Sic semper tyrannis

I knew I was going to have some major issues with the Obama presidency. Foreign policy, for instance looked really bad, and turned out worse (illegal bombing forays creating popular anger in The Most Unstable Nuclear Power In The World, killing hundreds of civilians? Seriously? That's your strategy to secure the USA? And don't even get me started on Israel.) I also figured his economic policy was going to be business as usual. But I never really thought that the collapse of civil rights in the US was going to be an issue. How could things get worse?

Barack Obama is a trained constitutional scholar. You would think that he would be quick to restore the US constitutional and civil rights that the Bush administration demolished over the past decade. And surely he would dismantle what Lawrence Lessig has called the "unitary überexecutive", where the President's office holds power over life and death. But no, he has done none of these things. There have been disappointingly few reversals, and even several issues where things have deteriorated. He has retained the excessive and unchecked power of the Bush administration, instead of taking his George Washington moment and relinquishing it. And he has insisted on not prosecuting the former administration for its many, many crimes. The man to read about all this is blogger and lawyer Glenn Greenwald, who has been taking the Obama administration to town over these issues.

But I think I had some vague sense of, hmm, Hope for Change, deep down, still. But now? Not so much, no. Two weeks ago, the Obama administration's Treasury Department slapped a Global Terrorist label on a man named Anwar al-Awlaki. He's a US citizen, living overseas, probably in Yemen. Now, in all likelihood, the man is bad news. He's apparently a fundamentalist radical muslim cleric. But that's not really an issue here. This is: The Obama administration has revealed that he is on an assasination list. Obama has, in effect, ordered a US citizen killed without due process, on some dreamed-up neverending battlefield in a neverending war, in which he is apparently a military player. The global terrorist label of the Treasury Dept. makes it a criminal offence to do any kind of business with him — including representing him as a lawyer. This means that al-Anwaki is specifically barred from challenging his kill on sight-order legally.

So the Obama administration is ordering a citizen killed arbitrarily, without due process, with no checks and balances, with no representation, and preventing any legal challenges to that completely crazy concentration of power. That's not something you can do in a democracy. Unchecked and arbitrary power over the life of your subjects is, in fact, the definition of tyranny. Thus, always, to tyrants.

My concern now, extrapolated from this case, is that Obama will keep the political and civil structures in place that preclude change. He was possibly the last hope for a transformative US presidency, but given how he consistently refuses to rethink the distribution of power and rights of opposition, exemplified here in the US's security policy, I'm afraid that this thinking represents his action plans on the domestic front as well. If that happens, then halfway into president Palin's first term, we'll look back on arbitrary extrajudicial assasinations as the good old days.

*

Update: And while I'm busy recommending Glenn Greenwald's writing, this post is very readable, building on the recent exposure by the Washington Post of the secret intelligence bureaucracy in the USA, and the evaporation of internet privacy.

From the introduction to the Washington Post piece:

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight.

torture & other things I'm reading about

Obama won't prosecute the torturers. This "stands Nuremberg on its head" according to Mike Farrell, President of the board of Death Penalty Focus and Co-Chair Emeritus of the Southern California Committee of Human Rights Watch.

The Nuremberg defense, as you know, Bob, is basically when people say that "I was just following orders when I committed this war crime. How was I to know slaughtering jews or simulating drowning was wrong? I mean: it's war, who am i to know that mass murder or torture is a bad thing? It's not like our society has a strict code of morality about these things or anything. Right? Right?"

Well, nuts to you, my good man! says the Nuremberg principles:

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

*
What kind of torture, you ask? Well, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed experienced simulated execution by drowning (waterboarding) more than 6 times a day for a month, a total of 183 times in 30 days.

*

Bernhard Ellefsen was kind enough to make me aware of two articles by Mark Danner on the torture reports etc. I haven't looked at them yet, but from the skimming, they look really good:

"US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites" and "The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means".

Ellefsen has a video of Danner on CNN up right now at the link above.

*

Here are the actual torture memos by the Bush administration, recently released by the Obama administration, explaining in deliberate, crimes-against-humanity-conviction-inducing prose how to torture a person in such away that it somehow fails to be torture:

In addition to using the cont1ncment boxes alone, you would like to introduce an insect into one of the boxes with Zubaydah. As we understand it, you plan to inform Zubaydah that you are going to place a stinging insect into the box, but you will actually place a harmless insect in the box, such as a caterpillar. If you do so, to ensure that you are outside the predicate act requirement, you must inform him that the insects "will not have a sting that would produce death or severe pain. If, however, you were to place the insect in the box without informing him that you're doing so,then in order to commit a predicate act, you should not affirmatively lead him to believe that any insects... the approaches we have described, the insect's placement in the box should not constitute a threat of severe physical pain or suffering to a reasonable person in his position. An individual placed in a box, even an individual with a fear of insects, would not reasonably feel threatened with severe physical pain or suffering if a caterpillar was placed in the box. Further, you have informed us that you are not aware that Zubaydah has any allergies to insects, and you have not informed us of any other factors that would cause a reasonable person in that same situation to
believe that an ... cause him severe physical pain or death. Thus, we
conclude that the placement of the insect in the confinement box...

blah blah blah. Basically, Bybee is arguing that if you shut someone into a coffin-sized box WITH AN INSECT walking all over him, even if he had a phobia for insects, then that is somehow not torture. He could be in the box for hours at a time. With the insect. I have no such phobia, and I don't think I would remain sane if someone did this to me. These documents are worth reading. Pure, distilled banality of evil. 

*

Last but not least on torture, an editorial in the NY Times in which they finally, finally, fucking finally bring out the big guns against the Bush administration:

At least Mr. Obama is not following Mr. Bush’s example of showy trials for the small fry — like Lynndie England of Abu Ghraib notoriety. But he has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners — in violation of international law and the Constitution.

That investigation should start with the lawyers who wrote these sickening memos, including John Yoo, who now teaches law in California; Steven Bradbury, who was job-hunting when we last heard; and Mr. Bybee, who holds the lifetime seat on the federal appeals court that Mr. Bush rewarded him with.

These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it.

After eight years without transparency or accountability, Mr. Obama promised the American people both. His decision to release these memos was another sign of his commitment to transparency. We are waiting to see an equal commitment to accountability. [my italics]

*

further torture update:

Digby, as usual making lots of sense. Read the Danner articles. They're good.



*

On the other hand, when Obama is not letting torturers go free, he is starting high-speed rail projects across the US. That is awesome. Now if only the Norwegian Arbeiderpartiet could get its ass in gear on this issue at their meeting this weekend, we could get something done in the next ten years.

*

Speaking of which, here's our prime minister saying that Twitter and Facebook are important (Norwegian). The left parties are finally starting to realise what a tool for change the web can be when they take the lead. I tried telling them this five years ago, but would they listen? No.

*

Ezra Klein on why the US health care system costs so much. Part I, part II.

*

Ian McEwan on John Updike. I never liked Updike. He could bang a sentence together like nobody's business but his books, the few that I have had to read, have always felt morally flawed and self-centered to me. But it's always interesting to see what others saw in him.

The Bush Years

8 fucking years.

I feel a profound relief. There's been this cloud of political enfeeblement that has been hanging over my twenties. I've gone through the better part of this decade thinking that we could never get things to move in the right direction. The best we could hope for was to stem the tide of ignorance and civilisational decline that the White House has been in charge of. The complete depression of political hope that resulted from his reelection was unbelievable. I completely lost faith in democracy. If the people were that stupid, how could things ever get better?

Maybe I'm exaggerating. I didn't suffer many of the effects of the Bush presidency. I live in one of the most pleasant little democracies in the world. Others weren't so lucky. Dumb bombs dropped on their cities. Their jobs were lost, their states collapsed, cities flooded because of the ecological damage. The rule of law was weakened. The respect for democracy weakened. Cultural bonds frayed and broke. The West's relationship to the Islamic world burned down. Two weeks ago, I saw kids throwing rocks and fireworks in my city in part because of the Bush administration. There was tear gas in my streets, and the Supreme Court of Florida was at the very least partially responsible.

What I'm struck the most by now is the sense of great opportunities lost. We've moved through one of the most dynamic periods in history with one of the most inept American administrations in history. The Bush administration was the wrong kind of radicals. They were radically deconstructive. There was nothing "conservative" about their destructive actions. They picked apart the very institutions that could have driven this period through profound social and political changes. The internet has exploded, the developing countries have been finding a voice, millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. China! India! Imagine how a progressive, forward-thinking man like the notorious technophile Al Gore (caveat: despite his many many faults, obviously) could have helped with this decade. Maybe we wouldn't have had profound reforms, but maybe we would have been closer to the moment those reforms are politically feasible.

The 2000s have instead been pervaded by the sense that everything that could possibly go wrong, did. I haven't for a second lost the feeling I had, back in 2002, that within the realm of the politically possible, this president could not possibly do anything worse than he did. Sure, his second term lacked the sheer kamikaze flavour of his first, not least after he lost the midterms, but even these four years have been hard to bear.

And now? We'll, I like to think that I'm realistic about the limits on what Obama can do - for instance, I'm sure it'll take him at least three or four hours to personally make peace in the Middle-East - but I do think that we've turned some sort of corner. If nothing else, then in the sense that things in general may be getting better.

But while the US is puttering away trying to rebuild its broken home, its democracy in ruins, its complete and total breakdown of political discourse, the rest of us need to figure out a way to not depend on the US, or on any single nation, both to get by and to create social change.

The most pressing thing is the need to reform the Security Council so that the veto, which the US is using over ten times more than any other country, can be voted down effectively. We need to remove status from the permanent members, and introduce some sort of absolute requirement for permanent membership. A certain number of citizens, a certain test of democratic ability. Whatever. The US, or any other country, should not be allowed to dictate the security policy of the world based on its own national interests. Fix this and we really could have peace in the Middle East by lunchtime.

This is just one suggestion. There are heaps of others: economic structural reform, establishing a system of international law, a functioning supranational political body. We need to bring ourselves into a world where we can operate independently of the fluctuations of the US. If the Bush years have taught us anything (and honestly, the first four years would have been enough) it is that we can't tie ourselves down to the political whims of one country or one region. Especially a democracy so labile, so incomplete, so destructive and unpredictable as the United States of America.

He's just making that shit up as he goes along

A remarkable fact of which I was unaware is that the last third of the speech — the part about the dream — was extemporized by King. He had a text, completed the night before. But as he was addressing the crowd, protesting the indignities and brutalities suffered by blacks, he put the prepared speech aside, paused for a moment and then introduced an entirely new theme.

“I still have a dream,” he said. “It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ ”

With that quotation from the Declaration of Independence, King made clear that his vision of the future for black Americans was for them to be part of the larger society, not embittered opponents of it. He reiterated the point a few minutes later. Faith in his dream, he said, will bring a day “when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning, ‘My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.’ ” Those “I have a dream” paragraphs still bring tears to my eyes.

Flere råd til Obama

På slutten av kronikken Trygve Tronhuus Svensson og jeg skrev om Obamas retorikk skrev vi:

Om 20 år kommer ikke USA til å være den kulturelle, økonomiske og militære supermakten vi kjenner fra det 20. århundre. Men de neste åtte årene vil bli overveldende preget av nattens vinner, og selv med forminsket makt vil USA påvirke oss alle. Forhåpentligvis vil vi allerede i morgen kunne glede oss til 20. januar 2009. Da den nye presidenten vil levere nok en tale, sin inaugural address. Den store forskjellen er at det da vil være makten som snakker. Og Barack Obama vil, om han vinner, deretter bli stilt overfor retorikerens største utfordring: Å artikulere budskapet om for-andring som politisk virkelighet.

I NY Times idag kommer fire taleskrivere med råd til ham om hva han bør putte i den talen. Det er mye interessant lesning.

Well, well, a representative from the Pentagon admits to Bob Woodward that there has been torture of a Guantanamo suspect.

"We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.

(...)

Military prosecutors said in November that they would seek to refile charges against Qahtani, 30, based on subsequent interrogations that did not employ harsh techniques. But Crawford, who dismissed war crimes charges against him in May 2008, said in the interview that she would not allow the prosecution to go forward.

(...)

"For 160 days his only contact was with the interrogators," said Crawford, who personally reviewed Qahtani's interrogation records and other military documents. "Forty-eight of 54 consecutive days of 18-to-20-hour interrogations. Standing naked in front of a female agent. Subject to strip searches. And insults to his mother and sister."

At one point he was threatened with a military working dog named Zeus, according to a military report. Qahtani "was forced to wear a woman's bra and had a thong placed on his head during the course of his interrogation" and "was told that his mother and sister were whores." With a leash tied to his chains, he was led around the room "and forced to perform a series of dog tricks," the report shows.

(...)


The interrogation, portions of which have been previously described by other news organizations, including The Washington Post, was so intense that Qahtani had to be hospitalized twice at Guantanamo with bradycardia, a condition in which the heart rate falls below 60 beats a minute and which in extreme cases can lead to heart failure and death. At one point Qahtani's heart rate dropped to 35 beats per minute, the record shows.

(...)


"There's no doubt in my mind he would've been on one of those planes had he gained access to the country in August 2001," Crawford said of Qahtani, who remains detained at Guantanamo. "He's a muscle hijacker. . . . He's a very dangerous man. What do you do with him now if you don't charge him and try him? I would be hesitant to say, 'Let him go.' "

You know, despite the fact that the prisoner is dangerous, if he has been tortured, and especially if he made confessions under torture, he should be released in compensation. In that case, it is the fault of the torturers and those who authorised the torture if he commits further abuses. If they didn't want him going free, then they shouldn't have tortured him or illegally detained him. They should have gathered evidence and put him on trial, like we do all other human beings who commit crimes. This is just one of the many many reasons torture is not just morally wrong, but illegal: you can't use it to get legally recognized confessions. 

You had me at "fuck you"

Exceptionally obnoxious article by Thomas Friedman:

But while the world appears poised to give Obama a generous honeymoon, there lurks a much more important question: How long of a honeymoon will Obama give the world?

To all those Europeans, Canadians, Japanese, Russians, Iranians, Chinese, Indians, Africans and Latin Americans who are e-mailing their American friends about their joy at having “America back,” now that Obama is in, I just have one thing to say: “Show me the money!”

Don’t just show me the love. Don’t just give me the smiles. Your love is fickle and, as I said, it will last about as long as the first Obama airstrike against an Al Qaeda position in Pakistan. No, no, no, show me the money. Show me that you are ready to be Obama stakeholders, not free-riders — stakeholders in what will be expensive and difficult initiatives by the Obama administration to keep the world stable and free at a time when we have fewer resources.

Examples: I understand any foreigner who objected to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the gross mishandling of the postwar. But surely everyone in the world has an interest in helping Obama, who opposed the war, bring it to a decent and stable end, especially now that there is a chance that Iraq could emerge as the first democracy, albeit messy, in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world. Obama was against how this Iraq war started, but he is going to be held responsible for how it ends, so why don’t all our allies now offer whatever they can — money, police, aid workers, troops, diplomatic support — to increase the odds of a decent end in Iraq? Ditto Afghanistan.

Look, Tom, after inflicting 8 years of the most incompetent administration in the history of the world, ever, you could do well to show a little humility. You do not get to go straight back to being the leaders of the free world. After 8 years of imperial foreign policy, flaunting of civil rights, torture, unilateral pursuit of national over global interest, not to mention the little matter of an illegal war waged on false pretenses. A war, let us not forget, which you supported, Tom. After all of this, you, the US, need to show us, The Rest of the World, the love. We need to see that you are back to being a serious nation again. You have a lot to prove. You have a lot to live up to. If you want our support and our money and our troops, you have to come asking for them. And if we say no, you are going to have to eat the fact that the administration whom you elected, at least once, is to blame. 

In short: get off your high and mighty exceptionalist horse, stop writing stupid shit like this and look your friends in the eye again.

Obamas ord

photo is Creative Commons and was taken by B. Rankin (Flickr user BohPhoto)

Martin Grüner Larsen og Trygve Tronhuus Svensson
Opprinnelig trykt i Bergens Tidende, 4. november 2008.

«Bush har brukt åtte år til å grave middelklassen ned i et hull. Nå planlegger McCain å bruke spaden til å grave dypere», sa Barack Obama nylig i en tale. Det er med slik retorikk han har vunnet frem som presidentkandidat.

Da Barack Obama entret podiet for å gi the keynote address på Demokratenes landsmøte i 2004 var det ingen som så for seg at dette kunne bli USAs neste president. Allere-de samme kveld ble det snakket om mulighetene for en svart president. Obama brukte 17 uavbrutte minutter på nasjonalt tv for alt de var verdt, og budskapet har siden definert hans retorikk. Fortellingen om Amerika handlet om en splittet nasjon og Obama holdt en tale som fortalte at motsetningene kan løses.

"…det finnes ikke et liberalt Amerika og et konservativt Amerika – det finnes kun Amerikas Forente Stater. Det finnes ikke et svart Amerika, et hvitt Amerika, et latino Amerika og et asiatisk Amerika – det finnes kun Amerikas Forente Stater.” sa han

Det ble den mest berømte frasen fra landsmøtet, og en oppsummering av kampanjens budskap.

Mens en ekstremt upopulær president, grasrotorganisering, krig og finanskrise har alle bidratt, er den avgjørende årsaken til Obamas gjennombrudd å finne i hans vel-lykkete politiske kommunikasjon, særlig hans taler. Retorikken har med Obama vist sitt potensial til å forandre verden.

I analyser av store taler vektlegges ofte stilistiske elementer: billedbruk, kontrast, rytme, etc. Slikt er interessant, men ikke det som gjør en tale avgjørende. Det som kjennetegner bemerkelsesverdige politiske taler, er at de løser eller omdefinerer en konflikt. Dette er kjernen i Barack Obamas retoriske strategi, og i hans politiske budskap.

Symboleffekten
Ingen blir president i USA uten å spille på amerikansk eksepsjonalisme: ideen om at amerikanerne har en opphøyd plass i verdenshistorien. ”A City upon a Hill” kalte John Winthrop det, da han i 1630 stiftet en koloni i Massachusetts. Obama presente-rer seg som den amerikanske fortellingens neste kapittel. En leder som kan bygge bro mellom nasjonaltraumet, slaveriet, og den økonomiske og kulturelle velstanden som loves av grunnloven og den eksepsjonalistiske fortellingen.

Hans retoriske strategi har derfor fokusert på å overvinne kulturkrigene som George W. Bushs valgkampstrateg Karl Rove var en mester i å starte og vedlikeholde (ko-piert av Framskrittspartiets i norsk kontekst). Målet er størst mulige motsetninger mellom folkegrupper ved hjelp av såkalte ”wedge issues”: verdiladete saker som abort, homoseksualitet og rase. Fellestrekket er at de splitter grupper med felles in-teresser og skjuler mer grunnleggende motsetninger i samfunnet – som de økono-miske.

Pastor Wright
Obamas styrke har vært å se alle utfordringer som en anledning til å snakke om det samme: behovet for forandring. Et eksempel var i mars, da talene til presten i Obamas gamle kirke, pastor Wright, ble offentliggjort. Hva sier man til det amerikanske folk når en prest – som har døpt dine døtre, viet deg, og hvis preken du har oppkalt en bok etter – på tv omtaler 9/11 som ”Amerikas kyllinger som kommer hjem for å legge egg”? I konteksten av den amerikanske nasjonalmyten er det helligbrøde.

Dette var den mest alvorlige krisen i kampanjen. I midten av mars viste meningsmå-linger at kun 8 prosent av velgerne støttet Wrights uttalelser. Den forbigåtte Hilary Clinton ledet igjen på meningsmålingene med 7 prosentpoeng. McCain gikk også forbi begge de demokratiske kandidatene med ca. 3 prosentpoeng. Det var en tilsvarende verdikonstruksjon, swiftboating, som drepte John Kerrys kampanje i 2004.

I denne situasjonen skrev Obama, mye alene, talen ”A More Perfect Union.” Pastor Wrights synspunkter betegnes her som uriktige i en tid der folk trenger å finne sam-men. Samtidig karakteriseres Wrights ideer som en del av den amerikanske historien som ikke forsvinner: ”Jeg kan like lite avvise ham som jeg kan avvise det svarte sam-funnet. Jeg kan like lite avvise ham som min hvite bestemor.” Også her bruker han muligheten til å vise hvordan den amerikanske historien representeres av hans egen biografi.

3 dager senere gikk Obama opp med 10 prosentpoeng, og ledet igjen over Clinton. Hun gjenvant aldri ledelsen.

Kairos
Kairos er et sentralt begrep fra den klassiske retorikken. Det betyr ”øyeblikk” eller ”mulighet”. Det er kvaliteten en tale har når den svarer til situasjonens utfordringer. På samme måte som talen i 2004 artikulerte en folkelig frustrasjon over kulturkampen, svarte ”A More Perfect Union” på spørsmålet om rase.

Tilsvaret er karakteristisk: Obama avleder ofte angrep ved å snakke om større problemer. Når motstanderne angriper ham ved å knytte ham til ”anti-amerikanske ide-er” hos en svart pastor, snakker han om opphavet til frustrasjon i den svarte ameri-kanske befolkningen. Denne evnen til å løfte debatten er ikke bare god kairos, det viser seg å være god politikk. Obama markerer seg ved å virke både på taktisk og strategisk nivå. Hans prosjekt er like mye å endre reglene for hva man på sikt kan snakke om og hvordan, som å vinne en enkelt debatt, holde en god tale.

Retorikkens renessanse
En vanlig anklage mot Obama har vært at det han gjør er ”bare retorikk” og at han ikke har ”substans”. Til dette er det to innvendinger: For det første er alle språkhandlinger retoriske. McCains ”Straight Talk Express” er en annen retorisk strategi. For det andre henger retorikk og politikk sammen som tenkemåte. George W. Bushs manikeiske retorikk henger uløselig sammen med den ideologien han har påført verdenssamfunnet, og folket i Irak spesielt.

Romertidens siste store retoriker, Quintilian, skrev at å tale godt henger sammen med å være et godt menneske. Med et godt menneske mente han en som forstod samfunnet og tok riktige avgjørelser. Retorikk dreide seg mer om situasjonsforståelse enn sminkekunst. Denne presidentkampanjen har vært mye mer løfterik enn den forrige, nettopp fordi det verdensbildet som har kommet til å dominere kampanjen har vært det forstående og omdefinerende.

Om 20 år kommer ikke USA til å være den kulturelle, økonomiske og militære su-permakten vi kjenner fra det 20. århundre. Men de neste åtte årene vil bli overvel-dende preget av nattens vinner, og selv med forminsket makt vil USA påvirke oss alle. Forhåpentligvis vil vi allerede i morgen kunne glede oss til 20. januar 2009. Da den nye presidenten vil levere nok en tale, sin inaugural address. Den store forskjellen er at det da vil være makten som snakker. Og Barack Obama vil, om han vinner, der-etter bli stilt overfor retorikerens største utfordring: Å artikulere budskapet om for-andring som politisk virkelighet.

Video av to nøkkeltaler:

Talen til landsmøtet i 2004:


Og "A More Perfect Union":

Transfusion

World Bank chief economist/Nobel Laureate/Smart Guy Joseph Stiglitz comments on the bailout bill at Democracy Now. His basic take: it's like giving someone suffering from internal bleeding a blood transfusion. It has to be done, but if the bleeding (the foreclosures on the property market, from what I gather in a rush reading) isn't stopped, the patient will die.

Specifics

A thing I've noticed:

Sarah Palin has now, in several interviews, used the following phrasing. In reference to which newspapers she reads, which constitutional rulings she disagrees with, and other completely non-essential issues:

Interviewer:
Name me a specific case of X.

Palin:
I can name you specific cases of X. You know, I think it's important in terms of X bla bla bla. So, you know, X.

Interviewer:
And what specific case of X are you thinking about?

[At which point she says basically more of the same, and you scream in agony and close the window you were looking at.]

So she specifically says that she can name specific cases of whatever it is (newspapers, constitutional law cases. Y'know: elitist things), and then reveals that she can't. Anyway, watch for it. As Michael Bérubé says, it's like watching a student try to fake a term paper in real time. Which, btw, is exactly the feeling I got watching that "all under the umbrella of job creation"-answer, which Tina Fey repeated verbatim in the Saturday Night Live sketch.

the definition of "funny, but not ha-ha-funny"

Actual Palin interview.

The Saturday Night Live version.

I can't tell the two apart, except one is hysterically funny, and the other one makes me hysteric. I'm foetal under the desk right now.

Also note how the SNL version uses many actual quotes from the Couric/Palin interview, with almost no change.

DOW(n) 300

Ok, so the US economy is "collapsing". I'm not an economist, but that can't be good. The DOW dropped 300 points in 10 minutes this morning (2.3 %), and the stock exchange in Oslo was down 7 percent this morning, as well, I heard.

*

Paul Krugman, world-class economist and newspaper columnist probably has some words to inspire us and calm us down, right, Paul?

Will the U.S. financial system collapse today, or maybe over the next few days? I don’t think so — but I’m nowhere near certain. You see, Lehman Brothers, a major investment bank, is apparently about to go under. And nobody knows what will happen next.

*

Much, much more, most of which I do not understand, in this linky post.

Amidst the awfulness there are a lot of lessons to be learned from what the activists who are demonstrating in St. Paul, Minneapolis are doing: they are bringing video cameras, journalists and citizen journalist/activists to every single demonstration. They leave the cameras rolling and document everything. That's how, for instance, we get this awful video of police firing tear gas and concussion grenades into an obviously peaceful crowd, or this video of the widely celebrated and RNC-accredited journalist Amy Goodman (of Democracy Now) being arrested. (Did the police know she was an accredited journalist? Well, the cop in the background who is helpfully saying "arrest the accredited journalist" probably did.) Btw, note the immediate response of the crowd when they cuff her.

I prefer Michael Palin, myself. More cosmopolitan.

I don't know if this analysis by Ezra Klein of McCain's vice-presidential choice of Sarah Palin is accurate, but I hope it gets a lot of play, because it's convincing. The "he's trying to look cool"-angle is great. It makes McCain look like one of those really old teachers who get the kid's slang wrong trying to "reach out to them". Good narrative for the Obama campaign:

This was, for McCain, a major decision. And we can learn from it. And here's what even his supporters must admit: Country did not come first. Polls did. The calculations are fully transparent. Understanding that he needed to broaden his electoral coalition, he picked a woman. Understanding he needed youth, he picked a young politician. Understanding he needed to emphasize his reformist credentials, he picked a onetime whistleblower. What he didn't pick was anyone able to help him govern, or capable of stepping forward in a moment of crisis. Palin is not an experienced foreign policy hand like Lieberman or a successful and experienced governor like Tommy Thompson. Today, McCain chose his campaign over his presidency. Over our presidency. Palin seems like a promising young politician, but McCain increasingly seems like a desperate one.

That having been said, I was kinda underwhelmed by Obama's speech at the convention. He gorged on a whole bunch of silly tropes he'd been sensible enough throughout the rest of the campaign to use sparingly. It just seemed too over-the-top to me.

And there was way too much emphasis on the military, Georgia and Israel for me to feel entirely comfortable. Also: you might not have heard the dog-whistle, but he was talking about doing military operations against Bin Laden and Al-Qaida, which means going into Pakistan. That's very troubling.

Update: although, when I think about it, he's finally putting some policy ideas more widely into the field, which is probably what his campaign needs at this point. Or maybe it's just my blood sugar talking. Who knows?

Oppspinndoktor

Her er en Fokus-sak jeg skrev til dagens Klassekampen:

Fortellingen om valgkampen er valgkampen

Alle elsker en god historie: Et utsagn som er så selvinnlysende at det umulig kan diskuteres. Nevrologisk er hjernene våre skrudd sammen slik at de forstår verden gjennom fortellingen.

Politikk er intet unntak. Det kan både regjeringens spinndoktorer og kognitive lingvister som George Lakoff skrive under på. Politikk avhenger av å skape forståelige fortellinger, og politisk retorikk er det som skaper fortellinger om saken, partiet eller kandidaten. Om du tviler på om dette er sant, anbefaler jeg dekningen av Demokratenes historiefortellingskongress i Denver denne uken.

Det er noe grotesk og overdimensjonert over det å drive valgkamp for 300 millioner mennesker, som setter noen grunnleggende aspekter ved hva politikk i demokratier er, i skarpt fokus.

Etter en røff sommer prøver Demokratenes presidentkandidat Barack Obama å tette igjen hullene i fortellingen om seg selv. Hans forsprang på meningsmålingene er nå - grøss og gru - nede i et snevert to-prosents gap mellom ham og John McCain. Noe må gjøres.

Så hva er historien som spinnes om Barack Obama? Første hovedtaler i går var den dødelig kreftsyke senatoren Edward Kennedy, John F. Kennedys lillebror, som talte så ikke et øye var tørt. Selv om han snakket om helsereform, og lovet å dedikere sine siste måneder til den saken, var det lite politisk substans i talen, som heller handlet om fraser som «å gi fakkelen videre» og «drømmen lever videre».

Senatorens niese Caroline Kennedy var langt mindre subtil i tittelen på en kronikk i New York Times i januar: «A President Like My Father».

Da arven fra Kennedy var sikret, kom Michelle Obama på scenen og holdt en 20 minutter lang tale om sin egen og Barack Obamas bakgrunn. Det viste seg her at Michelle Obama har en familie. Hun har både en bror, en mor og ikke minst en far. Og så er hun en kone. Hun er nemlig gift - med Barack Obama. Og hennes far kom fra arbeiderklassen. Og selv om Obama var litt fremmed - han «hadde et rart navn» og «kom fra den andre siden av landet» - så var han akkurat som hun selv var.

Altså: a) Selv om Obama er litt fremmed og litt rar (må jeg stave det for dere? Han er svart), så er han egentlig akkurat som alle andre amerikanere. b) Han viderefører John F. Kennedys arv.

Dette er bare to sterke elementer i historiefortellingen som demokratene bygger opp rundt Obama. Men fortellingene må også utkjempes retorisk, mot motstanderens omdefineringsforsøk.

De siste dagene har Demokratene laget riper i lakken i McCains krigsheltfortelling. De må ha velsignet dagen han plumpet ut med at han ikke var helt sikker på hvor mange hus han eier (mellom sju og ti, faktisk. De lærde strides). Siden da har «McCain er ikke i kontakt med vanlige amerikanere» vært historien, sammen med «McCain=Bush» («McSame»).

Det som blir tydelig i norsk politikk i lys av dette, er at våre valgkamper er like historiedrevne. Hos oss er det takk og lov mindre fokus på person, men desto flere fortellinger om partier og velgergrupper.

I 2005 klarte de rødgrønne å surfe inn i regjeringskvartalet på bølgene til en fortelling om at det står dårlig til i Norge, og nå skulle Norge forandres. «Change», ikke sant? Som alltid kom hverdagen tilbake for raskt og nå er en ny fortelling på plass: De rødgrønne er ikke i kontakt med det norske folk og deres reformer mislykkes.

Selv om den rødgrønne regjeringen ikke har levert, er det fascinerende å se hvordan en middels god regjering som ikke klarer seg så verst har blitt omdefinert. Om venstresida skal vinne en ny valgseier i 2009 må det først og fremst skapes en ny politikk. Men politikken må også tillegges en ny fortelling. Kan vi det? Yes, we kanskje.

Crash & burn

"Being shot down in a fighter plane is not a qualification for being president" says Wesley Clark.

Gasp! Shock! Horror!

Fortunately, there's sensible people talking, too.

The world has gone mad. Showing personal courage (which McCain has done, indisputably) is a good thing, but it's manifestly not a direct qualification to being president. It can be a tool for gauging character, but then again, it might not - Lincoln and Roosevelt, for instance, didn't serve in the military. "Swiftboating"? C'mon.

This just in

Mikkel changes his mind about Obama:

"OK, I change my mind. I'm all for Obama. But the little fucker better not let me down."

Welcome to the club, Mikkel. Here's your Kool-Aid.

Føre

I'm back from a long weekend cross-country skiing in the mountains. Going beyond cellular coverage and wireless email really is one of the great luxuries of our age. There's something about sitting in a small cabin miles away from anywhere anyone could get a hold of you which helps you focus. Conversation seems to turn naturally towards what is important, and all the noise of the everyday fades into the background.



*

Just so you don't think I'm going all luddite on you, I note that the Wikipedia article on "blog" has grown a lot since I saw it last time. It has an interesting history of early blogging-section now.

*

I was listening to a part of a lecture series called "Ethics and Public Policy" just now. The lectures, made in 1991 by the funny, insightful, rambling and delightfully Jewish political philosopher Ed Beiser, concern the idea of rights and law in the public sphere. It would probably be immoral of me to suggest that one could download the lecture series from this torrent here. Would it be legal of me to say so? Hard to say.

At one point, Beiser makes an interesting argument about what I suspect are different conceptions of rights between capitalist societies like the US and proto-socialist societies like the USSR*. He says that the conception of rights in the US is a negative conception. You have freedom of the press in the US, but the formulation is "Congress [i.e. the government] shall make no law" abridging freedom of religion, the press &tc. The freedom to assemble is the freedom to not be disassembled by the government.

The formulation of the first Soviet constitution is an entirely different approach.

14. For the purpose of securing freedom of expression to the toiling masses, the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic abolishes all dependence of the Press upon capital, and turns over to the working people and the poorest peasantry all technical and material means for the publication of newspapers, pamphlets, books, etc., and guarantees their free circulation throughout the country.

15. For the purpose of enabling the workers to hold free meetings, the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic offers to the working class and to the poorest peasantry furnished halls, and takes care of their heating and lighting appliances.

So the negative conception of rights says "we won't stop you from printing whatever you like". The positive conception of rights says "here, have a printing press. The paper is over there by the ink barrels." (And in the Soviet model follows this with "here, have an oppressive military dictatorship complete with total censorship.")

It occurred to me that both these notions of freedom of the press are obsolete in their own way. The negative version is obsolete because the oppression these days comes through entirely different channels (Clear Channel & Fox News, for instance), and takes the form of oligarchic capitalism, neo-imperialism and cultural hegemony instead.

The positive version is obsolete simply because the technological revolutions made in the 17 years which have passed since the early 90s have made mass syndication and distribution available to everyone with a PC. Technology solved the problem of scarcity of mass distribution. The problem now is more the perennial one of getting people's attention. Am I right, guys? Guys?

*

The Norwegian word "Føre" is untranslatable, but is indicative of how good the snow is for skiing. Good føre is good for skiing, bad is not. It is the condition of the snow which dictates whether you are gliding in a zen-like trance across soft, light, fluffy perfection or skating roughly across an icy shell roughly the constistency of a slush puppie, which drags you backwards on uphill treks and makes you go too fast and lose all control downhill - yet somehow seems to solidify into head-crackingly hard ice when you fall. We had almost perfect føre this weekend. Føre, like weather, is also a great metaphor for conditions which dictate your actions and your possibilities, like parental mental health or world capitalism or whatever.

To belabour the metaphor: going into the wild gives your thoughts great føre, until you run out of food, at which point you start thinking more and more about the ethics of cannibalism. Fortunately, Mikkel B's cooking skills don't decrease just because he is working on a propane stove in the middle of nowhere.

*

Arthur C. Clarke died. Between him and Gary Gygax going last week, two of the central pillars of 20th century nerdhood have suddenly disappeared.

*

I made brussel sprouts poached in cider with apples and onions last night. It tastes amazing and you should try it. This recipe is totally copied from the book I used. They just changed a sentence here and there.

Pick a winner

Speaking of American politics: big day tomorrow. Super duper tuesday. All the primaries are off to the races, so to speak.

I don't really know why, but somehow, I feel compelled to pick a candidate. Maybe it's because I follow US politics the way other people might follow sports (although to be fair, professional sports don't invade Iraq). But even though it's the night of the game, and I have this feeling of having to pick sides, I still can't choose. I've gone back and forth. Obama's health care plan has been the big thing that keeps cropping up in my reading. It's not as good as Clinton's, and there have been some persuasive arguments made (notably by Paul Krugman in his book, The Conscience of a Liberal) that if you get universal healthcare, it would open the door for a new New Deal. Some relevant discussion of that issue (Obama's plan lacks mandates and there are disputes as to how relevant that is) can be found here, here, and here.

With McCain as the presumptive nominee for the GOP, it does actually look like this election could be closer than we would like. If so, an Obama/Clinton ticket would probably be the sure win, mobilizing black and female voters - two groups that break overwhelmingly for Democrats (blacks hugely - around 90 % in 2004, I think, women around 10 %).

So on the one hand, Obama has a worse health plan, while on the other hand Clinton made a huge error in judgement in voting for attacking Iraq, which does reflect very poorly on her leadership ability. Right now, I'm inclined to let the last one be the weightiest argument. This time, I'm hoping for a presidency without wars. Oh, and Obama is a good speaker. I think a president who speaks (and who knows - maybe even reads and writes!) English would be a pleasant change.

So I guess that with flip-flopping and total ambivence, I'm coming down on the side of Obama after all, but only if he picks a progressive vice-president candidate (maybe Edwards) or Clinton. An Obama/Clinton or Obama/Edwards could both win and make good presidencies. Even though Obama's stupid about, say, Israel (to be fair: Clinton is even dumber on Israel), has an imperfect health care plan (and even argues that the flaw is the big selling point) and even though I think his campaign has waffled and gotten bogged down in rhetoric, and even though I think he started playing safe when he could smell the power, I have hope that he'll overcome the kinks in his personality and turn out to be a good president. Anything is better than John McCain and any human being with a heartbeat would be better than the lame duck quacking on Pennsylviana Avenue right now.

Astroturf® - for the Greater Good™

Interesting moral dilemma in the comments to the preceding post. Let me explain.

First off, there's a word you should know, if you don't already. It's Astroturfing. Astroturfing (internet venacular) is defined by Wikipedia as "a neologism for formal public relations campaigns in politics and advertising that seek to create the impression of being spontaneous, grassroots behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass AstroTurf, initially developed for the Houston Astrodome."

Like most people engaged in honest open debate the usual internet muckslinging, I hate astroturfing. I hate it with a cold fury most people reserve for Adolf Hitler or their income tax returns*. These people are the scum of the Earth and they are wrecking the public sphere for all of us hard-working, honest debaters.

So astroturfing happens quite a lot on the net. Typical astroturfing is when somebody creates a website or a discussion forum of some kind trying to create the impression that a whole lot of people are really interested and excited about Brand A or Movie B or Politician McC. One commonly used technique is to have somebody just dropping by a large number of blogs, leaving behind anonymous comments that usually start off with some unusually flattering compliment about your blog (because we should never underestimate the power of vanity). If you’re lucky, you get a sentence or two about the topic you have posted on. Then the post goes off the rails and starts talking about something completely different.

So in this case, I post on economic studies of organised crime and prostitution. Somebody comes in, compliments me, and then starts talking about climate change and linking to sites about climate change and tries to get a discussion going (to help the buzz, natch).

So the unique moral dilemma here is: I actually agree with this astroturfer. I think climate change is a huge issue that everyone – especially the Republicans – should get taken to the cleaners about. Agreeing with astroturfers has, in fact, never happened to me before. I have never encountered astroturfing that was not conservative, right-wing propaganda or commercial pap about some obscure product.

So here is my self-serving and evasive response:

See, now you're placing me in a difficult situation. You're obviously astroturfing, you're obviously just somebody clicking through blogs and leaving links - and btw you'd think you'd know how to make link tags, dude - but on the other hand, you're obviously doing it for one of the best causes there are. So do I

a. tolerate your comment, thus making me a hypocrite for accepting bad faith rhetoric (I am guessing you've never read my blog before) when I am in political agreement with the person making the statement.

b. delete your comment, thus infitesimally lowering necessary media exposure for one of the defining political issues of our time, and therefore possibly have cause to feel guilty about it.

or

c. make a long metaargument explaining how I actually thought this through, but decided to keep your comment after showing that I was aware that you made those links while in bad faith, said metaargument established only in order to reflect well on myself while also feebly trying to draw attention to the cause, despite the fact that I have also damaged the credibility of the followers of that cause. [I should have added: but leave you up under the pretense of having made an informative ”case” out of you.]

I think C. But see? See what you made me do? Couldn't you just behave like a real person and not leave those astroturfing comments with their habitual opening compliments about what a great blog this is and bla bla bla. It hurts the cause more than it helps it. Get in the fray and make some honest debate and spread the links properly, the way they should be spread.

* Note: not the income tax itself. We pay our taxes with Joy and Pride, citizen.