Quick Hit

Chris Floyd at his satirical best.

Blackwater's Contract Renewed

By Farol

Well, this is quite shocking. I mean, who could have guessed that after all the righteous outrage in Congress and the establishment press regarding Blackwater's killing of 17 civilians last September that...absolutely nothing would be done about it, and the mercenaries' contract would be renewed with barely a whisper of indignation from anybody?

Except, of course, for the Iraqi people themselves, who now have the renewed opportunity to be massacred at random. From Reuters:

BAGHDAD, April 5 (Reuters) - Iraqis expressed anger on Saturday at news the United States had renewed the contract of Blackwater, a private security firm blamed for killing up to 17 people in a shooting incident last year.

"Renewing this contract means we will see this sort of thing again in the streets," Abbas Hasoun, a grocer, said. "I wish we could turn the page on this, but keeping this company here means bloodshed will continue."

A traffic policeman who said he was questioned in Turkey by the FBI about the shooting was patrolling on Saturday the same busy traffic circle where the incident took place.

"I went to Turkey and testified about what I saw, but all my efforts were in vain when I heard the news," said the policeman who asked that his name not be published for security reasons.

But what the Iraqi people think does not, of course, matter to the corporate crooks who run the occupation of their country.

Make no mistake: Blackwater isn't going anywhere anytime soon, not even if the "progressive" Barack Obama wins the presidency. In a story that largely escaped the attention of the Obama-worshipping liberal blogosphere, Jeremy Scahill reported that Obama has explicitly refused to support legislation banning private contractors from Iraq.

Aren't you glad there are so many stark differences between our left-wing and right-wing candidates on foreign policy issues?

Terrifying News of the Week: You Can't Sue Drug Companies for Making Products That Kill You

By Quill

Via the New York Times:

For years, Johnson & Johnson obscured evidence that its popular Ortho Evra birth control patch delivered much more estrogen than standard birth control pills, potentially increasing the risk of blood clots and strokes, according to internal company documents.

But because the Food and Drug Administration approved the patch, the company is arguing in court that it cannot be sued by women who claim that they were injured by the product — even though its old label inaccurately described the amount of estrogen it released.

This legal argument is called pre-emption. After decades of being dismissed by courts, the tactic now appears to be on the verge of success, lawyers for plaintiffs and drug companies say.

Make no mistake of what this means for you and your loved ones: If the FDA, a chronically underfunded and overburdened bumble-fuck of a bureaucratic institution says that a product is safe, it preemptively prohibits you from any compensation you or your family is due if in fact ::GASP:: the medical product is not safe.

But why would the FDA ever approve a product it knew wasn't safe, you ask? Well, the Great and Almighty infallible FDA seems to have no godforsaken clue every time a product is indeed unsafe. Drug companies (as they are often wont to do for profit) have been known to 1) straight up lie to FDA 2) submit misleading trials to the FDA 3) manipulate the FDA into approving its product prematurely.

The only protection consumers had in case the FDA failed to do its job properly and/or the drug companies misled the public was the ability to file suit against the product makers and manufacturers, until a Supreme Court ruling in February prohibited most suits against the makers of medical devices (e.g. pacemakers, etc.). Meanwhile, a case appearing before the court next term may grant immunity to drug makers as well. This is the kind of gross negligence on the part of the court you get when, apparently,

The Bush administration has argued strongly in favor of the doctrine [of medical preemption], which holds that the F.D.A. is the only agency with enough expertise to regulate drug makers and that its decisions should not be second-guessed by courts.

The NYT article details the suit against the Johnson&Johnson product the Ortho Evra birth control patch, which is thought to have lead to at least 50 deaths -including that of an 18 year old girl - due to its absurdly (and illegally) high estrogen levels. Although its use has dropped 80% after 3,000 people filed lawsuits against its makers, Ortho Evra is still a widely available option for birth control. Meanwhile, the FDA is still sitting on its ass, scratching its head about what possibly could have gone wrong in this case as it becomes increasingly clear that Johnson&Johnson gave the FDA a misleading amendment to a trial result that showed the patch to have dangerously high estrogen levels.

How many people will have to die or become seriously injured before the court realizes that public health and well-being cannot rest solely on the shoulders of a politically manipulated, overstretched and incompetent bureaucracy? For that matter, when will public health and well-being come before the interests of shameless, greedy corporations and self-serving government officials?

Report: US Lawmakers in Bed with Defense Companies

By Quill and Farol

A new article in the International Herald Tribune sheds some light on congressional investing practices. Surprise, surprise: it turns out members of the U.S. Congress have about $196 million invested in defense companies. Which might just explain the prolonged dragging-of-feet on the part of Congress in getting us out of the quagmire that is Iraq.

Something that actually comes as a shock, however, is that Democrats have significantly more investments in defense companies than Republicans ($3.7 million vs. $577,500, respectively).

Clearly, Democrats who go along with Bush policies regarding "national security" or the "war on terror" (see "Feinstein, Dianne") don't do so because they are afraid of looking "soft" on terror and/or national security.

The truth is that Congress has too much invested in the ongoing occupation of Iraq to do anything to mitigate it. The only possible way the US will ever end the occupation is if the people demand it—and, according to polls, they DO demand it. Too bad our egomaniacal press corps still has its head too far up its ass to relay that demand.

Ana Marie Cox and the Journalistic Rat Pack

By Farol and Quill

In a recent bloggingheads.com video, Glenn Greenwald and Time.com journalist Ana Marie Cox debated whether or not hobknobbing with politicians and public figures they cover skewes the way in which journalists portray their hosts in the national media.

Take, for example, the now infamous video of the press party at John McCain´s ranch in Sedona, Arizona. His daughter Meghan, the videographer, croons over how ¨the guys from the Politico brought my mom flowers¨ while McCain himself serves up some reportedly very juicy ribs.

Now consider for a moment the kind of coverage John McCain receives in the media. From the Washington Post story on the press party:

If he loses the presidency, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will have a career as a barbecue chef
to fall back on.
At his weekend cabin just outside Sedona on Sunday
afternoon, McCain took a break from campaigning and grilled ribs and chicken for
three dozen reporters, some staff members and a few Republican friends from the
Senate.
Dressed in jeans, an L.L. Bean baseball cap, sunglasses and a sweat shirt featuring a
picture of his family, McCain held court the way he does almost daily aboard his
"Straight Talk Express" bus.

This is entirely representative of the coverage McCain typically receives. He's portrayed as the honest, "straight-talking", manly-man centrist, while Obama is the effeminate weakling who can't bowl, and Hillary is the cold, calculating bitch.

Yet, in the bloggingheads dialogue, Cox goes to the utmost lengths to defend both McCain and the conduct of her peers. She repeatedly - absurdly - insists that socializing with the people you're assigned to cover doesn't make you any less willing to ask them tough questions. Then, at about the 25-minute mark, Greenwald mentions the media's recent half-assed coverage of McCain's blatantly false statements regarding the relationship between Iran and Al-Qaeda, and he demonstrates fairly conclusively that a bias exists in McCain's favor. Cox, who seems visibly subdued, provides no meaningful rejoinder; instead, she changes the subject to how bloggers are making her job difficult (boo-hoo).

Indeed, one of the most telling moments in the video occurs when Cox states that she isn't afraid of being wrong - just of people not listening to her. We think it's fair to conclude that Cox inadvertently reveals that the pack mentality that plagues all journalism - but particularly campaign coverage - in the establishment press is actually the result of the insecurities of the journalists themselves. They want to be recognized, thought of as powerful, and those who bestow favors on them are in turn viewed favorably.

The Road to Gitmo Begins in Washington

By Quill and Farol

By now the latest revelations of U.S. policy on torture have hit the blogospheric fan, and while the continued authorization of torture by the government is old news, the Yoo Memos validated what were previously just speculations held by opponents of the pro-torture policies. The most important by far is the now indisputable fact that these orders came from the top and trickled down to the bottom, not the other way around, as the administration has consistently claimed.

The fact is, senior officials, including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, William Haynes, the general counsel to the U.S. Department of Defense, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, and former undersecretary of defense for policy (the no. 3 position at the Pentagon) Douglas Feith, have their dirty little fingerprints all over the atrocities being committed at Guantánamo and around the world in the name of the United States of America.

For an incredibly in-depth and damning explanation of the story behind how the higher-ups in Washington directed underlings in the military to use more "aggressive techniques" that constitute a violation of the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Constitution, see Philippe Sands' jaw-dropping article "The Green Light" in Vanity Fair (of all places...keep up the good work, guys). It demands to be read in full.

Besides the previously mentioned proof of top-down influence, some of the article's revelations that stuck out to us most were:

1. Douglas Feith is a comically diabolical man. This evil little shit actually glowed with delight has he told Sands how clever his circumvention of Geneva was:

Douglas Feith had a long-standing intellectual interest in Geneva, and for many years had opposed legal protections for terrorists under international law. He referred me to an article he had written in 1985, in The National Interest, setting out his basic view. Geneva provided incentives to play by the rules; those who chose not to follow the rules, he argued, shouldn’t be allowed to rely on them, or else the whole Geneva structure would collapse. The only way to protect Geneva, in other words, was sometimes to limit its scope. To uphold Geneva’s protections, you might have to cast them aside.

But that way of thinking didn’t square with the Geneva system itself, which was based on two principles: combatants who behaved according to its standards received P.O.W. status and special protections, and everyone else received the more limited but still significant protections of Common Article 3. Feith described how, as he and Myers spoke with Rumsfeld, he jumped protectively in front of the general. He reprised his “little speech” for me. “There is no country in the world that has a larger interest in promoting respect for the Geneva Conventions as law than the United States,” he told Rumsfeld, according to his own account, “and there is no institution in the U.S. government that has a stronger interest than the Pentagon.” So Geneva had to be followed? “Obeying the Geneva Conventions is not optional,” Feith replied. “The Geneva Convention is a treaty in force. It is as much part of the supreme law of the United States as a statute.” Myers jumped in. “I agree completely with what Doug said and furthermore it is our military culture It’s not even a matter of whether it is reciprocated—it’s a matter of who we are.”

Feith was animated as he relived this moment. I remained puzzled. How had the administration gone from a commitment to Geneva, as suggested by the meeting with Rumsfeld, to the president’s declaration that none of the detainees had any rights under Geneva? It all turns on what you mean by “promoting respect” for Geneva, Feith explained. Geneva didn’t apply at all to al-Qaeda fighters, because they weren’t part of a state and therefore couldn’t claim rights under a treaty that was binding only on states. Geneva did apply to the Taliban, but by Geneva’s own terms Taliban fighters weren’t entitled to P.O.W. status, because they hadn’t worn uniforms or insignia. That would still leave the safety net provided by the rules reflected in Common Article 3— but detainees could not rely on this either, on the theory that its provisions applied only to “armed conflict not of an international character,” which the administration interpreted to mean civil war. This was new. In reaching this conclusion, the Bush administration simply abandoned all legal and customary precedent that regards Common Article 3 as a minimal bill of rights for everyone.

(Feith then lit a pipe, twirled his moustache, and went, "BWAHAHAHAHA!")

This type of circular logic is emblematic of the current administration's agenda to legislate immunity for those complicit in its reckless law-breaking, such as the telecom companies involved in warrantless wiretapping.

2. Feith, along with John Yoo, are now ensconced in cushy teaching positions in two of America's most respected educational institutions - Georgetown University and Berkeley College, respectively. It is utterly horrifying that these war criminals are actually getting paid to teach the future lawyers of America the ways of justifying torture and the circumvention of the U.S. Constitution and international law to achieve the ends of a corrupt and morally bankrupt administration. Which is a great segue into our third point...

3. These kind of people still enjoy protection from prosecution for their crimes by an apathetic Congress and press corps. It is absolutely reprehensible that an article of this magnitude goes largely unnoticed by the very people whose duty it is to inform the public of this blatant disregard of the law, not to mention those who should be punishing lawbreakers. If Congress doesn't investigate the claims made by Sands in his article, it will be complicit in the deeds committed by these war criminals.

4. Sands reveals that some of these prisoners in Gitmo are actually being tortured our of their minds after 54 consecutive days of "enhanced interrogation techniques":

The abusive interrogation of al-Qahtani lasted a total of 54 days. It ended not on January 12, as the press was told in June 2004, but three days later, on January 15. In those final three days, knowing that the anything-goes legal regime might disappear at any moment, the interrogators made one last desperate push to get something useful out of al-Qahtani. They never did. By the end of the interrogation al-Qahtani, according to an army investigator, had “black coals for eyes.”

5. What happened in Gitmo lead directly to what happened in Abu Ghraib. The Haynes memo made it all the way to Iraq via a general and legal consultant at Guantánamo months before the scandal was uncovered, surely contributing to the appalling abuse of prisoners by U.S. soldiers.

While it is highly unlikely that the "torture team" will ever be tried for their crimes in our own country, Sands holds out hope that if they ever step foot on foreign soil again, what happened to another infamous war criminal - Pinochet - might just happen to them.

Shocking Revelation: The US Government Breaks the Law

By Farol

From The Guardian:

Faced with a litany of lawsuits and objections to its plans to build a 670-mile fence along the border with Mexico, the US government moved yesterday to bypass more than 30 laws and regulations in its effort to complete the fence by the end of the year.

Opposition to the 2006 secure fence act, which instructed the department of homeland security to build the fence by the end of 2008, has united an unlikely coalition of property owners and environmentalists.

Property owners and developers have launched numerous lawsuits to deny the government access to their lands, arguing that their property rights would be violated or the values of their homes suffer.

Environmentalists have challenged the government, saying that the plans would harm the natural habitats of species ranging from big cats to owls.

Native American groups have also protested that their traditional lands and burial sites would be desecrated by the fence.

The administration's action echoes a controversial provision of a 2005 act, which allowed the department of homeland security to waive all laws "necessary to ensure expeditious construction of the barriers and roads".

In a just world, all of this would be causing national outrage. It would be on the front page of every major newspaper and discussed by every TV pundit. But in the twisted world that has become reality in the U.S. today, it's just accepted that the government can break our laws with impunity. (Or, in the more polite language preferred by media outlets, "bypass" them. Can we please retire this word—at least, as it applies to laws—forever? When the government ignores the law, or asserts that it is above it, it BREAKS THE LAW, pure and simple).

In a way, there's really very little reason to be surprised by what the administration is doing here. This is, after all, an administration that has consistently asserted that it is exempt from laws that apply to everyone else. If lawyers at Justice can author decisions claiming that the U.S. has the right to violate treaties regarding torture to which it is a party, then why can't the Department of Homeland Security just decide to break "over 30 laws and regulations" in order to pander to the xenophobia of the Republican base? It makes perfect sense, in a sick sort of way.