CIA rendition: more than a quarter of countries 'offered covert support' | The Guardian →

The full extent of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme has been laid bare with the publication of a report showing there is evidence that more than a quarter of the world’s governments covertly offered support.

A 213-page report compiled by the Open Society Justice Initiative (OSJI), a New York-based human rights organisation, says that at least 54 countries co-operated with the global kidnap, detention and tortureoperation that was mounted after 9/11, many of them in Europe.

So widespread and extensive was the participation of governments across the world that it is now clear the CIA could not have operated its programme without their support, according to the OSJI.

Glenn Greenwald: Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens | The Guardian →

Glenn deconstructs today’s big news item.  His entire post is, as always, worth reading, but here are two highlights:

Crucially, Heller points out what I noted above: once you accept the memo’s reasoning - that the US is engaged in a global war, that the world is a battlefield, and the president has the power to assassinate any member of al-Qaida or associated forces - then there is no way coherent way to limit this power to places where capture is infeasible or to persons posing an “imminent” threat. The legal framework adopted by the memo means the president can kill anyone he claims is a member of al-Qaida regardless of where they are found or what they are doing.

The only reason to add these limitations of “imminence” and “feasibility of capture” is, as Heller said, purely political: to make the theories more politically palatable. But the definitions for these terms are so vague and broad that they provide no real limits on the president’s assassination power. As the ACLU’s Jaffer says: “This is a chilling document” because “it argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen” and the purported limits “are elastic and vaguely defined, and it’s easy to see how they could be manipulated.”

…

This memo is not a judicial opinion. It was not written by anyone independent of the president. To the contrary, it was written by life-long partisan lackeys: lawyers whose careerist interests depend upon staying in the good graces of Obama and the Democrats, almost certainly Marty Lederman and David Barron. Treating this document as though it confers any authority on Obama is like treating the statements of one’s lawyer as a judicial finding or jury verdict.

EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans | NBC News →

The secrecy surrounding such strikes is fast emerging as a central issue in this week’s hearing of White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, a key architect of the drone campaign, to be CIA director.  Brennan was the first administration official to publicly acknowledge drone strikes in a speech last year, calling them “consistent with the inherent right of self-defense.” In a separate talk at the Northwestern University Law School in March, Attorney General Eric Holder specifically endorsed the constitutionality of targeted killings of Americans, saying they could be justified if government officials determine the target poses  “an imminent threat of violent attack.”

But the confidential Justice Department “white paper” introduces a more expansive definition of self-defense or imminent attack than described  by Brennan or Holder in their public speeches.  It refers, for example, to what it calls a “broader concept of imminence” than actual intelligence about any ongoing plot against the U.S. homeland.

“The condition that an operational  leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” the memo states.

Wow.  I just finished reading the 16-page memo, which made my head hurt, but I think I understand the basics of the rationale.  And that is: if you are an American citizen and the government (some “high-level official” who apparently shall remain nameless) declares you a “senior operational leader” of al-Qaeda, the government can legally blow you away via drone.  Heck, you don’t even have to be planning some secret plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge or anything.  The government can say you’re an “imminent threat,” even though nothing you’re currently doing is “imminent” or a “threat.”  They have to make a pretense like they wanted to come grab you out of your cave (or country hostile to the US - there are a lot of those), and then boom!  Also, because a public figure is ordering the assassination, it’s cool with the Congress and our laws.

Ok, so that’s incredibly simplified.  But the fact that this scary set of rationalizations has seen the light of day is something.  This, in case anyone is still wondering, is how the government uses the law to make the things it does that used to be illegal (murdering American citizens from the air without evidence or due process) into things that are legal.  Of course, you have to read certain other legal justifications and arguments the same way the OLC did, but not know exactly how they did so because those readings are classified.  Does that make sense?  If you’re a cogent human being, it shouldn’t.  Yet this is your government at work.  I’m still in a state of shock/confusion/anger at reading all of this, so I apologize if this post isn’t the most cohesive.

On the plus side, this ought to make Brennan’s confirmation hearing this week very exciting.

Simon Johnson: Who Decided U.S. Megabanks Are Too Big to Jail? | Bloomberg View →

America’s past was dramatic and not always glorious. Our present is sordid. Financial shenanigans damaged the economy, and now a handful of powerful executives and their companies have received get-out-of-jail-free cards.

It’s official. The Justice Department said it loud and clear: No megabank will ever face meaningful prosecution.

Very big banks should be broken up immediately. That won’t happen. For his next movie, Hanks should focus on the ruin of democracy — aided and abetted by the Justice Department.

This weekend I finally caught Frontline’s powerful expose of the DOJ’s incompetence in prosecuting anyone from the TBTF banks.  It’s by far one of the best pieces of journalism I’ve seen on this subject.

Broad Powers Seen for Obama in Cyberstrikes | The New York Times →

WASHINGTON — A secret legal review on the use of America’s growing arsenal of cyberweapons has concluded that President Obama has the broad power to order a pre-emptive strike if the United States detects credible evidence of a major digital attack looming from abroad, according to officials involved in the review.

That decision is among several reached in recent months as the administration moves, in the next few weeks, to approve the nation’s first rules for how the military can defend, or retaliate, against a major cyberattack. New policies will also govern how the intelligence agencies can carry out searches of faraway computer networks for signs of potential attacks on the United States and, if the president approves, attack adversaries by injecting them with destructive code — even if there is no declared war.

Oh good.  Because pre-emptive strikes have worked out so well for us in the past.  This article also makes no mention of what would happen if, say, Anonymous took down the Pentagon’s computer systems.  What would happen then, Mr. President?

Amy Davidson: A Red Light at Guantanamo | The New Yorker →

Davidson on the Kafkaesque trial of KSM:

This is Guantánamo, where following the proceedings can be a bit like watching over someone’s shoulders when they play SimCity and forget an essential utility, causing the whole grid to crumple. The military-tribunal system has undergone a few revisions since the early Bush years, mostly thanks to the Supreme Court, but the government is still pretty much making it up as it goes along, in a way that is painful to watch. Hilarity would ensue were this not a solemn session in which we are supposed to be impressing the world with our ability to bring mass murderers to justice while maintaining not only the rule of law but also a shred of dignity.

U.S. Weighs Base for Spy Drones in North Africa | The New York Times →

WASHINGTON — The United States military is preparing to establish a drone base in northwest Africa so that it can increase surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region.

For now, officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the base, though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens.

Can you say “permanent war state?”  When life gives you lemons (interminable land wars in Asia), make lemonade (exciting new conflicts in Africa), I guess.

sagansense:

The ‘Disagreement’ Over Climate Change

The world’s leading climate scientists have (very) slightly differing perspectives.

Each year, NASA Goddard (US), the Met Office Hadley Centre (UK), NOAA National Climatic Data Center (US), and the Japanese Meteorological Agency pool their collected temperature data, from sources across the globe, presenting their independent observations about the year previous.

While minor variations due occur from year to year, each data set, visualized at right, offered peaks and valleys that are strikingly similar to each other. All data sets seem to agree that the ten warmest years in the 132-year record have happened since 1998.

Trends like these are difficult, if not impossible, to ignore. All the data seems to demonstrate a long-term rise in global temperature data.

‘The average temperature in 2012 was about 14.6 degrees Celsius (58.3 degrees Fahrenheit), which is 0.55°C (1.0°F) warmer than the mid-20th century base period. The average global temperature has increased 0.8°C (1.4°F) since 1880, and most of that change has occurred in the past four decades,’ said Goddard Climatologist Gavin Schmidt.

Click the picture to see the data visualization full size.

(via randomactsofchaos)

PBS Drone Coverage Brought to You by Drone Makers | FAIR →

The PBS Nova broadcast ”Rise of the Drones” was sponsored by drone manufacturer Lockheed Martin—a clear violation of PBS’s underwriting guidelines.

As Kevin Gosztola reported (FireDogLake, 1/24/13), the January 23 broadcast was a mostly upbeat look at surveillance and weaponized drones. “Discover the cutting edge technologies that are propelling us toward a new chapter in aviation history,” PBS urged, promising to reveal “the amazing technologies that make drones so powerful.”

I didn’t catch this documentary/infomercial, but FAIR sure did.

Insight: Poland's investigation into secret CIA prisons loses steam | Reuters →

(Reuters) - Lawyers for two men who say they were held illegally in a secret CIA jail on Polish territory argue that a landmark criminal investigation into the “black site” is being stalled because a trial will embarrass the Polish state.

Polish prosecutors are investigating the country’s role in a global operation run by U.S. secret services a decade ago to transport suspected al Qaeda members to facilities outside the United States where they could be held and interrogated without the safeguards set out under U.S. law.

Poland is one of only two countries known to have opened a criminal investigation into the secret jails, and its case could set a precedent for prosecutions in other countries. If it languishes, it greatly reduces the chances that the global veil over “black sites” will be lifted.

Slavoj Zizek - Zero Dark Thirty: Hollywood's gift to American power | The Guardian →

So what about the “realist” argument: torture has always existed, so is it not better to at least talk publicly about it? This, exactly, is the problem. If torture was always going on, why are those in power now telling us openly about it? There is only one answer: to normalise it, to lower our ethical standards.

Torture saves lives? Maybe, but for sure it loses souls – and its most obscene justification is to claim that a true hero is ready to forsake his or her soul to save the lives of his or her countrymen. The normalisation of torture in Zero Dark Thirty is a sign of the moral vacuum we are gradually approaching. If there is any doubt about this, try to imagine a major Hollywood film depicting torture in a similar way 20 years ago. It is unthinkable.

Rebecca Solnit: A Rape a Minute, a Thousand Corpses a Year | TomDispatch →

Absolutely phenomenal (and horrifying) piece by Solnit on masculinity, violence, rape, the degradation of culture, and how gender never seems to be mentioned in the same breath as these things.  Here’s a small excerpt, but go read the whole thing:

There are other things I’d rather write about, but this affects everything else. The lives of half of humanity are still dogged by, drained by, and sometimes ended by this pervasive variety of violence.  Think of how much more time and energy we would have to focus on other things that matter if we weren’t so busy surviving. Look at it this way: one of the best journalists I know is afraid to walk home at night in our neighborhood.  Should she stop working late? How many women have had to stop doing their work, or been stopped from doing it, for similar reasons?

Janet Reitman: Enemy of the State | Rolling Stone →

As a devastating series of cyberattacks struck the heart of the national-security establishment, the Feds set out to destroy the legendary hacker and radical anarchist by any means necessary

I forgot to post this one back in December after it ran in the magazine, but for those who did not read it I would highly recommend.  Reitman’s long-form article is a tour-de-force behind the infamous Stratfor hack that occurred in 2011, and the government’s obsessive attempts at locating the instigators.

Dean Baker: Aaron Swartz, Financial Fraud, and the Justice Department | truthout →

Many people have been asking about the Justice Department’s priorities in the wake of the suicide of computer whiz and political activist Aaron Swartz. As has been widely reported, the Justice Department was pressing charges that carried several decades of prison time against Swartz. He was caught hacking M.I.T.’s computer system in an apparent effort to make large amounts of academic research freely available to the public.

The Justice Department’s determination to commit substantial time and resources to prosecuting Swartz presents a striking contrast to its see no evil attitude when it comes to financial fraud by the Wall Street banks. People should recognize that this is not just a rhetorical point. It is clear that the Justice Department opted to not pursue the sort of investigations that could have landed many high level people at places like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup behind bars.

Michael Tomasky: Obama's Big and Quiet Transformation | New York Review of Books →

This piece from Tomasky has its share of centrist Beltway nonsense, but does contain an interesting examination of the GOP’s gerrymandering techniques that began in 2010:

The existence of these more partisan congressional districts has obvious ramifications for how politicians behave once in office. If you are a Republican who represents an ideologically heterogeneous district where Obama won around 50 percent of the vote, then obviously you will be more likely to behave in a moderate way. Such a district is also likely to be home to a number of aspiring Democrats, state legislators or others, who could mount a credible challenge against you. As you walk the tunnels from the House office buildings over to the Capitol on your way to vote, you will think about those potential challengers, and the thirty-second attack ads they might air against you for casting a vote out of step with the district’s mores.

But what if you come from a district that isn’t remotely like that? What if you come from a district that is so heavily Republican, and so strongly conservative, that your only pressure comes from the right? That is precisely the kind of district most House Republicans represent today.