I really should have known better. I guess that I still possess too much of that naive American optimism, an optimism that resists the harsh dialetical realities of European Marxism and anarchism. How else to explain my gullibility in believing that the House would resist the importunings of finance capital, and its seemingly ubiquitous political and social allies, and again refuse to move the bailout bill to the President's desk? Time for a moment of self-criticism and a rededicated resolve to avoid substituting wish fulfillment for hardened analysis.

With the requisite mea culpa out of the way, I can now offer assistance in the process of drawing a few conclusions as to what has just transpired. First, as I observed in my first post on the subject, the same processes of secrecy that have been developed for the Pentagon and the intelligence services are about to be extended to governmental involvement in the financial markets. The government developed the bailout proposal in closed door meetings, and it was modified as a consequence of equally covert meetings between the White House and congressional representatives. No meaningful hearings were held, with the only public testimony provided by Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke. Understanding the rules of the game, they politely sat through a couple of days of verbal abuse as the price for getting their plan approved.

Furthermore, there was little consideration of any alternatives to the plan put forward by Paulson, alternatives such as ones that would benefit lower and middle income Americans as well as the financial sector. Indeed, there was not even an attempt to explain how the bailout would address the current crisis, and thereby initiate a dialogue as to how to most effectively confront it, except by reference to day to day events in the financial markets. As with the invasion of Iraq, the bailout was marketed through hysteria, and the need to relieve it. Substance was irrelevant, as there is nothing in the plan that necessitates that the recipients of funds through debt purchases actually resume extending credit.

Accordingly, we should presume that the extension of such secrecy into the realm of economic policy will become more and more of a feature of our domestic politics, regardless of whom wins the November election. And, more disturbingly, we should also assume that, contrary to expectations, manipulation of public ignorance, fear and anxiety in the service of capital and conquest will become even more frequent than it was during the Bush presidency. With the media as willing accomplices, there is no reason for politicians, and the interests behind them, to conduct themselves otherwise.

Second, along these lines, the passage of the plan reveals the irrelevancy of the Congress in regard to serving as a constraint upon the President. It is pretty much acknowledged that the changes to the plan related to executive compensation and oversight were cosmetic ones so as to serve the purpose of enabling congressional Democrats to claim that they had improved it. As with the adoption of practices of unprecedented secrecy, this abandonment of responsibility first manifested itself within the confines of military and intelligence activities, and has now crossed the boundary into the realm of economic policy.

Just as with the war in Iraq, Congress has not only relinquished oversight, but has also, even more shockingly, allowed the President to assume the power of the purse. It is easy to forget that, even before the bailout, Congress permitted Paulson and Bernanke to loan hundreds of billions of dollars against distressed, low value securities without objection. It also permitted Paulson and Bernanke to implement their own restructuring of the US financial system by brokering deals, such as the J. P. Morgan purchases of Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, and nationalizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac without any review.

The US is now subject to a de facto government by decree as part of a global trend that includes countries as disperate as France, Venezuela, the Russian Republic and Great Britain. We cannot ignore the possibility, as absurd as it sounds, that there is more diverse participation in policy development in the People's Republic of China, a Communist dictatorship, with its plurality of emerging national and local interests, than there is in the US. Or, to put it differently, the US may well have a more centralized form of government than the People's Republic.

Third, as invoked by Joseph Stiglitz, Naomi Klein and many others, the invasion and occupation of Iraq is an inescapable metaphor for what has happened and what is about to happen. Bush and his allies have used the occupation as an opportunity to direct billions of dollars, much of it free from public disclosure, to private contractors. Some have provided military and security services, others focused upon more mundane things like rebuilding schools, public utilities and roads. Contrary to the musings of liberal defense policy critics who have limited their evaluations of the occupation to its military effectiveness, it has been a tremendous success in terms of accelerating the redistribution of income within the US. The US, along with Great Britain, now has the greatest inequality, among rich countries, as measured by the Gini coefficient.

Now, Paulson has the power to purchase $700 billion in distressed debt securities between now and January 20, 2009. The debt will be borne by all of us, while the recipients . . . well, the recipients, if the Bush record is any indication, will be financial institutions aligned with both the Bush regime and its bipartisan Congress allies, just as many of the occupation contractors, like Bechtel and Blackwater are. Crony capitalism is now official state policy. Predictably, Barack Obama supported the bailout, with an assertion that we can fix the problem later, even though the Democrats, after two years in control of the Congress, still haven't fixed a single problem identified with the Bush presidency. Expect a lot of talk, but little action, on a Democratic agenda of regulatory reform if he wins the election.

Finally, as noted here, many have recognized that the $700 billion is insufficient to deal with the amount of distressed debt, with Spengler over at Asia Times Online being one of the most recent to acknowledge it. The interests of the public appear to be subordinate to the interests of US finance capital, which seeks to retain its dominance within the this country and the world beyond. We are living through an inexorable process of asset destruction and recalculation of risk in relation to the extension of credit, and it is hard to imagine how the bailout can stop this merciless process, unless it can somehow reflate the housing bubble, an achievement that would be akin to levitation. Even then, we would just be kicking the can down the road a few years, with more extreme consequences when it invariably burst as well.

If the bailout does fail, there will, of course, be scapegoats, and the right has already obligingly targeted them for us. I reiterate what I posted here on Wednesday, because it is important:

And if conditions deteriorate to an extent not seen since the mid-1970s, or, one shudders to say it, even the 1930s, then, there are always poor people, people of color and undocumented immigrants to blame. The willingness of the mortgage lending community to target the requirements of the Community Reinvestment Act as one of the causes of this crisis is not reassuring in this regard. It suggests that the financial sector will, if no alternative is perceived, manipulate the bigotries of racist and xenophobic elements to resist any progressive assault upon its autonomy.

We may be about to enter a period with much more frightening dimensions than people being foreclosed out of their houses and forced to go to food banks.

Labels: American Empire, Bailout of Finance Capitalists, Barack Obama, Bush, Credit Crunch, Democrats, Housing Bubble, Immigration, Imperial Presidency, Neoliberalism, Postmodernism, Racism

Extra credit for those who can enjoy the animated graphic originality and still spot the analytical mistakes.

Labels: "War on Terror", Imperial Presidency, Iraq War, Neoconservatives, Occupation of Iraq, PNAC, YouTube

UPDATE: The Attorney General sends a message to the judiciary:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is defending President Bush's anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, said Friday that federal judges should not substitute their personal views for the president's judgments in wartime.

He said the Constitution makes the president commander in chief and the Supreme Court has long recognized the president's pre-eminent role in foreign affairs. "The Constitution, by contrast, provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime," the attorney general told a conference on the judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center.

"Judges must resist the temptation to supplement those tools based on their own personal views about the wisdom of the policies under review," Gonzales said.

And he said the independence of federal judges, who are appointed for life, "has never meant, and should never mean, that judges or their decisions should be immune" from public criticism.

Naturally, like we wouldn't want them to substitute their personal views by reference to things like the Constitution, the Magna Carta, things like that, because, that, you know, might reveal that the President is, like, subject to legal restraints like the rest of us, and can't just do anything he wants.

INITIAL POST: From today's Washington Post:

The military trials bill approved by Congress lends legislative support for the first time to broad rules for the detention, interrogation, prosecution and trials of terrorism suspects far different from those in the familiar American criminal justice system.

President Bush's argument that the government requires extraordinary power to respond to the unusual threat of terrorism helped him win final support for a system of military trials with highly truncated defendant's rights. The United States used similar trials on just four occasions: during the country's revolution, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War and World War II.

Included in the bill, passed by Republican majorities in the Senate yesterday and the House on Wednesday, are unique rules that bar terrorism suspects from challenging their detention or treatment through traditional habeas corpus petitions. They allow prosecutors, under certain conditions, to use evidence collected through hearsay or coercion to seek criminal convictions.

The bill rejects the right to a speedy trial and limits the traditional right to self-representation by requiring that defendants accept military defense attorneys. Panels of military officers need not reach unanimous agreement to win convictions, except in death penalty cases, and appeals must go through a second military panel before reaching a federal civilian court.

By writing into law for the first time the definition of an "unlawful enemy combatant," the bill empowers the executive branch to detain indefinitely anyone it determines to have "purposefully and materially" supported anti-U.S. hostilities. Only foreign nationals among those detainees can be tried by the military commissions, as they are known, and sentenced to decades in jail or put to death.

At the same time, the bill immunizes U.S. officials from prosecution for cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees who the military and the CIA captured before the end of last year. It gives the president a dominant but not exclusive role in setting the rules for future interrogations of terrorism suspects.

Written largely, but not completely, on the administration's terms, with passages that give executive branch officials discretion to set details or divert from its protections, the bill is meant to provide what Bush said yesterday are "the tools" needed to handle terrorism suspects U.S. officials hope to capture.

After the issuance of the United States Supreme Court's decision declaring the use of military tribunals to try suspects was unconstitutional, I wondered if the consequence would be a constitutional crisis. At the time, I emphasized the possibility that the President would openly defy the decision.

Silly me. No need to do so when the legislative branch of government is so willing to pass a measure that blatantly eviscerates legal protections against indefinite detention, conditions of confinement and fair trial. It can be safely said, without fear of contradiction, that these protections against arbitrary state action against the person have been the soul of Anglo American jurisprudence, the fundamental conditions of liberty that expanded into the more mundane liberties that we enjoy today. The real crisis, as with the Japanese internment, is whether the judiciary will serve its historic function to restrain the President's appetite for power, and one suspects that now, as then, it will not do so, especially after senators like Joseph Lieberman, Maria Cantwell and Ben Nelson broke ranks and voted for cloture to permit John Roberts and Samuel Alito to accede to the their seats on the Court.

But, of course, you can read about these subjects in depth on the liberal blogs, passionate statements by people who have a strong emotional bond with the republican philosophy upon which the United States was created. Here, at American Leftist, let's confront some of the possible consequences as they may manifest themselves outside the United States. Most of them arise as a quite predictable response to the vigilantism at the heart of the practice of seizing and detaining foreign nationals, and the use of it for purported intelligence purposes:

(1) People around the world can now legitimately claim that they need to arm themselves against possible seizure by the United States, as the United States has abrogated the right to seize, detain and torture anyone indefinitely, based upon the authority of the President, as delegated to the military and intelligence services (and, it is important to observe that many detainees have been seized in non-violent situations and subsequently found to have no connection to any violent actions against the US).

(2) People can thus additionally assert a right of self defense against the United States, because, again, once seized they have no rights of any kind, and can be held indefinitely, under conditions over which they have no control.

(3) Other individuals, groups, and even countries, may assert the right of moral necessity to defend people from seizure by any means that is considered proportionate to the threat. In other words, they can arm themselves and fire upon US military and intelligence officers who attempt to conduct such seizures, and potentially, even conduct covert operations.

(4) Other individuals, groups, and even countries, may assert the right of moral necessity to engage in covert activities to discover the locations of detention facilities, and and take action, perhaps violently, if necessary, to release detainees. For example, could Cuba assert the right, under international law, to demand the closure of Guantanamo, and respond with force if the demand was rejected?

(5) Individuals, groups, and even countries, may seize Americans abroad (and, possibly, within the United States?), and take action against American businesses and facilities, in an attempt to compel the release of detainees, because, now, after all, the American public, through the passage of the bill by Congress, has validated the President's policy.

Of course, we might, depending on the circumstances, vehemently object to such actions, but, on what basis? If one person, the President, can decide how, say, the citizens of Afghanistan, may be seized, detained and tortured, how are we to object to the decision of one, five or 500 Afghanis to oppose it, and the means by which they do so? The passage of this bill, as demanded by Bush, is yet another example, as is the war and occupation of Iraq, of his insistence that personal liberty and the sovereignty of nations must be subservient to his whim and the whim of future Presidents, and it will, as has the occupation of Iraq, inevitably engender violent resistance.

Labels: American Empire, Imperial Presidency, Political Violence

Some background context as to why the Supreme Court decision, discussed here earlier today, is important:

A Bahraini detainee at Guantanamo Bay can barely stand or exercise after being subjected to painful force-feeding in an effort to make him abandon his hunger strike, his lawyers claimed yesterday. Isa Al Murbati revealed the problems during a meeting with his lawyers at the maximum-security facility in January, but notes taken by his representatives have only just been declassified.

They say other than being offered the drug Motrin, which was tried and did not work, the 42-year-old prisoner has not received any treatment for his injuries.

"During our earlier visit in January, Isa had described being subjected to painful forced feeding in a successful effort to make him abandon his hunger strike," said legal team head Joshua Colangelo-Bryan.

"Isa has been held in Camp One since the time that he was forced from the hunger strike.

"Isa has experienced pain in his knees and shoulders as a result of the rough treatment he received from an Immediate Response Force during the forced feeding.

"Also, his legs are swollen, making it difficult to bend, stand or exercise. Isa is allowed to exercise two times per week. The lawyer said his client became emotional when given information about his family.

"Isa was very interested in hearing news about our trip to Bahrain and our visit with his family," he said.

"I told Isa that we had met with his three sons and that one of his sons had promised him a cake when he returns home.

"I told Isa that one of his sons had asked him to call home, which of course is not possible.

"Isa began to cry when I shared this news with him.

"I told him that many people in Bahrain are working to bring him home, but I do wish that I could have had told him something more concrete in order to comfort him."

Mr Al Murbati is one of three Bahrainis currently being held in Guantanamo Bay along with Salah Abdulrasool Al Blooshi, 24, and Juma Al Dossary, 32, who has attempted suicide 13 times since his incarceration. They are approaching their fifth year of detention at the facility without a trial.

Presumably, the application of the Geneva Convention to Isa Al Murbati, Salah Abdulrasool Al Blooshi and Juma Al Dossary, if enforced, would require that they receive more humane housing and medical treatment, as well as being allowed to communicate with their families.

Labels: "War on Terror", American Empire, Guantanamo, Imperial Presidency, Sadomasochism, Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has ruled that the use of military tribunals to try terror suspects at Guantanamo is unconstitutional, potentially taking the US political system into uncharted territory:

The Supreme Court today delivered a sweeping rebuke to the Bush administration, ruling that the military tribunals it created to try terror suspects violate both American military law and the Geneva Convention.

In a 5-to-3 ruling, the justices also rejected an effort by Congress to strip the court of jurisdiction over habeas corpus appeals by detainees at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

And the court found that the plaintiff in the case, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, could not be tried on the conspiracy charge lodged against him because international military law requires that prosecutions focus on specific acts, not broad conspiracy charges.

Clearly, the Supreme Court is expressing its exasperation with the indefinite detention of people outside the jurisdiction of American and international law, most strongly in its refusal to accept congressional action stripping it of the authority to hear habeas corpus petitions filed by Guantanamo detainees. The Court is sending an unequivocal message to the federal court system to stop evading the issuance of decisions on the merits through procedural subterfuges.

Much of the media coverage today suggests that the Bush Administration will seize upon the decision as an opportunity to extricate itself from the criticism associated with Guantanamo and move towards closing it. Perhaps. If so, it would constitute a radical departure from the administration's effort to concentrate all power in the executive, and thus, I remain dubious. Furthermore, the right has a history of running against the Supreme Court, with the so-called "pro-life" movement being the most obvious, but not the only, instance.

No doubt Karl Rove is familiar with this history. The temptation to step into the shoes of Andrew Jackson and George Wallace must be great. If Bush obstructs compliance with the ruling of the Court, what happens next? Will the federal judiciary issue orders requiring it? If Bush stalls, will the judiciary demand immediate action on behalf of the rights of the detainees, now much more comprehensive in light of the application of the Geneva Convention? And, if the judiciary does so, how will such orders be enforced against a President who declares that he remains free to disregard bills that he signs into law? What is to prevent him from treating the judiciary in a similar fashion?

Labels: "War on Terror", American Empire, Guantanamo, Imperial Presidency, Supreme Court

Yet another disturbing account of what actually transpires at Guantanamo, from taped responses to questions submitted to a detainee, Fawzi al-Odah, broadcast and published by BBC World News. Note the significance of the use of the restraint chair, as discussed here recently, in these excerpts:

Fawzi al-Odah said hunger strikers were strapped to a chair and force-fed through a tube three times a day.

The BBC Today programme's Jon Manel submitted questions for Mr Odah to his lawyer, Tom Wilner, who has access to the camp.

There was no opportunity for the BBC to challenge Mr Odah's responses.

Mr Odah, who has been held at the base since 2002, was one of 84 inmates at Guantanamo who went on hunger strike in December. Just four are still refusing food. Through his lawyer, Mr Odah described his treatment during his hunger strike.

"First they took my comfort items away from me. You know, my blanket, my towel, my long pants, then my shoes. I was put in isolation for 10 days.

"They came in and read out an order. It said if you refuse to eat, we will put you on the chair [for force feeding]."

He told how detainees were given "formulas" to force them to empty their bowels and were strapped to a metal chair three times a day, where a tube was inserted to administer food.

"One guy, a Saudi, told me that he had once been tortured in Saudi Arabia and that this metal chair treatment was worse than any torture he had ever endured or could imagine," Mr Odah said.

Mr Odah told the BBC that he felt like an old man despite being only 29. He described a regime where young military guards routinely beat detainees who caused problems.

"If anything bad happens to the United States anywhere in the world, they immediately react to us and treat us badly, like animals," he said.

"I'm always tired. I have pain in my kidneys. I have trouble breathing. I have pain in my heart and am short of breath. I have trouble urinating and having bowel movements. "Death in this situation is better than being alive and staying here without hope," Mr Odah added.

The US has said it is holding Mr Odah because he is a dangerous "enemy combatant", who travelled through Afghanistan with the Taleban, fired AK-47 rifles while at an al-Qaeda training camp and fought against US and coalition forces.

He dismissed the general allegations, branding them as "rubbish" and "absolutely untrue".

Such conduct by US forces at Guantamano certainly serves the purposes of irrational vengence, gratification of sadism and intimidation of Muslims, but the connection of these practices to the "war on terror" is hard to discern, unless one concludes it is being prosecuted to achieve similar goals. The refusal to close Guantanamo, as urged by many around the world, including the authors of a UN human rights report, raises some profound moral questions.

First, to what extent would Cuba, where Guantanamo is located, or any group of affiliated nations, or even a group of armed militants, be justified in using force to shut down Guantanamo? Given the lack of recourse to any political or legal process that presents the prospect of stopping the abuse of detainees there, what is the alternative? Are there non-violent possibilties for confronting the atrocity of Guantanamo, and, if so, what are they?

Similarly, what should we think of people who voluntarily enter the US military and serve there? Should we explain it by reference to the social pressures that might induce someone to enlist and accept deployment to Guantanamo? Or should we should insist upon the application of principles of personal responsibility for one's actions?

I have already addressed the subject of personal responsibility in the context of military service to perpetuate the occupation of Iraq, but willing participation in the operation of Guantanamo places it in even sharper relief. Especially when you consider that it is the government's public position that there is no prohibition against the use of torture at Guantanamo.

Labels: "War on Terror", American Culture, American Empire, Guantanamo, Imperial Presidency