Author Archive for Brad L
Obama is not a Socialist
Today’s absolutely essential Democracy Now! details the similarities of Obama and McCain’s approach to the bailout, Obama’s Wall Street-friendly economic leanings, the difference between “debt nationalization” and socialism, and what will be an increasing pressure to look at actual socialist solutions as the risk of industry collapse, particularly the auto industry, increases.
A must listen!
Bingo.
From NYTimes:
“Those who were complaining, only months ago, that excessive regulation was making American markets uncompetitive, had it exactly wrong. It was a lack of regulation of the shadow financial system and its players that allowed this to happen. The regulators might not have gotten it right if they had tried to put limits on leverage, or assure that it was clear what risks were being taken, in the world of derivatives and securitizations. But deciding not to even try, and assuming that risks traded secretly would somehow end up in the hands of those most able to bear them, reflected ideology, not analysis.”
An option that Lehman Brothers is considering.
It seems obvious that they’re going to have to do something – credit default swaps for Lehman are rising, and a secret effort to attract a sale to Chinese or Korean investors failed.
A lot of this NEEDS to be taken with a grain of salt. Lehman has long been rumored to be the next Bear Stearns, and such fires only need so much gasoline: a recent Vanity Fair story highlights the momentum and potentially deliberate manipulation of rumors surrounding Bear Stearns prior to its collapse. A pretty great read.
Joe Vogler, the head of the separatist AIP Party, was killed during a PLASTIC EXPLOSIVES DEAL GONE BAD.
The Palin story gets better and better.
I regularly hosted The New Afternoon Show on WNYU from 2004-2007, and filled in last Friday for some fine rock and reggae action. Enjoy!
8/1/08
| 1. | Sexteto Bolona “Te Prohibido el Cabaret” I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore (Mississippi) LP [C] |
| 2. | Simon Wickham-Smith/Richard Youngs “Cleveland” Veil (Insignificant) CD [N] |
| 3. | Freiland “Geduld” Total 9 (Kompakt) CD [C] [N] |
| 4. | Rome “Beware Soul Snatchers (Andy Bryant Small Heavenly Breathing Mix)” Beware Soul Snatchers/Pax Romana (Thrill Jockey) 12″ |
| 5. | Sugar Minott “Informer” Dance Hall Showcase Vol. II (Wackies) CD [N] |
| 6. | Silver Jews “My Pillow is the Threshold” Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea (Drag City) CD [N] |
| 7. | Dredd Foole “Once I Was Not” Kissing the Contemporary Bliss (Family Vineyard) CD [N] |
| 8. | Factums “Mushrooms” The Sistrum (Sacred Bones) LP [N] |
| 9. | David Bowie “Red Money” Lodger (Rca) LP |
| 10. | Circle X “Prehistory Part II” Prehistory (Blue Chopsticks) CD [N] |
| 11. | Kazino “Binary” Disco Not Disco: Post Punk, Electro & Leftfield Disco Classics 1974-1986 (Strut) CD [C] |
| 12. | Ackie “Call Me Rambo” Basic Replay (Basic Replay) CD [C] [N] |
| 13. | Paavoharju “Italialaisella Laivalla” Laulu Laakson Kukista (Fonal) CD [N] |
| 14. | Thollem Mcdonas & Arrington de Dionyso “InThe” Intuition, Science, and Sex (Edgetone) CD [N] |
| 15. | Bodies of Water “Only You” A Certain Feeling (Secretly Canadian) CD [N] |
| 16. | Echo & the Bunnymen “The Killing Moon” Ocean Rain (Sire) LP |
| 17. | The Black Angels “You On the Run” Directions to See a Ghost (Light In The Attic) CD [N] |
| 18. | thomas function “Sherman’s March” Celebration! (Alive) CD [N] |
| 19. | The Scenics “Sister Ray” How Does It Feel To Be Loved? (Dream Tower) CD [N] |
| 20. | Gaye Bykers on Acid “Better Off Dedd” Stewed to the Gills (Virgin) LP |
| 21. | billy bao “I Am Billy Bao, Right Here Right Now!” Dialectics of Shit (Parts Unknown) LP [N] |
| 22. | Noise Unit “Struktur” Deceit/Struktur (Wax Trax) 12″ |
| 23. | Glamma Kid “Fashion Magazine” An England Story (Soul Jazz) CD [N] |
| 24. | Unitz “The Drop” Mary Anne Hobbs: Evangeline (Planet Mu) CD [C] [N] |
| 25. | Shy Child “Angel of Mercy” Noise Won’t Stop (Kill Rock Stars) CD [N] |
| 26. | dj scotch egg “Scotch Circus” Drumized (Load) CD [N] |
| 27. | Frustration “Shake Me” Relax (Born Bad) CD [N] |
| 28. | The Crystal Stilts “Converging In The Quiet” S/T (Woodsist) CD [N] |
| 29. | Lungfish “Hallucinatorium” The Unanimous Hour (Dischord) CD |
| 30. | Grails “Stoned at the Taj Again” Take Refuge in Clean Living (Important) CD [N] |
| 31. | Blues Addicts “Coward Way” S/T (Shadoks) CD [N] |
| 32. | The Bug ft. Warrior Queen “Poison Dart” London Zoo (Ninja Tune) CD [N] {GAHHH!!!} |
| 33. | Chaka Demus & Pliers “Mister Mention” Mister Mention (Taxi) 12″ |
| 34. | Matias Aguayo “Minimal” Total 9 (Kompakt) CD [C] [N] |
| 35. | Sir Victor Uwaifo “Idogo (Ekassa 42)” Guitar-Boy Superstar (Soundway) CD [N] |
| 36. | Pyha “#2″ The Haunted House (Tumult) CD [N] |
Click here for streaming audio and MP3 download of the show.
“The PlayStation War”
A recent story documenting human rights abuses in the pursuit of coltan, a precious metal used in the production of, among other electronic devices, PlayStations. The launch of the PS2 was a major contributor to the rise in coltan prices.
When the war began in 1998, the race for every adult in the West to have a cell phone was well past the starting line. A computer in every household was also becoming a reality. And by the end of 2000, millions of Americans were still waiting for a PlayStation 2, a second-generation video game console, which SONY says was having manufacturing issues.
To fulfill the personal-tech desires of hundreds of millions of consumers, SONY and other manufacturers needed electric capacitors. These capacitors were made with tantalum, which is able to withstand extreme heat. So as multiple technological revolutions occurred in unison at the end of the 1990s, the worldwide demand for tantalum began to boil.
Like today’s demand for oil, this fever puts tremendous stress on tantalum’s supply chain. From the beginning of 1999 to the beginning of 2001, the world price of tantalum went from US $49.00 a pound to $275.00 a pound. At the same time, the demand and price of coltan also began skyrocketing; coltan is needed to make tantalum.
By 1999, the Rwandan army and several closely linked militias had swarmed over the hills of eastern DRC and took many coltan mines by force, said the UN. The Rwandan army that year would eventually make at least $250 million by selling DRC coltan with the help of mining companies and metal brokers. The estimates of the war’s dead range from hundreds of thousands to several million. A couple million Congolese are believed to have been displaced.
Dusted Review: Sun City Girls
For all the talk of Sun City Girls’ genre-hopping, they never seemed to undergo any wholesale revision or escape their singular aesthetic, which is mostly to their credit. It’d be foolish to argue that they trapped themselves or failed to bridge disparate strains of psychedelia, punk, exotica and cartoon-splatter. The music is problematic, but that’s not due to a lack of subjective generosity or curiosity on the group’s behalf.
Click here to read the rest of the review.
Awesome Movie Image #2
On this tip, check out an incredible post from David Bordwell concerning the development of continuity editing in the 1910s. Basically, at some point between 1913 and 1920, the average shot length decreased from over 10 seconds to between 4-6 seconds, which is more or less comparable to today’s average shot lengths. Bordwell tries to find out what happened in that time period.
The month of July, electronic-wise.
7/2/2008
| Artist “Track” Release (Label) FORMAT | ||||||||||||||||||
|
Streaming audio and MP3 download available here.
7/9/08
| 1. | Bruce Conner/Toni Basil “Breakaway” MP3 {r.i.p. Bruce} |
| 2. | J.O. Mallander “In Reality” More Time – Hits & Variations 1968-1970 (Anoema) CD |
| 3. | Jeremie “C’est Une Belle Journee” Bokan! Music in the Margin (Sub Rosa) CD [C] [N] |
| 4. | Matmos “Les Folies Francaises” Supreme Balloon (Matador) CD [N] |
| 5. | Roman Fluegel/Sven Nath “Trashbin Dance” Cocoon Compilation H (Cocoon) CD [C] [N] |
| 6. | AER “Speakers” Project (Touch) 7″ [N] |
| 7. | Paul Williams “Santa Pod Raceway” Santa Pod (Ash International) CD |
| 8. | Alec Empire “I Can See The Winds Of Saturn” C-pij 02 (c-pij) 7″ |
| 9. | Byetone “Heart” Death of a Typographer (Raster-noton) CD [N] |
| 10. | Synaesthesia “Hemisphere” Ambient Rituals (Hypnotic) CD [C] |
| 11. | Alva Noto “U_90″ Unitxt (Raster-noton) CD [N] |
| 12. | trg “Hoods Up” Missed Calls (Subway) 12″ [N] |
| 13. | The Bug ft. Warrior Queen “Poison Dart” London Zoo (Ninja Tune) CD [N] |
| 14. | Vibert/Simmonds “Open File” Rodulate (Rephlex) CD [N] |
Streaming audio and MP3 download available here.
7/16/08
| 1. | Ø “Loihdittu” Oleva (Sahko) CD [N] |
| 2. | Namlook “Environmental Atoms” Atom (Ambient World/Fax) CD [N] |
| 3. | Mono Junk “Fade Away” Gloom (Dum) CD |
| 4. | Jeph Jerman “Hindsight” Hindson (Con-V) CD [N] |
| 5. | Turntable Terranova “Symplisis” Turntable Terranova (Compost) 12″ |
| 6. | Felix Kubin und das Mineralorchester “The New Weapon” Music for Theatre and Radio Play (Dekoder) CD [N] |
| 7. | Qulfus “Mr. Baby Postman” Motown Meltdown (Gigante) CD [N] |
| 8. | DJ Speedranch & Janski Noise “Cinematic Haunts of the Intense Claustrophobic Goosander” Mix Oscillations – Celluloid Mata Deconstructed (Noise Museum) CD |
| 9. | DJ Scud & Christoph Fringeli “XXX” Bodysnatcher (Ambush) 12″ |
| 10. | Random “Mr. & Mrs. No Smoking Sign” Too Stoned To Sneeze Without Regretting It (Symbiotic) CD |
| 11. | Ø “S-bahn” Oleva (Sahko) CD [N] |
| 12. | Ando “Templ” Habitat (Bine) CD [N] |
Streaming audio and MP3 download available here.
7/23/08
| 1. | The Birdwatcher “Music Minus One” Assumed Identity #3 (Assumed Idendity) 7″ |
| 2. | Kluster “#6″ Admira (Important) CD [N] |
| 3. | Sammy Dee “Ultrastretch” Ultrastretch (Perlon) 12″ [N] |
| 4. | Tu M’ “You?” Is That You? (Cronica) CD [N] |
| 5. | Stephen Vitiello “Crackle Box, Thumb Piano” Box Music (12k) CD [N] |
| 6. | The Bug “Freak Freak” London Zoo (Ninja Tune) CD [N] |
| 7. | Caretaker “Recollected Memories from the Museum of Garden History” Recollected Memories from the Museum of Garden History (Vukzid) CD [N] |
| 8. | Vladislav Delay “Anima” Anima (Huume) CD [N] |
| 9. | MLZ “Crossed Swords (Alice Loop)” Crossed Swords (Alice Loop) (Modern Love) 12″ [N] |
Streaming audio and MP3 download available here.
This is some catchy shit
It will be an improvement over Batman Begins, mainly because BB was overlong, overdark, and, in its action scenes, unintelligible, with a terribly uninteresting villain. I couldn’t have cared less about “The Scarecrow.” Also, ”origin” stories inherently contain an uphill battle to win my interest.
I know, I know: ”It’s necessary to align yourself with the mythos of the story and to appreciate the scale of the created world.” Fair enough, but if extratextual material is necessary for, rather than a contribution to, the enjoyment of a film, that created world better be pretty damn interesting. To this extent, how interesting can a superhero movie really be?
I know, I know: “A superhero film both reflects and distends the emotions and situations that one encounters in daily life, thereby creating a useful prism through which to view our toils.” Fair enough, but superhero films aren’t born in a nurturing creative environment. They all have been, first and foremost, product designed to appeal to the target audience and sell soft drinks. Pop can matter, but this is another uphill battle.
I still have high hopes for The Dark Knight, but I doubt it will be the masterpiece that some are claiming it to be. Is The Dark Knight really the best cinema has to offer, a statement of who we are, what we can do, and where we’re going? To this end, two very useful reviews that hit on this feeling:
I’m not a guy—or for that matter a critic—who believes or has ever believed in genre hierarchies, but I don’t know, maybe my aesthetic arteries are hardening—entertaining arguments about the value/meaning of the likes of Hancock is increasingly making me (metaphorically) throw up my hands and say, “For feck’s sake, guys, this isn’t Stalker or The Red and the White or Kanal or Satantango or Muriel or what ever we’re talking about here, it’s a commitedly vulgar frickin’ superhero movie that’s been cut to shreds the better to flatter/insult its target audience.” Come on. Can we at least pretend we’re adults for 20 minutes or so? Apparently not, is what I’m thinking much of the past few weeks, entertaining dark thoughts about how if what 1968 embodied was a cultural explosion, what 2008 is building up to is an implosion into a state of permanent cultural adolescence.
Aaron Eckhart’s cop role in The Black Dahlia humanized the complexity of crime and morality. But as Harvey Dent, sorrow transforms him into the vengeful Two-Face, another Armageddon freak in Nolan’s sideshow. The idea is that Dent proves heroism is improbable or unlikely in this life. Dent says, “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become a villain.” What kind of crap is that to teach our children, or swallow ourselves? Such illogic sums up hipster nihilism, just like Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World. Putting that crap in a Batman movie panders to the naiveté of those who have not outgrown the moral simplifications of old comics but relish cynicism as smartness. That’s the point of The Joker telling Batman, “You complete me.” Tim Burton might have ridiculed that Jerry Maguire canard, but Nolan means it—his hero is as sick as his villain.
Man’s struggle to be good isn’t news. The difficulty only scares children.
Random Thoughts on Godard
There’s been much discussion as of late about Jean-Luc, mostly due to the publication of a new biography by New Yorker contributor Richard Brody. I haven’t read the book yet, but have been following the internet noise over the past month or so. The New York Times got around to reviewing the book this past weekend, which has occasioned some thoughts.
In the review, Stephanie Zacharek writes:
As Brody, a film critic and editor at The New Yorker, makes clear in the preface, he still believes in Godard’s relevance, claiming that the resolutely not-retired filmmaker, who has lived in Rolle, Switzerland, for the past 30 years, continues to work “at an extraordinarily high level of artistic achievement.”
That’s a lovely, optimistic sentiment, but one that much of Godard’s post-1967 output doesn’t deserve: Empty shadowboxes like “First Name: Carmen” (1983) or “Notre Musique” (2004) seem designed to alienate viewers rather than draw them closer, which is what happens when any artist begins to live entirely inside his or her own head.
I would counter that there’s a difference between offering an “optimistic sentiment” and taking a generous approach. Brody may be overreaching, and Notre Musique is undoubtedly a seriously flawed film, but to proclaim it an “empty shadowbox” is hyperbolic and shows a lack of generous attenuation to Godard’s political/aesthetic reckonings. Zacharek continues:
The second half of “Everything Is Cinema” covers the films Godard made after 1967, and it’s a very long half. Brody tries to energize us for this interminable home stretch.
So, the last, oh, forty years of an artist’s career have been “an interminable home stretch” to an admittedly dazzling first ten? Later:
Throughout his career, Godard’s political ideology has often amounted to little more than slogans, attention-grabbing sound bites…Although Brody repeatedly challenges Godard’s limited ideology, he does buy a little too readily into the notion that a work of art informed by political ideas is inherently more meaningful or more interesting than one with, say, a great deal of aesthetic inventiveness or emotional depth.
[...]
Godard’s political ideas have never been the strongest elements of his movies. Unfortunately, after 1968, they often became their focal point.
So, since Godard’s politics were facile, it was unfortunate that he decided to focus on them.
I think Zacharek hasn’t bothered to distinguish the medium from the message. From Gilbert Adair’s review of the book:
As for the cinema proper, it was Godard who first conceived of editing as the art of disconti nuity rather than continuity. Godard who paid retrospective homage to the neglected icons of popular culture. Godard who proposed that the filmic image had to be flattened out for the sake of its own autonomy. And Godard who foresaw that that image was ultimately destined to dethrone the word as the irreducible unit of communication. Marshall McLuhan, another major theorist of such a revolutionary semantic displacement, continued to have recourse to words to describe the end of the word, whereas Godard used images and, if words, then words as images.
Assume that Godard’s output is intended to be politically revolutionary (a notion that Zacharek implicitly seems to find fault with (as if real change would be as palatable as Breathless)), rather than a personal expression. If words are less powerful than images, how does one begin to communicate complicated ideas, let alone complicated revolutionary ideas? Words (sound-bites)-as-images was Godard’s chosen path, and his breakthough was to reconcile and communicate words-as-image/film-as-image into a text. Word – image – film = text.
Two problems: how to get beyond the surface level of the sound-bite (which Zacharek refuses to do), and how to make the sound-bite emotionally appealing. I’d argue that the near-impossibility of the former grants the latter. Godard may have thought that editing (a.k.a. the language of film) could be the thrust, but his revolution failed: techniques and ideas were co-opted and neutered with no punch-back from the revolutionaries. As such, the bulk of Godard’s post-60’s work has been a lament. In this light, look at this clip from Notre Musique, which Zacharek called an “empty shadowbox”:
I think Godard refuses to answer the question at the end because it misses the point. The question is not whether digital can save cinema, but whether cinema can ever be saved, or rather, if cinema itself can save. There’s a wealth of sadness in this clip. One might say it has ”emotional depth.”
R.I.P. Bruce Conner
Sad news indeed.
I gravitate towards those avant-garde artists that let the strength of the concept (and all “avant-garde” art is necessarily conceptual once understood as such - different and startling forms of expression are only properly received when understood in context, a property that, although arguably more important to the receiver, undoubtedly effects the creation) propel the work, rather than any sort of brutish desire to “change the world” or to “change perceptions.” These are not mutually exclusive needs, but an artist’s true faith in the former will be his or her primary source of longevity; everything else should be bottled in a time capsule and buried for the aliens to find.
Bruce Conner understood this divide, and his best work exemplifies the thrill of art’s “it-ness” – the ecstatic Frankenstein monster of the creative product, seperate from the artist and set loose in the world. His films may be more obscure in their politics than a Godard, but this is obviously a willing sacrifice: if anything, Conner is more concerned with the interplay between text and image, thus the political thrust is subjugated to Conner’s extratextual fascinations. The films are dead serious, yet lighter than air.
Via GreenCineDaily, Ray Pride’s entry on Conner is a great place to check out clips of his work. Unfortunately, I can’t locate any copies of Report online, which might help one make sense of my above ramble, but Breakaway, from 1966, is a more-than-adequate substitute. Few serious (as opposed to ironic or satirical) artists are this much fun:
Video removed due to comment by some lawyer-dude who said that he was representing Jean Conner, Bruce’s widow, and that they were both adamantly opposed to online presentations of Bruce’s work. I get it. Go see his films in a theatre.
Not surprising or really unknown, but still pretty incredible.
The idea that the U.S. would have been unable to halt the executions is somewhat laughable, as President Rhee’s government was analogous to the Diem government in South Vietnam – more or less a proxy that enjoyed American funding and military support in exchange for aligning itself with U.S. interests.
But of course, it’s not like real efforts were made:
“When Washington’s British allies protested, Dean Rusk, assistant secretary of state, told them U.S. commanders were doing “everything they can to curb such atrocities,” according to a Rusk memo of Oct. 28, 1950.
But on Dec. 19, W.J. Sebald, State Department liaison to MacArthur, cabled Secretary of State Dean Acheson to say MacArthur’s command viewed the killings as a South Korean ‘internal matter’ and had efrained from taking any action.’”
Add this to Vietnam and the 600,000 killed in Indonesia by the U.S. backed Suharto regime, I suppose.
Dusted Review: Dan Friel
On their last two albums, Parts and Labor haven’t eschewed their more experimental tendencies so much as incorporated them into an anthemic rock framework, with somewhat mixed results. The grit is still there, but, when buried underneath soaring vocals about great divides, it’s admittedly difficult to groove on the sounds alone. Basically, if frontman Dan Friel’s vocals aren’t your cup of tea, you’d be forgiven for entirely foregoing the operation.
To read the rest of the review, click here.
More new stuff than you can shake a stick at.
Artist “Track” Release (Label) FORMAT
| 1. | Sawako + Richard Chartier + Shinjiro Yamaguchi “November 9, 2007″ November 9, 2007 (Term) CD [N] |
| 2. | Hexlove-Faloulah “Exits Very Damp” Free Jazz From Slavery (Weird Forest) LP [N] |
| 3. | Constant Malva “Un Ecrivain Proletaire” Magritte, groupe Surrealiste de Bruxelles et Rupture, Volume 2 (Sub Rosa) CD [C] |
| 4. | Vladislav Delay “Anima (version)” Anima (Huume) CD [N] |
| 5. | Exos “Inhale” Inhale (Force Inc.) 12″ |
| 6. | Dan Friel “Desert Song” Ghost Town (Important) CD [N] |
| 7. | Richard H. Kirk “Monochrome Dream” The Number of Magic (Warp) CD |
| 8. | Vibert/Simmonds “Rare Peel” Rodulate (Rephlex) CD [N] |
| 9. | Ando “Optal” Habitat (Bine) CD [N] |
| 10. | Justus Kohncke “Yacht” Safe and Sound (Kompakt) CD [N] |
| 11. | Bruce Haack “Party Machine” Haackula (Omni) CD [N] |
Streaming audio and MP3 downlaod of the show available here.
I’m pleased with the new Ando release. It’s been awhile since Taylor Deupree stretched his dancier legs – death to the bliss-outs.
Something about me: I love stories about roller coaster accidents. Because of the sheer force involved, the injuries are sometimes ludicrously grotesque, and you’d have to be made out of stone to not get a dark chuckle out of stories like this:
Teen decapitated by ride at Six Flags
To summarize: the kid jumped two six foot fences in a restricted area to get his hat back. Little did he know that the roller coaster would smash right into and decapitate him.
I highly suggest a visit to RideAccidents.com, which has an inventory of every amusement park and roller coaster fatality from 1972 to 1997. Two highlights:
Sunday, April 30, 1989 – A 6-year-old boy died in an accident in Farmington, Utah after being struck by a roller coaster car which he had fallen from. The boy attempted to vacate his compartment after the ride had come to a stop past the normal boarding area. The operator decided to send the train around the track again, and as the ride restarted, the boy fell to the ground, which was less than four feet beneath the track. He climbed back up through the track and was struck by the car as it returned. Apparently, the operator could not have stopped the ride once the train had reached the top of the incline, as the ride was gravity-driven.
Monday, June 2, 1997 – A 17-year-old girl was killed and 32 teenagers were injured when a water slide collapsed at Waterworld USA park in Concord, California. A group of high school seniors celebrating their graduation ignored a lifeguard’s warning and rushed past him in an attempt to slide down the ride all together. The combined weight of the students exceeded the original design load by 4 times, and a section of the ride, a Banzai Pipeline water slide, collapsed. Some riders fell from heights of 30 feet. The students admitted that they were trying to break the school record for the largest number of students riding the slide at one time.
Feingold on FISA
A pretty incredible speech from Sen. Russ Feingold today on the pending vote to authorize vast new warrantless wiretapping privileges to the executive branch and to grant retroactive immunity to telecoms that allegedly participated in illegal spying programs.
The main reason that pundits put forward in supporting immunity is that, post 9/11, the telecoms were doing their patriotic duty by complying with government requests and therefore shouldn’t be punished for giving what was asked of them. The below excerpt from Feingold’s speech puts this argument in its place:
Some supporters of retroactively expanding this already existing immunity provision argue that the telephone companies should not be penalized if they relied on a high-level government assurance that the requested assistance was lawful. Mr. President, as superficially appealing as that argument may sound, it utterly ignores the history of FISA.
Telephone companies have a long history of receiving requests for assistance from the government. That’s because telephone companies have access to a wealth of private information about Americans – information that can be a very useful tool for law enforcement. But that very same access to private communications means that telephone companies are in a unique position of responsibility and public trust. And yet, before FISA, there were basically no rules to help the phone companies resolve the tension between the government’s requests for assistance in foreign intelligence investigations and the companies’ responsibilities to their customers.
This legal vacuum resulted in serious governmental abuse and overreaching. The abuses that took place are well documented and quite shocking. With the willing cooperation of the telephone companies, the FBI conducted surveillance of peaceful anti-war protesters, journalists, steel company executives – and even Martin Luther King Jr.
Congress decided to take action. Based on the history of, and potential for, government abuses, Congress decided that it was not appropriate for telephone companies to simply assume that any government request for assistance to conduct electronic surveillance was legal. Let me repeat that: a primary purpose of FISA was to make clear, once and for all, that the telephone companies should not blindly cooperate with government requests for assistance.
At the same time, however, Congress did not want to saddle telephone companies with the responsibility of determining whether the government’s request for assistance was a lawful one. That approach would leave the companies in a permanent state of legal uncertainty about their obligations.
So Congress devised a system that would take the guesswork out of it completely. Under that system, which was in place in 2001, and is still in place today, the companies’ legal obligations and liability depend entirely on whether the government has presented the company with a court order or a certification stating that certain basic requirements have been met. If the proper documentation is submitted, the company must cooperate with the request and will be immune from liability. If the proper documentation has not been submitted, the company must refuse the government’s request, or be subject to possible liability in the courts.
The telephone companies and the government have been operating under this simple framework for 30 years. The companies have experienced, highly trained, and highly compensated lawyers who know this law inside and out.
In view of this history, it is inconceivable that any telephone companies that allegedly cooperated with the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program did not know what their obligations were. And it is just as implausible that those companies believed they were entitled to simply assume the lawfulness of a government request for assistance. This whole effort to obtain retroactive immunity is based on an assumption that doesn’t hold water.
If they received the appropriate legal documents, they should prove it. If they didn’t, then they broke the law. Though he has vowed to fight for an amendment stripping immunity from the bill, Obama will still support the bill even if the amendment doesn’t pass. Send an e-mail to his campaign to yell at him for this.
Also, Glenn Greenwald is basically the authoritative source for all things FISA. There’s plenty more where this came from.
Marc B
Brad L
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