by Nat Hentoff
from HUSTLER Magazine November 2010

AS BIG BROTHER GETS BIGGER AND BOLDER, AMERICANS ARE ONCE AGAIN LIVING IN “TIMES THAT TRY MEN’S SOULS.”

Many years ago I went to a conference on privacy at Harvard University. The keynote speaker, a high-level assistant to then- FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, was unusually frank for an FBI official. He bellowed, “Privacy? It’s gone.” Even Hoover himself had no idea of how deep and continuing that loss would become. Last year the Electronic Privacy Foundation—the premier defender of our digital civil liberties—accused the U.S. government of engaging “in a massive program of illegal dragnet surveillance of domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans since at least 2001.”

Our home and business phones and e-mails are, of course, porous. But federal eyes and ears have moved on to cell phones, texting, Twitter and their ever-more-sophisticated progeny, while also increasing experimentation with methods of mind control through behavioral modification techniques and beyond. (For details, see “Obama Interrogation Official Linked to U.S. Mind Control Research” at PubRecord.org, May 25, 2010.)

James Bamford, the most informed investigator of our cavernous Big Brother—the National Security Agency, known for its limitless databases—reveals in his 2008 book The Shadow Factory : “NSA is also developing another tool that Orwell’s Thought Police might have found useful—an artificial intelligence system designed to know what people are thinking.”

I’ve written about our vanishing privacy in this column and in my books, but never with such penetratingly profound awareness as the Wall Street Journal ’s Peggy Noonan in her article “Our Lives Laid Bare”: “When we lose our privacy, we lose some of our humanity; we lose the things that are particular to us, that make us separate and distinctive as souls, as actually children of God.”

Actually, I’m an atheist, but I do have a secular soul with what once were secret compartments that may now be in “persons of interest” files at the J. Edgar Hoover Building, the FBI’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Also, as an unremitting critic of Bush and Cheney and now Obama—the continuer of their anti- Constitutional legacy—I’m not unmindful that were there another 9/11 or worse, I might have a compulsory change of address. So far I’ve not been able to get my actual current FBI files; but the one I saw years ago had me at a North Africa meeting of purportedly dangerous radicals.

I have never been to Africa, North or South. I did meet Che Guevara once, at New York’s Cuban Mission to the United Nations, and I had the irreverent nerve to ask him if Cuba would ever have free elections. He laughed sardonically, obviously not regarding me as a dependable revolutionary.

But there are millions of Americans without a tinge of radicalism or libertarianism (my core belief) in their past who are disquieted at being part of a society under ceaseless surveillance. They hear about current cases like that of Bruce Shore, who caught Kentucky Republican Senator Jim Bunning on C-SPAN complaining about having missed a basketball game to vote on unemployment benefits and then delaying the vote. Shore, a 51-year-old unemployed resident of Philadelphia, sent critical e-mails about Bunning to members of the senator’s staff, including “No checks equal no food for me. DO YOU GET IT?”

This citizen, supposedly protected by the First Amendment, was soon visited by United States marshals, who presented him with a grand jury indictment for violating the Communications Decency Act. His alleged crime? Shore, as this law spells out, “did use a telecommunications device, that is, a computer, whether or not communication ensued, without disclosing his identity, to annoy, abuse, threaten and harass any person who received the communication.”

Whether or not Shore is eventually found guilty, he is now in a stream of government databases, where he will probably remain for the rest of his life—unless we get a President whose bible, whatever his religion, or none, is the Constitution. If Shore is convicted, he faces up to two years in the slammer and a $250,000 fine.

As for many of the rest of us who could be ensnared in this federal dragnet, Peggy Noonan writes that “Americans, as a people, are not really suited to the age of surveillance, the age of no privacy. There is no hiding place now, not here.”

Can we ever get our privacy back? Not unless we fight for it. A movement has begun. According to the Wall Street Journal, such abusers of our privacy as Microsoft, Google, Intel and AT&T “are pushing for more stringent regulations on government ability to access electronic communications.”

They are seeking a basic reform and updating of the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which “extended restrictions on government wiretaps to data transmissions as well as phone calls” and “regulated privacy in stored data.” But these so-called restrictions have gone with the Presidential winds and whims. Therefore, this coalition—whose ultimate aim is to restore personal privacy—calls itself Digital Due Process.

Congressman John Conyers Jr. (DMichigan), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, says he will lead these attempts to rescue privacy. I know that Conyers is deeply into our American music of individual liberty— jazz—but he needs help. Although it may take some courage after what happened to Bruce Shore, notify your representatives in the House and Senate that you demand your privacy back. Peggy Noonan reminds us: “There are cameras all over. No terrorist can escape them, but none of the rest of us can either.”

Nat Hentoff is a historian of the Constitution, a jazz critic and a columnist for the Village Voice and Free Inquiry. His incisive books include The First Freedom: The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America ; Living the Bill of Rights ; and the forthcoming Is This America?

by Robert Scheer
from HUSTLER Magazine November 2010

LURKING BENEATH THE GULF OIL CATASTROPHE IS THE CORPORATE CORRUPTION OF AMERICA’S POLITICAL CULTURE.

What’s with Barack Obama’s war analogy on the Gulf oil spill? It’s as if some extraterrestrial force had suddenly launched “The Invasion of the Slippery Sludge.”

“Abroad, our brave men and women in uniform are taking the fight to al-Qaeda,” the President said in his June 15 prime-time address from the Oval Office after weeks of being slammed for apparent passivity in the face of mounting disaster. “And tonight, I’ve returned from a trip to the Gulf Coast to speak with you about the battle we’re waging against an oil spill that is assaulting our shores and our citizens.”

What nonsense! The oil was minding its own business until some multinational corporations, enabled by a dysfunctional government regulatory regime, decided to wage war on the ecological balance of the oceans by employing technology that they were not prepared to control. Cleaning up the mess we made by raping the environment to satiate our consumer gluttony is not a glorious battle against evil but rather obligatory penance for the profound error of our ways.

You wound Mother Nature by punching a hole deep in her pristine waters, where you have no business going, and when she bleeds uncontrollably, you dare blame her for the assault? This from a President who, shortly before this disaster, had given the oil companies permission to pillage in the deep seas at will.

At least Obama now admits to having been extremely naive in his belief that they knew what they were doing: “A few months ago, I approved a proposal to consider new, limited offshore drilling under the assurance that it would be absolutely safe—that the proper technology would be in place and the necessary precautions would be taken. That obviously was not the case on the Deepwater Horizon rig, and I want to know why.”

The President already knows why! It’s the same ideological obsession that led to the deregulation of the banking industry—a policy based on the assumption that the unfettered pursuit of multinational corporation profits would somehow serve the public good. In every area of federal governance, the story is the same: The mammoth corporations, through their lobbyists and campaign contributions, end up controlling the government agencies ostensibly regulating the activities of the military-industrial, health, financial and communications complexes. Why be surprised that the oil conglomerates are also in bed with their pretend Washington regulators?  Obviously, Obama cannot be blamed for the bipartisan endorsement of the Reagan Revolution’s siren song, a call to make the world safe for multinational corporations. The radical antiregulation campaign—endorsed by Bill Clinton as well as the father-and-son Bush team—corrupted rather than improved the efficiency of the entire private sector, and what happened with the oil industry was the rule and not the exception.

In explaining the failure of the Minerals Management Service, whose responsibilities include regulating oil drillers, Obama stated: “Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility—a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves. At this agency, industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight. Oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations.”

That damning indictment of the corporate corruption of our political process should stand as a cautionary tale to everyone, but particularly to the citizens of those red states now suffering, thanks to offshore drilling previously approved by the majority of their voters. Hopefully they, and the President who catered to such impulses, will take away from this very costly mess a justifiable skepticism about the risk assessments of plunderers that treat natural treasures as nothing more than potential profit centers.

The public goes along because, as with the jobs created by military spending and the false wealth of financial bubbles, it is blinded by lavishly funded corporate PR that cloaks the true costs of such reckless corporate behavior.

Coinciding with Obama’s June speech, one Republican congressman said British Petroleum— which took steps toward creating a $20-billion fund to pay for spill reparations— was the victim of a “shakedown” by the President. However, even financial experts noted that this may have been as much a crafty Wall Street move as anything, creating with the obligation a “poison pill” for potential “hostile takeover” predators.

Of course, it is quite possible BP could be chopped up and sold—its huge international oil reserves going one way to produce more billions in profits while a rump portion is left to languish through decades of liability litigation.  Ultimately, what must be fought and won is the war against corporate dominance of every important aspect of our political culture. The catastrophic Gulf oil spill is the wake-up call to fight corporate arrogance that we, and our President, desperately needed.

Before serving 30 years as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Scheer spent the late 1960s as Vietnam correspondent, managing editor and editor in chief of Ramparts magazine. Now editor of TruthDig.com, Scheer has written such hard-hitting books as The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America and his latest, The Great American Stick-Up: Greedy Bankers and the Politicians Who Love Them.

Larry Flynt
from HUSTLER Magazine November 2010

If nothing else, the oil-drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, in conjunction with the economic disaster caused by Wall Street, tells us one thing with certainty: Unless the CEOs of companies that have devastated this country are held personally responsible for their actions, nothing is going to change.

People who through negligence or indifference cause death or harm to others, whether it be economic or physical, should no longer be allowed to hide behind a corporation’s protective wall. If the CEO of British Petroleum, Goldman Sachs or whatever company is put in jail, his successors will think long and hard before trying to save a buck by taking shortcuts or bending the law.

from HUSTLER Magazine September 2010

That can we say about a guy who fries squirrels in a popcorn popper? Well, as it turns out, we can say plenty more about the Republican, whose tenure as governor of Arkansas still causes a stink.

Aside from his squirrel-popping revelation, the Fox TV talk-show host admits that he likes to shoot animals. Okay, a lot of people like to hunt. But check out what he told one NRA group: “I’m pretty sure there will be duck-hunting in Heaven, and I can’t wait!”

How odd. To Huckabee, Heaven is a place where you kill things. Not what most people think of when contemplating the Pearly Gates. And he was a Baptist preacher?!

But Mike isn’t the only one in the Huckabee family who likes to kill critters. While he was governor of the Razorback State, his son David was accused of torturing and hanging a stray dog. Daddy defended the boy, who was 17 at the time, by saying, “There was a dog that apparently had mange and was absolutely, I guess, emaciated.”Well, okay then, who wouldn’t hang an emaciated dog by the neck, slit its throat and then stone it for good measure? We’ll bet that David believes Heaven is filled with dead puppies.

Although Mike Huckabee denies any wrongdoing in regard to the foregoing, John Bailey claims the governor fired him as head of the Arkansas State Police for refusing to cover up David’s crime. I.C. Smith, the former FBI chief in Little Rock, confirmed that Huckabee interfered in the investigation.

Also while serving as governor, Huckabee was accused of dipping into public funds. Investigated 16 times and cited five times by the Arkansas Ethics Commission, Huckabee is said to have pocketed $112,000 under questionable circumstances in 1999. He also claimed $70,000 worth of furniture at the governor’s mansion upon leaving office in 2007. Moreover, he is said to have spent state funds on boat fuel, clothing alterations, dry cleaning, pantyhose, a doghouse and other non-jobrelated items. And let’s not forget the personal use of State Police aircraft as transportation for Huckabee and his family.

Regarding the furniture at the governor’s mansion, Huckabee agreed to leave it behind due to public outrage. But guess what? By the time he and his family moved out, the furniture had magically disappeared!

You think that’s bad? How about this? In Arkansas it’s illegal for a departing governor to accept more than $100 in gifts from appreciative citizens (or political benefactors). So what did Mike do? He and his wife, Janet, skirted the law by setting up bridal registries at several retail outlets for $7,000 in housewares and $1,000 in gift cards. In case you’re confused, the answer is yes, the couple had already been married more than 30 years.

Huckabee, it should be noted, was good at lining his own pockets even before he became governor of Arkansas. As lieutenant governor he made $61,000 delivering speeches to a nonprofit organization called Action America.

Now get this: Huckabee founded Action America! And it’s not at all clear that it has ever donated a penny to anyone else. However, none of the preceding qualifies him as an Asshole. He’s garnered that award thanks to his extreme and farfetched opinions. Among those, nothing tops his denial of evolution and belief that Adam and Eve were real people.

What we know about the rest of Huckabee’s religious views is limited. Apparently, just like the information stored on the hard drives that were destroyed at his behest when he left the governor’s office, Huckabee’s old sermons are nowhere to be found. But according to Mother Jones magazine, here’s what Huckabee said during a failed run for the U.S. Senate in 1992: “Homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk.”

He went on to say that AIDS victims should be isolated and that he’s against spending government money in search of a cure. His asinine proposal? “An alternative would be to request that multimillionaire celebrities, such as Elizabeth Taylor, Madonna and others who are pushing for more AIDS funding, be encouraged to give…increased amounts for AIDS research.” In other words, let the fags die.

However, in terms of pure ugliness, nothing compares to Huckabee’s just plain stupid, insensitive and unforgivable decision, while governor, to secure the parole of serial rapist and self-confessed murderer Wayne DuMond. DuMond, whom Huckabee claimed had gotten a “raw deal…and hadn’t been treated fairly,” was a real piece of work. One victim testified that DuMond held a butcher knife to her throat while he raped her and that he threatened to come back and rape and kill the woman’s three-year-old daughter, who’d been asleep in bed beside her during the assault, if she told anyone.

DuMond’s crimes also included helping beat a man to death with a claw hammer, but Governor Huckabee released him anyway because the prisoner claimed to have been “born again.” And maybe because one of the rape victims, a 17-year-old, was a distant cousin of Bill Clinton, who, as Arkansas governor, had previously denied DuMond’s release. In fact, Huckabee pardoned or reduced the sentences of 1,033 prisoners, including 12 murderers—twice as many as his three predecessors combined! He seemed especially inclined to free cons who claimed to be bornagain Christians, played in a prison band or worked in the governor’s mansion.

Perhaps most of those who’d been released went legit, but DuMond went on to rape and kill two more women. And before being gunned down himself, Maurice Clemmons—whose sentence had also been commuted by the religious zealot—was the only suspect in the 2009 slayings of four police officers in Washington State. All those murders stain Huckabee’s hands.

Finally, it would be wrong not to mention that the former fatty, who penned the book Quit Digging Your Grave With a Knife and Fork, is once again gaining weight—a lot of weight! (But not as much as his son, David.) If Mike Huckabee doesn’t get it under control soon, we won’t have to worry about him being a Presidential nominee in 2012. , Asshole!

by Alex Bennet
from HUSTLER Magazine October 2010

AS THE SAYING GOES, “THE BIGGER THEY ARE, THE HARDER THEY FALL.”

There was a time not so long ago when CNN was the only game in town. But that was then, and this is now.

Ted Turner, an Atlanta media mogul and visionary, didn’t mind being called nuts. So on June 1, 1980, he launched a crazy notion: the 24/7 Cable News Network. I remember watching CNN when it first lit up. The newscaster opened by announcing: “This is CNN signing on for the very last time.” He was right; it hasn’t signed off since.

Even so, CNN limped along for years. There was some extensive live coverage of the space shuttle Challenger explosion, but CNN didn’t get on everyone’s radar until the Baby Jessicatrapped- in-the-well story. Then, with its 24/7 coverage of the first Gulf War, CNN suddenly morphed into the most important television news organization of them all. It was where the world turned to get the news. Saddam Hussein watched the daily bombing of his country on CNN.

The network became the gold standard for quality news reporting and fairness. It was hard to define where CNN stood politically, and that’s the way a news organization should be. That’s precisely why it was so good.

Alas, today CNN is the lowest-rated cable news network, and its reputation for quality and fairness has vanished along with the numbers. What the fuck happened?!

Turner Broadcasting was gobbled up by media giant Time Warner. Soon Ted Turner, who had been the soul of the network, was gone. What was left was a corporate bureaucracy ruled by unimaginative bean counters. Sure, other operations like Fox News entered the scene as competitors, thus peeling off viewers. But it was CNN’s lack of focus and purpose that led to its downfall.

CNN has the worst anchors in the business. Let’s start with Ali Velshi at 1 p.m. (Eastern Time). This bald-headed creep started out as a financial reporter. CNN decided to compound the error by handing him an anchor slot as well. Given Velshi’s apparent discomfort in front of the camera, not to mention all the really good newspeople who are out of work, I can’t figure why he is even there. At 3 p.m. (ET) the brainless Rick Sanchez goes on the air. This is the guy who, while covering the Chilean earthquake, asked a scientist, “By the way, nine meters in English is what? Meters is an English word, you dope! On the same newscast, Sanchez pointed to an island chain off the coast of South America and said, “This is Hawaii, where the tsunami is headed.” In fact, he was indicating the Galapagos Islands, more than 4,500 miles southeast of Honolulu.

During coverage of Iceland’s ash-spewing volcano, he erupted with this bit of Sanchezian wisdom: “When you think of a volcano, you think of Hawaii and long words like that. You don’t think of Iceland. You think it’s too cold to have a volcano there.”This guy is anchoring a newscast for an outfit that calls itself “The Worldwide Leader in News”?

From 5 to 7 p.m. (ET) Wolf Blitzer, who has zero going for him, helms CNN’s most-watched show, The Situation Room. (This, by the way, is an amazingly stupid name for a news program.) Every other word out of Blitzer’s mouth is “um.” His personality is that of a dead carp. If it weren’t for the oddity of his name, absolutely no one would have ever paid attention to Wolf Blitzer. As a journalist, he is simply horrible. With Velshi and Sanchez, he rounds out a trio that accounts for six inept hours of “news” a day.

Meanwhile, anchors John King and Campbell Brown appear to have had a charisma bypass. Dull and uninspired, these anchors have hardly presented a challenge to the guys over at Fox, who at least know they’re in show business as well as news. That, no doubt, explains why Brown recently parted ways with CNN.

Then there’s Larry King. Do I have to say any more? The only thing interesting about King is his soon-to-be (or not-to-be) ex-wife. Let’s move on. Anderson Cooper’s only real accomplishment was being shot out of socialite Gloria Vanderbilt’s twat. He constantly acts as if he’s looking in a mirror. His newscasts are showy, and the globetrotter loves to fawn over orphans and stand in the rubble of some ravaged country. However, what looks like empathy is really just an ego freak getting in the way during trying circumstances. Rumor has it Cooper is the number-one choice to replace Katie Couric as host of the CBS Evening News. With thinking like that, CBS could be the next CNN.

My advice to CNN is simple: Fire everybody from the anchors to the newsroom staff to whatever idiot is at the helm of this unholy mess. Otherwise just close down and air cartoons. After all, the Cartoon Network has higher ratings than CNN.

Alex Bennett is a longtime HUSTLER contributor. The two-time Emmy winner, who broke into broadcasting as a teenager, can be heard on Sirius Left. 146 (9 a.m. to noon ET) and XM America Left 167 (midnight to 3 a.m. ET).

by Nat Hentoff
from HUSTLER Magazine August 2010

OUR LEADER AND WE THE PEOPLE SHOULD HEED THE ADVICE OF HIS PREDECESSORS AND THE FOUNDING FATHERS.

Between standing ovations at the University of Michigan on May 1, the President denounced those around the country who denigrate government as “inherently bad” and then lash his administration as “socialist,” among other epithets. Sending the graduates out into the dangerous universe, he reminded them that in a democracy “government is us.” But since his is the most secretive administration in our history, how much do We the People know about what he’s doing in our name?

Obama did speak abstractly of preserving “individual freedom.” As he solemnly intoned, “The question for your generation is this: How will you keep our democracy going and vibrant…at a moment when our challenges seem so big and politics seem so small?”

On the very night of Obama’s commencement address, our democracy was frighteningly challenged when a naturalized American citizen, Pakistani-born and earner of two Connecticut college degrees, came close to murdering thousands in New York’s Times Square. Faisal Shahzad is one of a growing breed of terrorists whom you would never know as a terrorist if you met them at their jobs or at a bar.

As former New York and then Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton warned, the lethal jihadists’ focus “has shifted from the large-scale 9/11 type assault” with al-Qaeda now “leaning on its loose networks of affiliates…to do any attack, large or small, that will hit [the] U.S. at home.” Bratton underlined, “That will not stop.”

I live in Greenwich Village,halfway between the horror of 9/11 and the near-bloodbath this May at Times Square.I am not without fear,particularly now that more aspiring suicide bombers look and talk like me. If the next Faisal Shahzad succeeds, Obama will finally have a bipartisan Congress eager to pass a new USA PATRIOT Act with even more electronic handcuffs on our individual liberties. Already, as head of “us,” as he puts it, Barack Obama has exceeded even Bush and Cheney in making our privacy obsolete while diminishing other individual liberties in the Bill of Rights, including a continuation, as I’ve reported in HUSTLER, of his predecessors’ torture policy that al-Qaeda and jihad affiliates welcome as a robustly effective recruiting tool.

With this nation in greater fear of actual instant terrorism than at any time since 9/11, Commander in Chief Obama would enthusiastically structure the next liberty-reducing PATRIOT Act tribute to George Orwell.

Obama did say one thing to the University of Michigan graduates with which I agree: “The practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. … If you’re a regular Glenn Beck listener [on Fox News], then check out the Huffington Post sometimes.” Similarly, when I used to teach at New York University, on the first day of class I would insist: “If you read The Nation or The New Republic, you must also read The National Review or The Weekly Standard.”

I also always gave my students a pocket edition of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, telling them: “That’s how you’ll judge whatever local, state and federal government is in power.” But, in counseling active citizenship to University of Michigan students, Obama left out the Constitution, an apparently bowdlerized version of which he used to teach at the University of Chicago.

As future suicide bombers doubling as U.S. citizens emerge, my advice to HUSTLER readers is that they confront their Congressional representatives and the White House with certain views opposing Obama’s from our history. Said Ronald Reagan: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same.”

And from Dwight D. Eisenhower, if you’re old enough to remember who he was: “I read where members of the so-called intelligentsia…urge a strong President. They are deluding themselves… with the idea of an all-powerful Chief Executive. In this democracy a [truly] strong President is one who will be concerned about doing things in a Constitutional way, respecting the Legislature and the Judiciary”—and especially “us,” whom all of those in office purportedly represent.

Indeed, we may yet be sucked by fear into a time like when the Bolsheviks taking over Russia resulted in a “Red Scare” here. In 1920, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer rounded up thousands of purported Communist aliens—among them American citizens with no connection to communism— for what Palmer called “a disease of evil thinking.” Many of the prisoners were summarily deported without any judicial intervention. One of the planners of Palmer’s raids on the radicals was Justice Department staffer J. Edgar Hoover, who later, as head of the FBI, increasingly shelved individual civil liberties as an obstacle to national security—a roundup term increasingly in use by Bush-Cheney-Obama.

Far too many Americans are just plain ignorant of their liberties and rights against government in the Constitution and will fearfully vote for pledges of national security rather than the Constitution. Our survival as a free people will depend on more of us taking heart and will from Samuel Adams, called by Thomas Jefferson the Father of the Revolution: “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires in people’s minds.”

And you ought not to forget Thomas Jefferson’s message to all Americans to come: “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

Even if you’re not of what some would consider good conscience, but regard yourself as an independent American, keep Samuel Adams in mind as you vote in the midterm elections and thereafter. As Jefferson also kept repeating, only you can protect your liberties!

Nat Hentoff is a historian of the Constitution, a jazz critic and a columnist for the Village Voice and Free Inquiry. His incisive books include The First Freedom: The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America ; Living the Bill of Rights ; and the forthcoming Is This America?