why i refuse to vote for barack obama

Interesting article/argument by Conor Friedersdorf:

Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama

Something I've been arguing myself for a while now. To be honest, I think one of the reasons that many 'left-leaning Americans,' including civil libertarians, continue to support Obama (besides not being all that left) is that many of us are either too lazy or too busy to organize and support a better alternative, and so simply choose the path of least resistance—checking the box for whomever has a 'D' next to their name on the ballot. Like Friedersdorf, however, I can't in good conscience do that, which is why I'm not voting for Obama this year, and I'll either be voting for Jill Stein or writing in Bernie Sanders.

Everyone should vote for whom and what they want, what they believe in; and I simply want better than what the two-party duopoly is offering. I sympathize with Friedersdorf and share many of his moral red lines. From where I stand on the political spectrum, and taking into consideration the values I hold, neither of the two major candidates passes muster.

As competent and likable as Obama may be, I'm unable to support an individual (or party for that matter) who, among other things, authorizes drone strikes that routinely kill innocent civilians, who authorizes extrajudicial assassinations of American citizens abroad, who cracks down on whistleblowers (even though they once said they're "often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government"), who supports the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which violates the very spirit of the Fourth Amendment, and who signed indefinite detention into law (not to mention vigorously, and successfully, appealing its injunction).

It may be a 'wasted vote' in the eyes of some, but I'd rather it be a wasted vote than having it be a vote for, and thereby giving my consent to, an individual who has already put into place policies that cross moral red lines that are simply too important for me to ignore. The Democratic Party will never change, or move more to the left, simply by giving in and voting for them no matter what just because they're not Republicans.

For many Democrats and 'progressives,' there's nothing Obama or any other Democrat can do to lose their support; and for all the people who say they side more with someone like Jill Stein, they'd never vote for a third party candidate unless they were better on the issues and more electable, albeit without their prior support—and they call this 'pragmatic voting.'

While pragmatic from one point of view, this is precisely how the Democrats can so easily be pulled right by the Republicans (because they know they have the majority of the progressive vote no matter what), and it makes other alternatives difficult to organize because progressives won't support them until they get electable, which it can't do without the help of progressives in the first place (e.g., votes in elections are important for third parties in regards to things like maintaining electoral ballot status in states, qualifying for federal funding, etc.).

So, in the end, you have a situation where the country and the Democratic Party is being drawn more to the right every year (as the Republicans move right, they pull the Democrats farther along with them, and centrists like Obama are portrayed as left/liberal even though Nixon was arguable more liberal than either Clinton or Obama), with each base supporting the shift, whether they like it or not, because it's easier and more pragmatic in their minds than saying enough's enough and supporting another candidate or party.

But if nobody (particularly on the left) has a line, and the Republicans keep shifting further right, there's nothing stopping Democrats from doing the same. There's not going to be any real pressure on the part of progressives, no push back, no lost votes, only endless lamentations that voting for Democrats is the best they can do in a two-party, winner-take-all system. And when it comes to things like civil liberties, which are difficult to regain once lost, how much more pragmatism can we take? Which leads me to the point that pragmatism isn't always the best strategy. Sometimes pragmatism and the 'lesser of two evils' principle will inadvertently leave you with a greater evil, or else put you in the lead of a political race to the bottom.

As difficult as building a viable alternative to the status quo and changing election laws is (e.g., dropping the Electoral College and implementing an instant-runoff system or even a more proportional system), it's not impossible. But it'll only be possible when people put their time and effort into organizing it because it is such an uphill battle. And that means possibly losing a few elections along the way. But even so, that doesn't mean it won't be worth it in the long run.

At the very least, I think Democrats, especially the progressives within the party, need to start taking to the streets and being extremely vocal about their opposition to things like drone strike assassinations, extrajudicial assassinations of American citizens abroad, the crackdown on whistleblowers, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, indefinite detention, etc. if they're not willing to abandon the Democratic Party but still want to stand by their left-leaning, civil libertarian principles.

arab muslims negatively stereotyped yet again by US officials, media?

Today, the Washington Post put out a timeline of the Obama administration's evolution of claims surrounding the US consulate attack in Benghazi, Libya:

From video to terrorist attack: a definitive timeline of administration statements on the Libya attack

It's interesting how the attack on the Libyan embassy that resulted in the death of the US ambassador to Libya went from being an attack by a spontaneous and unorganized mob of angry Muslims pissed at a YouTube video to a terrorist attack by individuals who may have had connections to al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda affiliates. The question is, was this a deliberate attempt by the Obama administration to avoid labelling this a terrorist attack for political reasons, or was it simply the result of Western prejudices and the media jumping too quickly on the 'Arab world is full of violent, angry Muslims ready to kill people at the drop of a hat' bandwagon before all the fact were known? Maybe a bit of both?

Update (9/27/12, 3:45pm): According to a recent Yahoo News article, it looks as if the Obama administration may have known all along that it was most likely a terrorist attack organized and committed by extremists, many of whom were from outside of Libya. And yet many of President Obama's top aides still "argued for days afterward that the violence was linked to an Internet video that ridicules Islam," and many news agencies apparently followed suit. Way to perpetuate the 'angry Muslim mob' stereotype while knowing all along that the reality was most likely completely different and far more complicated.

mek set to be a-ok as far as state dept. is concerned

From the Guardian:

MEK decision: multimillion-dollar campaign led to removal from terror list

True to form, the US government's hypocrisy and opportunism shines through as the MEK (a.k.a., the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, a militant Iranian opposition organization opposed to the current Islamic government) is set to be removed from the State Department's list of terrorist groups because of, among other things, an aggressive lobbying campaign by the group and the fact that they oppose, and possibly even attack, our enemies instead of us, at least for the time being. (Remind you of anything? *cough... the Afghan Mujahideen*).

I think this should not only outrage every American in its blatant illustration of our loose and opportunistic use of the 'terrorist' label, but the fact that our government apparently hasn't learned anything from its decades of meddling in Afghanistan and the ease with which our elected representatives can be bought by the highest bidder.

While I don't really have an issue with militant and revolutionary groups that evolve into political organizations, which I think is a perfectly legitimate transition when the opportunity presents itself (not unlike how American revolutionaries, who were labelled Patriots as a group, were basically militants who became politicians after their victory over Britain), I do have an issue with my government punishing people who 'materially support terrorist groups' (e.g., Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.) while essentially allowing members of Congress to do the exact same thing with groups that, at least temporarily, serve 'our' interests and provide kickbacks in the form of campaign contributions to Congress members in exchange for their advocacy.

time for us to look in the mirror and change our imperialist ways

I understand that people are upset about the tragic death of Libyan Ambassador Christopher Stevens, the US diplomat who was killed in Libya recently. I also understand that many people think the demonstrators in the Middle East protesting the shitty anti-Islam video are overreacting. But what seems to be missing from many of the news reports I've seen, and discussions I've been a part of, is an acknowledgement of the underlying reasons Muslims in the Middle East and around the world are so angry with the US in the first place (which seem to be hidden from news outlets like USA Today and NBC News), and how things like this can spark such explosive reactions.

The truth is, we've been meddling in Middle Eastern politics and pushing our weight around for decades (particularly because of their strategic position and rich oil supplies), from invading and occupying two predominately Muslim countries and bombing others to supporting dictators with money and weapons (e.g., Mubarak) and backing military coups against democratic governments (e.g., the 1953 CIA-backed coup in Iran). Our drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, etc. are routinely killing innocent civilians. And stories continually surface that make US and NATO troops look bad and fuel growing anti-American sentiments, from soldiers videotaping themselves urinating on corpses to burning Korans (accidentally or otherwise) and raping and murdering civilians. From their point of view, we're more like an imperialist power trying to make the Middle East submit to our regional hegemony than the defenders of truth, freedom, and democracy we often like to imagine ourselves to be.

So while I think that the killing of a US diplomat in protest of a film critical of Islam, or the role the US has played in the region for the past few decades, was excessive and beyond the pale, I can certainly understand where much of their anger is coming from, and it's not just the result of extremist religious ideologies, but our fairly aggressive foreign policy in the region as well (especially considering this took place in Libya, which is rather unstable at the moment and has had a rocky relationship with the US ever since Gaddafi came to power in 1969).

At some point, I think we, as a nation, need to take a critical look at how we've helped to contribute to this anger and the material conditions that have nurtured it. We're not as innocent in this as we may like to believe, and we can't continue to ignore the fact that our actions have a serious impact in a world where we're one of the dominant powers. To use the old cliché, with great power comes great responsibility; and frankly, we haven't been all that responsible with our 'superpower' status. Unlike Spider-man, who realized early on, after the death of his uncle, that his selfish pursuits and flagrant use of his superpowers had serious and often tragic consequences, we haven't seemed to grasp that lesson yet, and continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. And while mistakes in some shape or form will always be made, we have to own up to ours and truly learn from them if we're ever going to help put an end to this self-perpetuating cycle of violence. We need to change our ways.

an open question: should tolerance always be tolerated?

While I think Glenn Greenwald makes some good points regarding the prevalence of double standards among free-speech advocates who also support the censorship of political opinions they find disagreeable in his article "Conservatives, Democrats and the convenience of denouncing free speech," I'm disappointed that he doesn't address things like the fighting words doctrine, which, established by a 9-0 decision in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, holds that "insulting or 'fighting words,' those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace" are among the "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech the prevention and punishment of [which] ... have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem," take a closer look at the closely-related incitement doctrine, etc.

Even though subsequent Supreme Court rulings have since narrowed what's considered 'fighting words' (e.g., Street v. New York, Cohen v. California, etc.), and concluded that "the mere abstract teaching of the moral propriety or even moral necessity for a resort to force and violence, is not the same as preparing a group for violent action and steeling it to such action" (Brandenburg v. Ohio), it can't be ignored that a constitutional line has been drawn between free speech and non-protected speech, e.g., speech that's intended to, and will likely cause, immediate breach of the peace (acts of violence). And I think that advocates of censorship, at least in certain instances, have more ground to stand on, intellectually as well as legally, than Greenwald is willing to admit.

The real question, in my opinion, is whether this is due to the vagueness of the line drawn by the Supreme Court or some kind of inherent weakness in the institution of constitutionally protected free speech itself. In other words, is there an inherently repressive aspect to liberal ideas of, and basis for, free speech rights (as some coming from a Marxist perspective might argue, for example), or is this repressiveness (i.e., grounds for censorship) simply due to conflicts in the Supreme Court's interpretation of the First Amendment? Or even more provocatively, does America's institution of free speech allow dominant ideas and forms of expression (i.e., those sanctioned by the state and/or ruling class) to create a background in which progressive (or one could even say radical) ideas are limited "even before the courts create whatever explicit limitations they devise," as the authors of "Codes of Silence" suggest Herbert Marcuse argues in "Repressive Tolerance"?

To phrase it yet another way and add another dimension to the discussion, does censorship = (or lead to) freedom in certain contexts, or is this simply Orwellian doublespeak for a possibly well-meaning but ultimately repressive attitude towards tolerance? Should tolerance extend to all things equally (as some die-hard free-speech advocates would argue), or should a distinction be made between what Marcuse called "liberating tolerance," which enlarges "the range and content of freedom" and is "intolerant toward the protagonists of the repressive status quo," and "indiscriminate [or repressive] tolerance," which, under the current societal structure, allows "the expression of 'false words and wrong deeds' to work against the attainment of 'liberation' and of true 'freedom and happiness'" and becomes "an instrument for the continuation of servitude" by those in power?

To use an extreme example, take the Nazi's racist ideology, which made being Jewish dangerous and ultimately a death sentence in Germany: Should their expression of anti-Semitism be defended on free speech grounds, or would it better (and more moral) to oppose and actively attempt to suppress such ideas? Should Hitler's Mein Kampf be defended, or should it, too, be opposed and suppressed?

In essence, does being unequivocally pro-free speech mean sometimes being placed in a seemingly contradictory position, such as defending the Nazi's right to promote their racist ideology and rhetoric of violence against the Jews, which helped turn German society against Jews and make the Holocaust possible, while at the same time supporting military violence against them for the consequences that arose out of supporting a situation where such ideas became dominant in the first place? A legitimate question emerges, I think: Is it ever justifiable (at least in certain situations) to suppress free speech, or should we always be tolerant of everything? For me, it's still an open question.

fuck gitmo

From the Atlantic:

Dead After 11 Years of Despair: A Prisoner Who Proved Gitmo Is Immoral

Another senseless casualty in the War on Terror, and both Democrats and Republicans alike are directly responsible—including President Obama, whose administration appealed Adnan Latif's release and prolonged his detention after a federal judge ruled in 2010 that he was being held unjustly. And this despite being cleared for transfer out of Guantanamo in 2008 by the Bush administration, and cleared for release in 2009 by his own administration.

Started by Bush in 2002 to hold 'enemy combatants' from the war in Afghanistan (and later Iraq), the hellhole known as Gitmo is still open thanks in no small part to the combined efforts of Congressional Democrats and Republicans, who joined together in the Senate in 2009 and overwhelmingly passed an amendment that kept the prison open by denying funding for its closure in a 90-6 vote (48 Democrats and 40 Republicans). And Congress has continued to prevent its closure and the relocation or release of its detainees, who seem all but forgotten by the short attention span of the fast-paced world of the 24-hour, sensationalist news cycle.

"The only detainees who have been released from Gitmo in the last two years have been in caskets." - David Remes, head of a legal team that represented Latif, via NBC News.

9/11: a day to remember what we're capable of

Eleven years ago today, the World Trade complex was destroyed and the Pentagon damaged in a terrorist attack that killed 3,000 people.

Thirty-nine years ago today, a CIA-backed coup headed by General Augusto Pinochet toppled Chile's democratically-elected, socialist president Salvador Allende, installing a ruthless seventeen-year dictatorship, led by Pinochet, during which 3,000 people were killed and 30,000 were imprisoned and/or tortured.

Sixty-eight years ago, the British RAF firebombed Darmstadt, Germany, destroying much of its historic city centre and killing over 11,000 inhabitants.

One hundred and fifty-five years ago today, one hundred and twenty emigrants on their way to California, known as the Baker-Fancher party, were massacred at Mountain Meadows in southern Utah by a militia composed of Mormon settlers disguised as Native Americans and a group of Paiute that the militiamen had armed and persuaded to join them.

Never forget the terrible things human beings can do to one another, and the horrors we're capable of.

the left needs to transcend lesser evilism

While I have no illusions that a Romney administration would be any better than current one (and would most likely be worse), I'm annoyed by the growing number of portrayals of Obama as some kind of liberal saint by supporters. Sure, he's changed his stance on same-sex marriage, coming out in support for it after initially being opposed, and has done a number of other things that I think are a step in the right direction, such as repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions, his slight easing of the US's ridiculous embargo on Cuba, etc.

However, Obama has done a fair number of things that I think are a step in the wrong direction, from his continuation of Clinton and Bush era policies such as extraordinary rendition and drone strike-assassinations, to his administration's crackdown on whistleblowers (e.g., former CIA agent John Kiriakou) and the medical marijuana industry, his signing of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, allowing indefinite detention to be codified into law, and his continued support for the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which violates the very spirit of the Fourth Amendment. In this situation, Obama is clearly the 'lesser evil' from where I sit on the political spectrum; but Obama isn't the champion of freedom and transparency that many of his supporters make him out to be.

I'm not blind. I understand that we have more political freedom here in the US than they do in places like China, Iran, or North Korea. I also understand how fortunate I am to enjoy that freedom. But that doesn't mean that that freedom, which we've struggled for over two hundred years to expand and protect, isn't quietly being eroded away by modern-day Federalists and corporatists in collusion with big-monied interests and large, multinational corporations, of which both of the two major parties are beholden as they've repeatedly shown.

I strongly believe that Hal Draper was right when he wrote, "In setups where the choice is between one capitalist politician and another, the defeat comes in accepting the limitation to this choice." What the left needs to do, in my opinion, (if there even is a left anymore) is think outside of the box and do something a bit more radical which involves organizing outside of the current two-party oligarchy and agitating for real systematic change, Tahrir Square-style if need be; because engaging in electoral politics alone won't change the dynamics of our current, winner-take-all system dominated by the Democratic and Republican parties. They control too much, from ballot access rules to who can compete in debates, and they're in the pockets of Wall Street and the ossified labour unions.

Ultimately, though, I don't think the problem lies within the two dominant political parties themselves so much as within the structure of the system itself, which actively promotes a two party duopoly, produces toxic accumulations of both wealth and power (which seem to go hand in hand in politics), and serves to protect the economic, legal, and political hegemony of the ruling class. That's why it seems to me that, even when people who have the best interests of the citizenry in mind get elected to office, the system often forces their hand and they end up being like every other politician, or else the system just runs them over (metaphorically speaking, of course).

Hence, the candidate in 2008 who, assuming he was genuine, strongly criticized what he called "the Bush Administration's attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo," now continues where his predecessor left off by being a proponent of, and codifying into law, what the Bush administration argued the original 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force against terrorism already empowered them to do—to, in the words of Glenn Greenwald, "imprison people without charges, use force against even U.S. citizens without due process (Anwar Awlaki), and target not only members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban (as the law states) but also anyone who 'substantially supports' those groups and/or 'associated forces' (whatever those terms mean)."

In my opinion, once people start to realize that simply voting for one party or the other (an electoral version of the 'lesser of two evils' principle) doesn't really make that much of a difference, that there's something inherently wrong with the system itself, the better off we'll be. And that goes double for leftists since one of the biggest problems with the lesser of two evils strategy is that it consistently pulls the Democrats farther to the right (e.g., in many ways, Nixon was arguably more liberal than either Clinton or Obama). It's high time the left in this country started thinking outside the box of two-party electoral politics, stopped blindly supporting the lesser evil as their sole act of political activism, and started doing more to hold those in office accountable for their record. /rant