutional law case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent political expenditures by nonprofit corporations, for-profit corporations and labor unions. According to investigative reporter Greg Palast, a major agenda behind the decision was to retroactively decriminalize extensive past donations the Koch brothers had already made to Republican campaigns – in other words to keep them out of jail.

Senate Wants to Save You From Superbugs By Ending Farms’ Overuse of Antibiotics

stuartbramhall:

 

 

Senators sponsor bill to end routine use of antibiotics on factory farms, a major factor in deadly antibiotic resistance.

Originally posted on thekirkshow:

Image Credit: Peta Kids

In the mostly toothless fight by the Food and Drug Administration to combat the alarming rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs—a spike that can be traced in large part to the profligate overuse of the lifesaving drugs on factory farms—we can at least take heart in one thing: Someone in Washington, D.C., still seems to care about the issue.

It’s not just any old someone. Rather, four U.S. senators are pushing legislation that would close a gaping loophole in the FDA’s voluntary program to address the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, introduced the bill Monday, which was cosponsored by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. If passed, the legislation would require the FDA to actively regulate the use of drugs that are important to human health and end the use of antibiotics and dosages that violate the agency’s…

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Shadow Government: Neither Secret Nor Invisible

National Security and Double Government

by Michael J Glennon (2014)

Available as free PDF: http://harvardnsj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Glennon-Final.pdf

National Security and Double Government is a lengthy article about the highly visible national security bureaucracy that presently runs the US government. The author, Michael J Glennon, is Professor of International Law at the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Glennon disputes the claim by conspiracy theorists that a secret shadow government is attempting to overthrow constitutional democracy. In his view, the deep state is simply a vast, self-serving bureaucracy of technocrats – forty-six (as of 2011) federal departments and agencies engaged in intelligence gathering and analysis, military aggression, cyber operations and weapons development.

Glennon’s description of how the deep state operates, which strikes me as depressingly accurate, shatters any lingering illusions about reforming the US government. It can only be dismantled.

In essence, the real work of the US government is controlled by several hundred officials who run the national security bureaucracy. Removed from public view and the constitutional restrictions that restrain the President, Congress and the judiciary, they make most of the key decisions concerning foreign policy and national security. Although their budget is classified, Glennon estimates it engages millions of employees at an annual cost of $1 trillion.

The “Trumanite” Arm of Government

Glennon calls them the “Trumanite” arm of government because President Harry S Truman created the US national security apparatus. Under Truman, Congress enacted the National Security Act of 1947, which unified the military under a new Secretary of Defense, set up the CIA, created the modern Joint Chiefs of Staff, and established the National Security Council (“NSC”). Truman also set up the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor  communications abroad. Truman’s vision was to create a civilian infrastructure strong enough to address the Soviet threat and rein in an errant military.

Both the Trumanite arm and the constitutional arm work really hard to maintain the fiction that the President is commander-in-chief. The reality is that the president only has the power to appoint 3,000-4,000 of the millions of federal employees nominally under his control. This means the Trumanite bureaucracy continues to operate pretty much under its own steam no matter which party is in office.

As Glennon describes it,

“President Obama could give an order wholly reversing U.S. national security policy, but he would not, because the likely adverse consequences would be prohibitive. Put differently, the question whether the President could institute a complete about-face supposes a top-down policy-making model. The illusion that presidents issue orders and that subordinates simply carry them out is nurtured in the public imagination by media reports of ‘Obama’s’ policies or decisions or initiatives, by the President’s own frequent references to “my” directives or personnel . . . But true top-down decisions that order fundamental policy shifts are rare.

The reality is that when the President issues an “order” to the Trumanites, the Trumanites themselves normally formulate the order. The Trumanites cannot be thought of as men who are merely doing their duty. They are the ones who determine their duty, as well as the duties of those beneath them. They are not merely following orders: they give the orders. They do that by ‘entangling’ the President… To avoid looking like a bystander or mere commentator, the President embraces these Trumanite policies, as does Congress, with the pretense that they are their own.’

Obama Forced to Agree to Drone Policy

As an example, Glennon quotes Vali Nasr’s* description of how the national security network strong armed Obama into expanding his drone policy:

When it came to drones there were four formidable unanimous voices in the Situation Room: the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Pentagon, and the White House’s counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush administration, also strongly supported an increase in drone strikes. All five also suppressed any debate in national security meetings of the broader implications of this policy.

According to Nassr, it was the classic Henry Kissinger model: “You have three options, two of which are ridiculous, so you accept the one in the middle.”

Obama openly complained about the Trumanites only given him one option: “The military was “really cooking the thing in the direction that they wanted. They are not going to give me a choice.”

Obama Also Opposed Increasing Troop Levels in Afghanistan

Obama’s 2009 proposal to lower the military’s proposed troop levels in Afghanistan ran into the same unified opposition. According to Glennon, the Commander of U.S. and International Security Assistance Forces (“ISAF”) in Afghanistan (General Stanley McChrystal), the Commander of U.S. Central Command (General David Petraeus), the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Admiral Michael Mullen), and even Secretary of Defense Gates all threatened to resign over it.

As Glennon observes,

“No president has reserves deep enough to support a frontal assault on the National Security network. Under the best of circumstances, he can only attack its policies one by one, in flanking actions, and even then with no certainty of victory. Like other presidents in similar situations, Obama thus had little choice but to accede to the Pentagon’s longstanding requests for more troops” in Afghanistan.”

Clinton’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” Fiasco

He reminds us of the uproar in the military and Congress when President Bill Clinton moved to end only one national security policy shortly after taking office—the ban on gays in the military. Forced to backtrack, Clinton ultimately enacted his “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Glennon goes on to explore similar paralysis the President and Congress are experiencing in attempting to curtail spying by the NSA.

The final section of the article reviews possible options for reform and concludes the national security bureaucracy is too powerful (and has too much control over the media) to be reformed by constitutional means. Glennon believes that the only option for change is a bottom-up mobilization by the American people.

*Vali Nasr is dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. David E Sanger quotes him in Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Secret Use of American Power.