Shocking Revelations as Bush "Secret Prisons" Empty

With the Obama administration planning to restore habeas corpus and close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, while Bush factotums scramble for pardons, new photographs have been released of some of the "prisoners without a name, in cells without a number" rounded up by the Bush administration.

Readings: Commonplace Book for October, 2006

“The moderates will vote for the extremist. "Moderate," after all, is only an adjective; "Republican" is a noun. Chafee, Snowe, the whole lot of them, are moderate enablers of an extremist party.” ( Harold Meyerson)

***
“....The actual journalistic accomplishment in [Bob Woodward’s] “State of Denial” is less than grand. It took him three books to arrive at a conclusion thousands of basement-bound bloggers suggested years ago: that the Bush administration is composed of people who like war, don’t seem to be very good at it and have been known to turn the guns on each other. Such an epiphany doesn’t seem to reflect a reporter who had rarefied access.... Given Mr. Woodward’s tendency to fill his books with kitchen-sink detail, he maintained that the seeds of dysfunction were there to see in his previous two books. But Mr. Woodward’s time spent living in the treetops seems to have blinded him to the fact that the forest below was on fire.” (David Carr)

***
Our tone should be crazed. The nation's freedoms are
under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much
damage as al Qaida; the nation's marketplace of ideas is being poisoned by
a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would've quit.”
(Keith Olbermann)

***
“[Punk] defined itself by trashing Led Zep, Pink Floyd et al."—but as much as punks hated hippies, their common romanticism proves them more alike than not. Cynicism is just optimism turned on its head, replacing a belief in the perfectibility of humankind with a certitude that everything sucks.”
(Thurston Moore)

***
“The trash-pickers, drug fiends, and unsuccored polysexual sensualists of Up Is Up embraced the darker side of the bohemian legacy, but some of their Left Coast contemporaries chose instead to extend Summer of Love optimism into the high-tech age by embracing libertarian entrepreneurship, as chronicled in Fred Turner's info-packed academic study From Counterculture to Cyberculture. Turner focuses on the career of Stewart Brand, a former Ken Kesey collaborator who started the Whole Earth Catalog, which, as the author notes, "bridged cybernetics and the back-to-the-land movement" by spreading the gospel of Buckminster Fuller and Norbert Weiner, melding hands-on pragmatism with lofty earth-changing goals. "We are as gods and might as well get good at it," Brand wrote in one Catalog intro. In the 1980s, Brand translated this vision into new media with the WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link), a pioneering online forum that incubated future dot-communists and Wired editors. Turner notes the earthy roots of terms like "virtual community" and "electronic frontier," which first appeared there, along with early arguments for the ethics of open-source technology; offline, Brand later refined his utopian social engineering with the high-powered boomtime Global Business Network. So by the 1990s, the idea of revolution had morphed from a political goal to a corporate strategy. On the East Coast, the underground expired, but out West, it simply apotheosized into the mainstream itself.”
(Ed Halter in The Village Voice)

***
“I’m sure my mom will be proud. You work hard making independent films for fourteen years and you get voted best breasts.” (Scarlett Johansson)

***
“Fellow citizens, this bill throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems it necessary—these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law.
“I’d like those supporting this evil bill to spare me one affliction: Do not, please, pretend to be shocked by the consequences of this legislation. And do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis.” (Molly Ivins)

***
(from Pat and Bill)
POLL: MAJORITY OF AMERICANS FEAR BEING INSTANT-MESSAGED BY A REPUBLICAN
".... When asked to name their number one fear, 8% said "losing my job to outsourcing," 10% said "not being able to afford to fill up my car with gas," 14% said "North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il blowing up the world with a nuclear weapon," while a whopping 65% said "being instant-messaged by a horny Republican." ... "If you hear your child start to use phrases like 'tax cut,' 'stay the course,' or 'family values,' those are danger signs that he has been chatting with a horny Republican."
(The Borowitz Report)

***
“Speaking of the psychology underlying the Christian right ... My current pet hobby-horse/hypothesis to explain human behaviour is that most of us don't subjectively feel our age internally: we're children or adolescents role-playing our way through adulthood, with greater or lesser degrees of success, guided by the experience we've picked up from observing other people. That is, we do what we're expected to do by those around us, even when it doesn't feel right. And folks who are compelled to conform to the expectations their family and friends and neighbours impose resent the hell out of the imagery all around them of people who aren't conforming. ("Why are they allowed to behave that way when I'm stuck here earning bread for my family?")
“It takes a certain amount of self-confidence to strike out for your own, and fire-and-brimstone religions promising all the answers in return for conforming to the one true lifestyle don't give their followers self-confidence; rather, they try to instil a neurotic dependency on the behavioural/ideological safety-blanket, which is not the same thing at all.”
(post by unknown British person, please advise, at Making Light)

***
“[Chicago is] Like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies. But never a lovely so real." (Nelson Algren)

***
"Sir Francis Drake's gold pocket calculator.
Hewlett-Pakenham Modell 1. Sir Francis Walsingham had a few of them built for "especial agentes." It could take sun sightings, record dead Spaniards to a perhaps optimistic six digits, and had a Vigenère lattice engraved on the inner lid. Drake's is said to have been later set with a Nicholas Hilliard miniature of "A Comely Ladye of Cheapside," and a concealable cheating device for "I'm From Devon and I Don't Know This Game," a popular quayside entertainment of the day."
...

"President Bush announced today that he was displaying the coloration of a monarch only to avoid being eaten by birds. No intentional deception was involved.
In related news, Tony Blair denied that he had turreted eyes and a long, sticky tongue, after snatching a fly that was circling the Deputy Minister for "Coupling."

(Casual blog entries to friends by John M. Ford)

***
“My only relationship to the Sheikh’s case and his cause was as his lawyer. Throughout all the events, I believed I was acting as I should, as his lawyer. I violated my SAMS affiliation in that I permitted him to communicate publicly and these statements if misused may have allowed others to further their goals. These goals were not mine.
I am not a traitor... I did not intentionally enter into any plot or conspiracy to aid a terrorist organization. I inadvertently allowed those with other agendas to corrupt the most precious and inviolate basis of our profession—the attorney-client relationship...
Many who have written to you on my behalf, have characterized my actions as mistakes or lapses of judgment. I would add that I was also naïve in the sense that I was overly optimistic about what I could and should accomplish as the Sheik’s lawyer, and I was careless.”
(Lynne F. Stewart)

***
“I wanted to write a book [Pride of Baghdad] from a non-combatant's perspective, and talk about war from the civilian point-of-view. It's really difficult for Americans to sympathize with "the other," and I wanted to cross that culture gap. Emotionally, we're maybe not able to feel for [Iraqi civilians] the way we can feel for talking animals. So I was looking to exploit our universal sympathy with animals to tell a story about the suffering of Iraqi civilians.
“It's weird. You can threaten and kill a baby in a movie, but put a dog in jeopardy and people will walk out. You make a more immediate connection to a giraffe than a person. It sounds psychotic, that you can feel more for an animal than a human. “
(Brian K. Vaughan)

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“Occasionally, a student would write an essay answer [for nationally standardized tests like the MEAP] that would exhibit more intelligence than any other essay answer I’d seen, but more often than not, the essay would be subversive in some way, questioning the essay question itself while illuminating some truly great points. But here were essays (finally!) with souls behind them — not just some student who’d been trained how to write "the good essay." Sadly, though, these essays generally received three points out of six because they fell into the "convoluted" category. The "good essays" — by "good" I mean formulaic, boring, and teachable — generally received six points.” (John McNally)

***
“If [John McCain] can manage to combine America's tribal pride, its yearning for some sort of spiritual meaning and its fear of the other and put together an inspirational, nationalistic message (along with his pre-fab image as a straight-talking "reformer") he could be very hard to beat --- and very, very dangerous. He's a warmongering hawk, don't ever forget it. The only real difference between him and Bush on these matters is that he's willing to attend the funerals of the dead. (Digby’s Hullabaloo

***
I hear the RePubs are planning to actually run this [Ticking Bin Laden ] ad (at the cost of who knows how much loot) this Sunday during the national news. If you happen to see it then, giggling and pointing is appropriate. If anyone asks you what’s so funny, you can explain that Bush shut down the CIA office that was looking for bin Laden.
(Jim McDonald)

***
“...[India] has to sustain nearly twenty percent of the earth’s population with four per cent of its water. China has less water than Canada—and forty times as many people.” (Michael Specter in The New Yorker, October 23rd, 2006)

***
"Some men are male-oriented. While they are boys, because they are chips off the male block, they love men and enjoy lying with men and being embraced by men; those are the best of boys and lads, because they are the most manly in their nature. When they're grown men, they are lovers of young men. Do you want me to prove it? Look, these are the only kind of boys who grow up to be politicians." (Aristophanes, in Plato's Symposium)

MONSTER

Let us regard this day in a more positive light. It may be that the president has suspended habeas corpus because his followers are too inept to get a conviction any other way.

The worst president in the history of the republic gave himself the power Tuesday to "arrest" persons on American soil and throw them into dungeons indefinitely. He also reinstituted the use of coerced testimony in court, for the first time since the Salem witch trials.

The last time habeas corpus was suspended by a president, Abraham Lincoln was faced with armed insurrection on American soil. Even Roosevelt's imprisonment of the California Japanese was later found to be unjust, without due process, and restitution paid.

On Tuesday, the United States of America was overthrown in a bloodless coup by its least worthy student, a "monstre sacre" spawned by its own excesses.

"Speaking Truth to Power" Now Officially Against the Law

The Gloves Are Off: Screw You, Screw the Constitution, and Screw Yo' Mama Too. From the Rocky Mountain News, October 3rd:
"A Denver-area man filed a lawsuit today against a member of the Secret Service for causing him to be arrested after he approached Vice President Dick Cheney in Beaver Creek this summer and criticized him for his policies concerning Iraq.
Attorney David Lane said that on June 16, Steve Howards was walking his 7-year-old son to a piano practice, when he saw Cheney surrounded by a group of people in an outdoor mall area, shaking hands and posing for pictures with several people.
... Howards and his son walked to about two-to-three feet from where Cheney was standing, and said to the vice president, "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible," or words to that effect, then walked on....Ten minutes later, according to Howards' lawsuit, he and his son were walking back through the same area, when they were approached by Secret Service agent Virgil D. "Gus" Reichle Jr., who asked Howards if he had "assaulted" the vice president. Howards denied doing so, but was nonetheless placed in handcuffs and taken to the Eagle County Jail."

I'm sure glad our Congressmen found a way to "compromise" on habeas corpus last week; now anyone can be labelled an enemy combatant and arrested without probable cause. Enjoy your new country, boys; I hope to see you choke on it. Four Republicans: Lincoln Chafee, Gordon Smith, Arlen Specter, and John Sununu-- voted with the Democrats to strike down the provision regarding habeas review. They lost, 48-51. One Democrat-- a grinning, glowing, globular fellow, Ben Nelson from Nebraska-- voted with the Republicans, and one Republican-- Olympia Snowe from Maine-- abstained, no doubt for a highly principled reason.

Lazy Plotting at Marvel's "Civil War", Good Stuff at "Front Line", "Cap" and "Planet Hulk"

Terrorist explosions kill thousands of innocents while the country watches on television. The incident turns the country against anyone who "might be" or "looks like" a terrorist. Their friends and legal defenders are branded as fellow travelers. Congress panics and rushes through a series of laws to suspend due process and habeas corpus. The president tells the dissidents "you're either with us or against us".
The head of US intelligence tries to recruit prominent Americans to the government cause. When they refuse, the government and the conservative press defame them as traitors who hate America. Former heros, even combat veterans loyal to the Constitution, find themselves on the wrong side of the law. Prisoners are transported thousands of miles away to an improvised prison camp and kept without trial, with no contact with the outside world. Defendants are abused by over-eager guards and interrogators. Intimidated by the government, bullied by their peers, eager to please, old friends sell each other out. Both sides regroup as the violence increases Several former conservatives change sides and join the anti-government dissidents. The law-abiding, pro-government forces become more and more righteous and defensive, desperate enough to enlist sadists and crimnals to attack their former friends. The American government persecutes "enemies within", while a dangerous foreign power activates a sleeper cell...
But hey, it's just a comic book.
For me, "Front Line" is the best (and least publicized) of Marvel's "Civil War" titles. The multiple storylines-- Ben Urich's simple motivation to get to the truth, Speedball as an unpopular defendent being tossed into the prison population-- gets closer to the "messier" aspects than the mainstream titles.
What I object to is Marvel's bad habit under Quesada of trashing well-established characters we've been taught to respect and care about. We're supposed to believe that characters who have (literally, sometimes) gone through Hell to do the right thing will suddenly buckle for anyone waving a flag or a badge? I think this is lazy writing and a failure of imagination; instead of creating new and interesting characters to embody the pro-registration side, we're supposed to believe that Reed? Jan? SPIDEY?!? would sign on for this? And the goofier characters from the '70s and '80s used as cannon fodder?
Heck, even Stan, whose sixties "political" stories might have been naive pleas for tolerance, wasn't afraid to try a new character to embody ideas. Some were Star Trek Silly-- remember Hitler as the Hate-Monger?-- but some, like Bolivar Trask and his heirs, had real staying power. "Front Line" is doing a pretty good job of playing with the archetypes; the two-panel suicide in issue 6 had real pathos.
It's not as if it's a lost skill--Brian K. Vaughn, Alan Moore, the nuts over at "Planet Hulk", all these guys can make us care about a new character in just a few panels. Grant Morrison broke my heart in just three issues with brave little Pirate in "We Three" (and yes, house rabbits really ARE that aggressive and stubborn when they don't want to go where you want them to go.)
The uncharacteristic, un-heroic, "you're either with us or against us" behavior of suddenly right-wing characters at Marvel is unconvincing. It may be that Marvel has brought in too many Hollywood writers trained by Hollywood. The manufactured "conflict between old friends" is reminiscent of an ensemble television show that's running out of steam.
In tawdry reality, the politicians so quick to abandon habeas corpus and their constitutional oath were never our friends, and never our heros; they have been waiting their entire lives to sell out to any bully with a twang. Nine-eleven didn't change a damn thing, it only brought out the smallness and meaness that was always there. Torturers, let your hearts be glad. Let a thousand sadists bloom. If Marvel really wanted to appear even-handed in "Civil War", the pro-registration team would be led by nasty little opportunists giving orders to conflicted characters who do the wrong things for the right reasons, instead of heros selling out heros and trashing their reader's good will.

(Inspired by a review of "Civil War" at Filing Cabinet of the Damned)

COMMONPLACE QUOTATIONS for AUGUST, 2006

"Public interest is clear in this matter. It is the upholding of the Constitution. . . . It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control. (U.S. District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of Michigan)

***
“One judge in Michigan has done what 535 members of Congress have so abysmally failed to do.” (NYT editorial)

***

“Socrates asked: what do a beautiful woman, a beautiful vase and a beautiful bed have in common? His answer: the idea of beauty. My question is: what do extremist ideologies like the communism or Nazism of yesteryear and the Islamism of today have in common? After all, they support ostensibly very different ideals – the superior race, mankind united in socialism, the community of Muslim believers, the Umma. Tomorrow, it could be altogether different ideals: some theological, some scientific, others racist. But the common characteristic is nihilism.
“The root element is the attitude that anything goes, particularly when with regard to ordinary people: I can do whatever I want, without scruples. Goehring put it like this: my consciousness is Adolf Hitler. Bolsheviks said: man is made of iron. And the Islamists whom I visited in Algeria said that you have the right to kill little Muslim children, in order to save them.
“....Religion is only the cloth, the excuse and the justification. What is essential is the practice. For there is a direct connection between the Islamic suicide bomber and the general serving under Franco who shouted out in front of the University of Salamanca: “Long live death!” This is the connection that I was trying to grasp.”
(André Glucksmann, in a terrific interview considering Bin Laden in the light of Dostoevsky’s “The Possessed”)

***
“Strategic bombing has been a failed military concept for ninety years, and yet air forces all over the world keep doing it. ... You have to hunt like a network to defeat a network. Israel focused on bombing against Hezbollah, and, when that did not work, it became more aggressive on the ground. The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.” (John Arquilla, defense analyst at the Naval Postgraduate School, quoted by Seymour Hersch in The New Yorker August 21, 2006)

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The Geek Heirarchy

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“How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?” (Charles Bukowski in “Factotum)

***
“[During the Cuban Missile Crisis] Kennedy was deeply influenced by Barbara Tuchman's classic, "The Guns of August," which recounted how a seemingly isolated event 92 summers ago -- an assassination in Sarajevo by a Serb terrorist -- set off a chain reaction that led in just a few weeks to World War I. There are vast differences between that August and this one. But Tuchman ended her book with a sentence that resonates in this summer of crisis: "The nations were caught in a trap, a trap made during the first thirty days out of battles that failed to be decisive, a trap from which there was, and has been, no exit."
Preventing just such a trap must be the highest priority of American policy. Unfortunately, there is little public sign that the president and his top advisers recognize how close we are to a chain reaction, or that they have any larger strategy beyond tactical actions. (Richard Holbrooke, The Washington Post

***
“Ralph Giordano, a German writer and, by the way, a Jew, has noted that Mr. Grass was only 6 when Adolf Hitler was invited to become Germany’s chancellor. (The overused phrase “seizure of power” badly distorts what happened around Jan. 30, 1933, the date of the Führer’s accession. A coup d’ état would have been bad enough; that Hitler’s appointment was perfectly legal only makes it worse for German history.) And Mr. Giordano has asked, reasonably enough, “What else could he have done during that time in the face of the Nazis’ all-powerful propaganda apparatus?” And answers his own question: “Nothing.”.... It is not that a public personality should get a free ride simply for being famous, let alone popular. Herbert von Karajan may have been an outstanding conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, but this would not erase the fact that he joined the Nazi party twice — these were the acts of an adult, after all. The uncomfortable question that remains for Mr. Grass is this: Why did he keep this interlude as a servant of the regime so tight a secret? .... I am not Mr. Grass’s analyst, nor have I ever met him. But it seems to me that he failed to come forward all these years simply because he was too ashamed.” (op-ed by Peter Gay in the New York Times

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(Ward Sutton in The Village Voice)
***

"All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency.
“They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.
“....Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests."
(George Washington)

***

".... The snakes will reveal themselves to be not a counter-Phallus, but rather an expression of the rage of the Medusa, the radical queer postcolonial feminine. What is at stake here is not a battle between "snakes" and the "plane," but rather the contest between transgressive Oedipalized subjectivity (memorably described by Jackson's line, "there's motherf---- snakes on the motherf---- plane") and the anti-Oedipal, serpentine, body-machine complex...."
(A Pre-Reading of "Snakes on a Plane" by Amardeep Singh)

***

“... And I’ve been killing my way to the truth ever since.”
(Marv, in Frank Miller’s “Sin City”)

SCOTUS and Guantanamo Bay, Friday Noon

[This is only a tiny victory from our side, because we're on the side of truth and justice. It is a major rebuke to the administration, because they are doing a bad thing, and when when someone is in the wrong, they cannot afford even the slightest derivation from their party line. We question ourselves as a matter of steering our course. They do not dare to question themselves about anything, because once they do, their intellectual conceit crumbles like a house of cards.]

everything below copyright the AP

***
In Loss for Bush, Supreme Court Blocks War-Crimes Trials at Guantanamo
The Associated Press

Thursday 29 June 2006

Washington - The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.
The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and Geneva conventions.
The case focused on Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as a bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden. Hamdan, 36, has spent four years in the U.S. prison in Cuba. He faces a single count of conspiring against U.S. citizens from 1996 to November 2001.
Two years ago, the court rejected Bush's claim to have the authority to seize and detain terrorism suspects and indefinitely deny them access to courts or lawyers. In this followup case, the justices focused solely on the issue of trials for some of the men.
The vote was split 5-3, with moderate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy joining the court's liberal members in ruling against the Bush administration. Chief Justice John Roberts, named to the lead the court last September by Bush, was sidelined in the case because as an appeals court judge he had backed the government over Hamdan.

HARRY TAYLOR SPEAKS TRUTH TO POWER; POWER ANSWERS THE FIRST QUESTION, IGNORES THE REST

[Excerpt from the official White House transcript of an exchange between 61-year old Charlotte real estate broker Harry Taylor and G.W. Bush at Central Piedmont Community College,
in Charlotte, North Carolina on Thursday, April 4, 2006.]

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, squeaky wheels. There's three of you up there. Is this like a chorus? (Laughter.) Would you please decide among yourselves?

Harry Taylor: I've got the mike.

THE PRESIDENT: Okay, yes, very good. (Laughter and applause.) Good move.

Harry Taylor: You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you'd like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf. You are --

THE PRESIDENT: I'm not your favorite guy. Go ahead. (Laughter and applause.) Go on, what's your question?

Harry Taylor: Okay, I don't have a question. What I wanted to say to you is that I -- in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate, and --

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: No, wait a sec -- let him speak.

Harry Taylor: And I would hope -- I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself. And I also want to say I really appreciate the courtesy of allowing me to speak what I'm saying to you right now. That is part of what this country is about.

THE PRESIDENT: It is, yes. (Applause.)

Harry Taylor: And I know that this doesn't come welcome to most of the people in this room, but I do appreciate that.

THE PRESIDENT: Appreciate --

Harry Taylor: I don't have a question, but I just wanted to make that comment to you.

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate it, thank you. Let me --

Harry Taylor: Can I ask a question?

THE PRESIDENT: I'm going to start off with what you first said, if you don't mind, you said that I tap your phones -- I think that's what you said. You tapped your phone -- I tapped your phones. Yes. No, that's right. Yes, no, let me finish.

I'd like to describe that decision I made about protecting this country. You can come to whatever conclusion you want. The conclusion is I'm not going to apologize for what I did on the terrorist surveillance program, and I'll tell you why. We were accused in Washington, D.C. of not connecting the dots, that we didn't do everything we could to protect you or others from the attack. And so I called in the people responsible for helping to protect the American people and the homeland. I said, is there anything more we could do.

And there -- out of this national -- NSA came the recommendation that it would make sense for us to listen to a call outside the country, inside the country from al Qaeda or suspected al Qaeda in order to have real-time information from which to possibly prevent an attack. I thought that made sense, so long as it was constitutional. Now, you may not agree with the constitutional assessment given to me by lawyers -- and we've got plenty of them in Washington -- but they made this assessment that it was constitutional for me to make that decision.

I then, sir, took that decision to members of the United States Congress from both political parties and briefed them on the decision that was made in order to protect the American people. And so members of both parties, both chambers, were fully aware of a program intended to know whether or not al Qaeda was calling in or calling out of the country. It seems like -- to make sense, if we're at war, we ought to be using tools necessary within the Constitution, on a very limited basis, a program that's reviewed constantly to protect us.

Now, you and I have a different -- of agreement on what is needed to be protected. But you said, would I apologize for that? The answer -- answer is, absolutely not. (Applause.)

Q Mr. President, I was raised on a ranch in New Mexico. And my heroes have always been cowboys.

THE PRESIDENT: There you go. Thank you, yes. (Laughter.) I'm not sure I qualify as a cowboy. (Laughter.)

See Also:
THE HICKERBILLY ANTICHRIST,
FEINGOLD TO DEMOCRATS: L'AUDACE! L'AUDACE! ET TOUJOURS L'AUDACE!!!,
PLAY THE GAME: GEORGE BUSH OR ED WOOD?,
AMERICA THE CHICKENSHIT,
EVEN A BROKEN CLOCK IS RIGHT TWICE A DAY,
YOU... MY SWEET IMPEACHABLE YOU...

CITIBANK ATMS LOOTED; DRESS REHEARSAL FOR THE COUP

Word of mouth from Boing Boing Saturday night: Citibank customers traveling out of the country have been frozen out of their bank accounts. They are being told that the ATM networks of Canada, Russia and the United Kingdom have been "compromised", so that using an ATM card over the Canadian network locks out your account automatically.

"She informed me that I would have to return to the United States to change my pin number before my card would be valid and in a usable state again. When I informed her that I would be traveling outside of the United States for at least a few months, possibly up to six, she repeated that I would have to re-enter the United States to fix the problem."

Electronically frozen assets have been a trope in science fiction at least since Heinlein-- that's why so many of his characters have gold stashed somewhere. In Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale", electronic banking was used to strand the opposition and take over the United States.

Gotta wonder is this isn't criminal activity at all, but a dress rehearsal for some future "state of emergency". I hate being intuitive sometimes. I still remember puzzling over a small NYT story about an assassination in Northern Afghanistan the weekend before September 11, and thinking that the murder reminded me of the prologue for a paperback thriller...

MARY JANE WATSON, MAY PARKER HELD AT GUANTANAMO WITHOUT HABEAS CORPUS: ACLU Seeks Release of Dissidents' Relatives

Yes, there are otaku lurking at the NYT, and the horribly artsy (therefore acceptable to New Yorkers) Chris Ware can go screw himself. Or bore himself to death. Myself, I'll always love watching the Archetypes wrestle with the Zeitgeist. I hear the Zeitgeist is getting a couple of evil sidekicks, Weltsmerch and Schadenfreude:

From The New York Times, February 20, 2006
THE BATTLE OUTSIDE RAGING, SUPERHEROES DIVE IN
By GEORGE GENE GUSTINES
".... America's current real-world political issues will wind themselves into the lives of the heroes of Marvel Comics in "Civil War," a seven-issue limited monthly series set to begin in May. In the series, the beliefs of many well-known Marvel characters, including Captain America, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man and Spider-Man, will be challenged. ...

"Civil War" provides problems in spades. The story opens with a reckless fight between a novice group of heroes (filming a reality television show) and a cadre of villains. The battle becomes quite literally explosive, killing some of the superheroes and many innocent bystanders. That crystallizes a government movement to register all super-powered beings as living weapons of mass destruction. The subsequent Registration Act will divide the heroes into two camps, one led by Captain America, the other by Iron Man. Along the way, Marvel will unveil its version of Guantánamo Bay, enemy combatants, embedded reporters and more. The question at the heart of the series is a fundamental one: "Would you give up your civil liberties to feel safer in the world?"

".... As deeply entangled in current United States politics as the new Marvel series seem, "Civil War" and the accompanying "Front Line" series won't be written by Americans. Mark Millar, a popular comics writer who is Scottish and lives in Glasgow is writing "Civil War"; Paul Jenkins, a British writer who lives in Atlanta and had a lengthy run on "Spider-Man," is writing "Front Line."

".... Mr. Millar said the story would cause a "seismic shift" in the Marvel heroes: "Before the civil war, the Marvel universe was a certain way. After the civil war, the heroes are employed by the government." But don't think that gives away the ending. "Some people refuse to do it," he said, "and those guys are performing an illegal act by doing so."

***
[--do the words, "Spider-Man: Threat or Menace?" strike a familiar note? As the most human of heroes, fighting for the little people and not ideologies, I'm sure that Spidey, bless him, will find himself bucking authority for the sake of some victim of "collateral damage", and get booted out of Stark Tower with the rest of the Mets fans. -- M.]
***

"Mr. Jenkins's "Civil War: Front Line" will explore the ramifications of the events in the main series and more. "I have absolute carte blanche to take on the political landscape as it exists in America and all around the world," he said in a telephone interview.

"Mr. Jenkins will be telling some of his stories through the viewpoint of two embedded reporters. One works for a left-leaning newspaper, The Alternative. The other works for The Daily Bugle, whose fictional publisher, J. Jonah Jameson, Mr. Jenkins likened to Rupert Murdoch. Jameson has an agenda and pushes his embedded reporter to meet it.

"Mr. Jenkins will be doing some embedding of his own, using, in part, actual war letters and diaries, including "The Diary of Anne Frank" to tell the parallel story of a frightened young mutant girl in Manhattan, and the World War I poem, "Futility," by Wilfred Owen, to chronicle the last moments of a hero's life.

"Are these stories getting too heavy for comics readers looking to shut out real-world tensions?

"Not really, say the Marvel writers. "Civil War," Mr. Millar said, will work on two levels: "At the core, it's one half of the Marvel heroes vs. the other half." But, he added: "The political allegory is only for those that are politically aware. Kids are going to read it and just see a big superhero fight."

***
There's a part of me that still believes in Truth and Justice, and despite what television says, that doesn't always include the "American Way".

To give credit where credit is due, DC and Frank Miller covered these conflicts back in the 80s, when Batman used kryptonite to beat the mortal shit out of Superman for protecting a Reagan lookalike: "Keep talking, Clark; you've always known just what to say. 'Yes'-- You always say 'Yes'-- to anyone with a badge, or a flag. Just like your parents taught you. My parents taught me a different lesson, lying on this street, shaking in deep shock, dying for no reason at all." One thinks of the recent photographs-- I'm not going to post them, you can hunt them down yourself if you need to be taught that lesson over again-- of children screaming over their parents' body parts in Iraq, and parents trying desperately to put their broken children back together.

People who don't read comics, but are interested in this war of ideals, or the intersection of human reality with fantasy are encouraged to start with Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross' "Marvels". A recent New Yorker cartoon showed a grumpy old man growling past a bookstore, "Now we have to pretend to read GRAPHIC novels, too?"

BUSH and the NSA: DON'T QUESTON ME.

Sad to say, our only overseas communications this year involved the wedding of Maureen and Michel, bridesmaid dresses and the wrenching loss of our house rabbit Fanny. No enemies list for pipsqueaks like me this year. The bloggers at The Washington Note sure were eager to know who was on the list, but that was December 16, and by now the list is about as exclusive as toilet paper.

The New York Times, under the stewardship of Arthur Pinch "Rich and Powerful People are Nice to Me, Therefore We Trust Them" Sulzberger, waited until Christmas weekend to reveal that Bush's spying without a warrant was NOT limited to people who might have stood next to a terrorist once. It seems the National Security Agency has without court-approved warrants, been plugged right into tapping directly "the American telecommunication system's main arteries".

And John Conyers-- a Michigan boy, I'm pleased to say-- was first on the board to utter the "I" word, impeachment, in public. Too bad fellatio wasn't involved, or Henry Hyde could jump on there with him. Does anyone else think it odd that a drunken woman picked this week of all weeks to start a public bar fight with Mrs. Conyers?

Of course, the American telecommunications corporations rolled over like micturating daschunds to help the NSA get in the electronic back door. And lots of "concern" has been expressed by judges and agents, but not enough concern for more than one of them to resign.

"Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda." Is there anyone who believed that? Well, the lickspittle Attorney General, of course. And Idaho. Cheney doesn't believe in anything, he just bulliies you into this week's party line. He's kind of like a short, balding Patsy Stone-- "Don't question me!" And Rumsfeld, the very avatar of arrogance, thinks EVERYONE'S stupid and can't even brook the mildest line of questioning from an NPR reporter without insulting the interviewer. Sadly, this tells us more about Rumsfeld's insecurities than he wants us to know.

The Bush administration says it wants "to detect terrorist plots before they can be carried out". The consensus of the people-who-know-better-than-me seems to be put us at a 70% chance of a terrorist attack with a weapon of mass detruction on US soil within the next 10 years. Nothing in Bush's efforts is likely to better those odds; indeed, this adminstration seems determined to increase the terrorist population. See Also: Jekyll & Hyde President, , St. George vs, the Pagan Knight, ,Missing Link, ,NeoCon Blogging, , Hating the French, The Worms Turn

MEMO FROM: Jesus of Nazareth/ TO: Congressional Torture Caucus

Somebody over in Congress finally read the Constitution, or had lunch with Robert Byrd, or maybe their kid came home from civics class and explained it to them. At any rate, they have rediscovered checks and balances and have started to grow some balls.

The McCain amendment S.AMDT.1977 forbids the torture of "persons under the detention, custody, or control of the United States Government." It was attached to a major spending bill, but the current president has announced he will veto it. (I'm pleased that Michigan's own Carl Levin was one of the co-sponsors. I'm very fond of ol' Carl; I ran around with a lot of Jewish kids in high school and Senator Levin reminds me of everyone's dad or uncle.)

There were, of course, abstentions (feelthy people, pah! -- we will speak no more of them) and nine senators who voted against the amendment. In alphabetical order, they are:

Wayne Allard, Colorado (odd choice for a former veterinarian with pretty mountains on his website)
Kit Bond, Missouri (Sen. Bond has a son in the Marines-- I pray the lieutenant's never captured and finds the shoe on the other foot)
Tom Coburn, Oklahoma (Oklahoma stands united for torture! And him an OB/GYN man who delivered babies. It's wonderful how the moral sense can compartmentalize itself)
Thad Cochran, Mississippi (awards from National Wildlife Federation and The Nature Conservancy-- here's a fellow I can talk to)
John Cornyn, Texas (lists his favorite book as "Bonfire of the Vanities" and favorite film as "Jerry Maguire"; thinks his "most embarrassing moment occurred when I muffed the opening pitch at a Round Rock Express baseball game"... we're frickin' doomed)
James Inhofe, Oklahoma (posing with young soldiers who behind the grins are thinking, "If I'm ever captured, this bastard is going to get my nuts cut off.")
Pat Roberts, Kansas (Senate Intelligence Chairman, also on Select Committee on Ethics; and yes, his ethics are "select")
Jeff Sessions, Alabama (Alabama; no surprises there)
Ted Stevens, Alaska (Ted's been a madman for years now, and I see no reason for him to change)

Several bloggers are calling them "The Nazgul", a literary nickname for the nine dark riders and servants of Sauron from "The Lord of the Rings."

I'm curious as to whether or not these fellows openly adhere to the teachings of Yeshua of Nazareth, aka Jesus the Christ, who was himself a victim of torture. I assume they do identify themselves as "Christian", when asked, that being the most popular answer for politicians these days. (I'm looking for a quote from Mark Twain, wherein the devil says to a smug fellow, "The trouble with you is, you think you're the best people here, whereas you're really just the most numerous.") I'm not speaking from any high moral ground-- I indulge myself with elaborate revenge and torture fantasies for people who hurt animals or little kids, bullies in general-- but I'm not making laws. Even from the coldest perspective imaginable, I thought they got the memo Torture Doesn't Work as an intelligence gathering tool. Satisfying, yes, but productive, no. This is an old Victorian notion in fiction, that you've converted the bad guy by making him cry. By the time you're finished venting your anger, the other side has changed their plans and the information you got from the torture victim is out of date. It doesn't change people's minds, either... you can bomb the shit out of someone's home town and blow up any number of old ladies and kindergartners, and all it does is make the citizens even more determined to fight you. Did Abu Ghraib (new even more offensive photos coming soon, I hear) accomplish anything beyond increasing anti-American feeling? How the hell did we blow the lead, the world sympathy we had on September 12?

Has it occured to anyone that the Nazgul Nine might be Al-Qaeda sleeper agents?

WAITING FOR BAIL: essay

Reprinted from The Kalamazoo News, copyright Michael Fountain

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.... He’d said the same thing to three others that night, each of them coming into jail for the first time. I recognized the emotion behind it—he was trying to convince them that he wasn’t just part of the system, that he was a human being in a hollow place. I used to work in such a place; I used to talk the same kind of bullshit.

.... I wasn’t sure how to feel about this. I felt gratitude; I also saw it as just one more way they get you on their side, get you dependent on them.

.... When you’re in a place like this you walk, sit, eat, answer questions or silently wait according to their schedule, the schedule of the institution, and a friendly individual will get you hooked on the smallest taste of human decency so that you start to think of that particular cop—the cop who lets you keep your clothes on, the cop who flips you a book of matches—as my cop. You watch him move behind the desk with the others; you feel a small sense of panic when he drifts out of sight. His face is the face of Daddy, Uncle, God; the other guards, acolytes of the institution, are bland, unfriendly blobs. ...

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