Positive Universe Abstracts

New York Times, United States

By The Editorial Board

The results were so thoroughly precooked that there was no surprise in the Senate’s 69-to-28 vote today to gut a law that has protected Americans from spying by their own government for 30 years.

Still, it was distressing — and depressing — to watch Congress wrench Americans’ civil liberties back to where they were in the days before Watergate, when the United States government listened to our phone calls whenever it wanted.

We had hoped, at least, that the supporters of this awful bill would make a substantive case for their position. Instead, they offered up the usual thick stew of fear mongering mixed with big chunks of disinformation. [more]

Salon

(updated below - Update II)

The Democratic-led Congress this afternoon voted to put an end to the NSA spying scandal, as the Senate approved a bill — approved last week by the House — to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, terminate all pending lawsuits against them, and vest whole new warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President. The vote in favor of the new FISA bill was 69-28. Barack Obama joined every Senate Republican (and every House Republican other than one) by voting in favor of it, while his now-vanquished primary rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, voted against it. John McCain wasn’t present for any of the votes, but shared Obama’s support for the bill. The bill will now be sent to an extremely happy George Bush, who already announced that he enthusiastically supports it, and he will sign it into law very shortly.

Prior to final approval, the Senate, in the morning, rejected three separate amendments which would have improved the bill but which, the White House threatened, would have prompted a veto. With those amendments defeated, the Senate then passed the same bill passed last week by the House, which means it is that bill, in unchanged form, that will be signed into law — just as the Bush administration demanded. [more]

CounterPunch, CA

A Threat to the Privacy Rights of All Americans
By Sen. RUSS FEINGOLD

A number of Senators came to the floor prior to the Fourth of July recess to debate the FISA legislation, and more debate has occurred this week. We have heard arguments for and against the legislation, and Senators have cited a variety of reasons for their positions.

Several have defended the bill by arguing that the legislation includes improvements compared to the Senate bill we passed earlier this year. I was not surprised to hear that line of argument. I agree that there are some improvements to the Senate bill contained in the legislation that we are now considering. But those changes are not nearly enough to justify supporting the bill, as I will explain in a few moments.

I was surprised to hear, however, several Senators still defending the legality of the President’s warrantless wiretapping program, and still arguing that Congress had somehow signed off on this program years ago because the Gang of Eight was notified. Mr. President, I thought we were well past these arguments. Two and a half years after this illegal program became public, I cannot believe that we are still debating the legality of this program on the Senate floor, and that anyone seriously believes that merely notifying the Gang of Eight – while keeping the full intelligence committees in the dark — somehow represents congressional approval.

Mr. President, it could not be clearer that this program broke the law, and this President broke the law. [more]

Consortium News

By Daniel Ellsberg
July 9, 2008

Today could mark the beginning of official condoning of warrantless surveillance of law-abiding citizens in the US, not to mention foreign nationals.

In the video below, I talk about what every American needs to know — and do in the next 24 hours — about the new FISA (Federal Information and Surveillance Act) amendments. The interview, and below partial transcription, answers questions like…

-I don’t have anything to hide. How does this affect me?

-What if this type of surveillance is what has prevented another 9/11 from happening?

-What are common inaccuracies about FISA reported in the media?

Find below how you can make a real impact in less than 60 seconds. Every person counts — the Senators who will vote are watching the numbers. 41 Senators can block the bill, and it’s not too late.

Please do the following: How I ask you to spend 60 seconds… [more]

Salon

U.S. officials went to extremes to stifle our legal challenge to Bush’s warrantless surveillance — but a federal judge says the program is criminal, anyway.

By Jon B. Eisenberg

July 9, 2008 | On July 3, Chief Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court in California made a ruling particularly worthy of the nation’s attention. In Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc. v. Bush, a key case in the epic battle over warrantless spying inside the United States, Judge Walker ruled, effectively, that President George W. Bush is a felon.

Judge Walker held that the president lacks the authority to disregard the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA — which means Bush’s warrantless electronic surveillance program was illegal. Whether Bush will ultimately be held accountable for violating federal law with the program remains unclear. Bush administration lawyers have fought vigorously — at times using brazen, logic-defying tactics — to prevent that from happening. The court battle will continue to play out as Congress continues to battle over recasting FISA and possibly granting immunity to telecom companies involved in the illegal surveillance.

The story of how Al-Haramain’s lawyers negotiated the journey thus far to Judge Walker’s ruling — a team of seven lawyers that includes me — sheds light on how much is at stake for the Bush administration and the country. It is a surreal saga, involving a top-secret document accidentally released by the government, a showdown between Bush lawyers and a federal judge, the violent destruction of a laptop computer by government agents, and possibly even the top-secret shredding of a banana peel.f a banana peel. [more]

Editor & Publisher

By Charles J. Hanley and Jae-Soon Chang, The Associated Press

SEOUL The American colonel, troubled by what he was hearing, tried to stall at first. But the declassified record shows he finally told his South Korean counterpart it “would be permitted” to machine-gun 3,500 political prisoners, to keep them from joining approaching enemy forces.

In the early days of the Korean War, other American officers observed, photographed and confidentially reported on such wholesale executions by their South Korean ally, a secretive slaughter believed to have killed 100,000 or more leftists and supposed sympathizers, usually without charge or trial, in a few weeks in mid-1950.

Extensive archival research by The Associated Press has found no indication Far East commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur took action to stem the summary mass killing, knowledge of which reached top levels of the Pentagon and State Department in Washington, where it was classified “secret” and filed away.

Now, a half-century later, the South Korean government’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is investigating what happened in that summer of terror, a political bloodbath largely hidden from history, unlike the communist invaders’ executions of southern rightists, which were widely publicized and denounced at the time.

In the now-declassified record at the U.S. National Archives and other repositories, the Korean investigators will find an ambivalent U.S. attitude in 1950 — at times hands-off, at times disapproving.

“The most important thing is that they did not stop the executions,” historian Jung Byung-joon, a member of the 2-year-old commission, said of the Americans. “They were at the crime scene, and took pictures and wrote reports.” [more]

San Francisco Chronicle

Robert Scheer, Creators Syndicate, Inc.

As we head into the Fourth of July weekend of patriotic bluster and beer swilling - but before we are too besotted by ourselves - might we also for once consider our imperfections? Why not take a moment to heed the cautions of our founding father, George Washington, whose true legacy will most likely be ignored during the flag-waving weekend?

Washington’s “Farewell Address” to the new nation was a warning about the threat of American imperial ambitions and a declaration of his high expectations for a republic of free men: “In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself, that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism… ”

We are drowning in the “impostures of pretended patriotism,” used to cover the lies that got us into Iraq, the defense of torture and the violation of our basic liberties. In the name of patriotism, we presume a God-given American right to reorder the world to our liking, masking the vice of unfettered greed as an obligation of national security.

Any doubts as to this later governing impulse of our imperial ambitions were shattered with the recent news that U.S. advisers to our puppet government in the Green Zone of occupied Iraq have worked out agreements for American oil companies to gain control of Iraqi oil fields. But, then again, what did we expect when we elected a Texas oil hustler, and a failed one at that, to be our president?

Only in an America dumbed down by constant propaganda about our innate moral superiority will anyone any longer believe that we didn’t invade Iraq for the oil, even though Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came to the Bush administration from the Board of Directors at Chevron, where they named an oil tanker after her. Like Vice President Dick Cheney with those Halliburton contracts, Rice has stayed true to her corporate sponsors.porate sponsors. [more]