Month: April 2008

Smell the Harmony

Well, I suppose you have to smell China’s “Harmonious” torch, because you couldn’t see the Olympic Torch Relay if you were in Delhi.

The Olympic torch made a strange and lonely procession through central Delhi on Thursday, with the event so overshadowed by fears of the anti-Chinese protests that marred its appearances in other cities that no members of the public were allowed close enough to witness it.

The 70-odd Indian athletes and celebrities who carried the torch down Delhi’s widest avenue were outnumbered by thousands of watchful members of India’s security forces, who managed to stamp out any pomp and excitement, transforming the occasion into a tense security operation.

The authorities cordoned off much of the heart of New Delhi for hours before the event, anxious to avoid the disruption that plagued earlier stages of the torch relay and concerned that protesters from India’s large Tibetan community would seize the opportunity to sabotage the occasion. [Emphasis added]

What a joke the Olympic Torch Relay has become.  The only solace that the International Olympic Committee and party elites of the Chinese government can take is that the Relay has become such a humiliating mockery of past Olympic festivities that it’s almost impossible to imagine a situation where the Games themselves are worse than the Relay itself. As much as I might revel in schadenfreude in similarly disastrous Beijing Olympics, I don’t think it’s possible to have a more shameful production of any event than this has been.  What a joke.

Debate Blowback

I didn’t watch last night’s Democratic presidential debate on ABC. Judging from the blogospheric reaction, I didn’t miss much. You know the debate was a disaster when the Washington Post’s TV critic Tom Shales rips ABC and their moderators like he does in this piece, “In Pa. Debate, The Clear Loser Is ABC.” Shales writes:

At the end, Gibson pompously thanked the candidates — or was he really patting himself on the back? — for “what I think has been a fascinating debate.” He’s entitled to his opinion, but the most fascinating aspect was waiting to see how low he and Stephanopoulos would go, and then being appalled at the answer.

I honestly wonder what ABC’s internal goal for the debates was. I doubt it’s something direct like “Make Clinton and Obama talk about trivialities so McCain will look great in comparison.” I’d guess it was something more like, “Have the sort of debate that gets praise from Serious People.” No doubt winning over David Brooks will be seen as a sign of the sort of success ABC likely sought last night.

As I said above, I didn’t watch the debate so I can only marvel from afar at how bad it was. But while this may have been a triviality driven debate, I remember quite a few debates with seven or eight Democratic candidates that failed to seriously discuss the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and completely skipped any discussion of issues connected to the rule of law. So while this may represent a new iteration of how low the media will go in their substance-free Democratic debates, it’s not as if we suddenly arrived here after having departed from Socrates’ agora just weeks ago.

London Mayor Admits Olympic Mistake

Following in the footsteps of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s hard stance against the Olympic torch relay going through Tibet – a welcome move that was akin to closing the barn door after the horses had escaped – London Mayor Ken Livingstone now says that he made a mistake by allowing Chinese armed security forces to roam the streets of London guarding the Olympic torch.

London’s mayor Ken Livingstone said on Tuesday it was a mistake to allow Chinese secret police officers to guard the Olympic torch when it was paraded through London earlier this month.

“It was wrong and should not have happened,” Livingstone told a BBC Radio London debate.

…Livingstone was asked if he knew in advance that the Olympic torch guards were members of China’s military secret police and he said he did not.

“Had I known, I would have said it was unacceptable,” he said.

But Livingstone apparently didn’t know and thus an unacceptable act took place on the streets of London. Once again, the powers that be in the Western cities that hosted China’s torchwashing of Tibet are realizing too late that they should have handled things differently.

The Zellification of Joe Lieberman

Joe Lieberman is about to go fully Zell Miller on the Democratic Party. Though in fairness to Zell, he just retired and Joe is embracing the GOP while serving in the US Senate as a self-proclaimed independent-Democrat.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the Democratic Party’s 2000 vice presidential nominee, is leaving open the possibility of giving a keynote address on behalf of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) at the Republican National Convention in September.

Republicans close to the McCain campaign say Lieberman’s appearance at the convention, possibly before a national primetime audience, could help make the case that the presumptive GOP nominee has a record of crossing the aisle. That could appeal to much-needed independent voters.

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McCain has yet to ask Lieberman to speak, either in primetime or elsewhere, at the convention. But if McCain thinks it will help make his case for the White House, as some of his allies suspect, Lieberman would be willing to speak on his behalf.

“If Sen. McCain, who I support so strongly, asked me to do it, if he thinks it will help him, I will,” Lieberman said in a brief interview.

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog frames the situation and needed response well:

This is bad because the speech won’t be Zell Miller, it will be Zell Miller plus. The plus is the fact that the press — still — treats Lieberman as the cuddly, adorable, highly appealing independent (I almost typed “maverick”) who’ll make swing voters sit up and take notice…

Endless repetition of the notion that support from Lieberman equals support from a Democrat makes it seem true.

That’s why, well before this speech happens, the Obama campaign needs to neutralize Lieberman. Obama needs to make sure that everyone in American realizes that that elfin, soft-spoken, apparently nice guy is possibly the biggest apologist in America for a war the vast majority of the country hates. Obama needs to portray him as a dishonest faux-naif who acts shocked, shocked, when anyone dares to suggest that he’s exactly what he is, a Republican apparatchik still pretending not to be one.

Will that happen? I doubt it. But if it doesn’t, this speech will do real damage.

I think this is a spot-on assessment and I just don’t see Democrats doing what is needed to inoculate themselves from Lieberman.

Lieberman has been actively campaigning for John McCain since December 2007. He is willing to support Republican incumbent Chris Shays in the CT-04 against Democratic challenger Jim Himes. He has not, to my knowledge, endorsed a single Democrat this cycle. And now he sits on the verge of being a key speaker at the Republican National Convention.
The real question at hand is, what does it take to get someone kicked out of the Democratic caucus?

Paranoia Will Destroy Ya

The Chinese government’s paranoia is really reaching comic levels.

Just two days before the Olympic torch relay here, a paranoid Chinese delegation told the Indian authorities that it fears guerrilla-style assaults by militant Tibetans and sought foolproof security for the event.

A high-level Chinese team led by former ambassador Sun Yuxi, who has been specially sent to India by a nervous Beijing, met Delhi government officials on Tuesday to discuss security for Thursday’s torch relay ceremony.

“They are so fear stricken that all types of baseless apprehensions are doing the rounds in their minds. They fear that Tibetans may attack the torch relay from hot air balloons. They asked if Tibetans can open fire from rooftops too,” a senior government official told IANS.

“We assured the delegation that nothing untoward is going to happen Thursday and the entire ceremony will conclude smoothly. Elaborate security arrangements have been made,” said the official who did wish to be identified.

“We told them that since India is a democracy, demonstrations are a routine affair,” the official said. “Nothing, however, is allowed beyond Jantar Mantar,” in the heart of the capital. [Emphasis added]

China threw a party in Athens, London, Paris, San Francisco, and Buenos Aires and no one liked it. Now they’re scared their party in India is going to be the worst thing imaginable. Hot air balloons?

Bloggingheads TV on Tibet

Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake and Erick Erickson of RedState have a very interesting discussion of what’s going on in Tibet and China on Bloggingheads TV. Erickson argues that Bush should boycott the Olympics, while Jane pushes for action ahead of that, including efforts to ensure that China does not violently crack down in Tibet in connection to the torch relay. It’s an interesting discussion that moves on to America’s moral standing in the world.

Show Trials?

The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle thinks the Nuremberg Trials were “show trials.”

Mmmm . . . I am in no way unhappy with the outcome of Nuremberg, but my understanding is that most international lawyers regard them basically as show trials. I’m not sure they’re a great example to use.

There is an almost unfathomable level of ignorance on display here. Steven D at Booman Tribune smacks McArdle down pretty hard, but my past work for and deep respect of Senator Chris Dodd demands I say more.

The Nuremberg Trials are mostly regarded as the highest point in Western respect for the rule of law. They are the antithesis of show trials, which is incidentally what Churchill and Stalin wanted. American leadership ensured that our respect of the rule of law was what defined us, not our desire to punish an enemy who we had just defeated.

Senator Dodd’s father, Tom Dodd, was a lead prosecutor at Nuremberg. Dodd recently published his father’s living history of his experience at the trials in a living history titled Letters From Nuremberg. On the campaign trail, Senator Dodd would frequently reference Nuremberg when talking about the necessity to defend the rule of law here in America. His favorite quote, something that I have since committed to memory, was from chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg, Justice Robert Jackson:

“That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.”

This is the essence of the rule of law and the importance of the Nuremberg Trials. It may well be the most significant action taken by the American government in the 20th to establish ourselves as defenders of the rule of law. The Bush administration has done immeasurable damage to our standing in the world by approving policies of torture, extraordinary rendition, and secret prisons – among many, many other things. McArdle’s glib dismissal of history and law is only shocking to the extent that she purports to be a libertarian. Otherwise such a passive acceptance of the abandonment of the rule of law in America is fairly indicative of what we have seen from the American press, a fact that goes a long way to explaining why the Bush administration has not been held accountable for their lawlessness.

Congress on Congress on FISA

Today I received a joint email from Patrick Leahy and John Conyers asking their supporters to contact the local newspapers and ask them to write in support of the House version of FISA reform legislation and against retroactive immunity for big telecom companies that helped the Bush administration spy on Americans without warrant. I always love it when I see incumbent Democrats use their email lists not for fund raising, but for activism on pressing issues in Congress. I think the Dodd campaign really helped define the extent to which this sort of activism is both possible and effective – and I’m glad to see other good Democrats take these lessons and apply them today.