The New Yorker Out Loud: Escalation
Date: July 7, 2008
Description: Seymour M. Hersh talks about the Bush Administration’s secret campaign against Iran.
Role: Content and audio editing, working through Curtis Fox Productions
Last Thursday I edited an audio interview with journalist Seymour M. Hersh. Hersh has an article in this week’s New Yorker about how the Bush administration already has secret operatives in Iran hooking up with dissident groups to try and destabilize Tehran.
As cool as it was to be privy to Hersh’s findings a few days before the official publication date, the story has been on my mind all weekend. This is seriously scary stuff. Almost as worrisome as the approaching conflict itself is the degree to which the media here may either avoid this story or superficially report but play it down. Let us hope–and pray to the higher power of your choice– demand that they take this seriously.
Hersh (who as it turns out is a delightfully brusque character when the tape isn’t rolling–something like a film noir P.I.–and I don’t fault him based on what I’m sure he’s had to go through to tell this and the other important stories he’s broken during his career) had some great lines that I wish could have made in in the final edit, but alas the podcast is designed to get people to read the article, and it’s all in there.
One of the quotes in the final edit comes (via Hersh) from Sec. of Defense Robert Gates during an off-the-record meeting with Congress:
“If we bomb Iran, our grandchildren will be fighting jihadists.”
Got that? It’s Bush’s OWN secretary of defense breaking with the administration and giving his own (off-the-record) opinion on the dire consequences of going to war with Iran.
If there’s ever a time to NOT soften the edges in our reporting on Iran (as if there ever weren’t one), it’s now.
I knew they’d make something like this sooner or later
My friend Lidia just introduced to me www.ridethecity.com. It’s like hopstop.com but for bike routes!
That was a nice set of civil liberties we had there…
Here is the bill that will effectively give the administration the power to spy on American citizens (think: your phone calls, email, and internet usage) without accountability. In other words, it’s not illegal if the president says it ain’t. No warrants. No courts. No questions. This isn’t conspiracy theory, this is really happening. (e.g. Act II of last week’s episode of This American Life.) And regardless of the fact that Democrats now control BOTH houses, it looks like this thing is still going to pass. (I know it’s naive, but for a while I really thought they were going to derail it.)
I’ll leave the most of the commentary to Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer and writer for salon.com who’s been sounding the alarm on this issue for a while now. (If you haven’t already, seriously go read him now.) But I do wonder: what would Mrs. Kregness, my 9th grade civics teacher, say?
How do you even teach civics to kids these days? Aside from all the other wrenches this administration has thrown at the constitution, I would think they’ve seriously undermined a civics teacher’s lesson on the system of checks and balances.
“But Mrs. Kregness! You told us that the constitution was written to specifically to stop abuses of power.”
“Well, yes in theory it would…if the other people elected actually oppose those abuses.”
My parent’s generation saw Nixon get his comeuppance. (Well, sort of, if resigning in shame counts.) People my age grew up seeing the president getting impeached for perjury about a non-criminal act between two consensual adults–like, on a technicality–and even as redonkulous as that whole thing was, at least we saw the system in motion, goldangit! But what if we have a generation of kids who grow up seeing there really aren’t consequences for very serious breaches of the law? Will they–like I sometimes find myself doing–shrug their shoulders saying “well, that sucks but whachagonna do?” and wait for the next power-grab?
Yes, the constitution is malleable, is subject to ammendment and reinterpretation. That’s why they call it a “living document.” But what if you gut it of the very qualities that make it that way? What if everybody gets it wrong and nobody cares? If the constitution is a living document, can you kill it? Kill it dead?
And lastly, I want to echo Greenwald: where’s Obama on this? He had been a vocal opponant of telecom imunnnity and supporterd of Sen. Dodd’s revision of the FISA bill. I’m not in any way suggesting that Obama could wave his hand and make the problem go away (I know folks who hate when he’s characterized as some kind of Messiah, and so do I). But if he got the Democratic party to follow suit and reject money from lobbyists–no small feat–could he rally the party against this bill?
I bought this old “All Pro” department store bike (originally from K-mart, I think) from a flea market in Hell’s Kitchen near Michelle’s place. If rust = vintage and vintage = cool, then does rust = cool?
I hope not, because I sanded all of it off and repainted the frame, bell, fenders, and chainguard (including the orange stripe detailing). New brakes, new handlebars, kickstand, new back weel (ditched the coaster for a single speed cog), trued and re-dished the wheels, polished all the chrome, and a badass new cruiser saddle. I’ll post the “after” picture as soon as she sees it.