Argo

In Greek mythology, Argo was the ship that Jason sailed on in search of the Golden Fleece. Metaphorically, that prize usually represents legitimacy or economic reward. In Ben Affleck's movie of the same name, Argo represents freedom.

Ironically, and unintentionally, I saw the movie on November 4th, the 23rd anniversary of the start of the Iran Hostage Crisis.

From Wikipedia:

"Militants storm the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979 in retaliation for sheltering the recently deposed Shah. More than 50 of the embassy staff are taken as hostages, but six escaped and hide in the home of the Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor. With the escapees' situation kept secret, the US State Department begins to explore options for "exfiltrating" them from Iran. Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), a CIA specialist brought in for consultation, criticizes the proposals. He too is at a loss for an alternative until inspired at home by watching Battle for the Planet of the Apes on TV with his son: he plans to create a cover story that the escapees are Canadian filmmakers, scouting "exotic" locations in Iran for a similar sci-fi film ..."

I remember the days of the Hostage Crisis. The speed in which events moved in an age of a few TV networks and some newspapers is distinctly different than what they would be in today's constantly changing, instant update, Twitter world. Affleck in his direction and his setting the scene does a good job of focusing on those differences. It's obvious that a mission like theirs, that relied on the limits of data acquisition, could probably not be carried out today. I find it hard to imagine that 6 Americans could successfully hide out for 79 days and then escape in plain sight.

Argo is the telling of the Canadian Caper, as it was called at the time, but with much more of a focus on the CIA involvement. This involvement wasn't even admitted until the declassification of it in 1997. Canada was largely, and deservedly, given most of the credit at the time. They were risking much by harboring the Americans. Despite the way in which Canadians are portrayed in American popular culture, especially by conservatives, their willingness to do what is difficult and what is right should not be questioned.

One of the major reasons why this movie works is because the seriousness of the subject matter is leavened by irony and gallows's humor, usually by John Goodman, portraying a special effects man, and Alan Arkin, a producer. You would not think that levity would work here but, as is often the case, sometimes when things are particularly dire or hopeless, humor gives focus and hope.

The recurring refrain by the fake movie crew is "Argo fuck yourself", to great comic effect.

It's nice to see that Ben Affleck has transitioned from a mediocre, if lucrative, leading role acting career to a directing and character actor one. As I've written before, his previous work in The Town and Gone, Baby, Gone show that this isn't just some vanity project or passing fad. He's serious about making gritty and real dramas.

There are several scenes that are fictionalized so as to add drama, most notably the chase scene at the airport at the end. In addition, the path that led them to stay at the Canadian ambassador is not quite as focused as the film would lead you to believe. Canada was not the only embassy that aided them, with New Zealand, Sweden and England playing large parts. But that aid is diminished in the movie so as to accentuate the isolation of the group of Americans.

The strength of Affleck in Argo is in his direction, not his acting. And I'm not diminishing his acting in the movie as he plays Mendez appropriately. But, rather a showy acting performance in this role is not called for. He's playing a CIA agent who has to largely not call attention to himself. And, functionally, he's playing the straight man to Goodman and Arkin. Both of their roles as Hollywood movie types in the 70's are showy by the very nature of the period.

I highly recommend the movie as both pure entertainment and as a historical perspective on a time in our not so distant past. For those that lived through the times, we understand the tensions. But for those younger, Argo gives some insight to the nature of our continuing philosophical struggle with Iran. Grade: A-

Pre-crime

From the latest issue of Mother Jones magazine:

When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales held a press conference in the summer of 2006 announcing the arrests of seven young men for plotting to bomb Chicago's Sears Tower, he sounded defensive, his voice lingering a beat on each thing the men allegedly did. "Individuals here in America made plans to hurt Americans," he claimed. "They did request materials; they did request equipment; they did request funding." Gonzales admitted that the American and Haitian-born men posed "no immediate threat." But, he warned, "homegrown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like Al Qaeda. Our philosophy here is that we try to identify plots in the earliest stages possible, because we don't know what we don't know about a terrorism plot."

... juror Delorise Thompkins told the Miami Herald. "You're going to find someone always afraid of terrorist groups, but then when you see the evidence, there's not a lot there—no plans, no papers, no pictures, no nothing connecting them to Osama bin Laden." The jury's ambivalence is understandable. The plots were little more than talk encouraged by informants; the central evidence in the case—the taped oath—was a staged fbi production. But then, whether the men were a threat or the plot real doesn't matter when it comes to the charge of material support.

... There's a reason material support has become such a popular charge, a reason it's central to many of the government's most questionable cases: The laws are a prosecutor's dream. They don't require evidence of a plot or even of a desire to help terrorists. They give the government a shot at convictions traditional criminal laws could never provide. "The administration adopted the preventive paradigm, i.e. 'We've got to stop people before they've done something wrong,'" says David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who's the author of several books about the effect of anti-terror laws on the justice system. "There's tremendous pressure to expand grounds of criminal activity, to prosecute people who might represent a threat. The material-support provisions have been the principal vehicle for pushing that envelope."

The question is whether that approach has made us any safer. "The government does not understand how terrorist groups operate," says Michael German, a former counterterrorism agent at the fbi and now counsel for the aclu. "When I was undercover, there were plenty of people who may have been sympathetic to a group but were very clear they didn't want to break the law or get involved in violence. And we didn't go after them." Blurring that distinction by opening the door for prosecutions of people who do little more than express sympathies for a group, argues German, "that's where the material-support provisions go off the rails. The terrorist's goal is to convince everybody he identifies as his community that they are being oppressed. And when the government's response tends to create injustice, the government's fulfilling that prophecy."

... Think of the laws as "aiding and abetting"—only on steroids. It has always been illegal to support criminal activity. If a man drives a getaway car for bank robbers, then he can be charged for the robbery, too. Prosecutors have simply had to show that there was an intent to further the crime and some meaningful connection between the help and the crime itself.

What the material-support laws did was roll back those requirements. A taxi driver hired for a short drive by a Hezbollah politician—a driver who had no intention of engaging in terrorist activity—would, so long as he knew the politician was with Hezbollah, be guilty of providing material support. That's because the laws that define "material support" contain a long list of often nebulous activities, such as providing "property, tangible or intangible" or "service," and are applied whether or not those activities truly helped advance the cause of a terrorist group, and regardless of the suspect's intentions. The laws make little distinction between the taxi driver and, say, an arms merchant who sells detonators to Hezbollah. The Patriot Act extended the concept further, making it illegal to attempt or conspire to provide material support. Before, prosecutors had to prove you gave support. Now they just have to show you wanted to ...

"The Constitution is, among other things, a counterterrorism strategy," says Michael German, the former fbi agent. "What the framers recognized is that you don't create the perception of repression if you allow people legitimate means for fostering change. The material-support laws criminalize conduct that in and of itself isn't typically criminal, isn't illegal." When you have cases based on such sweeping laws, argues German, "you're ostensibly hurting terrorist organizations, when in fact you're helping them. You're giving people more of a reason to become militant."

Fittingly, but coincidentally, I had re-watched Minority Report this week, a movie that takes the concept of predicting and preventing crime to another level. The whole concept of punishing people for what they think is just a bit too 1984ish, with the government in the role of the Thought Police.


Where is the line drawn? It's not difficult to see this being taken to a level where any seditious thoughts are punishable. And what is sedition? The founding fathers of our country were certainly seditious. As the above article states, "What the framers recognized is that you don't create the perception of repression if you allow people legitimate means for fostering change." These loosely drawn laws and the way we enforce them are criminalizing thoughts and gutting our own Constitution.

The system of government that used to be a beacon for the rest of the world is now using the tools of totalitarian regimes. It's not hard to see why we are not respected any more. It's hard to respect a country that tortures, that spies on its own people, and ignores it's own laws.

"We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be. Even in the instance of death we cannot permit any deviation . . . we make the brain perfect before we blow it out." -- 1984 by George Orwell

Be not intimidated ...

From Court Rejects ACLU Domestic Spying Suit:

CINCINNATI — A divided federal appeals court rejected a lawsuit Friday challenging President Bush's domestic spying program without ruling on the issue of whether warrantless wiretapping is legal.

In a 2-1 decision with Republican-appointed judges in the majority, a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the plaintiffs had no standing to sue because they couldn't prove their communications had been monitored by the government.

The decision underscored the difficulty of challenging the anti-terrorism program in court because its secret nature prevents plaintiffs from obtaining surveillance information. The National Security Agency had refused to turn over information about the warrantless wiretapping that would have bolstered the court case.

"This is a Catch-22," said Steven R. Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit. "I think what in effect they're saying is that we can't tell you whether you have been wiretapped because that's a secret. And unless you know you've been wiretapped, you can't challenge that program..."

That last line is hilarious, but sad and true. We're supposed to trust that the intentions of our government are worthwhile and noble while they have proven over and over again the last 6 years (and many would say longer than that) that they are not. They have not earned the benefit of the doubt.

"Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice." -- John Adams

One Day You’re Gonna Wake Up

One Day You’re Gonna Wake Up
by David Michael Green

One day you’re gonna wake up, America.

And, like every other one since last you can remember, it’s gonna be an ugly morning.

One day you’re gonna wake up and go to your lousy job with its lousy salary and non-existent benefits. You might even remember the good job you once had. Or that the government you once supported gave tax breaks to companies like the one that exported that good job of yours to the Third World (which is what they’re now starting to call your country). Or that that same government undermined the labor unions which fought to get you your good wages and benefits.

One day you’re gonna wake up and be furious at the monstrous tax burden you are carrying, a tab which accounts for fifty of the seventy hours you must work each week just to eke by. You might even figure out why your tax bill is so high. You might remember that the government you once supported shifted the tax burden from the rich onto people like you, and from the taxpayers of the time onto those of today. And that they borrowed money in astonishing quantities to fund their sleight-of-hand, so that you work thirty hours a week just to pay the interest on a mountain of money borrowed decades ago.

One day you’re gonna wake up in anger at the absurdly poor education your children are receiving. You’re gonna remember that it wasn’t always that way, that even after the military’s voracious appetite was temporarily sated, your country still managed to find a few bucks to at least educate a workforce. No more. And you’re gonna remember how you applauded when your educational system was twisted in to a test taking industry that is careful, above all, not to teach children how to think.

One day you’re gonna wake up literally sick and tired. You’re gonna want treatment for your maladies but you won’t be able to touch the cost. You’re gonna wonder what you were thinking when believed your country had the best healthcare system in the world, even though it was the only advanced democracy in the world that didn’t provide universal care, even though it devoted fifty percent more of its economy than those other countries to pay for a system that left fifty million people uninsured, and even though there were massive layers of unnecessary and harmful private sector bureaucracy skimming hundreds of billions of dollars of profits out of the system in the name of free enterprise.

One day you’re gonna wake up too tired to go to work anymore. You’re gonna want to retire in dignity but will be left instead to laugh bitterly at the cruelty of that joke. And you’re gonna wonder what in the world you had been thinking voting for a president who’s primary goal was to allow Wall Street to raid Social Security, destroying what had once been considered the most successful domestic program in human history.

One day you’re gonna wake up and wish that it wasn’t so bloody hot, and that there weren’t so many diseases and species eradications and violent storms lashing the planet. And maybe you’ll even remember that you once supported a government that lied about the very existence of global warming - back when it might have been curtailed - a government that scuttled the barest remedy for the problem in order to protect oil company profits.

One day you’re gonna wake up and wish you had a government that could simply and competently do the basic things it was designed for. A government that could protect you from foreign attack, that could come to your rescue after a devastating hurricane, that could properly manage a new program or other people’s security. An administration that didn’t pervert the purpose of every agency within the government to its opposite, using civil rights lawyers to fight civil rights, for example, or the EPA to protect polluters.

One day you’re gonna wake up and cry out for simple justice, blindly applied without bias. And perhaps you’ll remember when that principle died. When your country stood by and watched the politicization of its judicial system for purposes of partisanship, and said nothing. When it stood by and watched its highest law enforcement officials in the land lie about their failing memory of events and pretended to believe that was acceptable.

One day you’re gonna wake up and wish that you weren’t being drafted to go fight wars you don’t believe in. You’ll remember how soldiers were sent to their deaths for lies. You’ll remember how badly they were treated when they came home maimed and twisted. You’ll remember how real, patriotic, former soldiers were mocked and humiliated by dress-up, unpatriotic, former non-soldiers. And suddenly you’ll understand why no one would volunteer for the military anymore, and why people like you had to be drafted.

One day you’re gonna wake up and want very badly to run outside and scream in anger about a government that long ago stopped serving your interests in favor of the narrow interests of a tiny oligarchy. But instead you’ll stay inside and keep your scream tucked safely in your belly. Because you’ll know that in your country dissent has long since been outlawed, on pain of torture and death. You’ll remember concepts like due process, limitations on government search, seizure and wiretapping, habeas corpus, trial by peers, legal representation and prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment as historical artifacts no longer even taught in schools.

On day you’re gonna wake up and want so badly to change governments. You’re gonna treasure the concept of democracy like no Soviet dissident ever did. You’re gonna crave the opportunity to own your own government, to make your own societal choices, to make a change of direction never before so desperately necessary. And you’re gonna wonder why you didn’t speak up as you watched first-hand the dismantling of the democracy you had been handed by previous generations of patriots. You’re gonna wish you had been patriotic enough yourself to demand, above all else, free and fair elections, and you’re gonna shake your head in puzzlement at how you stood by watching in silence those that patently were not.

One day you’re gonna wake up and want to get the hell out of your rotting, repressive country. You’re gonna remember a time when that wasn’t true. But, oddly enough, you’ll find that other countries remember too. They’ll remember your country’s arrogance, its unilateralism, its walls, its racism, and its politicized abuse of immigrants. And they’ll remember how your government undermined and violently replaced theirs whenever corporations from your country had their profits threatened. You’re gonna want to leave, but there will be nowhere you’ll be welcome. You’re gonna find out that walls can face both directions.

One day you’re gonna wake up in a hostile world where your country no longer has any friends. There will be governments of other countries - former long-standing allies - that cannot afford to have anything to do with you, lest their publics angrily remove them from office for collaborating with a country as hated as yours. Nor will those governments trust yours anyway. They will perhaps possess intelligence that could save your life, but they will not share it. They will possess forces that could help you survive real security threats, but they will not provide them. Your country will have become an international pariah, the South Africa of the twenty-first century.

And because no one will assist you, one day you’re gonna wake up fearing for your life as your country is brutally attacked by angry militants deploying weapons of mass destruction against your cities. Long dormant connections in your brain will resurface, and you will dimly understand why. On this day - perhaps March 20, 2023 - you might be assisted in your comprehension by the message of one of the attackers, someone whose family your country callously destroyed in its mission accomplished in Iraq, and who spent the next twenty years plotting this day’s revenge. And you will wonder again why you stood by as your country attacked Iraq on a completely bogus pretext. You’ll remember applauding when this mailed fist was long ago sent. And, just as it comes hurling back in your direction at a lethal velocity, stamped “Return to Sender”, you’ll wonder what you were thinking. And you’ll realize just how much you weren’t.

One day you’re gonna wake up, America, and you’re gonna find out what was happening while you were sprawled on the couch watching endless mind-numbing loops of CSI, Desperate Housewives or Dancing with the Stars.

One day you’re gonna wake up and realize that catching all the action during week seven of the 2011 NFL season really wasn’t so critical in the greater scheme of things after all.

One day you’re gonna wake up and wished you’d invested a little more energy into monitoring and choosing the people who made monumental decisions on your behalf.

One day, with a flash of remorse greater than you thought it possible that one human vessel could contain, you’ll remember the ignored warning shots across your bow. Moments later, you’ll discover the human capacity for searing remorse is actually even greater still, as you contemplate your inattention even to the shots that were fired right through the bow. With a fury you would yesterday have thought yourself incapable of, you’ll hurriedly attempt to affix Band-Aids to the tattered splinters remaining from your country’s once sturdy hull. But you’ll learn quickly the toll of those years spent wasted in a civic coma. You’ll find that no amount of patchwork can any longer save this sinking ship from its appointment with the dustbin of history.

In shame, you’ll regret the callous arrogance with which you laughingly dismissed those who sounded the early clarion call. “We are destroying ourselves”, they tried to tell you. But even on the rare occasion when you roused yourself from your stupor long enough to learn the slightest bit about the very threats that jeopardized your life and that of your species, still you found it more reassuring to follow the blustering worst amongst us, with their patently absurd pretended confidence, and their ever constant resort to the cheapest of false solutions, and the rudest of demeanors.

One day, you’ll desperately search for hope of any sort, but none will remain. Nothing will be left to save you.

One day you’ll realize that once there were solutions, but that that day is now long past. You’ll see that human technological capacity ran its evolutionary race with wisdom, and the latter came in second. You’ll sadly realize that you stood by while your country led the once great tool-making species to its own destruction.

One day you’re gonna wake up, America, and realize how far it’s all gone. But if that day isn’t very soon, it won’t matter.

Because one day you’re gonna wake up, and it will be far, far too late.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York

Clash/Zep ... Terrorists?

From Yahoo News:

LONDON (AFP) - A love of punk and hard rock anthems by The Clash and Led Zeppelin reportedly led to a British man being hauled off a plane bound for London by police on terrorism fears.

Indian-born Harraj Mann, 23, played "London's Calling" by The Clash and Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" through the stereo of a taxi he caught to Durham and Tees Valley Airport in northern England.

The taxi driver, however, grew suspicious of his passenger after listening to the lyrics of his chosen songs and alerted the authorities after they reached the airport.

Two police officers boarded Mann's flight to London's Heathrow airport shortly before take-off last Thursday.

"I got frogmarched off the plane in front of everyone, got my bags searched, asked every question you can think of," Mann, a mobile phone salesman, told his local newspaper, the Hartlepool Mail, on Monday -- a story that was picked up by the national press on Wednesday.

"I was being held for questioning under the Terrorism Act," he said.

By the time Mann was set free his plane had already departed.

The offending lyrics by The Clash include the lines: "London calling from the faraway towns, now war is declared and battle come down.

"London calling to the underworld, come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls."

"Immigrant Song", for its part, starts: "The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands, to fight the horde singing and crying Valhalla, I'm coming!"

A spokeswoman for the Durham Police confirmed that a man was escorted from the London-bound flight, questioned by police and released without charge.

"Safety is paramount and we respond to concerns from members of the public in the way they would expect us to," she said.

"In this case the report was made with the best of intentions and we would not want to discourage people from contacting us with genuine concerns regarding security."

Is the culture of fear that Bush and Blair are fostering making us all just a little bit jumpy? 1984 and V for Vendetta look more and more real every day. I'd be locked up for years for half the stuff that I listen to. Hell, even the titles would probably get me in trouble:

Vote With a Bullet -- Corrorosion of Conformity
Stigmata -- Ministry
Bullet in the Head -- Rage Against the Machine
Fuck Tha Police -- N.W.A., Rage Against the Machine

Free thought and free speech are not crimes.