The felt pressure to find some other explanation is nearly overwhelming!
Agreed, but I'm drawing a blank. I mean, if you actually thought this was a good plan, step 1 would be not to tell people about it.
It's called double reverse psychology and you learn about it as a 1L.
neb, how do we know you aren't a government infiltrator trying to stir up distrust of government infiltrators who try to stir up distrust of government conspiracies in an effort to make us trust the government?
Wait a sec, I thought the conventional wisdom around here (excluding the opinions of us DFHs) was that the Demoncrats should grow a backbone and start playing hardball with the Repugs. How is this not indicative of a shift towards exactly those sorts of tactics?
5: Step 1: Announce hardball tactics that require secrecy to work. Step 2: ???. Step 3: Victory.
Like, isn't it pretty well known by now that that sort of thought process always ends up in abuse of power, even if you can somehow overlook that it also starts there?
It's ok if you're a member of the technocratic elite. By definition your actions are for the public good.
I don't know what the CW around here was, NP, but if it advocated government-funded propaganda and infiltration of groups critical of the government (however ill-founded their beliefs might be) in order to discredit them and thereby increase trust in the government, I wasn't party to the convention.
Yenz kin spell 'technocratic elite.' Your one of 'em.
Who's Yenz? Some kind of foreign dictator waiting in the wings?
Someone with a large, spelling-obsessed family.
You know you're a member of the technocratic elite when you post your secret plan to SSRN.
11: That's the local pronunciation of the second person plural.
5 I haven't seen this here either. In other news, nobody except perhaps BobM here would support torturing folks with ties to the extreme anti-abortion groups or placing various radical righties in Guantanomo.
15: I even misspelled what I wasn't trying to misspell.
Sunstein et al also work in a nice speculative argument implying that FOIA requests mess with the executive's right to act in its public's best interests.
Lu/bos Mo/tl also has a post about this. I think this is the first time I've ever agreed with him about a political issue. Well, except for the bit where he says he thinks Obama may have been born in Kenya.
(psst. Moby. I think essear was trying out this new rhetorical mode, facetiousness.)
Whatever the merits of these pragmatic and tactical questions, the availability of censorship gives U.S. officials operating in foreign countries an extra instrument for coping with conspiracy theories, one that is not available in the domestic arena due to both legal and political constraints.
The domestic government just can't catch a break. Such a shame.
20: Ha! Yes. I mean, I've never agreed with him about politics in the past, but I agree with much of what he says in his current post about Sunstein, although I do not agree with that portion of it in which he says Obama may have been born in Kenya.
I suppose I could claim facetiousness rather than inept phrasing. Yeah, let's go with that.
Continuing on, the final paragraph:
Some conspiracy theories create serious risks. They do not merely undermine democratic debate; in extreme cases, they create or fuel violence. If government can dispel such theories, it should do so. One problem is that its efforts might be counterproductive, because efforts to rebut conspiracy theories also legitimate them. We have suggested, however, that government can minimize this effect by rebutting more rather than fewer theories, by enlisting independent groups to supply rebuttals, and by cognitive infiltration designed to break up the crippled epistemology of conspiracy-minded groups and informationally isolated social networks.
Any reason to think those suggested strategies might in themselves be counterproductive? Maybe?
25: Wow, that paragraph is all kinds of crazy and/or stupid.
I was going to read the whole thing, but that would just make me part of the conspiracy.
I've only skimmed it, except the FOIA section, but I think Greenwald is probably understating the crazy/stupid in the paper. Or at least burying it in the way he writes his posts.
It seems unGreenwaldian to understate things. Maybe he's in on the conspiracy.
This sort of tactic would probably work best when paired with "bread and circuses". Maybe I'll go long on wheat, elephant, and big shoes.
I think it's a case where literal understatement might be more powerful than overstatement. I don't read him that much, be seems to write over more than he writes about.
Also, I looked up the post referred to in 19. It use the word literally in a literal sense.
I blame my keyboard for the loss of individual letters, articles, and pronouns that has afflicted my commenting for the past few months.
I recently used the word "literal" in its literal sense. How about that.
That can't be the real Greenwald: he doesn't call anybody "all over marked with the tracks of unmistakable wickedness," "irredeemably corrupt" or "a repulsive tub of rancid lard masquerading as a paragon of journalistic rectitude."
One hesitates to belabor the obviously obvious, but one does think that a state that can occupy itself with investigating and correcting counterrevolutionary sympathies servicing the vanities of the opining class showing those dumb white trash peckerwoods that Brattle Street's in charge now repairing fringe elements' "broken epistemology" must be a state without poverty or violence.
26 already pointed this out, but I feel compelled to repeat that 25 is just breathtaking. Really amazing. Michael Ledeen could have written it.
16:I have never advocated or supported torture. terza is projecting, as liberals tend to do. See Sunstein.
OTOH, Britain just proscribed a political organization. I spent a little while wondering how that might be defended under the American Constitution.
And y'all are wrong. Sunstein is our next justice, and this is a plus for Conservatives, not a minus.
I should follow the links and think about this, but I have always been somewhat more disturbed by Obama's University of Chicago Behavioral Economics buddies than the likes of Summers or Geithner.
"The Simulacrum is Better than the Reality" may be their motto. Phony or crippled Health Care "Reform" may be "better" than real reform because it activates opposition to Obama's left.
Was Leo Strauss at U of Chicago?
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I hate to do it, but Emerson "retired" again on the tenth at trollblog, and yet Here he is today at Yggles.
Also linked because of Ygg's complicated scenario of Obama appointing a Democrat to the Fed to unsettle financial markets, and thus generate inflation and employment.
I am reading yet another book on Post-Modernism, but I am not sure pomo can be understood. If pomo makes any sense, ur doin it wrong.
|>
Britain just proscribed a political organization.
Britain proscribes political organisations all the time. See IRA, passim. You can't defend it under the US constitution, because i. the US constitution doesn't apply to Britain, Republican party delusions notwithstanding and ii. it's a complete formality with no actual meaning. Anjun Chaudry's nasty little gang will continue to operate exactly as before, with a new name, or set of names.
I gather the "Real IRA" has since been banned by the US government for nearly a decade. This was a Bush initiative, how does that square with the bill of rights?
Cass Sunstein is a terrifying real-life Homo economicus. The idea that his government spies would be used to discredit conservative organizations but not progressive organizations is implausible at best.
42
I gather the "Real IRA" has since been banned by the US government for nearly a decade. This was a Bush initiative, how does that square with the bill of rights?
The bill of rights guarantees:
... or the right of the people peaceably to assemble ...
"Peaceably" appears to be the key word.
Right-leaning journalist Peter Oborne's (one-sided) book "The Rise of Political Lying" is substantially about the way in which a Sunstein style policy completely ate the Labour party from the inside.
"Peaceably" appears to be the key word.
But it ain't. Three minutes thought would suffice - to paraphrase Housman - to work out that the Real IRA was wildly unlikely to breach the peace on American soil. Its activities there, fundraising and speechifying, offered absolutely zero threat to the peace of the United States. Essentially, Bush or Cheney decided that people peaceably assembling in order to advocate violence by other people on the other side of the world were no longer protected by the constitution.
Make what you please of the ethics of that. But if I were on the Supreme Court I'd tell them to get stuffed.
Eh, but that's not that odd. Why should the Real IRA being violently in a different state mean it isn't violent in the US? After all, if the Real IRA was bombing California but fundraising in Texas, then I doubt anybody would claim the RIRA (Texas) was peaceable. What makes the jurisdiction of the crimes important?
(--- and it isn't like these are crimes which are particularly localised in criminality; they're the sort of crime that is universally abhorred to the extent you can almost squint and see elements of a universal obligation to act against the perpetrators emerging.)
Pwned by 49, but the Constitution doesn't say "peaceably-on-US-soil." The courts have to decide whether that's implied. To me it seems a bit Jesuitical to characterize collecting funds for violent purposes, even abroad, as a peaceable activity.
Keir, just as one example among many, during the 1970s and 80s a lot of Americans and South African expatriates in the US were peaceably advocating for the ANC, which was known to be connected to Umkhonto we Sizwe and whose leadership were mostly in prison on charges related to political violence.
Would the US government have acted constitutionally if it had banned the Ant-Apartheid Movement?
Eh? I think the Real IRA has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the US state department, which means that it's illegal under US law to send them money or provide other material support. But the Real IRA is not "banned" in the sense that it's illegal to speak on it's behalf --- it's not illegal in the US to advocate on the Real IRA's behalf, mount a demonstration on their behalf, etc. Unless you have a problem with banning the provision of money of weapons to terrorist groups generally, which is a weird position, there's not much of a constitutional or First Amendment problem.
Which isn't to say that the process for identifying terrorist organizations couldn't be abused, or performed in ways that raise First Amendment issues. But designation alone doesn't really do so.
36.2 to Sunstein's work generally - if the NYTM has it right that a characteristic proposition of his is the utility of opt-out over opt-in employee savings plans.
Would the US government have acted constitutionally if it had banned the Ant-Apartheid Movement?
I think they would have if they had banned giving money (& other material support) to the ANC while the ANC was substantially* engaged in activities that were universally understood to be reprehensible and against the common standards of humanity (yeah, yeah, that's weasel words and not the right standard, but it's somewhere in that vicinity.) I'd even go further and say they'd be acting culpably immorally if they didn't take such steps.
But! I don't think the ANC was engaged in such activities, and I think the model ought to be the general anti-criminal-conspiracy laws, though of course there would be differences, and restricted to only banning material support and not expression (excepting where expression is already understood to amount to criminality.)
* again not the right standard -- whatever it is for an organisation to be criminal, as opposed to merely having members who are criminals.
52. Hmm... One point would be that the US government never lifted a finger to stop NORAID raising money for the Provos in the late 20th century, so clearly their designation of "foreign terrorist organisation" is defined by expediency rather than principle, and basing your constitutional decisions on expediency is generally a shitty idea.
Another point would be that the history of the last century or so is full of instances where a large number of right thinking people in western democracies countries we like to think are sort of OK have supported liberation movements which were characterised by their opponents as terrorist. My example of South Africa being just one (I defer to nobody in my admiration for the old leadership of the ANC, and if they were involved in blowing shit up good luck to them). People were not impeded from supporting those organisations.
I don't like the RIRA. I don't like Anjun Chaudhury's gang. But I don't like changing the rules for the sake of convenience either.
At this time I would like to make the case that the Republican Party of the US is a terrorist organization.
Well, I generally agree that the designation of a terrorist group could be open to abuse, although there are standards and a way to review the designation judicially. On the other hand, you do need a way to criminalize funding of terrorist organizations.
I'm on record on this blog as stating that tacit US govt acceptance of support for NORAID was a massive crime, which was the product of fairly shameful pandering by a small number of politicians. Personally, I am glad that our gov't has gotten it's act together on that front . . . but that seems like a positive, not something to complain about. I don't know enough about the history off hand, and don't know what legal regime existed in the 1980s w/r/t funding foreign terrorism, but I could see Reagan's state department trying to designate the ANC as a terrorist group. But I don't see why that means it's not OK to support criminilizing the funding of actual terrorist groups like the Real IRA
55
Hmm... One point would be that the US government never lifted a finger to stop NORAID raising money for the Provos in the late 20th century, so clearly their designation of "foreign terrorist organisation" is defined by expediency rather than principle, and basing your constitutional decisions on expediency is generally a shitty idea.
So what? Just because the constitution allows the government to ban foreign terrorist groups from operating on American soil does not mean it is required to do so, or do so in an evenhanded way.
38: OTOH, Britain just proscribed a political organization. I spent a little while wondering how that might be defended under the American Constitution.
Well, there wasn't much of a hitch during the 50 years or so that the Anarchist Exclusion Act was the law of the land. Besides, you know that's not the way we do things here nowadays. You don't have to ban a 1st Amendment-protected group. You just use COINTELPRO to assassinate its leaders, "bad-jacket" its activists, undermine its community support and then buy off the remnants with foundation money. Much more effective in the long run.
59: Shearer gets to the heart of it: good policy is nowhere mandated by the Constitution, and therefore unimportant.
Sorry, 61 is misdirected: the discussion is still on Constitutional requirements specifically.
So what? Just because the constitution allows the government to ban foreign terrorist groups from operating on American soil does not mean it is required to do so, or do so in an evenhanded way.
Actually, I have a read a British silk (Geoffrey Robertson) argue it may (or rather that in the case of the *IRA/loyalist paramilitaries it may), and while, you know, he's got a bee in his bonnet about this stuff, I wouldn't be entirely sure he's wrong. (His claim was that the obligation arose from the US' obligations to act against perpetrators of crimes against humanity, and that arguably the actions of the various armed groups in NI reached that standard.) On the other hand, wouldn't like to have to argue that one in front of a judge who hadn't had their morning coffee.
I do think that if the ANC had been mainly engaged in certain kinds of crime it would have been perfectly constitutional (I probably mean moral, because I'm not an American constitutional lawyer) to ban sending them material support. I don't think the US should have until they reached a standard of odiousness I don't think they ever did. I think that there's another, higher, standard of criminality at which it becomes a duty to ban material support. (Which standard was of course met by the apartheid government of South Africa a great many times over, & if the US was getting all antsy about the ANC and not doing anything about the SA government of the time that would have been really quite wrong*. But that would imply that the then US government was a bunch of racists and clowns, which surely can't be true.)
Behavioral Economics buddies
Not a Chicago guy, but FWIW Sunstein's co-author thanks Schleifer in the acknowledgments.
I'm pretty confused about what's being argued with these ANC/IRA comparisons. For one thing, both the US and the UK were active, then tacit supporters of the apartheid regime for the vast majority of its existence. So it's hardly surprising that they would oppose the ANC. And of course the US, while it may have taken a somewhat ambiguous position with regard to NORAID, never took any steps to oppose the UK's actions in Northern Ireland. Both the US and the UK were completely in the wrong the whole time, at least in terms of their official actions.
Additionally, while it's very easy to compare movements of oppressed peoples, especially when they occasionally ally themselves with each other, it's still lazy to equate the ANC and IRA, which were no more coming from the same place than either or both of them were equivalent to FARC or the DFLP or what have you.
So again, what's being argued? The basis for a legal justification for the protection of empire? That seems pretty small beer to me. If the political classes are going to work to protect the state and capital (as, of course, they always will), then they'll find some justification and make it legal. The fact that they'll switch sides if it suits their interest should hardly come as a surprise.
I want a system that would make it illegal to materially help groups like the *IRAs or the various loyalist paramilitaries, but not illegal to assist groups like the anti-apartheid movement.
I also think there's a duty to deny terrorist groups support.
The difficulty is getting all those ducks in a row.
65. I haven't honestly got a clue what anybody else was arguing. My sole point was to observe that in the 20th century successive American governments seem to have interpreted the right to peaceful assembly as extending to peacefully advocating for armed struggle (or groups involved in armed struggle) as long as that armed struggle was outside the United States, but that effective from September 2001 they have taken a much narrower view of 1st amendment rights in this area as in many others.
My opinion, for what it's worth, is that this is not altogether a good thing, independently of my views on this or that organisation.
67
I haven't honestly got a clue what anybody else was arguing. My sole point was to observe that in the 20th century successive American governments seem to have interpreted the right to peaceful assembly as extending to peacefully advocating for armed struggle (or groups involved in armed struggle) as long as that armed struggle was outside the United States, but that effective from September 2001 they have taken a much narrower view of 1st amendment rights in this area as in many others.
The previous tolerance was a policy choice not a constitutional requirement.
66: Well, fair enough, that's a coherent statement, but one that you should know is never going to actually represent an official policy position of an imperial government.
First off, it relies on there being some reasonable, apolitical definition of "terrorist". Which is an impossibility. The closest you might get to that would be a doctrinaire pacifism, in which case you would have to oppose all support for violent action, whether state-sponsored or not, all the time. Once you start making exceptions for, say, the Free French in WWII, or the Algerian independence fighters in the 1950s, you've got to toss out "terrorist" as a descriptor for non-state violent actors. Or be okay with being completely logically inconsistent.
Look at what the capitalist countries did during the Spanish Civil War: tacitly supported a putsch by fascists by refusing to actively support a recognized, democratically-elected sovereign state that was under attack. That's the kind of thing we can expect from "principled" imperial foreign policy.
67: As a matter of law, I think you'll find that advocating the violent overthrow of the United States government is not illegal per se in the United States.
70. Wouldn't surprise me. I'm not even sure it is here - they'd use some sort of conspiracy law if they wanted to. Besides, the "right to revolution" was fairly commonplace in enlightenment thinking. Equally, Castro did nothing contrary to the Cuban constitution in 1959, as far as I know.
this is just to note that if the long-rumoured[1] Cass Sunstein sex tape ever comes to light, I call dibs on marketing it under the title "A Vulgar Display Of Samantha Power".
[1] not really
We're trying not to talk about all that, daniel. It's gauche, okay? The man is undoubtedly on the defensive, and it's up to him to set the record straight. He's not managing to do that so far.
What in the world are you on about, parsley?
72. Good title. Perfect for the target market.
74: Samantha Powers. Affair with Cass Sunstein -- they may be married now. Samantha Powers reputed to be a follower after power, and/or a facilitator of power. Powers as a supporter of a certain sort of humanitarian interventionist foreign policy that's subject to debate.
I don't know; put Sunstein together with Nussbaum initially, then with Powers. I can't make sense of the man. It's inappropriate to shade, or color, a person's writings with the work of his (in this case) lovers, in any case, which is what I was on about.
I meant, who's this we trying not to comment about this that? And who was shading Sunstein's work with Powers' (or Nussbaum's)? What has your comment to do with dsquared's?
Her last name is Power not Powers. Can we at least get that straight?
What has your comment to do with dsquared's?
For god's sake, man! dsquared thought he'd ...
Forget it.
Look. dsquared seemed to be suggesting that Powers thinking had or has been informing Sunstein's.
A more bizarre reading of his comment is simply not possible.
What the hell just happened here?
Wait, has Sunstein called Clinton a monster? Is that something he yelled out on the rumored sex tape?
I am opposed to dsquared's comment which linked Sunstein and Power with the IRA and the ANC. Also, I call on dsquared to immediately renounce his support for Jonas Savimbi.
81: An extra s sowed a great deal of confusion, apparently. It's hardly the first time. The letter s is just like that.
(This thread will probably be taken as evidence in support of all the things Sunstein has written about how the internet is crap.)
87: That's because nobody wants to do any research anymore. There are far crappier threads to be found.
I don't see how the letter "s" sowed any confusion.
Anyway, Sunstein has been pissing me off for some time. It doesn't matter who he's been having sex with.
This is a good movie. Oscar-nominated, Danish with subs. Watching it now, almost over.
On topic because the theme is caritas vs family, developed in very complicated ways. A subtheme is the developed world's relation to the underdeveloped. It only looks like soap opera if you don't take the above conflicts seriously.
Recommended.
This is a good movie. Oscar-nominated, Danish with subs. Watching it now, almost over.
On topic because the theme is caritas vs family, developed in very complicated ways. A subtheme is the developed world's relation to the underdeveloped. It only looks like soap opera if you don't take the above conflicts seriously.
Recommended.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
Or maybe I just have an idiosyncratic reading of the movie.
This sounds a lot more like Sunstein's co-author than like Sunstein (in the formulation as well as the particular argument). But he put his name on it, so.
Unless. I'd venture that the proposed inflitration has been going on more or less untrammeled for the past ten or so years, and longer in a more trammeled way. So, being basically a Pollyanna, I might conclude that Sunstein helped a neo-con get a paper published to reveal what was happening anyway, and make himself more palatable to those who would block him later on, the net result being only that the left would get riled in the way that it should about systems already in place and Sustein might get on the Court.
Or maybe it's just that the felt pressure to find some other explanation is nearly overwhelming.