James Zogby on Gaza, Scott Horton on Guantànamo

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On May 31st the Israeli military attacked a flotilla of boats full of civilians attempting to deliver humanitarian supplies to the Gaza strip, and to call attention to the impact of Israel’s blockade. At least 9 and as many as 16

activists were killed—we don’t know in part due to Israel’s tight control over the flow of information. We’ll talk with James Zogby of the Arab American Institute about Gaza.

Also on CounterSpin today: A new U.S. report says that most of the detainees held on
Guantánamo since Obama took office, should be released. That’s after nearly three fourths of those originally held had already been released under the Bush administration. This has enraged many on the right who are conducting a campaign targeting the detainees and even their U.S. lawyers. We’ll talk to Scott Horton, contributing editor at Harper’s, and the magazine’s No Comment blogger.

All that’s coming up, but first we’ll take a look back at the week’s press.

—You might remember the infamous ACORN videos, where right-wing

activists

released heavily edited and misleading tapes of themselves visiting offices

of

the community organizing group. The hoaxers said they told ACORN that they

were

a pimp and a prostitute, and ACORN gave them advice on how to cheat on their

taxes. The slightest bit of checking revealed that was a lie—checking

the

corporate media almost never bothered to do.

But the video maker, James O’Keefe, is still being treated seriously,

judging by

his June 1 appearance on ABC‘s <span

class=”media_outlet”>Good Morning America. Host George Stephanopoulos

introducing the interview this way: “James O’Keefe became a media sensation

after he and a friend posed as a pimp and a prostitute and secretly recorded

ACORN workers giving them advice on how to cheat on their taxes.” Again,

that’s

false—you’d think by now journalists would know this. But

Stephanopoulos

went out of his way to praise O’Keefe: “I have to give you credit for this,

on

ACORN, you did expose people doing things they shouldn’t do.” Journalists

normally don’t give “credit” to people who lie to them—or at least

they’re not supposed to. O’Keefe’s publisher Andrew Breitbart was also on

hand,

and when it was mentioned that none of the ACORN workers did anything

illegal,

he protested: “Is it legal to help set up a prostitution ring in every

single

office?”

But Stephanopoulos let that slide too.

It’s worth pointing out that the point of the <span

class=”media_outlet”>ABCinterview was to tout O’Keefe’s latest

videos

attacking Census workers. So, the guy who created hoax videos that were

treated

like real journalism by a gullible media has a new batch of videos that are…

being taken seriously again by a gullible media.

—For many people the incredible devastation of the Deepwater Horizon

oil

spill and the revelation of patently inadequate oversight of the company and

the process by regulatory agencies are undeniable: Something has to change.

But

not so fast, say corporate media wise men like the <span

class=”media_outlet”>New York Times’ David Brooks; it’s all much more

complicated than you sorts understand. Brooks’ May 28 column sighed that the

debate over the disaster has fallen into “predictably partisan and often

puerile categories,” one of which is the “liberal” view that the government

should have more control over industry. Actually, Brooks explains, “the real

issue has to do with risk assessment. It has to do with the bloody

crossroads

where complex technical systems meet human psychology.” He goes on to offer

a

line, that Matthew Yglesias pointed out is largely cribbed from a 1996 <span

class=”media_outlet”>New Yorkeressay by Malcolm Gladwell, about

various

psychological pitfalls that contribute to accidents.

So what we really need to do is work on “helping people deal with

potentially

catastrophic complexity,” so we can “improve the choice architecture.”

Meanwhile back on earth, the Times ran a

story

May 27 headlined “BP Used Riskier Method to Seal Well Before Blast,” about

how

the oil company chose to use a cheaper casing for the well, even though this

could lead to a buildup of explosive gasses—as it seems did happen.

Did

BP make this decision because as human beings they have trouble

understanding

complexity? Or did they make that choice because they are trying to pump oil

as

cheaply as possible so they can maximize their profits? And does that

suggest

they need an outside authority watching over them to ensure that their money

grubbing doesn’t lead to disaster? Or would that be puerile?

—Newsweek‘s website featured an

article

by correspondent Stefan Theil, dated May 28, declaring climate change to be

“Uncertain Science.” Giving the Reader’s Digest condensed version of the

global

warming denialist case, Theil refers to “e-mails and documents suggesting

that

researchers cherry-picked data and suppressed rival studies to play up

global

warming”—without mentioning that after the media sensation, subsequent

academic investigations cleared the researchers of wrongdoing.

The Newsweek reporter talks about a U.S.

scientist “under investigation for allegedly using exaggerated climate data

to

obtain public funds”—without mentioning that the scientist, Michael

Mann,

is being investigated by Virginia’s Tea Party-aligned Attorney General Ken

Cuccinelli, whom the Washington Post has

described as having “declared war on reality.”

Theil also claims that there is a real scientific debate “over the extent

and

time frame” of CO²‘s greenhouse effect—while glossing over

the

fact that the actual debate in climate science circles is over whether the

consensus predictions have underestimated how much and how quickly

the

Earth will warm as a result of the burning of fossil fuels.

—There were protests recently at the Maryland homes of several bank

executives, along with follow-up rallies in Washington, D.C., at bank

branches

and offices. The events organized by the National Peoples Action and the

SEIU

went largely uncovered by the local daily, the <span

class=”media_outlet”>Washington Post, which led <span

class=”media_outlet”>Postombud Andrew Alexander to wonder why the

paper

missed a major labor and activism story that was covered by <span

class=”media_outlet”>Mother Jonesand the <span

class=”media_outlet”>Nation, among others.

But when you read how Alexander imagines the paper might’ve approached the

story, you might be glad they didn’t do more. Wrote Alexander:

class=”media_outlet”>Postcould have gotten back in the game on the

story. For example, how did Chevy Chase neighbors react? Did protesters

break

trespass laws? When does First Amendment expression infringe on residential

privacy? Does President Obama, who enjoyed SEIU electoral support, sanction

these types of protests? And is a blitz on private residences a new protest

tactic?

Gee, somewhere in there he could’ve suggested a few differently-angled

questions, like: What were the protesters talking about? Do their complaints

about excessive cronyism between Wall Street and Washington have foundation?

And did people’s loss of their homes, jobs and retirement savings ever

interrupt their dinner time? Just some ideas….

—And finally, witless commentary and breathtaking hypocrisy are no

strangers to Fox News, but Bill O’Reilly

was

in rare form on June 1. Discussing Joe McGinniss, the journalist who moved

next

door to Sarah Palin’s family home in Alaska in order to write about her,

O’Reilly declared the move “immoral” and maybe even unconstitutional:

(The “pursuit of happiness” phrase actually appears in the Declaration of

Independence, not the Constitution.)

About now, listeners who have followed O’Reilly’s sordid career are probably

recalling the Fox host’s practice of

having

his camera crews ambush news subjects at their homes, on vacation, even when

they are with their children—in other words, “intruding on them, all

right?” Of course, by O’Reilly’s lights, only intrusions targeting those he

cares about raise moral or “constitutional” questions. This is the beauty of

being utterly un-self aware.

JAMES ZOGBY

CounterSpin: The New York Times

called

for Israel to end its blockade of Gaza. But the paper’s reason seemed to be

the

blockade’s failure to weaken Hamas, as much or more than its success at

impoverishing and punishing Gaza’s one and a half million people. Is this

the

best the U.S. press corps can muster, in the wake of the storming of six

humanitarian aid ships headed for Gaza by Israel military commandos, killing

at

least nine civilians and injuring many more? What ideas, and facts, are

missing

from mainstream reporting and how could coverage be refocused?

We’re joined now by James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab-American

Institute and also a cofounder of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination

Committee.

Welcome back to CounterSpin, James Zogby!

James Zogby: Thank you. I’d say nice to be back, but it’s actually

sad to

be back because when I’m on it’s because some horrific event is unfolding.

CS: Exactly, we were speaking with you in 2006 about Gaza, and I’m

sorry

to say I could almost have cut and pasted that interview into this one, so little

has

changed, in terms of media. Well, in a June 1 report the <span

class=”media_outlet”>New York Times’ Isabel Kershner wrote, “Despite

sporadic rocket fire from the Palestinian territory against southern Israel,

Israel says it allows enough basic supplies through border crossings to

avoid

any acute humanitarian crisis.” I wonder what you make of the paper of

record,

if you will, contextualizing this event by saying Gaza is not in crisis?

JZ: They are reflecting talking points, liberal talking points, not

the

more hardline pro-Likud talking points, and pretty much the poles of the

debate

here in this country have wavered between the two. The Palestinian side of

this

narrative is not found, and basically has almost never been found in

official

circles, and by that I mean mainstream press and among political leaders. So

the best you do is you sort of get the argument that you gave in the

beginning

about how the difficulty here is that it hasn’t worked; it hasn’t weakened

Hamas, that it’s only harmed the people—but not all that bad because,

you

know, there’s really no major crisis, it’s just an inconvenience and a

burden.

The problem is is that if you think about the way that’s framed: “there’s no

crisis because basic subsidies are getting through,” what you’ve got is a

strategy designed to limit the caloric intake of people in Gaza to the bare

minimum. And fundamentally it’s a racist concept. They’ve trapped 1.5

million

people in a reservation of despair and poverty, and they allow in, like an

eyedropper, enough to keep them alive. What you’ve got is 80-plus percent of

the people today get their food subsidy simply from the United Nations. It’s

a

welfare state. Secondly, you get 48 percent of the children in Gaza are

anemic.

And poverty levels have climbed into the 80 percent range. People are living

in

bombed out houses because construction material hasn’t been in. It’s a

disaster. But, technically, the Israelis are right and the <span

class=”media_outlet”>New York Timesis right: people are surviving.

And

if survival is what’s acceptable, then I guess the <span

class=”media_outlet”>New York Timescan be happy.

CS: This has been a popular take on the assault on the boats: that it

couldn’t “really” have been about aid—the flotilla—because they

get

aid. I wonder, would other routes of possible access for materials, in any

event, justify Israel’s assault, to your mind?

JZ: No, I mean look, the fact is that a year ago the president spoke

in

Cairo and encouraged the Palestinians to pursue nonviolence. This was a

nonviolent approach. The Washington Post

didn’t get that. The Washington Post and

some

members of Congress made the argument that the Israelis were ambushed. I’m

not

quite sure that coming down from helicopters with black hoods and weapons

out

constitutes tripping into an ambush. But, you know, the fact is that this

was

largely a nonviolent effort. Sure, some people attacked the folks who

attacked

the boat, but I think that’s a purely logical response to fear, to anger, to

frustration on the part of some. But what the Israelis have done, cleverly,

is

control the narrative, so this was an Al Qaeda supporting ship. They used

that

language, that 50 people were Al Qaeda supporters; they were extremists.

Interesting that they ended up freeing them all and sending them away. I

guess

that means that Israel is now complicit in Al Qaeda in letting go some of

their

terrorists. But that has been echoed here by Congress and by some of the

newspapers who’ve argued, as the Washington

Postdid, that these were terrorists of borders and that they were a

dangerous group of people and the Israelis were defending themselves. That’s

the way that they shaped the story, and that’s the way the story ends up

playing out.

CS: Well, let’s do a little bit of history here. The <span

class=”media_outlet”>Associated Pressreported June 1, that “Israel

and

Egypt sealed Gaza’s borders after Hamas overran the territory in 2007,

wresting

control from Abbas-loyal forces”—that referring to Fatah forces

affiliated

with Mahmoud Abbas. Should readers accept that explanation, that history?

JZ: No, but if you control the history and define the starting point

of

the history, then basically the rest of it flows perfectly. There was a

civil

war, and to some degree it was prompted by the United States that thought

that

we could encourage and support Fatah into winning and Hamas ended up

winning.

You know, they won an election, they’ve been punished for winning. I believe

that Hamas behaved very badly once they won. They should’ve acted more

responsibly as a government and they didn’t. But aside from that, the fact

is

that what the U.S. did was it couldn’t take yes for an answer. There was a

Hamas-Fatah agreement on how to move forward in Mecca. The U.S. refused to

honor the agreement. Aid was frozen. The closure of Gaza did not begin in

June

of 2007. In reality, the closure of Gaza and the sort of eeking, the letting

limited amounts of aid in and limited amounts of people out began in the

mid-1990s. And it has continued ever since. It was kind of a stranglehold in

2007, and it did come after Hamas beat Fatah in what had amounted to a

mini-civil war. The Egyptian role, however, needs to be understood, and it

has

not been understood, in part because Egypt is in a bind and doesn’t know how

to

explain itself and feels awkward about explaining itself. I’m not a fan of

how

they’ve handled their situation, but nevertheless the Egyptians understand

that

what Israel has tried to do is seal off Gaza as the occupying power, control

the

sea lanes, dominate the airspace, and control all access and egress, and

then

say to the Egyptians, you know what, you got it, it’s yours. And the

Egyptians

have said, we don’t want to take control of Gaza; Israel has the

responsibility

as occupying power. We’re not willing to relieve them of the burden of

dealing

with this. And so the Egyptians are in kind of a bind. If they open it up

and

free it and link it economically and every other way to their territory,

then

they’re going to own it, and the Israelis will simply walk away. And 20

years

from now, it’ll be absorbed into Egypt, and it will have nothing to do with

Palestine. Israel thinks in the long term, and the Egyptians are trying to

avoid this becoming a fait accompli.

CS: Finally, one of the things most characteristic of U.S. coverage

is

its focus on what the Israeli assault or even the blockade itself mean for

“U.S.-Israel relations” or for the Obama White House. We would always say,

of

course, it should start and end with human beings and human rights, but if

we’re going to follow that diplomatic angle, well, the news today says the

White House finds the blockade “untenable”—that’s not exactly a

clarion

call. Do you, briefly, see change in the U.S. role?

JZ: I see the U.S. today, one week later, being where they should

have

been on the first day, and they should have been evolving since then. They

started in a horrifically ambiguous place, they end up a little bit better

today, but they have a long way to go. The blockade has to end, Israel has

to

be held accountable for what they did, and the Palestinians have to be able

to

breath free. All three things must occur if the U.S. is to deliver on the

promise of the president’s speech in Cairo. I don’t hold any hope for that.

But

I think that if there’s any clarion call, it’s that Palestinians should be

free,

the blockade should end, and Israel should be held accountable for its

piracy.

And it’s murder on the open seas, of nine innocent people.

CS: We’ve been speaking with James Zogby, president of the

Arab-American

Institute, and author of the forthcoming book, Arab Voices: What They Are

Saying to Us, and Why it Matters.

Thank you for being with us today on <span

class=”media_outlet”>CounterSpin.

JZ: Thank you very much.

SCOTT HORTON

CounterSpin: The U.S. detainment camp at
Guantánamo is in the news

again.

On May 29 the Washington Post ran a story

about a new U.S. report that concludes that most of the remaining
Guantánamo

detainees should be released, and recommending that only about a third of

them

be held for trials, military commissions, or indefinite detention. These

findings, which echo earlier reports and studies, have not gone down well

with

many on the right, who insist on the old Bush propaganda line that

Guantánamo

is still home to the terror war’s “worst of the worst.” Indeed former Bush

officials and supporters have mounted a formal campaign targeting the

detainees

and even the lawyers who have represented them.

Joining us to talk about
Guantánamo, the government report and the right’s

response, is Scott Horton. Horton follows the
Guantánamo story closely at

his

Harpers legal issues blog, No Comment.

Welcome back to CounterSpin, Scott Horton!

Scott Horton: Great to be with you.

CS: Well, I’d like to begin with the detainees. This latest report is

really concerned with the 240 or so detainees that have been held since

Obama

became president. But you did a story recently on your <span

class=”media_outlet”>Harper’sblog that looked at the disposition of

all

779 detainees who have been held on
Guantánamo since it opened. What did you

find?

SH: Well it’s really a fascinating case study because though we find

that

579 of them have been released, and most of those releases were by the Bush

administration itself, which is a tacit accepting of the fact that they

shouldn’t have been detained in the first place. And then with respect to

the

balance, we have a large number of habeus corpus cases pending. So far we’ve

had 50 of them decided, and the government has lost 36 out of those 50

cases.

So that means 72 percent of the cases going against the government. And

that’s

with respect to just the little bit less than 200 remaining detainees who

were

not released. So that suggests that the government’s case against the

detainee

population overall is extremely weak. Although we do have to recognize after

September 2006, President Bush took the worst of the worst, who were not

then

held at
Guantánamo but in fact in black sites operated by the CIA, and he

put

them in
Guantánamo. So of those since 2006, we have had a population of 16

serious terrorist offenders in
Guantánamo.

CS: Well by now there’ve been several studies and reports suggesting

that

the great majority of
Guantánamo detainees were far from the worst of the

worst.

But the right won’t let go of this. Former Bush aide Marc Thiessen, for

instance, attacked the new government study in a <span

class=”media_outlet”>Washington Postcolumn that began like this:

Now, Thiessen goes on to say that there’s proof that 95 percent of those

detained are confirmed terrorists. Now of course the right’s
Guantánamo

campaign is far bigger than a column or two. Can you tell us a little bit

about

the right’s campaign and why former Bush people like Thiessen, Bill Kristol,

and

the Cheneys seem to see so much at stake here?

SH: Well, I think we have to go back to the original idea for

Guantánamo,

and we know now from documents released from the Bush era that as the

original

plan was formulated for this prison camp, it was designed to hold roughly

600-800 commanders, serious leadership figures from Al Qaeda and the

Taliban.

And these plans were concluded early in 2002, and in fact late in 2001,

American forces believed that they have surrounded exactly this population,

the

people who should be held in
Guantánamo. In two redoubts in

Afghanistan—one was at Tora Bora, and the other, where the larger

number

were, was in the city of Kunduz. Kunduz was encircled, it was being

bombarded,

and then something strange happened: the U.S. bombardment ceased, an air

corridor was opened, and Pakistani transport planes came in and evacuated

out

of Kunduz a number of people, probably about 1,500 altogether. We now know

from

information that’s been collected from the Pakistani ISI—a large part

of

it the work of Ahmed Rashid, prominent journalist—that that included

600-800 Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, in fact the very people for whom the

Guantánamo camp was built. Who authorized this evacuation? Well, we know the

answer. Dick Cheney did. So Dick Cheney made the decision basically to allow

these people to escape and hide out in Pakistan, where most of them still

are

today, the target of this drone campaign. That’s the dark secret that sits

in

the background of the
Guantánamo camp’s history. In fact, the administration

stepped in and began filling the camp with nobodies—I mean with people

who certainly were not the sorts of Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership figures

for

whom it was built. And the Bush administration itself acknowledged that when

it

released 500, I think about 540 of these prisoners, the majority of the

camp’s

historical prison population.

CS: So you’re saying that Thiessen, Bill Kristol, and the Cheneys are

hanging on to this because they’re afraid of that dark secret getting out.

And

tell us a little bit more about the campaign. What are Kristol and the

Cheneys

and Thieseen doing here?

SH: Well, it’s definitely vulnerability. In fact I think if you look

at

Cheney and his own attempts to address this issue, he’s always adopted the

position that the best defense is an offense, but his position clearly is

extremely defensive. He knows that there are these dark secrets, which are

highly embarrassing, highly embarassing to him. And I think this agressive

campaign is designed to cover. And Mark Thiessen, I think one of the

fascinating points here, he is sprending pretty much all his time working on

this project. His work and his writing parallels perfectly work that the

Keep

America Safe group, which is headed Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol, he writes

column after column backing up what they do. How does Mark Thiessen earn a

living? Well we know when he left speechwriting for the White House, he set

up

a publicist office, Oval Office Writers, and he’s not disclosed who his

clients

are, but I think if you look at what he writes and what he advocates, it’s

quite

obvious for whom he’s working. But he’s not disclosing this client

relationship,

even though he seems to be devoting all of his energy and his writing at the

Washington Post to the service of his

clients.

CS: Scott Horton, what is the lesson of the U.S.’s
Guantánamo

experience

of letting the White House decide who our enemies are, while discarding due

process and the rule of law?

SH: Well, I think the original concept of
Guantánamo is a completely

defensible and reasonable concept, that is holding 600-800 leadership

figures

there. The problems began when political figures began to dictate how it

would

be operated, and moved to a rejection of traditional military rules and

military procedures. So it was the intense politicization of
Guantánamo and

the

detention process that’s lead to all of our headaches and embarrassments.

CS: We’ve been speaking with Scott Horton, a contributing editor at

<span

class=”media_outlet”>Harper’smagazine and the No Comment blogger on

Harper’s website.

Thanks again for joining us today on <span

class=”media_outlet”>CounterSpin, Scott Horton!

SH: Great to be with you.