glenn greenwald « shoqvalue.com

Update: This term has been recast as “Puritopian.” Emo Progressive was never coined by either Joy Ann Reid or myself. It had already gotten traction before we came together and tried to give it greater definition. We succeeded, perhaps too well. Like others, we were never comfortable with it because it was far too disparaging of emotion, which in itself is not a bad thing. At the same time, we never much liked “Pro Left” either, as many of the people associated with the behavior and attitudes were amateur writers and boggers. Thus, we now feel that “Puritopian” is a better term of art to decribe the beliefs and attitudes that were being discussed on this page. You can read more about the term as soon as I have time to write it up here. For now, just substitute it wherever you seer Emo Progressive below.

Note: Joy Ann Reid and I posted the definition below on Urban Dictionary. But it really needs more discussion than what can be posted there. So this post will serve as an ongoing primer on the subject, and will be expanded incrementally. If you have comments or ideas for things to include, please post them below.

Emo Progressive

The Original Definition, reprinted from Urban Dictionary

Emo Progressive (or “emoprog”) is a self-described liberal or progressive, often with strong libertarian leanings, whose primary political orientation is to be angry, dissatisfied and unhappy with the state of the nation at any given time, because in their view, liberal policies are not being implemented quickly enough or articulated forcefully enough. They have particular contempt for Democratic presidents.

Emoprogs are ideological purists who disdain compromise and incremental change, which they see as “selling out” classical liberal ideas like full employment, an end to all wars, state secrets, and liberal social policy.

Emoprogs dislike Republicans but reserve their greatest disdain for Democratic presidents, whom they relentlessly attack for not meeting a set of ideological goal posts that are constantly adjusted to ensure that the president will be deemed a disappointment, “not progressive enough” or “just like a Republican” no matter what policy achievements are made.

Emoprogs routinely dismiss or ignore congress’ role in making or impeding policy, believing presidents can simply “use the bully pulpit” and “fight” in order to overcome constitutional or legislative obstacles.

Emoprogs have a strong affinity for third party politics as a way to punish Democratic presidents. They are especially hostile to President Barack Obama and deem anyone who expresses a lack of ill will toward him to be “Obamabots” and enemies of liberalism.

Example1: After Eric Holder announced congress had blocked the Justice Department from trying 9/11 mastermind KSM in civilian court, social networks lit up with emo progressives complaining that President Obama had broken his campaign promise to end military tribunals. Their criticism did not mention congressional Democrats who helped block Holder.

Example2: Emoprogs dismissed healthcare reform as a failure, saying President Obama should have used the bully pulpit to achieve a single payer system, despite the fact that Sen. Harry Reid made it clear that such a plan could not pass the Senate.

Related Reading

In a pointed essay about how wrong some libertarian bloggers masquerading as progressives can be, Booman Tribune (@booMan23) outlines a very good summary of just some of the major progressive achievements of the Obama adminstration. Despite the incessant and destructive doom and gloom whining of a professional left that profits from all the hysteria they manufacture, and the general ineffectualness of a progressive movement that now seems to have been far more interested in bumper sticker slogans that made them feel good,rather than in the long,hard slog we needed to make real political change, the Obama administration has gotten far more accomplished than any of these do-nothing idealogues really want you to know about.

Why it that? Because the more you know, the more likely you are to vote. And that means Obama would easily win reelection, and that's just something they cannot stomach because he's not "just not progressive enough" to suit their suspiciously juvenile expectations or tastes.

Whether they actually feel that way, as so many irrelevant socialists, anarchists, and nihlists have always felt in our nation's history, or they are being well-paid by the right wing to appear as if they feel that way, is really irrelevant in the current shadow of an impending Right wing takeover of the White House and Senate. Their glum, disappointed, despiriting voices and screeds deface the pages of countless newspaper, broadcast, and blogging accounts so often, the apathy and despair in the electorate is palpable, and probably far greater than is being reflected in Obama's low approval numbers.

Those numbers always take a plunge after the latest "Caver in Chief" memes get planted by the Hamshers, Greenwalds, Uygurs, Schultzes, Moores, Ratigans, Daous, and the rest of the perpetually petulant rich people gambling with America's future so they can look important to the 7% of democrats who will never be happy with any Democratic president. These memes get traction not because they are true, but because these people get more traction in the main stream media than do all the other voices who actually lay out the facts without all the ruinously simplistic distortions and polemical firebombs designed to get them high-fives from their friends and sympathetic media hosts, and generally advance their career profiles and products, no matter how much they posture otherwise. Whether they really want to destroy the Obama presidency is secondary to the fact that they actually are. So why are they so culturally suicidal with so much at risk for our society? Ask them. They will spin you up a nice lie, replete with just enough pseudo-progressive blither blather that you might actually confuse them with sincere progressives. They're not.

But enough preamble. Here is Booman's list, mostly reformatted and marginally reworded to suit this purpose, and with just enough of his lead-in retained to provide some context:

On many of the issues that most concern [Glenn] Greenwald, the two parties are frighteningly alike. How do we get these assholes to stop the insane War on Drugs? How can we ever shrink the Pentagon down to a reasonable size? Is there any end to the expansion of the surveillance state? It seems like neither party has any interest in budging on any of these questions, and it's appalling.

But how about the areas where they do differ?

Obama has overhauled the food safety system

Advanced women's rights in the work place

Ended Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) in our military

Stopped defending DOMA in court.

Passed the Hate Crimes bill.

Appointed two pro-choice women to the Supreme Court.

Expanded access to medical care and provided subsidies for people who can't afford it.

Expanded the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP)

Fixed the preexisting conditions travesty [and rescissions] in health insurance.

Invested in clean energy.

Overhauled the credit card industry, making it much more consumer-friendly.

While Dodd-Frank bill was weak in many respects, it was still an extremely worthwhile start at re-regulating the financial sector.

He created a Elizabeth Warren's dream agency: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

He's done a lot for veterans

He got help for people whose health was injured during the clean-up after the 9/11 attacks.

None of these things were priorities for Republicans. They actively opposed, directly or indirectly through obstruction, every single item on this list. In fact, they succeeded in killing a Cap & Trade bill in the Senate after it had passed through the House.

All of these things are improvements that would not have occurred under a McCain-Palin administration. Moreover, a McCain-Palin administration would have moved in the other direction on most of these issues, or come up with even worse compromises.

Booman then concludes with:

The president has achieved a tremendous amount under the circumstances. And it matters greatly that he not be replaced by Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, or Michele Bachmann. Or even Ron Paul.

Thank you, Boo. It needed to be said.

Moreover, it needs to be repeated to everyone. Please use the Retweet button below and help do that. Thanks.

Note: :Last year, a team I assembled produced a far more extensive list and published it at ObamaAchievements.org. We are about to start updating it to include some of what can be found above, and certainly all of what is found in Milt Shook's much later effort, which you can read here:

TO THOSE WHO CONSIDER PRESIDENT OBAMA A DISAPPOINTMENT; YOU'RE JUST NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

I get asked a lot why I persist in relentlessly calling on serious journalists to investigate the outrageous hyperbole and egregiously distorted facts about accused Wikileaks source, Bradley Manning.

Well, perhaps we now have a good example of why it mattered so much to me. It seems that a famous story about Gitmo torture deaths by journalist, Scott Horton, doubted by some at the time, but which nonetheless won the National Magazine award, is now collapsing under a scrutiny that such a sensational story should have gotten when it first appeared.

Perhaps this fiasco will cause some to look again at the equally dubious Manning exaggerations now going into their 7th month.

Since last December, the Manning story has gone from a single post by Glenn Greenwald, who took ridiculous liberties with facts and his own beliefs to spin a yarn of government malfeasance bordering on conspiracy, torture, and a wanton disregard for established rules of military justice and decency. All without a single shred of proof, or even a credible source, outside of the accused's attorney, and a pretentious hacker named David House, who used 15 minutes of knowing Manning as a pretext for visiting him, then parlaying those visits into international fame by spewing psycho babble about Manning looking "catatonic" to his professional hacker's eye.

But as Greenwald often seems to do with his stories, that story had planted a seed that would then grow in the minds and blogs of the disaffected left, and particularly an angry civil liberties lobby that has welcomed any story of alleged abuse of power or other wrongdoing that could be used to shame, embarrass or inconvenience the Obama administration.

Within weeks, the story was being aggressively shipped from, and pimped by Jane Hamsher's FireDogLake.com, Truthout, and countless other progressive and wikileaks-obsessed news sites and bloggers, all thrilled to have another new outrage that they could use to drive traffic to their web sites.

Inevitably, mainstream news outlets picked up the buzz, and without even a phone call's worth of effort to confirm a single fact or allegation, they repeated Greenwald's views and conclusions almost verbatim, and ad nauseam.

Soon enough, driven by Greenwald's grotesquely inflated reputation as a reputed expert on matters of constitutional law and torture (he wrote a book), the stories were being purportedly "investigated" by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations. Of course, in every case, the only reason these organizations were looking into it at all, were, by their own admission, because of "reports" of abuse by none other than Glenn Greenwald himself (citing the lawyer, himself, or self described torture experts from Firedoglake). Such a small world.

Never one to let ethics dampen his enthusiasm for promoting a good story, Greenwald would make a huge noise every time one of these organizations would appear to confirm his conclusions that Manning was being tortured, rarely if ever hinting to his readers that their interest was generated by Greenwald himself.

Since then, I have continually tried to use my Twitter presence and blog to alert journalists and the media to the many holes, half-truths, and outright distortions in the Greenwald and Jane Hamsher narratives about the Manning story.

Detail: About Dr. Jeff Kaye, Firedoglake, and Pfc. Bradley Manning

More of my posts: http://shoqvalue.com/?s=manning

Alas,because of Greenwald's weird popularity, driven by the blogosphere's increasingly sloppy criteria for what a "journalist"is (Greenwald doesn't actually call himself one, but dresses in the trappings of one with nearly every word he writes), and probably his legendary tenacity for attacking and bullying critics, it was only a very few columnists like Joy Ann Reid who took my bait and looked deeper:

Finally, Someone Else Has Questions for Bradley Manning & David House

Joy-Ann has done a lot more work since, and tells me she has some revelations coming on this case. I am eagerly awaiting them.

In the meantime, I urge every thinking person to consider this embarrassing Scott Horton fail, and realize just how deeply susceptible we have all become to these sensational stories that can gain swift traction on the Internet, but which are rarely vetted by it.

Instead, the mainstream media diligently takes dictation, happy to echo the totally free content and accrued site visitations which they receive as a result of this thin and dubious reporting from the aggressive self-promoters like Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher.

I realize that liberals like to feel a kinship with victims of injustice. But we have more than enough real ones to worry about, without outrageous exaggerations, ginned-up by people always on the lookout for something which might be used to embarrass the Obama administration.

I will now head off to find some lunch, and await Greenwald's loyal minions (or Glenn himself as sock puppet), who will comment below that another "Obama cultist" has smeared their Dear Leader again.

I haven't even had breakfast yet, haven't blogged in a month, and I am still recovering from some weird 3-day, ass-whoopin flu or whatever, so this is gonna be rough. But I want to get it out there. It's important.

My friend @rootless_e, whom I have been urging my twitter stream to follow (but not often enough), has painted a scathing and laser-pointed portrait of the very punditocracy that I so often deride in my Twitter stream as a big part of the reason the Democrats can never find enough support to do anything, and why the Senate and perhaps even the White House are more than vulnerable to a calamitous GOP takeover in 2012.

Since Barack Obama began to find success in the Democratic primaries of 2008 he and his supporters have attracted virulent attacks from the professional left of liberal commentariat, lobbyists, pundits, think tankers, and academics. The underlying basis for the attacks is class – the class of professional liberals/leftists, cut off from any popular movement, derives its authority, prestige, and income from its status as the official interpreter and judge of "leftism" or liberalism. That's why they get writing assignments, TV invitations, grants, jobs in DC or NY writing position papers for liberal institutions. The term "professional left" describes a group of people who generate liberal/leftist opinion as their profession (these are not organizers). But while the professional right is disciplined and assiduous in supporting the Republican Party, the professional left is disciplined and assiduous in attacking the Democrats especially the Obama Democrats. There are three main reasons:

Full (Long) Story (after you finish up here, please

You won't see words like this coming from the very family of journalistic fame whores and careerists that he reveals here. They are that now legendary "professional left," which former Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was mocked for labeling, mostly by that very same Professional Left. Just as the right has learned to shame the media away from criticizing Fox news, or the Christian right, or lobbying, or the excesses of the defense industry, this class of raconteurial oligarchs are able to carp, snipe, whine, and snivel to a devout audience of readers about any topic that drives their papers, blogs, and podcasts, as well as their careers forward.

While of course, they fill the databases of their blogs and other publications with a daily supply of pedestrian stories of interest to Progressives, that's not the stuff of celebrity blogging, nor profitable page views, nor the advertising revenue (or prestige) that comes with them. For that, they often rely on sensational stories that cherry pick facts about anything likely to inflame a sincere Progressive's sensibility, especially if it comes from any kind of leak, action, or allegation made from, or about, the Obama administration.

They don't set out to provide passive, thoughtful, journalistic analysis of a story that helps a reader understand a policy, position or action, but rather, they laboriously contort any aspect of that story in order to make the reader see the issue and context as they do. It's advocacy journalism at its very worst, and by today's standards, William Randolph Hearst would be seen as a rank amateur at this game.

Whether about some latest White House leak, allegation of "torture," or alleged policy walk-back, from the headline of their work, they will set out on a polemical joyride which, even if failing to get that reader to entirely agree with their take, will often succeed in delivering them to a mental destination where they feel outraged, demoralized, or just apathetic about the President they elected, and the Democrats they must support if they don't want to see their country move even further back in time under another ruinous Republican rule.

They almost never talk about how that administration and party can be worked with constructively, without tearing apart the leadership (and morale of the electorate) in the process.

About the Voting Right's Act, LBJ once said to Martin Luther King, "make me do it." And so he did. But by taking to the streets and attacking THE problem and the people standing in the way of solutions, and not the President he needed to help make that change happen.

The popularity of the Professional Left is powered by the passionate, if often gullible beliefs of a large, but very fragmented progressive community, many of whom are rarely schooled in the complex nuances of how politics in America works in even the most basic ways, never mind how formidable are the forces aligned against anything which might alter the badly broken status quo.

They got used to reading many of these Pro Left bloggers and journalists back in the early days of blogging (way back around 2000-2005), when the Left was in the opposition, and anything "anti-Bush" would get them a loyal and devoted following. But after Obama took over, and Liberal blog traffic plummeted, and suddenly they had no easy outrage to use for marketing their 1500 WordPressed treatises on anything. So almost gleefully, they turned on the very president they helped elect, using a few problematic issues like Gitmo and the Wars, both very difficult problems to resolve in this age of obstruct-anything Republicans—without Making Him Do It.

And then there are the sites like FireDogLake and Salon's Glenn Greenwald,who push a daily diet of "Just like Bush" memes on their readers, not merely because they can drive traffic, but because they further their own political agendas, which are always some kind of weird flirtation with a third-party effort that might challenge the status quo. But rarely is this done with any focused or sustainable effort (or articles about people pushing same). Instead, it's just enough to excite the disillusioned, keep them reading, and probably likely to vote for whatever half-baked candidate or party they have been misled to believe is even plausible (e.g., Sanders, Kucinich, Paul, Johnson, Feingold, etc.).

Believing anything else, they are told, is giving in to a "fear the GOP evil more strategy," being sold by feckless Democrats who merely want to retain power at all costs. And of course, they are partly right about that. That's what any political party tries to do. But sadly, those fears of the great evil are also quite real, as recent events in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Florida are nicely illustrating for us. While we do need to find a way out of this quagmire of dysfunctional plutocracy, we will never do it by disemboweling what remains of a badly weakened democratic party, and casting the country into another dark age of GOP rule.

Despite the bleatings and blatherings of these Pro Left propagandists with their mixed ideologies and agendas, there still remains a huge difference between the parties. Only one of them can still be "Made To Do It." The other will be all to happy to do what we see happening at the state level now: crushing what remains of our democratic traditions and laws, and changing all the rules so they can disenfranchise as many voters as possible, thus helping to ensure that we will never be able to make any of them do the people's business again.

Now please read the piece. I have stolen none of its massively awesome thunder

Finally…

A real journalist steps up to knit together the many questions about the Manning story that you probably won't be reading at Firedoglake and Salon.com. But now, thanks to this post, we may finally see some from the rest of the stenographic media. Emphasis on "may."

I'm pleased that some of the work that my friends and I did is pointing out some of the gaping holes in the story around this Manning detention circus, and the fact that almost no one else has been taking a careful look at all the clowns. They've accepted uncritical, politically charged reporting from Greenwald, Hamsher, House, and FiredogLake, or entirely client-centric spin from Manning's attorney, nearly verbatim—for months.

@MSNBC and Miami Herald columnist Joyannreid writes:

How well does David House know Bradley Manning?

The issue of Manning’s cognitive function is relevant both because of the torture allegations being made, and because of more recent allegations that have surfaced about Manning’s state of mind going back perhaps to 2007.

And this:

So now I’m really confused. A guy who had possible links to Manning before his alleged theft of classified data and who was stopped by Homeland Security from getting on a plane and had his laptop seized in relation to the Manning case, is nonetheless permitted near exclusive access to the defendant at a U.S. military base?

Read the Post

Please RETWEET this.

With the button below. Perhaps we can actually nudge (shame?) more of the media into asking a few questions. Who knows? Maybe we can start a trend. Again, their tendency to take the easy content, and add no value, is most of my complaint in this entire Manning/Wikileaks affair. If stories this interesting can't get our media to go long on following leads that may be important to the truth, what will?

Shoq's Related Posts

Team Manning Attacks

Other Resources

DOD News Briefing with Geoff Morrell from the Pentagon 1/26/2011

Meet Mike Gogulski

The video below was made by him. And who is he? Why, he's a close associate of one @DavidMHouse, the "friend of friends" of Bradley Manning, who provided the sole "eyewitness" account of Bradley Manning's "deteriorating" condition, using words he was quite obviously coached to use by someone, perhaps Dr. Jeffrey Kaye?

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, and currently living in Bratislava, Slovakia, Gogulski calls himself a "stateless person." On his websites,including nostate.com and golguski.com, he indulges in all sorts of hoary rhetoric that boasts of his love for anything anarchy, like most of the people House seems to be connected to (including, we might speculate, associates of Julian Assange?)

Mike is also the co-administrator of the Bradley Manning mailing list (see bottom credits). And who is the other administrator of this list, which has very few active users, as far as I can tell? Why, it's David M.House!

Now just because they share a love of anarchy, and co-manage a mailing list dedicated to Bradley Manning, I am not going to suggest that Mike's video in any way represents the views of David M. House, nor the other programmer/hackivist types Mike runs with. But the sheer loopiness of the ramblings in this video sure might provoke thinking people to ask questions about some of those connections. And since our stenographic media hasn't yet asked any probing questions about David House yet, that might be a good thing.

Note: Mike looks a bit older here, than in his Website photos (by at least 10 years). But all email roads lead back to the same Golguski. They are one and the same.

Shoq's Related Posts

Why Does The Media Let Greenwald and Hamsher Do All The Talking about Bradley Manning?

On Jane Hamsher And Our Fact-Free Media: It’s Not Just For Fox News Anymore
- Excerpt: Why Is Jane Hamsher Promoting A Redundant Fund Raising Effort for Bradley Manning?

Team Manning Attacks

Other Resources

DOD News Briefing with Geoff Morrell from the Pentagon 1/26/2011

About this post

What follows was extracted from an 8700 word essay that I wrote yesterday, entitled: On Jane Hamsher And Our Fact-Free Media: It’s Not Just For Fox News Anymore. That too-lengthy screed tried to explain a number of ethical fails that explain Jane Hamsher's Twitter attacks on me, after I had criticized some of what I considered to be FDL's reckless and self-serving coverage of Pfc. Bradley Manning. Unfortunately, more than a few important threads got overwhelmed and lost in all that sauce.

So this post will focus on a few of those threads, adding only a postscript and update at the very end, which has some new information, as well as an important question for Bradley Manning's "friend," David M.House).

[About] All those [Firedoglake] funding drives…

…may very well be the reason that Jane [Hamsher] is so upset with me. Since I have been fearless about calling her out, perhaps she fears that I just won't shut up, and that I will keep talking about all that damn money, continuing to remind readers that despite her blithering about progressive values, she's mostly running two very successful businesses; FDL and her advertising network, Common Sense Media. Both enterprises are highly vulnerable to conflict of interest charges, especially considering how often Jane conducts various fundraising drives for something or other. Oh yes, how she hates it when people talk about that damn money.

And she should be more than a little nervous, because few of her readers really know just how the professional fundraising game is really played, or how many magical accounting tricks get used to conceal expenses or other fiduciary mechanics which might appear questionable, even when legitimate. Yes, yes, yes, of course all those funding drives are always tied to non-profits. But in the fine print of many of them, one can almost always find a convenient disclaimer that some funds raised will be used for, among other things, "speaker fees, events, communications, advocacy, etc.." Just the "event" expenses can cover for anything from promotion, travel and entertainment expenses, to simple hair and make-up fees. As written on an FDL contribution page:

The Bradley Manning Advocacy Fund is a new public advocacy effort for Bradley Manning that will organize events, issue press releases, recruit spokespeople to speak out on Bradley’s behalf, and assemble researchers and witnesses to help with Bradley’s case.

Anyone care to place any bets on who gets fees as a "spokesperson?" To be fair, this fiscal smokescreen is common in many left and right political efforts, but it almost always roughly translates to: "Oh, by the way, it's not unlikely that some amount of money—or even a lot of money— will probably go to FDL and/or Jane Hamsher or her designees, for whatever perfectly legal administrative costs, personal services fees, or other expenses will not fail too many smell tests." FDL claims the Manning funds are being passed to a bona fide, tax-exempt non-profit called the "Institute for Media Analysis." While this group is legitimate, and has worked with Democracy Now (in some capacity that I couldn't determine), the "contact" for this charitable effort, is one "Trever Fitzgibbon," who, curiously enough, became an FDL blogger only on January 25th, 2011, posting a few minor articles about Manning, almost as if this would validate an ongoing interest in the case.

Hmm. Now why would Trevor want to suddenly pop up as an FDL blogger? It ain't like his career needs the exposure. Fitzgibbon is a well known professional media consultant who founded "Fitzgibbon Media," a very successful firm which almost exclusively farms opportunities arising from progressive celebrities, causes, interests and liberal organizations including Health Care for America Now, Moveon,org, Bruce Springsteen, etc.. We can assume the firm—and it's founder—are handsomely compensated for their efforts. And perhaps because he has such experience and clout, and knows how to drive efforts that produce the really big bucks, Fitzgibbon has slipped into the FDL blogging stream to help ramp up the visibility of…

A second "advocacy fund" for Bradley Manning?

On their contributions page for this "fund," Hamsher's FDL doesn't seem to feel obligated to point out that nearly $160,000 dollars has already been raised by another, far more established public advocacy and defense fund run by "Courage to Resist." That effort is clearly stating that much of the tax-deductible contributions are for advocacy efforts, while a separate stream of non tax-deductible money goes directly into a trust established by David Coombs (Manning's attorney) for actual legal costs. This group, which has Michael Moore and Daniel Ellsberg on its advisory board, has a long and proven track record at raising money for similar causes to Manning's.

But back to FDL's contributions page. Note the very misleading words in the page title, "Donate to the Bradley Manning Advocacy fund: make a tax-deductible contribution for the public defense of Pfc. Bradley Manning." Here, the word "defense" has a slightly ambiguous—if not an overtly misleading—implication. And then further down the page, we find the following copy:

We think this fund to advocate for Bradley is deserving of your support. 100% of contributions to this fund will be used to pay expenses related to the advocacy and defense of Bradley Manning. (Bold emphasis theirs. Underline, mine.)

Only their lawyers can say for sure, but it certainly appears to me that the wording suggests that most of the funds will be used for advocacy related purposes. Yet the wording, first ambiguously, and then unambiguously, suggests that at least some monies will go toward Manning's legal defense costs. They are clearly designing their copy to aim it straight for those good Samaritans who would want to help out with Manning's legal fees, while minimizing any questions that might arise about what else the money could be used for. Regardless of the real or inadvertent intent in FDL's wording, a careful observer still can't help but wonder, "why the duplication of fund raising efforts at all?"

If such famous people like Moore and Ellsberg are already raising money for public advocacy and defense, wouldn't a consolidated effort make far more sense? But then, of course, Hamsher wouldn't have any control over the use or accounting of that other fund, and thus, not have a very easy time billing it for any expenses that she, David House, or FDL staff or associates might wish to recover from it. But these matters are above my pay grade. I will leave such questions to the real journalists to ask Ms. Hamsher. I'm just some anonymous man who lives with his mother.

These kinds of fiduciary details, and adequately disclosing them (or the appearance of adequately disclosing them), have often seemed problematic for Hamsher. Especially those oh so tricky political action committees. The legendary Rogers Cadenhead has famously told much of that story, and far better than I ever could.

Post-script

Let me add here a comment not in the original post. My purpose in bringing this up is to show that Firedoglake, considered such and "important blog" on the left, has a Jane Hamsher wing with its own agenda, and it stands apart from the rest of the FDL community, which as I have said before, has many good and well intentioned bloggers. The Hamsher wing, on the other hand, is not all that different from Fox News, @msnbc, or Michele Malkin's HotAir.com. It's a commercial enterprise, and acts like one. It plays upon progressive sentiment and issues so that it might drive website traffic from its core demographic; American liberals who feel there are important voices at FDL. And there are some. Many in fact.

But none are so prominent as Jane Hamsher, who uses FDL as a vehicle for her own self promotion. With all the problems facing America right now, such egocentric publishing venues, especially run by someone so clearly willing to take no prisoners, and use any and all tactics available to her to crush or smear even a casual critic, is neither very progressive, nor conducive to progressive causes, and certainly not helpful for building a progressive future for America.

Update: Feb 1st

This morning Jane attacked me again, eager to employ anyone she felt could help to throw anything available at me, even if it again meant she had to buddy-up with the execrable wingnut, Erick W. Erickson (CEO of Redstate.com). Even more remarkably, she jumped into Twitter-bed with one of Twitter's more deranged borderlines, the perpetually unemployed Daniel Spengies (Warning: graphic info enclosed). a.k.a @Ratboy1979.

This character, famous for tweeting into any stream that gets him negative attention, might be described as mobile sociopathic research laboratory in the body of an overweight sumo wrestler who'd been bottle fed on crack cocaine and drain cleaners as a baby. Yep, he was the perfect hit man for any progressive leader who presumably had a reputation to protect.

In a twisted conversation few could believe was happening outside of a video written by @theOnion, the two of them confirmed each other's hypothesis that @Shoq, an anonymous cat (who was on Twitter for a year longer than she was), just couldn't possibly have more followers than she did. Thus, the only explanation was that he was some sort of master hacker with access to the "authority nodes". No one seems to know what they are, exactly, but we're sure it's a reference to some peer-to-peer networking jargon that she picked up somewhere or other, while trying to impress someone or other.

She also tries to (feebly) suggest that Trevor Fitzgibbon was solely responsible for the Bradley Manning Defense Fund, even though she knows that under IRS rules, his nonprofit doesn't have to reveal diddly about its donors. Thus, unless he wanted to reveal his contacts and bookkeeping to the world, any arrangement with FDL would be known only to he and Jane Hamsher.

For his part, Trevor (who is on Twitter) seemed to wisely stay far away from her mayhem, no doubt realizing that nothing good could come of drawing still more attention to the curious questions I was raising. Questions that might lead to inconvenient questions about why such a famous promoter had been brought in late, to raise money for a poorly articulated advocacy effort, and a vaguely described legal defense fund, both of which were redundant with a prestigious and well managed existing effort with exactly the same goals.

You can see Jane's latest responses, in all their embarrassing viciousness, here: : http://chirpstory.com/li/628

A message for David M. House: David, you can keep refusing to respond to my question on Twitter, but I will keep asking it anyway:

When did you actually meet Bradley Manning (whom you characterized as a "friend of friends," even one time?" In researching your story, and your Boston programming associates, I cannot seem to get an answer to this riddle. Is it possible that, until you visited him at Quantico Brig for the first time, and began your storied TV career, that you had not actually met him even once before? All I can find are connections to at least one complicit associate of Adrian Lamo (who outed Manning). But surely you had other connections to Manning besides a link to those hackers, also deeply implicated in the Wikileaks affair… right? I'd appreciate your answer, by Tweet or direct message. Thank you.

Shoq's Related Posts

Team Manning Attacks

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DOD News Briefing with Geoff Morrell from the Pentagon 1/26/2011

About this post

Unfortunately, more than a few important threads got overwhelmed and lost in all that sauce. While the context of her attacks do matter, so too do the serious distortions of facts, and various reads on those facts as they appear in the writings of Jane Hamsher, David M House, and especially Dr. Jeff Kaye.

So this post will focus on those threads, beginning with:

Has Jane Hamsher been forthright about ethical disclosures?

Just going over a month of FDL's stuff, my impression was that, like with the advocacy fund, things just get stated, but the reader is forced to probe the veracity of what is said themselves. Hamsher feels very little obligation to document anything that might call into question the truthfulness, analysis or urgency of things she uses to whip up emotional support for her ginned-up causes, or donations to her various funding drives.

Examples of this abound, but while looking over the history of FDL's Manning coverage, I came across this rather…

Egregious example of an ethics fail:

On January 21st, Jane Hamsher writes:

Dr. Jeff Kaye, who works with torture victims, wrote about the potential effects of Manning’s extended suicide watch/POI. He says that extended isolation is “a technique well-known to break down individuals.” But when the Brig Commander moved Manning to suicide risk/MAX custody, his conditions grew even more extreme…

Four days later, on January 25th, Jane also writes:

Dr. Jeffrey Kaye of Survivors International, a San Francisco-based torture victims center, describes the effect of severe solitary confinement: * Solitary confinement is an assault on the body and psyche of an individual…Over time, isolation produces a particular well-known syndrome which is akin to that of an organic brain disorder, or delirium….

Manning Supporter, Glenn Greenwald had also cited Dr. Kaye:

"locking up someone who has not presented any kind of threat to other prisoners and who has not been convicted of a crime for months on end in solitary confinement under tight restrictions is torture." The psychologist and torture specialist Jeffrey Kaye made the same argument.

Well that's some pretty serious stuff, right?

You betcha. And this Dr. Jeff Kaye guy sure sounds pretty knowledgeable about solitary confinement, torture, and related subjects, right? I mean, surely a prosperous blog like Firedoglake, making the claim that the U.S. Government and its United States Marine Corp. might be inhumanely abusing a detainee, would want to provide highly competent and unimpeachable sources before going so far out on a limb, right?

I mean, were it me, and I were looking to pull from the pool of experts to make my case that Manning was exhibiting signs of extreme abuse or torture resulting from what I was claiming to be "solitary confinement" (itself a lie.. I mean… "misnomer"), I might go with credentialed experts recognized by every major human rights and civil liberties group in America. Professional experts like:

Dr. Terry Kupers is a Board-certified psychiatrist, Institute Professor at The Wright Institute, a member of Human Rights Watch, and author of Prison Madness: The Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and What We Must Do About It. He has served as an expert witness and monitor in class action litigation about conditions of confinement such as supermax isolation. He was named “Exemplary Psychiatrist” by NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) in 2005.

Dr. Stuart Grassian is a Board-certified psychiatrist and former faculty member of the Harvard Medical School. He has served as an expert witness in numerous lawsuits addressing solitary confinement, and his conclusions have been cited in a number of federal court decisions.

Dr. Philip Zimbardo has been on the faculty at Yale, New York University, Columbia University, and Stanford University, where he has been a professor since 1968. Though Zimbardo is the author of more than 400 professional publications and 50 books, he is perhaps most known for his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, which studied the physical and psychological effects of power and examined how otherwise “good” people can turn “evil” when placed in certain situations.

Each of these acclaimed experts have, in detail far too long to list here, professional, peer-reviewed journal articles and other scholarly activities and testimony all over the Internet, as found in countless academic bibliographies covering these very subjects of our interest, i.e., the nature and possible effects of extreme confinement on the human body, mind, and so forth.

But why have such acclaimed experts…

…who might not support the FDL thesis that Manning is being treated so inhumanely, or at least provide a far more serious and credible academic standing for the hyperbolic emotional claims that that they've been making for weeks, when you can have you own "in house" expert, such as Dr.Jeffrey Kaye?

Each time Jane or other FDL bloggers (and Greenwald) refer to Kaye, they always seem to fail to point out that he's not merely a long-standing FDL blogger, but also that he's made a career out of making sensational claims about prison life, torture, solitary confinement, etc. all over the Internet.

What do we know about Dr. Kaye, which might be relative to understanding his stature and credibility in helping Hamsher and Greenwald to portray Bradley Manning as a torture victim? I mean, after all, this "expert's" cred would be crucial, since much of their torture narrative relies on the second-hand anecdotal observations of another recent FDL blogger, the now storied "friend of friends of Bradley Manning," Mr. David M. House.

I will have more to say on Mr. House in a future post. You would think such a key figure would be thoroughly vetted by anyone using him as the basis of these sensational charges of human rights abuse. But again, that's the real media's job. I'm just an anonymous nobody that lives with his mom.

But for now, let's get back to…

Background on Dr. Jeffrey Kaye:

He's a Ph.D who maintains a family therapy practice in San Francisco that, according to his resume, "worked with individuals and couples with psychological, emotional and relational problems for over twelve years."
As a hobby or sideline, it appears that he's also spent much of the past decade focused on the Guantanamo detainees, and has blogged aggressively on related pet subjects for his own blog called "Invictus," as well as Alternet, Truthout.org, DailyKos/Valtin, Jason Leopold's ThePublicRecord, and finally, again as Valtin on AmericanTorture.com. (Do you get the sense yet that Dr. Kaye is fairly accomplished at finding claims of torture almost as frequently as he manages to create sensational blog posts about them?)
On January 27th, 2008, he resigned from the American Psychological Association, because he was disgusted with their "complicity" with the U.S. Government's practice of torturing inmates. However, this has not stopped him from continuing to cite his membership on his resume, despite that page's last modified date being July 8th, 2009.
He is a local member of Survivors International (SI) conducting psychological evaluations and offering psychotherapy for refugees applying for political asylum in the United States.

But more germane… than any of these other activities and interests, which generally seem to pigeonhole him as another Greenwald-esque, U.S. Government hating champion for truth and justice, Kaye is also a member of the Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR), a group dedicated to advocacy for a broad spectrum of war and human rights related issues.

At this point, it should come as no surprise—after all these cozy and incestuous relationships between FDL, Greenwald, Kaye, and his association with another always-angry-at-Obama crusader, Truthout's Jason Leopold*— who has openly battled with many over his own ethical problems—that PsySR, of which Dr. Kaye is an active member, is the very same organization that quite ceremoniously, and with great fanfare from Hamsher and FDL, wrote an "Open Letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates," strenuously objecting to Manning's method of confinement.

*Note: Leopold leapt into my Twitter fray with Hamsher, using a gratuitous snark that suggested I had some army of sock puppets who were defending me. (This is one of the most common—and lamest—allegations one hears on Twitter, and many other places on the web). It was meant to set off another round of conflagrations that he's contrived with me each and every time I make any critical statements about FDL or some of its notable bloggers. I didn't really have a theory about why he was taking up their defense until Jeff Kaye popped off to defend him to me. It was their combined mouthing-off in public that actually led me to the breadcrumbs about Kaye, and his connections to FDL and Leopold, that actually got this post off to the races.

Of course, as Hamsher knew, this letter would be seized on by sympathetic parties on the left as just one more potential embarrassment to the Obama administration (in their ongoing Obama tortures Manning narrative), so this grave sounding letter magically found its way—quick as a swiftboat—to that bastion of ethical purity, the DrudgeReport.

Yet despite this huge click bait posting at Drudge, only Raw Story, Tehran Times, and a few other papers or blogs seemed to have even picked it up. Possibly, I speculate, because they looked at the group, at Kaye, or the wording of the letter, and decided that it was pretty much as I have now somewhat famously alleged: just one more semi-scripted rehashing of the same Greenwald/Hamsher mistreatment/torture narrative. A narrative which was effectively copy-and-paste "it be torture" cud that was regurgitated by Amnesty International (AI), and others, as I'd pointed out to Greenwald on Twitter, thus igniting my previous blog post, and thus, also in part, to this one.

Anyone familiar with the history of AI, knows that they, like most similar groups, will rarely miss a chance to follow up an allegation of a reported human rights abuse, especially in a case as exciting and global as the incredible Wikileaks caper. Their mission statement demands it, and their credibility and funding depend upon it.

Now, to his credit, when Jeff Kaye cites the letter himself on FDL, he appears to have a more ethical bent than Hamsher ever does, when he does in fact disclose that:

"I have been a paying member of PsySR, though I have not participated in any organizational activities, nor am I a member of any of their committees."

Huzzah! At last, someone at FDL has pointed out that Dr. Kaye might have some connections worth pointing out to its readers! Even if it would mean very little without all the other dot's I have connected for readers herein, at least he tried. But further research into Dr. Kaye reveals still more questions. While his disclosure may have seemed technically accurate, Kaye doesn't appear to be quite as isolated from this organization as his disclaimer implies. For example, he recently is cited his being featured in the forthcoming documentary, Doctors of the Dark Side, which, according to it's website:

"exposes the scandal behind the torture scandal — how psychologists and physicians devised, supervised and covered up the torture of detainees in U.S. controlled military prisons.” Both PsySR and Jeffrey Kaye (with a link to his FDL profile) are both listed as resources to “learn more about Doctors and Torture” (on the site's tab labeled "On Doctors and Torture."

Ok, fine, two references in such near proximity might just be a coincidence, but also connected to this this film in which Kaye is featured? Dr.José Quiroga is the Medical Director of the Program for Victims of Torture, and serves on the Executive Committee and is Vice-President of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims in Denmark. He is also is or was, according to this source, the treasurer of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. Dr. Quiroga is shown on the Doctors of the Dark Side website being interviewed for the documentary.

Color me skeptical, but it hardly seems these two anti-torture advocates, both members of PsySR, just happened to be connected to this film independently of their association with PsySR. But I'm just an anonymous nobody who lives with his mom.

Kaye has been used to validate claims of Manning's "abuse."

…and for all or most of Hamsher's allegations that Manning's Maximum Custody Detention with Prevention of Injury (POI) status added, and at least one of Greenwald's similar charges. And it seems pretty clear that Kaye has been at best, a poorly disclosed member of Team Manning (he'd blogged with FDL for almost two years prior), and at worst, a very modestly-credentialed source posited as an expert witness who has been making internationally echoed charges based on little more than his opinion of what a complete lay person with an unknown history with the subject had reported in his "observations" of Bradley Manning.

This fail is additionally compounded by Dr. Kaye's own admission that he did so anecdotally, and without first-hand contact with the subject, nor having the benefit of any instruments such evaluations would require. He writes:

"…having spoken to David House, I have been considering Manning’s situation and the effects upon his likely mental and emotional status. While an accurate assessment of a person would mean direct access to them, and the application of psychometrically valid psychological instruments, experience allows me to make some general statements." (emphasis mine).

And thus, with this one disclaimer, placed just once in an opening blog paragraph, we clearly see that Ms Hamsher and Team Manning have whipped up all this hysteria about the Obama Administration and the United States Marine Corp. "torturing" Bradley Manning, all pretty much based on Dr. Kaye, FDL's house expert's entirely speculative account, offered without any empirical data whatever.

From this flimsy, overblown, and undocumented opinion from a family counselor who moonlights as an anti-torture advocate, and who has spent more than a decade chasing after torture claims of a far more serious nature than this Maximum Custody Detention case, we are now where we are. The Obama Administration gets constant Manning flak and distractingly redundant questions it must answer again and again, the media gets free content for their blogs which seem like a cover band singing country versions of anything Wikileaks, Salon and FDL get lots of web site traffic, David House gets on TV and invited to all those swank parties Jane Hamsher attends, and Bradley Manning may or may not get a few dollars for his defense fund.

In May, Pfc.Manning will probably be tried, convicted, and sent away for a long time (perhaps as long as 50 years). And I won't be surprised to learn, a decade or so from now, Jane, David, Glenn and the good doctor Kaye will have only visited Bradley once after his conviction. Probably to get his signature on a book proposal, movie deal, or licensing rights for the Bradley Manning's House of Pain video game series, with a 3D action figure tie-in.

Once again, let me state for the record that I have no opinion on Bradley Manning's guilt or innocence. I say he will probably be convicted only because most people accused of espionage acts often are. I also have no opinion on whether Maximum Custody detention is a form of abuse or torture, nor whether the military is correct when it says it is often required in espionage cases, even for people awaiting trial. I only know that it's been used for much of our history, in one form or another, and I wouldn't mind if it was aggressively researched and debated out in the open, and ultimately abolished. Toward that end, some of this attention will certainly be a good thing. But I also think it's simply convenient to use this allegation in the Manning case, alone, when tens of thousands are held in the same conditions, and the motive for doing so has much less to do with Manning, and far more to do with Wikileaks, and the people milking such a sensational story for all that it's worth. And it is that reality, a part of the very nature of today's mass media, and its role in controlling—or reshaping—our nation, that is my paramount concern.

If the above text compels you, I urge you to read the closing portion of the original post that followed it.
You can jump to it here. (Where you can also read Dr. Kaye's response in the comments—and my response to it).

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- Excerpt: Why Is Jane Hamsher Promoting A Redundant Fund Raising Effort for Bradley Manning?

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Dear Glenn:

Today I posted a blog entry about Jane Hamsher at 1:30 pm, EST. Then I went to the dentist for a 3 hour session. I came back to find Jane Hamsher acting like Jane Hamsher. Rather than respond to anything in my post, she resorted to another round of goofy attacks on me. This time it was for attacking you on a day when you had just entered hospital with what is, apparently, a very serious illness. .

As my post was 8700 words, a reasonable person would be right in assuming I was editing all morning, and not reading any blogs or other news, so I was of course not aware of your condition. In fact, my entire stream was unaware of it until Jane tweeted about it.

As my post wasn't really about you, but merely discussed you in a few places (and actually commended you), I doubt I would have withheld it anyway. But I might have added a note at the top to acknowledge your situation. I am quite confident that you know that my complaint is about some of your work, and not remotely about you personally.

I hope you are getting the best care available. I wish you well, and a very speedy recovery.

-Shoq

Emo Progressive

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About this post

[About] All those [Firedoglake] funding drives…

A second "advocacy fund" for Bradley Manning?

Post-script

Update: Feb 1st

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About this post

Has Jane Hamsher been forthright about ethical disclosures?

Egregious example of an ethics fail:

Well that's some pretty serious stuff, right?

But why have such acclaimed experts…

Kaye has been used to validate claims of Manning's "abuse."

Related

Shoq's Related Posts

Team Manning Attacks

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