http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/31/opinion/the-drone-war-is-far-from-over.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Fri, May 31, 2013 at 4:50 PM
Subject: re: The Drone War Is Far From Over
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   The Tribal Areas are--by definition--beyond the ordinary writ of Pakistani law. To try to enforce the law there without regard to their power structures is a doomed project.  The Taliban are another matter. They are a Pashtun nationalist movement. If they are thwarted in taking over Afghanistan (where they constitute the largest  minority group) they can make a serious case that they deserve national self-determination in a free Pashtunistan.

   To date, the U.S. foreign policy has shown no grasp of the local politics. On the current trajectory, we will continue to make enemies faster than we  can kill them and will make our world ever less safe.

Barry Haskell Levine

Find more of my (largely one-sided) correspondence with the New York Times at:
htt://forgottencenter.blogspot.com/
Or write a letter of your own. Democracy only works when we engage in
the issues of our day

The Drone War Is Far From Over

By AKBAR AHMED

Published: May 30, 2013WHEN people in Washington talk about shrinking the drone program, as President Obama promised to do last week, they are mostly concerned with placating Pakistan, where members of the newly elected government have vowed to end violations of the country’s sovereignty. But the drone war is alive and well in the remote corners of Pakistan where the strikes have caused the greatest and most lasting damage.

Drone strikes like Wednesday’s, in Waziristan, are destroying already weak tribal structures and throwing communities into disarray throughout Pakistan’s tribal belt along the border with Afghanistan. The chaos and rage they produce endangers the Pakistani government and fuels anti-Americanism. And the damage isn’t limited to Pakistan. Similar destruction is occurring in other traditional tribal societies like Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen. The tribes on the periphery of these nations have long struggled for more autonomy from the central government, first under colonial rule and later against the modern state. The global war on terror has intensified that conflict.

These tribal societies are organized into clans defined by common descent; they maintain stability through similar structures of authority; and they have defined codes of honor revolving around hospitality to guests and revenge against enemies.

In recent decades, these societies have undergone huge disruptions as the traditional leadership has come under attack by violent groups like the Taliban, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Somalia’s Al Shabab, not to mention full-scale military invasions. America has deployed drones into these power vacuums, causing ferocious backlashes against central governments while destroying any positive image of the United States that may have once existed.

American precision-guided missiles launched into Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal areas aim to eliminate what are called, with marvelous imprecision, the “bad guys.” Several decades ago I, too, faced the problem of catching a notorious “bad guy” in Waziristan.

It was 1979. Safar Khan, a Pashtun outlaw, had over the years terrorized the region with raids and kidnappings. He was always one step ahead of the law, disappearing into the undemarcated international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the very area where Osama bin Laden would later find shelter.

I was then the political agent of South Waziristan, a government administrator in charge of the area. When Mr. Khan kidnapped a Pakistani soldier, the commanding general threatened to launch military operations. I told him to hold off his troops, and took direct responsibility for Mr. Khan’s capture.

I mobilized tribal elders and religious leaders to persuade Mr. Khan to surrender, promising him a fair trial by jirga, a council of elders, according to tribal custom. Working through the Pashtun code of honor, Mr. Khan eventually surrendered unconditionally and the writ of the state was restored. The general who had argued for using force was delighted.

We were able to get Mr. Khan without firing a single shot by relying on the three pillars of authority that have traditionally provided stability in Pashtun tribal society: elders, religious leaders and the central government.

Over the past few decades, these pillars have weakened. And in 2004, with the Pakistani army’s unprecedented assault and American drones’ targeting suspected supporters of Al Qaeda in Waziristan, the pillars of authority began to crumble.

In the vacuum that followed, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or Pakistani Taliban, emerged. Its first targets were tribal authorities. Approximately 400 elders have been killed in Waziristan alone, a near-decapitation of traditional society.

Large segments of the tribal population were displaced to shantytowns surrounding large cities, bringing with them traditional tribal feuds and a desire for revenge against those they saw as responsible for their desperate situation.

As the pace of the violence in the tribal areas increased, the Pakistani Taliban sought to strike the central government. They kidnapped Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, stormed Army General Headquarters in Rawalpindi, and assaulted a naval base in Karachi. In 2009, fighters attacked a military mosque, killing 36 people, including 17 children. Taking hold of children’s hair and shooting them point-blank, they yelled “Now you know how it feels when other people are killed.”

For the first time tribesmen resorted to suicide strikes — in mosques, bazaars and offices in which women and children were often the victims — something categorically rejected by both Islam and the Pashtun tribal code.

The tribesmen of Waziristan have for years seen the Pakistani government as colluding on drone strikes with the Americans, against whom their tribal kin are fighting across the border in Afghanistan. Therefore, they take revenge against the military and other government targets for those killed by drones.

Their suspicions of Pakistan complicity proved correct. Former President Pervez Musharraf admitted to CNN last month that his government had secretly given permission to the United States to operate drones inside Pakistan.

Drone strikes have made Waziristan’s already turbulent conflict with the central government worse. Almost 3,500 people have been killed by drones in Waziristan, including many innocent civilians.

Those at the receiving end of the strikes see them as unjust, immoral and dishonorable — killing innocent people who have never themselves harmed Americans while the drone operators sit safely halfway across the world, terrorizing and killing by remote control.

Mr. Obama should not assume that his pledge to scale back the drone war will have an appreciable impact on America’s image or Pakistan’s security unless the strikes stop and the old pillars of tribal authority can gradually be rebuilt.

Until then, American policy makers would do well to heed a Pashto proverb: “The Pashtun who took revenge after a hundred years said, I took it quickly.”

Akbar Ahmed, the Islamic Studies chair at American University and the former Pakistani high commissioner to Britain, is the author of “The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam.
”

In Terror Shift, Obama Took a Long Path

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/us/politics/in-terror-shift-obama-took-a-long-path.html?pagewanted=all

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, May 28, 2013 at 4:15 PM
Subject: re: In Terror Shift, Obama Took a Long Path
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

  President Obama's "new playbook" in the war on terror amounts to abiding by established law sometimes, when he feels like it.  Use of deadly force has been limited to members of the military armed forces (i.e. not CIA) and to battlefields (i.e. not everywhere) for six decades.  He has yet to clarify whether as commander in chief in times of war he is actually bound by the law, nor whether we are actually at war.

   As long as these ambiguities remain, future presidents will cite his actions to justify outrages against life, liberty and property. Surely this is not the legacy president Obama means to leave us.

Barry Haskell Levine

1142 Brown Ave

Find more of my (largely one-sided) correspondence with the New York Times at:
htt://forgottencenter.blogspot.com/
Or write a letter of your own. Democracy only works when we engage in
the issues of our day

WASHINGTON — The pivot in counterterrorism policy thatPresident Obama announced last week was nearly two years in the making, but perhaps the most critical moment came last spring during a White House meeting as he talked about the future of the nation’s long-running terrorism war. Underlying the discussion was a simple fact: It was an election year. And Mr. Obama might lose.

For nearly four years, the president had waged a relentless war from the skies against Al Qaeda and its allies, and he trusted that he had found what he considered a reasonable balance even if his critics did not see it that way. But now, he told his aides, he wanted to institutionalize what in effect had been an ad hoc war, effectively shaping the parameters for years to come “whether he was re-elected or somebody else became president,” as one aide said.

Ultimately, he would decide to write a new playbook that would scale back the use of drones, target only those who really threatened the United States, eventually get theC.I.A. out of the targeted killing business and, more generally, begin moving the United States past the “perpetual war” it had waged since Sept. 11, 2001. Whether the policy shifts will actually accomplish that remains to be seen, given vague language and compromises forced by internal debate, but they represent an effort to set the rules even after he leaves office.

“We’ve got this technology, and we’re not going to be the only ones to use it,” said a senior White House official who, like others involved, declined to be identified talking about internal deliberations. “We have to set standards so it doesn’t get abused in the future.”

While part of the re-evaluation was aimed at the next president, it was also about Mr. Obama’s own legacy. What became an exercise lasting months, aides said, forced him to confront his deep conflicts as commander in chief: the Nobel Peace Prize winner with a “kill list,” the antiwar candidate turned war president, the avowed champion of transparency ordering operations over secret battlegrounds. He wanted to be known for healing the rift with the Muslim world, not raining down death from above.

Over the past year, aides said, Mr. Obama spent more time on the subject than on any other national security issue, including the civil war in Syria. The speech he would eventually deliver at the National Defense University became what one aide called “a window into the presidential mind” as Mr. Obama essentially thought out loud about the trade-offs he sees in confronting national security threats.

“Americans are deeply ambivalent about war,” the president said in his speech, and he seemed to be talking about himself as well. Mr. Obama said the seeming precision and remote nature of modern warfare can “lead a president and his team to view drone strikes as a cure-all for terrorism,” and it was not hard to imagine which president he had in mind.

“We must define the nature and scope of this struggle,” Mr. Obama said, “or else it will define us.”

In a sense, that had already happened to Mr. Obama. Somehow he had gone from the candidate who criticized what he saw as President George W. Bush’s excesses to the president who expanded the drone program his predecessor had left him. The killing he authorized in September 2011 of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen tied to terrorist attacks, brought home the disparity between how he had envisioned his presidency and what it had become. Suddenly, a liberal Democratic president was being criticized by his own political base for waging what some called an illegal war and asserting unchecked power.

The Awlaki strike also killed another American, Samir Khan, who officials say was not intentionally targeted. A subsequent strike killed Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old American son, a death that officials say was an accident. A furor over the American deaths convinced Mr. Obama that it was time to lay out clearer standards and practices for drone warfare.

Under the stewardship of John O. Brennan, then the president’s counterterrorism adviser, officials spent months discussing how to be more transparent about a program that was still officially secret and how to define its limits. After last spring’s discussion with the president, Mr. Brennan began a more intensive, formalized interagency process to rewrite the rules. He also took a first step in explaining the administration’s drone policy to the public with a speech in which he said strikes targeted only those who posed “a significant threat to U.S. interests.” But even then he did not directly acknowledge American involvement in Mr. Awlaki’s killing.

In seemingly endless meetings, including a dozen or more with the president, Mr. Brennan and other administration officials grappled with the issue. Concluding that Al Qaeda’s core leadership had been decimated, some officials wanted tighter restrictions on the use of drone strikes, but the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon balked. The C.I.A.’s counterterrorism center resisted another proposal to take its drones away and put them under Pentagon control.

While the agencies argued, Mr. Obama focused on winning a second term, boasting about the same aggressive approach he was privately rethinking. “Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top Al Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement,” he said in response to campaign criticism.

Days after his victory, he told his staff he wanted to conclude the review with a major speech, although there would no longer be pressure to complete it before the next inauguration, since he would be staying. Around the White House, it became known as Archives 2, a reference to the president’s May 2009 speech at the National Archives on counterterrorism issues.

“What he said repeatedly is he felt when he took office it wasn’t clear how we used this tool,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser assigned to write the speech. “Part of this frankly is laying out for the American people but also for the next president: here’s how we do this.”

The first outlines of the speech came together in February. But there were critical debates to resolve. As Mr. Brennan departed to become C.I.A. director, his replacement, Lisa Monaco, and the top White House national security lawyer, Avril D. Haines, ushered the process to a conclusion.

Ultimately, the president and his team decided to tighten the standard for striking targets outside overt war zones. Instead of being authorized for any “significant threat to U.S. interests,” drone strikes would be used only in cases of a “continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons.” They would also be limited to cases with a “near certainty” of avoiding civilian casualties.

The C.I.A.’s opposition to shifting responsibility for drones entirely to the Pentagon resulted in a compromise: There would be a transition period for the program in Pakistan, which would be reviewed every six months to determine if it was ready to be moved to military control. Administration officials suggest that the transfer of the Pakistan drone program may coincide with the withdrawal of combat troops from Afghanistan in 2014.

“The hawks may be grumbling about it, but that’s to be expected,” said a senior government official who supported the strategy shift. “This is a big change. But no one is screaming.”

The hawks proposed a change of their own, suggesting, as The Daily Beast has reported, that the president leave individual strike decisions in authorized areas outside overt war zones to the Pentagon and the C.I.A. But the White House rejected that. Mr. Obama felt those decisions were the president’s responsibility: he wanted to keep his own finger on the trigger.

All of that was codified in a Presidential Policy Guidance that remains classified. To address drone policy, though, meant owning up to the killings of Mr. Awlaki and other Americans, officials concluded. The C.I.A. and others resisted, but Mr. Obama decided to declassify information about not just Mr. Awlaki’s killing, but the killings of three other Americans who officials say had not been intentionally targeted.

Mr. Obama was also interested in instituting an independent review of how and when drone strikes would be conducted. Multiple papers were prepared and multiple options evaluated. Among them was a special court to oversee targeted killings, but the discussion became tied up in knots about how it would work. Would a judge have to approve such strikes in advance or after the fact? What about an independent board within the executive branch instead? Administration lawyers argued against surrendering presidential authority, and defense policy makers argued against giving up operational control.

That proved to be a debate Mr. Obama could not resolve. In his speech, he invited Congress to come up with ideas. He also thought it was time to review the authorization of force that Congress passed in the days after Sept. 11, 2001, and that has been the legal foundation for the war on terrorism. But after a two-hour discussion just days before the speech, he could not decide exactly how to do that, either.

In the midst of the White House debate, two bombs went off at the Boston Marathon in an attack attributed to two ethnic Chechens living legally in the United States, reaffirming the continuing threat of terrorism. For Mr. Obama, it was another pivot point. The Boston attack, he thought, typified the new terrorist threat more than 11 years after Sept. 11, 2001: smaller-scale attacks that have fewer casualties but are harder to stop and often conducted by people radicalized while already living in the United States.

At the beginning of May, Mr. Obama was given a first draft of the speech but tossed it out and wrote out a detailed outline by hand over several pages. He expanded it from drones to include a renewal of his failed promise to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. He also wanted fresh emphasis on nonmilitary tools like diplomacy, foreign aid and help for other countries dealing with threats inside their borders, although he made sure the word “patiently” was added to reflect the difficulty.

Some Pentagon and State Department officials learned only the day before the speech that Mr. Obama would lift his moratorium on repatriating Guantánamo detainees to Yemen and appoint a new official at the Defense Department to oversee transfer efforts.

Mr. Obama’s eventual speech, at 59 minutes one of the longest of his presidency other than a State of the Union address, reflected the process that developed it. Even as he set new standards, a debate broke out about what they actually meant and what would actually change. For now, officials said, “signature strikes” targeting groups of unidentified armed men presumed to be extremists will continue in the Pakistani tribal areas.

Even as he talked about transparency, he never uttered the word “C.I.A.” or acknowledged he was redefining its role. He made no mention that a drone strike had killed an American teenager in error. While he pledged again to close the Guantánamo prison, he offered little reason to think he might be more successful this time.

Yet even the promise of change left some people scathingly critical. “At the end of the day,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, “this is the most tone-deaf president I ever could imagine, making such a speech at a time when our homeland is trying to be attacked literally every day.
”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/us/us-acknowledges-killing-4-americans-in-drone-strikes.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, May 23, 2013 at 10:49 AM
Subject: re: Obama, in a Shift, to Limit Targets of Drone Strikes
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

    Attorney General Eric Holder's argument that the extra-judicial slayings of four Americans was lawful deserves to be heard. But as a member of our Executive, it is not for him to interpret what the law is; that lies with out judiciary. In this case, the only appropriate court of law is the U. S. Congress. So let's impeach president Obama for these killings. And let's hear the arguments. And let's  exhonerate president Obama if that's what the law requires. But to leave such a precedent on the books without challenge invites future presidents to indulge in what might be criminal behavior.

Barry Haskell Levine

Find more of my (largely one-sided) correspondence with the New York Times at:
htt://forgottencenter.blogspot.com/
Or write a letter of your own. Democracy only works when we engage in
the issues of our day

Obama, in a Shift, to Limit Targets of Drone Strikes

Khaled Abdullah/Reuters

This image, taken in February, shows the location of an American drone stroke that killed Abdulrahman al-Awlaki and six Qaeda militants on October 14, 2011. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki is the son of the cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a separate drone strike.

By CHARLIE SAVAGE and PETER BAKER

Published: May 22, 2013 874 Comments

LIVE VIDEO AT 2 P.M. ETWASHINGTON — President Obama plans to open a new phase in the nation’s long struggle with terrorism on Thursday by restricting the use of unmanned drone strikes that have been at the heart of his national security strategy and shifting control of them away from the C.I.A. to the military.

•  (March 10, 2013)In his first major speech on counterterrorism of his second term, Mr. Obama hopes to refocus the epic conflict that has defined American priorities since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and even foresees an unspecified day when the so-called war on terror might all but end, according to people briefed on White House plans.

As part of the shift in approach, the administration on Wednesday formally acknowledged for the first time that it had killed four American citizens in drone strikes outside the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, arguing that its actions were justified by the danger to the United States. Mr. Obama approved providing new information to Congress and the public about the rules governing his attacks on Al Qaeda and its allies.

A new classified policy guidance signed by Mr. Obama will sharply curtail the instances when unmanned aircraft can be used to attack in places that are not overt war zones, countries like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The rules will impose the same standard for strikes on foreign enemies now used only for American citizens deemed to be terrorists.

Lethal force will be used only against targets who pose “a continuing, imminent threat to Americans” and cannot feasibly be captured, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a letter to Congress, suggesting that threats to a partner like Afghanistan or Yemen alone would not be enough to justify being targeted.

The standard could signal an end to “signature strikes,” or attacks on groups of unknown men based only on their presumed status as members of Al Qaeda or some other enemy group — an approach that administration critics say has resulted in many civilian casualties. In effect, this appears to be a step away from the less restricted use of force allowed in war zones and toward the more limited use of force for self-defense allowed outside of armed conflict.

In the speech he will give on Thursday at the National Defense University, Mr. Obama will also renew his long-stalled effort to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Officials said they would make a fresh push to transfer detainees to home countries and lift the ban on sending some back to Yemen. The president plans to reappoint a high-level State Department official to oversee the effort to reduce the prison population.

The combined actions constitute a pivot point for a president who came to office highly critical of his predecessor, George W. Bush, yet who preserved and in some cases expanded on some of the counterterrorism policies he inherited. Much as Mr. Bush did in 2006 when he acknowledged and emptied secret overseas C.I.A. prisons, Mr. Obama appears intent on countering criticism of his most controversial policies by reorienting them to meet changing conditions.

In his speech, Mr. Obama is expected to reject the notion of a perpetual war with terrorists, envisioning a day when Al Qaeda has been so incapacitated that wartime authority will end. However, because he is also institutionalizing procedures for drone strikes, it does not appear that he thinks that day has come. A Pentagon official suggested last week that the current conflict could continue for 10 to 20 years.

Yet even as he moves the counterterrorism effort to a next stage, Mr. Obama plans to offer a robust defense of a continued role for targeted killings, a policy he has generally addressed only in passing or in interviews rather than in a comprehensive speech. A White House official said he “will discuss why the use of drone strikes is necessary, legal and just, while addressing the various issues raised by our use of targeted action.”

While Mr. Obama may not explicitly announce the shift in drones from the Central Intelligence Agency in his speech, since the agency’s operations remain formally classified, the change underscores a desire by the president and his advisers to balance them with other legal and diplomatic tools. The C.I.A., which has overseen the drone war in the tribal areas of Pakistan and elsewhere, will generally cede its role to the military after a six-month transition period as forces draw down in Afghanistan, officials said.

Drone strikes have already been decreasing in the past few years as targets have been killed and opposition has grown. John O. Brennan, the new C.I.A. director, has been eager to shift the agency more toward espionage, intelligence gathering and analysis and away from the paramilitary mission it has adopted since Sept. 11.

Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said that after more than a decade of war it was time to “rebalance” the missions of the Pentagon and C.I.A. “The policy is intended to refocus the activities of the intelligence community to collection, which is crucial,” he said.

But Mr. Obama’s moves may provoke criticism from some Republicans who say a law enforcement approach underestimates the continuing threat from terrorism. An aide to Representative Howard P. McKeon of California, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said his boss would insist on “concrete answers” about what Mr. Obama planned to do with “terrorists who are too dangerous to be released” from Guantánamo.

In his letter to Congressional leaders, Mr. Holder confirmed that the administration had deliberately killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who died in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen. Mr. Holder also wrote that United States forces had killed three other Americans who “were not specifically targeted.”

The American involvement in Mr. Awlaki’s death has been widely reported, but the administration until now had refused to confirm it. Likewise, Mr. Holder confirmed the government’s role in the deaths of Samir Khan, who was killed in the same strike, and Mr. Awlaki’s son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who died in another strike. The letter disclosed the death of a fourth American named Jude Kenan Mohammad but gave no further details.

Mr. Holder defended the actions, saying they were consistent with American law and taken only after careful consideration. “Based on generations-old legal principles and Supreme Court decisions handed down during World War II, as well as during the current conflict, it is clear and logical that United States citizenship alone does not make such individuals immune from being targeted,” he wrote.

Critics were not assuaged. “The Obama administration continues to claim authority to kill virtually anyone anywhere in the world under the ‘global battlefield’ legal theory and a radical redefinition of the concept of imminence,” said Zeke Johnson of Amnesty International. “President Obama should reject these concepts in his speech tomorrow and commit to upholding human rights, not just in word but in deed.”

The lifting of the veil of official secrecy over the Awlaki killing could have broad legal ramifications. The Justice Department on Wednesday afternoon dropped an effort to throw out a California lawsuit seeking documents related to the killing, while a judge here ordered the government to address the disclosure in a wrongful-death lawsuit brought by Mr. Awlaki’s family.

Mr. Holder, in a speech at Northwestern law school last year, laid out the administration’s basic legal thinking that it could target American citizens deemed to be operational terrorists who pose an “imminent threat of violent attack” and where capture is not feasible.

Mr. Holder’s letter expanded the rationale for the killing of Mr. Awlaki. Mr. Holder said Mr. Awlaki not only had “planned” the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009, a claim that has been widely discussed in court documents and elsewhere, but had also “played a key role” in an October 2010 plot to blow up cargo planes bound for the United States, including taking “part in the development and testing” of the bombs. He added that Mr. Awlaki had also been involved in “the planning of numerous other plots.”

“The decision to target Anwar al-Awlaki was lawful, it was considered, and it was just,” Mr. Holder said.

Stop the Leaks

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/opinion/stop-the-leaks.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, May 21, 2013 at 9:02 AM
Subject: re: Stop the Leaks
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Messrs. Barr, Gorelick and Wainstein reassure us that the search of AP phone records was done in accord with "longstanding regulations" by which they seem to mean internal department of Justice guidelines. But these guidelines  are not laws. Laws, we are taught come from our ratified treaties, from our Congress and from our state legislatures. And it is the Executives job to "take care that these laws be faithfully executed".  

   The American people will be best served when our Department of Justice takes "care that these laws be faithfully executed" and leaves the enforcement of internal guidelines to someone in Human Resources.

Barry Haskell Levine

Eavesdropping on Internet Communications

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/opinion/eavesdropping-on-internet-communications.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, May 20, 2013 at 8:02 AM
Subject: re: Eavesdropping on Internet Communications
To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

To the Editor:

  It has long been established that we have an expectation of privacy in our landline telephone communications that can be invaded only by court order. It is overdue that we extend the same protections to our communications by cellphone and email. Instead, our cellphone communications are currently treated as radio broadcasts.

      But the greater threat is that a government which goes on promulgating new law without enforcing what is already enacted is just going through the motions. Our Legislature should hand the FBI a resounding "no" to all proposed changes until our  Executive prosecutes violators of the 1979 FISA statute. Tens of thousands of Americans have suffered illegal unreasonable search in blatant violation of duly enacted law. The telecoms that were immunized against civil lawsuits still need to be prosecuted for their criminal conduct.

 

Barry Haskell Levine

President Seeks Path Forward Beyond Troubles

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/us/politics/obama-vows-to-focus-on-governing.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Sat, May 18, 2013 at 3:15 PM
Subject: re: President Seeks Path Forward Beyond Troubles
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   In this season of scandal--real or imaginary--president Obama needs to focus on what he can do and not on what he cannot. The power to tax and the power to spend and the power to stimulate are explicitly given to Congress.  For better or for worse, obstructionists there hold our economy in their fist.  But there remain the powers of the Executive, particularly the department of Justice. President Obama can go a long way towards reestablishing the credibility of our government by prosecuting torturers and wiretappers and war profiteers.  The crimes are manifest and America is diminished by them. It remains only to "take care that these Laws be faithfully executed" as his job description requires. Or to concede failure.

Barry Haskell Levine

Fatal Encounter With Police Is Caught on Video, but Kept From the Public

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/15/us/fatal-encounter-with-police-is-caught-on-video-but-kept-from-the-public.html?_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, May 16, 2013 at 3:00 PM
Subject: re: Fatal Encounter With Police Is Caught on Video, but Kept From the Public
To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

To the Editor:

   When the police leap to launch a cover-up, the public will leap to conclude that their behavior was criminal in the first place. It remains now to see how far the corruption runs. Is this a matter of manslaughter or murder for a California court, or is it a Federal Case.  Because it's plain that when  David Sal Silva  was beaten to death by his own public servants, he has been deprived of his rights to life and to the pursuit of happiness.

Barry Haskell Levine

LOS ANGELES — When Maria Melendez emerged from Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield, Calif., just before midnight last Tuesday, she said, she heard screams that have kept her awake at night for an entire week.

A half-dozen Kern County sheriff’s deputies were across the street beating a man with clubs and kicking him, she said. So she whipped out her mobile phone and began to video the episode, announcing to the officers what she was doing.

For about eight minutes, Ms. Melendez said, the man screamed and cried for help. Then he went silent, she said, making only choking sounds.

Finally, having hogtied him, a number of witnesses said, two officers picked up the man and dropped him, twice. One deputy nudged the man with his foot. When he did not respond, they began CPR.

“He was like a piece of meat,” said Ms. Melendez, 53, who was visiting her son at the hospital after he was injured in a car accident. “We were telling them: ‘He’s dead. You guys already killed him.’ ”

Responding to a call, deputies had arrived at the scene to find the man, David Sal Silva, a 33-year-old father of four, on the pavement. Their attempts to rouse him resulted in the altercation, the authorities said. Mr. Silva was pronounced dead less than an hour later at Kern Medical Center.

Ms. Melendez said she recorded the entire episode on her phone, as did her daughter’s boyfriend. But before they could send the videos to news media outlets, detectives from the Kern County Sheriff’s Office took their phones before a warrant for them had even arrived, Ms. Meledez and her family said.

Ray Pruitt, a sheriff’s spokesman, said the two phones were confiscated in accordance with search warrants and had been handed over to the Bakersfield Police Department as part of the investigation.

The sheriff has requested that the F.B.I. investigate the episode.

In the meantime, six deputies and a sergeant who were there during the encounter with Mr. Silva have been allowed to return to full duty while the episode is investigated. Two California Highway Patrol officers were also present.

The seizure of the phones has led to accusations that the sheriff’s department is trying to cover up the episode. David K. Cohn, a lawyer representing Mr. Silva’s family, said they planned to file a federal civil rights complaint. He said there was no reason that the sheriff’s office should not have already returned the phones unless they wanted to keep the videos from being seen by the public.

“Now they’ve given the cellphones to the Bakersfield police?” he said. “That just smacks of collusion.”

Sheriff Donny Youngblood of Kern County did not return calls seeking comment on Tuesday. But in a news release last week, the sheriff’s office said Mr. Silva was “uncooperative” and had continued to resist arrest even after a number of officers had arrived.

Laura Vasquez, who was with Ms. Melendez, recalled the encounter very differently.

She said that sheriff’s deputies told Mr. Silva to stay on the ground. When he tried to get up, she said, deputies ran up and hit him in the head with their clubs. Soon, she said, he was crying for help as at least eight officers hit him, kicked him and pressed their knees into his chest and stomach.

“For the first couple minutes he was screaming for help, basically pleading for his life,” said Ms. Vasquez, 26. “Then we couldn’t see him anymore. That’s how many cops were on top of him.”

After everyone had gone home, sheriff’s detectives showed up at the house of Ms. Melendez’s daughter, Melissa Quair, about 3 a.m.

Ms. Quair said she and her boyfriend were kept from leaving the house for three hours. When her boyfriend tried to leave for work, a detective shoved him, closed the door and told him to hand over his phone, she said. Eventually he did.

Ms. Melendez said her phone was also confiscated by sheriff’s detectives at Ms. Quair’s house later the same day. Mr. Pruitt and a sheriff’s detective investigating the case would not discuss the seizures.

Jody Armour, a professor at the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law, said legal precedents about the power of the police to seize such videos are still emerging as new technology is developed.

In the two decades since the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers was captured on tape, he said, “these videos have become powerful agents of debate, perhaps even change, and we have a public interest in that.”

He added, “It could have a chilling effect on the willingness of bystanders to make these recordings, if they worry that they could be accosted by law enforcement.”

The Deeper Blame for Benghazi

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/opinion/the-deeper-blame-for-benghazi.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Tue, May 14, 2013 at 8:59 AM
Subject: re: The Deeper Blame for Benghazi
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

  Ethan Chorin makes a good case that we should have a consulate in Benghazi. The fact remains that we do not and did not two years ago. What he insists on calling our "diplomatic mission" there was a CIA spy nest.

   What remains to be determined is whether ambassador Stevens had travelled there purely to furnish our CIA with a fig-leaf of respectability or if in fact our diplomats are so entwined with our CIA's covert operations that they are all legitimate military targets themselves.

Barry Haskell Levine

Afghans Say an American Tortured Civilians

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/13/world/asia/afghans-say-an-american-tortured-civilians.html?src=recg

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, May 13, 2013 at 9:01 AM
Subject: re: Afghans Say an American Tortured Civilians
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   President Bush assured us that Americans don't torture. That was a lie. President Obama has covered Bush's sins by refusing to prosecute torture. That cover-up may be a crime. But more urgent that either is the allegation that Americans are still torturing. Even a false allegation of such a crime is a powerful recruiting tool for our enemies. President Obama can no longer maintain the sham that torture was an embarrassment of the previous regime that he'll overlook as he moves forward. Torture is a crime. Torture is a recruitment tool for our enemies. The prosecution of torturers is as urgent as any item in the U.S.'s foreign policy if we are to continue to pose as a model for civilized behavior to the world.

Barry Haskell Levine

Syria Is Not Iraq

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/opinion/keller-syria-is-not-iraq.html?pagewanted=all

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, May 7, 2013 at 9:13 AM
Subject: re: Syria Is Not Iraq
To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

To the Editor:

  Predictably, Bill Keller is now beating the drum for war in Syria. But first, there's that matter of being so wrong in Iraq. That, he concedes was "humiliating". But this time is different! You see the sectarian violence that David Petraeus empowered and armed in Iraq is already flaring towards civil war in Syria, so it won't be our fault!  

   If no editor at the Times dares take a blue pencil to Bill Keller's ravings, it will be left to the readers. He can't fire us.

Barry Haskell Levine

\

U.S. Is Weighing Wide Overhaul of Wiretap Laws

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/us/politics/obama-may-back-fbi-plan-to-wiretap-web-users.html?pagewanted=all

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Wed, May 8, 2013 at 8:11 AM
Subject: re: U.S. Is Weighing Wide Overhaul of Wiretap Laws
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   It is reasonable that internet companies and telecom companies should be compelled to comply with court-ordered wiretaps. Likewise, it is reasonable that they should comply with the FISA statute of 1979. And yet tens of thousands of Americans suffered unreasonable searches through warrantless wiretaps in violation of that statute and of our constitution. Congress subsequently immunized telecom companies from civil suits over the matter. It remains for the U.S. attorney general to prosecute these crimes.

   Any executive who would promulgate new laws in this area while disdaining to enforce existing statute is a fool, too far removed from the reality to execute his office.

Barry Haskell Levine

Syria Is Not Iraq

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/opinion/keller-syria-is-not-iraq.html?pagewanted=all

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, May 7, 2013 at 9:13 AM
Subject: re: Syria Is Not Iraq
To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>

To the Editor:

  Predictably, Bill Keller is now beating the drum for war in Syria. But first, there's that matter of being so wrong in Iraq. That, he concedes was "humiliating". But this time is different! You see the sectarian violence that David Petraeus empowered and armed in Iraq is already flaring towards civil war in Syria, so it won't be our fault!  

   If no editor at the Times dares take a blue pencil to Bill Keller's ravings, it will be left to the readers. He can't fire us.

Barry Haskell Levine

Syria Blames Israel for Fiery Attack in Damascus

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/world/middleeast/after-strikes-in-syria-concerns-about-an-escalation-of-fighting.html

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, May 6, 2013 at 9:59 AM
Subject: re: Syria Blames Israel for Fiery Attack in Damascus
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Bashar al-Assad should note that Syria and Israel have been at war since 1948 and Israel didn't start it. It's past time that he made peace. Instead, his regime has continued war for decades through its proxies. Does he whine now that Israel hits back? Will the Arab world rally around him while he goes on killing Arabs? The man deserves the same mercy I'd give rabid dog. Kill him quickly (rather than slowly as he has earned), but kill him before he kills again.

Barry Haskell Levine