“All the News That’s Fit to Print.”

Dear Mr. President,

The masthead of the NYT says “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” Apparently, the news on Afghanistan, where we still have 66,000 troops killing and being killed, Guantanamo, where they’ve thought up new ways to brutalize prisoners and the Bradley Manning show trial isn’t fit to print since there’s not a word on any of them for days. The front page did have an account of Erdogan’s crackdown on protests at Taksim Square; it sounds much like the NYPD and Oakland PD crackdown on the Occupy protests in 2011, although Erdogan also took direct aim at the foreign press, medics who treat protesters and businesses—including luxury hotels in the area—who shelter them. Then the story on p. A7 about the latest revelation that the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand tapped the phones and computers of G20 participants in 2009. So much for friends and allies; everyone’s now an enemy or a potential enemy. The Times article is curious though; nothing about the crimes committed by the government and all about Snowden’s “shocking” breach of security, Clapper’s letter to Congress assuring them that “dozens” of terrorist plots have been thwarted by the NSA surveillance systems and Cheney’s latest proclamation that Snowden is a “criminal and a traitor.” I guess it’s not fit to print that Cheney should be hauled before the ICC for war crimes or that Clapper should be charged with contempt of Congress for lying. But in typical topsy-turvy Obamajustice, they go free while the Injustice Department trumps up charges to get Snowden in their clutches and silence him permanently, maybe even a cell in Guantanamo where the latest twist in cruelty is a change from using soft plastic feeding tubes for force-feeding hunger-strikers to stiff blue and green plastic tubes with  metal inserts that cause internal bleeding along with a new regime of loud noise and banging cell doors all night to prevent prisoners from sleeping, all designed to break the hunger strike. You may think force-feeding is humanitarian, that suppressing whistle-blowers is necessary for national security and that drone strikes protect the U.S., but I call them all crimes against humanity. Steve Coll, in his current New Yorker article on press leaks, says, “press leaks offend [your aides’] aesthetics of power.” I think that applies to you too, Mr. President. So does this: “…the self-evident truth that secrecy and concentrated power are inherently corrupting.” And it’s only going to get worse.