As Attaturk on FDL said: Lady, you're forgetting who's been in charge here for 8 years. Sick.U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men -- or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.
Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.
According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI agent reported a detainee belonging to China's ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators.
Susan Manning, a lawyer who represents several Uighurs still held at Guantanamo, said Tuesday the allegations are all too familiar.
U.S. personnel "are engaging in abusive tactics on behalf of the Chinese," she said Tuesday. When Uighur detainees refused to talk to Chinese interrogators in 2002, U.S. military personnel put them in solitary confinement as punishment, she said.
"Why are we doing China's dirty work?" Manning said. "Surely we're better than that."
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
What. The. FUCK?
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
seasteading
Big Brother is... making music videos
The Obama Doctrine
Obama is offering the most sweeping liberal foreign-policy critique we've heard from a serious presidential contender in decades. It cuts to the heart of traditional Democratic timidity. "It's time to reject the counsel that says the American people would rather have someone who is strong and wrong than someone who is weak and right," Obama said in a January speech. "It's time to say that we are the party that is going to be strong and right." (The Democrat who counseled that Americans wanted someone strong and wrong, not weak and right? That was Bill Clinton in 2002.)That's a bit unfair to Clinton, I think, because it comes off as if he's advocating being wrong. I think he was just observing, accurately, the reason Dems got pummeled that year: they hadn't stood up for their beliefs. But of course his wife is Exhibit A of that, as are most of the Boomer Dems in leadership over the last 15 years.
The Obama foreign-policy team describes it as "the politics of fear," a phrase most advisers used unprompted in our conversations. "For a long time we've not seen much creative thinking from Dems on national security, because, out of fear, we want to be a little different from the Republicans but not too different, out of fear of being labeled weak or indecisive," another top adviser says. Identifying that fear as the accelerant of the Iraq War mind-set is the first step to a new and innovative foreign policy. John Kerry was not able to argue for fundamental change in foreign policy because he was consumed by that very political fear. Obama's admonition to Democrats is much like Pope John Paul II's to the Gdansk shipyard strikers -- first, be not afraid.A good start for a new century. If a few years too late... but it's never too late!
Monday, May 19, 2008
Maddow/Matthews on appeasement flap
MADDOW: Do you think this is something new? Do you think this is something specific to our current, contemporaneous politics that we have these sort of buzzwords and bumper sticker slogans, whether it’s ‘appeasement,’ or ‘fight over there so we don’t fight them here’ or ‘they hate our freedom,’ any of these terms. Are they designed to be repeated and not to be interrogated?
MATTHEWS: Well, just look at the way people are basically exterminated or tried to be exterminated. Bill Maher makes a comment –which may not have been the right comment–but he was making a point he was trying to make, about stand back weaponry compared to people killing themselves. You can argue about the niceties of that. The Dixie Chicks say something about the war—and they shouldn’t have said it overseas, but they said it. The shutting up of opposition is critical to running a country in an undemocratic way, let’s put it that way. And so you have buzzwords like ‘appeasers’ or ‘cut and run’ and they’re used over and over again by the most mindless people. The trouble with them is they tend to work. The dittoheads can use them. Anyone can use them and they seem to have the same effect. They cause people to run from criticism.
Ollie North, "history guy"?
For someone who was lucky not to have spent the better part of the last two decades making license plates, he’s got some nerve touching this topic. This is the guy who oversaw the arms for hostages deal with Iran in 1985 (among other crimes), right in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war in which the US was actively and openly arming and supporting Saddam Hussein. Ollie North didn’t just talk with Iran at a time they were our enemy in a proxy-war, he actually helped to arm them, bypassing Congress by violating the Boland Amendment to help fund an illegal war in Nicaragua.
Lacking even a shred of credibility, Fox News’ “history guy” is to the truth in the historical record what Dick Cheney is to gun safety. He shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the subject, and anyone who believes a word of what he says about it is a fool.
Word!
yelling "appeasement"
if there is anything that has been discredited by history, it is the argument that every enemy is Hitler, that negotiations constitute appeasement, and that talking will automatically lead to a slaughter of Holocaust-like proportions. It is an argument that conservatives made throughout the Cold War, and, if the charge seemed overblown at the time, it seems positively ludicrous with the clarity of hindsight.He goes through the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Carter, and Reagan administration examples. It's insane. These people are warmongering psychopaths at every turn. They do not change their tune. Our foreign policy successes have for 60 years come when they are ignored, either by Democrats or by their own party. Even in Bush II:
The Bush administration has been little different, refusing for years to talk to North Korea or Iran about their nuclear programs because it wanted to defeat evil, not talk to it. The result was that Pyongyang tested a nuclear weapon and Iran's uranium program continued unfettered. (By contrast, when the administration negotiated with Libya -- an act that its chief arms controller, John Bolton, had previously derided as, yes, "appeasement" -- it succeeded in eliminating Tripoli's nuclear program.)But nooooo, can't talk to Iran. What ignorance.
more millennials - the smackdown finally comes
The boomers' decades-long spin campaign against Generation X has entered a new phase as they've begun to promote Millennials at our expense. Lest you think I'm paranoid, the proof of their plot to elevate the so-called "Internet generation" can be discovered by anyone who knows how to use Google. As it turns out, my generation founded the company. So, to prove my point, let's Google back in time to provide a little context.On Monday, July 16, 1990, the largely baby boomer–run Time published a cover story called "Twentysomething." It was the one of the magazine's best-selling covers in history, and introduced Generation X—we were known as the baby busters then—to the public, largely defining how we were perceived as a generation. Those who read it will recall that the piece possessed the journalistic muster of a Dateline story on poisonous dog food imports from China. In short, "Twentysomething" was meant to alarm the public into believing they'd raised a generation of stoic nihilists who, as one interviewee stated, were destined to be America's "carpenters and janitors." The only thing preventing us from flushing America's future down the toilet was our lack of initiative. We were too slack to flush.
Reminds me of a statement by Michael Hais in the FDL Book Salon thread on Millennial Makeover (comment 197):
In our PPT presentation, Morley and I show Time and Newsweek magazine covers taken from issues ten years apart–the former when Gen-Xers were teens and the latter when Millennials were teens. In the older picture, all of the Gen-X teens were dressed in black, none were smiling, and none were looking at any of the others in the pictures. In the newer cover, all of the Millennials were dressed in bright colors, smiling, and toching one another. It surely captured the individualism and pessimism of the X’ers and the optimism and unity of the Millennials.
What a dumb statement. Those covers are STAGED images. Boomer-constructed stereotypes of the generations after theirs. It's like Reality Bites, where the footage the Xers shot the whole film is re-cut into an acerbic, nihilistic hit job on their generation. (Done, as Lanham notes, by a few sellout Gen-X traitors catering to corporate Boomer types.)
Sunday, May 18, 2008
more appeasement
From the conclusion:
Assign this as an optional reading during Hitler week, to remind how history is used in public discourse.The problem with seeing Hitler in Stalin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Saddam Hussein is that it reinforces the presidential tendency since 1945 to overstate threats for the purpose of rallying public and congressional opinion, and overstated threats in turn encourage resort to force in circumstances where deterrence, containment, even negotiation (from strength) might better serve long-term U.S. security interests. Threats that are, in fact, limited tend to be portrayed in Manichaean terms, thus skewing the policy choice toward military action, a policy choice hardly constrained by possession of global conventional military primacy and an inadequate understanding of the limits of that primacy.
If the 1930s reveal the danger of underestimating a security threat, the post-World War II decades contain examples of the danger of overestimating a security threat.
latest outrage
The CNN follow-up story ("Behind the Scenes: Apology for a Desecration") is pretty interesting as it chronicles the general's public apology to local religious leaders. It's very ceremonial, and a good example of the challenges in an occupation of this nature.
A former college quarterback, Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, stood facing the angry crowd. His face was grim and fixed as tribal sheikhs swirled around him.
"I am a man of honor, I am a man of character. You have my word, this will never happen again," the general told the angry crowd through loudspeakers, pounding the makeshift podium three times with his fist.
"In the most humble manner, I look in to your eyes today and I say, please forgive me and my soldiers." The act of his sniper was criminal, he said. "I've come to this land to protect you, to support you...this soldier has lost the honor to serve the United States Army and the people of Iraq here in Baghdad."
Martin stood before the crowd next, opening his address with an Islamic blessing. He announced the sergeant had been relieved of duty with prejudice; reprimanded by the commanding general with a memorandum of record attached to his military record; dismissed from the regiment and redeployed from the brigade.
Holding a new Quran in his hands, he turned to the crowd. "I hope that you'll accept this humble gift." Martin kissed the Quran and touched it to his forehead as he handed it to the tribal elders. The crowd's voice rose, "Yes, yes, to the Quran. No, no, to the devil."
But would it be enough to appease the mood in Radhwaniya? A local sheikh came to the microphone. "In the name of all the sheikhs," he said, "we declare we accept the apology that was submitted."
And the kicker, to me, was the phrase scrawled on this Koran -- "FUCK YEAH." And so the uncritical jingoist embrace of that film continues apace. Lovely.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
epic Godwin battle of the century
First, Bush violates all kinds of political norms in going off on Obama (well, his favorite "some people") during a speech to the Knesset for Israel's 60th anniversary.
Second, Democrats and tv journalists go nuts blowing his lame comments away. (Especially on the heels of yesterday's idiotic "I quit golf" lies.) Biden calls "bullshit" -- LITERALLY.
Third, some absolutely psychotic right-wing talk show host (Kevin James, apparently - no, not that one!) goes on Hardball to try and defend the comments and attack Obama. Pulls out all the appeasement b.s he's been trained to do... and Matthews asks a simple question: "What did Neville Chamberlain do?" Hilarity ensues.
Salon War Room's summary:
Matthews asked James a simple question: What exactly did Chamberlain do that was so wrong? (The following is a close paraphrase of the ensuing exchange.)Pretty much sums it up. The whole segment has to be seen to be believed. James was screaming and finger pointing from his first words. Matthews was bemused at first, then ripped him a new one. One of the more amazing takedowns of recent tv gabfests. Matthews absolutely destroyed him -- "if you don't know what appeasement is, don't talk about it!"Well, he was an appeaser, James exclaimed.
Yeah, but what did he do?
He was an appeaser!
Kevin, what exactly did Chamberlain do?
He appeased!
Definitely one to show the kids in class. How NOT to do historical analogies. You can't just throw out buzzwords, you have to define them with details.
Friday, May 9, 2008
scary new world
There are already tons of pictures there. Elahi will post about a hundred today — the rooms he sat in, the food he ate, the coffees he ordered. Poke around his site and you'll find more than 20,000 images stretching back three years. Elahi has documented nearly every waking hour of his life during that time. He posts copies of every debit card transaction, so you can see what he bought, where, and when. A GPS device in his pocket reports his real-time physical location on a map.
Elahi's site is the perfect alibi. Or an audacious art project. Or both. The Bangladeshi-born American says the US government mistakenly listed him on its terrorist watch list — and once you're on, it's hard to get off. To convince the Feds of his innocence, Elahi has made his life an open book. Whenever they want, officials can go to his site and see where he is and what he's doing. Indeed, his server logs show hits from the Pentagon, the Secretary of Defense, and the Executive Office of the President, among others.
Why do this?
The idea is to give them all info in real time, so they feel no need to investigate him.So it's both an interesting reaction and a FUCKING SCARY SIGN of the lengths we have to go through in this new security state.
So it dawned on him: If being candid about his flights could clear his name, why not be open about everything? "I've discovered that the best way to protect your privacy is to give it away," he says, grinning as he sips his venti Black Eye. Elahi relishes upending the received wisdom about surveillance. The government monitors your movements, but it gets things wrong. You can monitor yourself much more accurately. Plus, no ambitious agent is going to score a big intelligence triumph by snooping into your movements when there's a Web page broadcasting the Big Mac you ate four minutes ago in Boise, Idaho. "It's economics," he says. "I flood the market."
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Johns Adams fact and fiction
A screenwriter always seeks economy in storytelling. Of course I knew that there were two Boston Massacre trials, not one. But the audience would not have thanked us for devoting the whole of the first episode to an examination of courtroom procedure, with two separate verdicts rendered. The key dramatic points are Adams's decision to defend Captain Preston and his soldiers, and his success at exonerating them on the charge of murder. Both points are "factual." Has there been some manipulation involved in the dramatization? Absolutely. But the outcome of the proceedings has not been altered.Other examples are more suspect. But the general point remains, and in any case it's an interesting thing to present to students as a thought piece on how to write and present history.
Bush's pet terrorist
Luis Posada Carriles, an admitted terrorist wanted for crimes in Latin America, had a nice dinner the other night.
...the man being honored by 500 fellow Cuban Americans at a sold-out gala was Luis Posada Carriles, the former CIA operative wanted in Venezuela on terrorism charges and under a deportation order for illegally entering the United States three years ago [...]
Venezuela's ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, condemned the celebration of Posada as a mockery of justice and evidence of a Bush administration double standard in fighting terrorism.
...
Analysts speculate that the U.S. government has dodged calls for prosecution of Posada for fear he would disclose details of CIA involvement in coups, assassination plots and scandals, including the Iran-Contra Affair.
Peter Kornbluh, head of the Cuba Documentation Project at George Washington University's National Security Archive, has compiled declassified CIA and FBI documents on Posada that show he remained in close touch with Washington handlers throughout his covert service.
"The spectacle of a wanted international terrorist being publicly feted as a hero in Miami makes a mockery of the Bush administration's commitment to wage a war on terrorism," he said of Posada's coming-out party.
More from Digby on Justice Department's almost purposeful incompotence in managing his hearings.
Useful for 20th century CIA ops part of course.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Hitler's War on America
Vidal Sasoon: scourge of fascists!
And so it was that the fresh-faced cockney (the measured, mid-Atlantic tones of the modern Vidal are the product of elocution lessons taken in the 1950s) signed up with the 43 Group, a crudely armed paramilitary force which began as 43 Jewish ex-servicemen and which by its peak was to number more than 1,000 Jews and gentiles, men and women. "We had turned the cheek for the last time," says Sassoon, who heard about it on the Whitechapel grapevine. "And as a 17-year-old recruit, I was proud to be involved. The men were mostly ex-servicemen, unsung heroes who had fought for five years and had come back to be abused by fascists as they walked down the street. They didn't want anything but peace, but it was disgusting that having just fought a war against Nazism, home-grown fascists were allowed to start reorganising. Something had to be done.
...
A boy amongst hardened fighting men, Sassoon was to become one of the toughest and keenest of all the informal soldiers.
"He was only a kid, but he was a tough little shtarka", says a former group commander and comrade, retired paratrooper Gerry Lambert, using a Yiddish word that corresponds, more or less, to hard man. Many former 43ers remember Vidal well and his solid reputation of standing firm when the fists started flying. "To think what a big deal hairdresser he would become," said one of the veterans. "You would never have guessed to see him there, deep in the fray. At that time he was just the sort of guy you wanted standing right by your side when the fighting started. And back then, of course, we often had to break the law. It was out of necessity. We had to use the same weapons as the fascists did: knuckle-dusters, coshes, and cut throat razors".
Wow! One to pull out in future lectures for the kids who only know him as a stylist.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Lincoln-Douglas smackdown
Mission Accomplished!
Editor & Publisher roundup of the NYT coverage of this stunt and its aftermath. One interesting note:
“The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior allied officials said today.”Guess that statement is 'no longer operative'... For more, see Greg Mitchell's So Wrong for So Long.
But the worst of course are the jock-sniffing reactions of our major media figures, which Media Matters provides for your throwing-up-in-the-mouth-a-little pleasure. There's too much to quote here, but it just makes you sick over and over.
daily Godwin
Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.
Crouch: That’s right.
Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.
Crouch: Good word, good word.You can see the whole shameful thing here. It's a pity Crouch didn't invite the Rev. Jeremiah Wright into the studio for a three-way conversation. It would have elevated the tone.
Hee.