Newsflash: Your Rights and The Constitution Are In The Toilet

One has only to read a paper, or rather browse through Facebook, to come across daily occurrences of blatant disregard of laws and citizens' rights in this country. Ever since 9/11, the most damage those satanic terrorists inflicted in this country has been the rise of a secret police state and the erosion of the legal guarantees and freedoms we all think we still have as we happily watch the fireworks on the 4th of July. It ain't the land of the free anymore.
And guess what? It's a slippery slope. You start with "enemy combatants": no trial, no habeas corpus, no nada, stick them in Guantánamo indefinitely, torture them and force feed them if they go on hunger strike, and next thing you know, every law enforcement department in the country feels free to dump on the Constitution.
A kid in Florida is in jail since February and on half a million dollars bail for making a really stupid comment in Facebook. 
The house of a guy in Nevada is stormed by armed police after he refuses to let them in to conduct a stakeout.
A young woman buys a case of water and is arrested and sent to jail by plainclothes police as if she were Pablo Escobar.
The government keeps track of everything you ever wrote or said, now with broader powers through a secret body of law, etc.
Who's next? I don't ask where's the outrage because it is useless. We are all looking the other way, making no waves, confident that no one is ever gonna come and get us.
Barack Obama pretends to be a champion of change while presiding over the trashing of the Constitution, the disregard for the Geneva Convention, etc.
I voted for the guy twice, as most people I know. His record on immigration deportations is worse than Bush's. Countless human rights abuses happen every minute at the for-profit jails where illegal immigrants fester waiting to be deported. Guantánamo is still there, and not getting any better.
If it were Dick Cheney, you'd be up in arms.

Now Showing At A Theater Near You

The suspiciously overpraised Zero Dark Thirty.

Go Preach To The Choir

iWarning: This is a major rant. If you are sensitive to religion, God, atheists, etc, stop reading now. 

Friday, August 24, 2001: A beautiful afternoon to venture out to Coney Island and eat cold borscht on the Brighton Beach boardwalk. We get on the B train. It is quiet, almost empty and very pleasant.
All of a sudden, a young black man starts preaching at the top of his lungs, even though there are only about 10 people in the car. He hollers about how Jesus saved him, and how we all need to follow Jesus, and every two words it's Jesus this and Jesus that. We are with our dog Petra and we're not about to try to change cars in the middle of the Manhattan Bridge, which is the strategic location where this young man chooses to assault us and take us hostage with his extremely loud spiel.
Imagine that I get on a subway car, and in the loudest voice possible, perhaps even with a sound system to back me up, I start screaming at the top of my lungs that God doesn't exist, and that belief in Him has brought humanity extreme cruelty, human imbecility and suffering, etc. I bet a lot of people wouldn't like it. I bet someone may find this really offensive and tell me to shut up. In olden days, much milder stuff would get you burned at the stake. But when it comes to God and religion, even today, we are all hostages, because nobody has the guts to find this religious blather the most aggressive, obnoxious, offensive, insulting form of imposition. People are afraid to speak up against it, because they know it's a lost battle. It's reason versus obsession. You can't engage, because you will never be right. They also live under the misguided notion that somehow God is off limits. God freaks can attack us mercilessly with their certainties but we can't even ask them politely to zip it. It's a taboo to be against God, and by extension the morons who claim to be His messengers.
God freaks, by the way, are so demonically insane that they are willing to change the definition of female rape ("legitimate", "forcible") in order to outlaw abortion. This is the grossest, vilest form of human perversion. But someone screaming about God in your ear? You have to grin and bear it.
What about Jews? Buddhists? Members of the Church of Elvis? Why do they need to listen to this Jesus crap? It's offensive to anyone who happens to believe in something other than Jesus.
I have no doubt that this enraptured young man may be an effective preacher one day. That is, if he actually finds something interesting to say. Demanding that we must all follow Jesus just because he did does not cut the mustard. It is fucking annoying, and it sounds like a broken record. I once went to the Abyssinian Church in Harlem and heard a smart, compelling preacher. I did not agree with everything he said, but he was thrilling. He had interesting stuff to say. If you are going to force me to listen to this bullshit, at least have the courtesy to make it worth my while. Otherwise, shut the fuck up. I don't want to hear it. Freedom of religion doesn't mean you have the right to force me to listen to your bullshit. The subway is not the place to preach. That's what church is for.

The clown from Hell 

We had a wonderful time by the beautiful sea. We got on the D train at dusk. Again, a few people, tired from a day of sun and noise on Coney Island. A dude half dressed like a clown stands in the middle of the car and starts bleating grotesquely and shaking a pair of very loud maracas. He is appalling. He is the exact opposite of funny; a black hole of pathetic, insane cluelessness. He is so bad, he is scary. He bleats like a tortured animal, screeching "I love you" and shaking the maracas in our faces. Even Petra, who is an expert subway traveller, is rattled by this idiot. A French family of three gapes at him like he is the Antichrist, their teenage son beseeching them in French to move to another car*. But nobody says anything. Understandably, since he may be deranged. We gesture to him gently to tone it down, but he keeps screaming.

Appalled French Family

But then comes the clincher. Turns out he's a Christian, and God and Jesus and all that fucking unholy crap from utter HELL. Of course he is a Christian: he knows that's how he gets away with murder. One could call the police on him and get him busted for being a public nuisance. And that's what I should have done. Call 311. But they might give him a pass. Why? 'Cause he's a Christian.
A young black woman eggs him on, obviously making fun of him. He latches on to her, but it turns ugly the minute he finds out that she thinks he's crazy, not funny. He starts hurling abuse at her. The Christian clown that one second ago was boasting that he never curses and he just wants to "entertain and give joy", has a mouth like a sewer, even in the presence of young, scared children. And still, the parents keep quiet. He and the girl start having a ferocious argument. He mentions the word "Christian" once again and that's where I lose it. I scream at them both to shut up. I ask him to please pipe down. We want quiet, I demand. This fat moron comes right at me, and starts insulting me. I tell him what he is doing is aggressive. The crazy black girl actually stands on her seat and looks like she is about to jump on him. Finally he gets off the train, still complaining loudly that he's a Christian. Like he can't believe that we are all evil for not letting him assault us with his deranged screaming.
This is New York. The reason why people do shit like this on subways is because they know we are all afraid to engage with them and put them in their place. I can ignore and tolerate all kinds of annoyances, but religious people trying to impose their beliefs on me, that makes me righteous angry, regardless of faith. Using Jesus as an excuse to pester people is even worse.
I don't go around trying to convert people to atheism. Your faith is your own damn business and you have no right to hoist it up on me in a public place, unless it is a temple and I'm walking through its doors of my own accord. Goddammit.




*Moving to another car is pointless. They may follow suit.

Plus ça change

Not to ruin your lovely weekend or anything, but here are some fresh remnants of the depravity of the Bush administration.  Immigrant detainees dying in private jails and officials scrambling to cover up their deaths and mistreatment.
Every time stuff like this surfaces, I wonder how is it that Bush and Cheney and their despicable minions roam the Earth unscathed.
Instead of jail, why don't they just deport the people? Do you know that they have detained legal immigrants because of bureaucratic technicalities that then disappear into a nightmarish rabbit hole from which there is no way out? 
Enjoy the outrage!

Let's get outta there! NOW!

Colonel Reese, an American adviser in Iraq, is saying in no uncertain terms, (blunt is how the Times puts it) that it is time to say Adios amigous! and leave Iraq.
Hey, not a moment too soon! What took you so long?
His memo makes for great reading, even though it has the tone of a superior being who has finally ran out of patience with the pesky, stubborn natives. That is, the tone of a colonialist from the 19th century.
In a nutshell: we can't change their ways and we are not welcome anymore, plus they're bleeding us to death.
He says, let's declare victory and call it a day. I have a problem with the victory part, because it don't look like no victory to me, but just call it what you please, and let's vamoose.
Why do Americans insist that other people are going to abandon their culture and their entrenched ways and embrace, digest, and ape a totally different culture in a matter of months? Is this the height of naiveté or arrogance, or both? We can't even change our own culture HERE.
The US invades and occupies a country under false pretenses. This country is ruled by a truly evil bastard whose only way to keep the ethnic chaos in check is through a reign of utter terror. This is a deeply abused and traumatized country, but Americans think that they will "liberate" it and all of a sudden the grateful Iraqis, who would not know democracy or freedom if it bit them in the ass, have not known it and will not know it for the next thousand years, are going to all start acting like Thomas Jefferson. Instead, they start a massive bloodbath against themselves and the occupying forces.
We cannot invade a country over false pretenses, because of sheer greed and then pretend we were there to save it. And who should be held accountable for this criminal mess? To the gallows!

To clean up the mess we are leaving behind would probably require at least 50 years and too much money to count, neither of which we can afford. As many commenters say, let's bring the troops back and use the gazillions we are wasting over there for better things at home; i.e, single payer healthcare.

I quote Mr. Byron Jones from Pennsylvania:

...we spend trillions of dollars for stupid "regime changes" aka Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. without so much as flinching. Saving lives and providing affordable medical care for our own citizens, well, that is something entirely different. Can anyone explain the logic? In other words, you can use my tax dollars to kill someone I don't know, but God forbid that you use my tax dollars to help my neighbor obtain affordable health insurance!

Bring the troops home NOW.

Obama is a Wimp: Cheney to the Gallows

He is not a wimp, as Cheney claims, because he is "soft" on terror. He is a wimp and a hypocrite and a disillusionment to those who voted him into office because he is soft on Cheney (and on real health care reform and on banks and their perks, but let's leave it at that).
Prosecute those responsible for breaking the law during the Bush Administration to the fullest extent of the law. Send these motherfuckers where they belong: behind bars.

McNamara: A timely death

The best this man could do is die right now. Actually, it would have come in handy if he died right when Dick Cheney and his team first foisted the weapons of mass destruction lie upon the American people. His death is hopefully serving to revisit with more urgency why are we still in Iraq and why we are not prosecuting that band of bastards for war crimes, incompetence, torture, lying, etc.
I am very disappointed that Obama refuses to go after them. I don't think the small potatoes who actually did the torturing should be punished first. It's the big fish who need to stand trial.
McNamara's belated contrition sheds interesting light on his successors. We all know we are never going to get that kind of soulsearching from Cheney or Rummy or any of those cowards. Dick Cheney is not going to expiate his guilt by trying to alleviate poverty like McNamara did for years at The World Bank. McNamara was perhaps an evil man, but he had more moral stature than the repugnant Cheney.
The war in Vietnam was ultimately rejected by American public opinion because in those days you could turn your TV on at 6 pm and see daily horrific footage of the savagery and the absurdity of it all right at home. The media was not in total cahoots with the government and there was a sense of deep outrage. That is totally missing today. Every single American citizen should be demanding to end this stupid Iraq war and to bring the troops back home NOW. The parties responsible for lying to the American people and starting a war under false pretext should be tried in a court of law.

Be a patriot: scorn Sarah Palin.

It is the patriotic duty of every American citizen to heap unlimited amounts of scorn and vitriol on the topic of Sarah Palin's resignation and her future political hopes. The mere fact of her political existence is already surreal, pathetic and ridiculous, as is the entire Republican party, which is having a decadence as grotesque and revolting as Nero's Rome. However, it is our duty to remind her in no uncertain terms that she and her party demean and diminish the great civic achievement of our last Presidential election. In this historical moment, the citizens singlehandedly delivered this country from the clutches of indecency, and saved and helped restore the last shred of dignity of our political system.
Nobody knows why she is doing what she is doing. She is either having a meltdown or planning to run for president. Let us pray it's the former and not the latter, because she is unfit for public life. I think we should all be tired of the grotesque humiliations we endured for eight years and should countenance no more from the likes of her.
One thing is clear: She recently signed a lucrative contract to "write" a book.
The sheer absurdity of it all.

Cheney: You are Pissing me OFF

Not content with leaving us to worry in peace about a worldwide pandemic of Swine Flu, the malignant, malevolent, satanic, chill-inducing ex VP (or rather ex P) is intent on discrediting the Obama Administration's efforts to restore dignity to the foreign and domestic policy of the US, and potentially save us from harm's way in an intelligent and diplomatic manner. He continues carping that Obama is making us less safe, although there is absolutely no evidence of that. He continues defending torture even though it has been amply documented that the only thing torture is good for is to manufacture more crazy lunatics hell bent on torturing us back.
If I were Obama, just to shut this fucker's trap, I would allow for impeachment proceedings against him and his underlings. Let him rant all he wants from jail.
Meanwhile, you can meet the obnoxious man who sucks Cheney's dick in this video from The Daily Show. Listening to him, now that is torture.
Here is a certifiable moron attempting to defend waterboarding. He is so unbelievably stupid that he mentions the presence of doctors, to make sure the torturee is still alive, as if this was a sign of benevolence. The presence of doctors in torture chambers is one of the most base examples of human depravity. Doctors are brought in to ensure that the prisoners withstand as much pain and suffering as possible without dying. The moment you torture, there are no humanitarian concerns.
This dickhead should be waterboarded with a pail of shit, in the presence of a doctor. Let's see then if he feels the same way.
Jon Stewart was excellent. But he should have pointed to the fact that coercive interrogation has been found to yield little of value and is a spurious argument in favor of torture. He was up against a frantic bully, who knows his argument doesn't withstand scrutiny, but who kept pointing his finger and hollering through the conversation. What an asshole. And who does he thinks he's fooling by calling his outfit something for the defense of democracy. You can't talk about the defense of democracy and advocate for torture. They are mutually exclusive.
Maybe the torturers who actually physically inflicted pain should not be prosecuted. Although I don't see why not. But their superiors? Those who gave the orders? Most certainly and all the way to the top.

The joyful aftermath

Now that I have been able to collect my thoughts, scattered as they were by more powerful emotions such as joy and relief and pride and amazement, here they are:

McCain's concession speech was the greatest moment of his campaign. Had he sounded and acted like last night throughout, he may not have been trounced the way he was. Call me paranoid, but I thought that making it about African-Americans at the very beggining of the speech still had a whiff of scaremongering amongst his base. It was over 100 million people who voted, it was about more than African Americans. Thus, I didn't find the speech as gracious at the very beginning, but maybe it's just that there is a certain tone-deafness in McCain's camp in general. Then McCain corrected course. When alluding to the mistakes he made, I could not help but parse this as the major blunder of choosing Palin for a running mate (against his wishes, according to a New Yorker article). About her, there is no need to expound. She showed who she was, or rather who she wasn't from the very beginning and it just kept getting worse. The way she was manipulated by the campaign and used to unleash ugliness was not only cynical and disgusting but a terrible setback for women and for everybody in America. There were many other mistakes that showed McCain was out of touch with the reality of most people. The condescension towards Obama, the racial baiting, the patronizing tone towards the American people (Joe the Plumber?) but most damaging was the ideological tunnel vision of his campaign strategy. Their base, to which they pandered and because of which they floundered, is irrelevant today. Most American people have more common sense and more authentic decency and, as the results show, more pressing problems, than those fringe lunatics that Steve Schmidt and Karl Rove think can win them an election. Republicans showed that they live in a dangerous ideological bubble of their own making that has now felicitously (for us) and disastrously (for them) exploded. The fact that they pretended that G.W. Bush, the biggest elephant in the room in the history of the world, wasn't there, didn't help any. The entire McCain campaign symbolizes neatly and beautifully everything that is wrong with the Republican party. Now they have four years to regroup and fix it, and perhaps they can become a viable party again for those tax-obsessed people who believe in total self-reliance, not for evangelical loonies and intolerant bigots and ultra-rightist extremists.

I was struck by the cold indifference of McCain's body language as he patted Palin in the back and as he almost forgot that his Barbie wife was standing beside him (who must have been the most relieved American of all). He barely acknowledged her, and not for the first time. Compare that to what goes on with the Obamas and I'm just thrilled we have a power couple finally who seems to be having an actual, living, breathing intimate relationship. They are a real couple. I'm thankful just for that. I believe it is more important than it seems (think the Nixons, the Fords, the Clintons, the Bushes and the Bushies. I rest my case). I also love Biden's wife. She seems authentic.

And then we have our winner, who is not only intensely charismatic and capable and intelligent and a magnetic orator (and super duper handsome), but who ran, as he himself said, the best political campaign ever. If he runs this country with the intelligence and strategic acuity and steadfastness and nimbleness with which he ran his campaign, we may have a formidable president. For a spine-chilling comparison in leadership styles just think back to Hillary Clinton's debacle and/or the McCain campaign. Both seem rudderless and opportunistic and willing to shift and pander at any cost for the big prize. Meanwhile, "That One", breezes through on message, on point and without psychodrama. That's who we need at the helm.

I found it interesting that the victory music playing was no Motown or Stevie Wonder. It was a bombastic film score from John Williams for The Patriot. As an inside joke it works real well. But it is also a cunning choice because, like Obama's victory speech, it is about America, not about our different particularities. The Clintons used Fleetwood Mac (Don't Stop). It would have been a joyous get down and boogie had the Obamas used any of the magnificent music that is the African American legacy to this country, but it was politically right to use something generic, because this presidency, as Obama mentioned time and time again in the speech, needs to be about everybody, not about him being a Black man. Still, in the speech, he did not disappoint in this respect. Nobody can accuse this man of being an Oreo. The speech was perfectly nuanced between inclusiveness and the acknowledgment of his historical reality and its astounding implications for America and the world. When he mentioned what that 106 year old Black lady who got out and voted had been through to get to this day, through Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma (and I will add Katrina), he brought it all home.

But images can speak louder than words even as magnificent and adroit as our new President-Elect's. The faces in Grant Park, a veritable mosaic of color; the booing faces in Arizona, a sea of white. Guys, I have news for you: that is not America anymore. Hasn't been for a while now. America is more like Obama, an amalgam of races and nations and colors and creeds. Sasha and Malia beaming, their parents looking and acting like parents and like a couple. And I was surprised by Obama's gravitas, no doubt influenced by the sad loss of his grandmother, but also I'm sure by what he correctly deemed appropriate for the moment. He looks like a statesman, talks like a statesman and acts like a statesman. I'm in love.

I'm also in love with Michelle Obama. I can't wait for her to be the first lady. She rocks.

I have been reading the comments in the NY Times (the schmaltziness gets boring pretty fast). Apparently, Australians are uncommonly happy about the results. But I have not seen comments from Israel. Israel should be rejoicing just like the rest of the world. This man is committed to a foreign policy that will restore America's standing in the world and I'm sure this will include plans for a lasting peace in the Middle East (which means more peace for all the planet). Jews need to understand that he and Biden, not the macho bluster and evangelical craziness of Bush and the Satanic self-interest of Cheney, will be in the best interests of Israel and of the Palestinians.

Lastly, I heard the message that outgoing POTUS sent Obama. It sounded like a frat boy talking to a buddy. Awesome dude! I must agree, but it is so below the standards the occasion requires. Luckily, we can look forward to the winds of change from now on. Oh, happy day.

Biden v Palin: It was Nucular!

So she didn't spontaneously self-combust. So, as everybody says with surprised admiration, as if it was an achievement of the highest order, "she held her own". Truth is, the bar was set so incredibly low, the expectations were so dismal, that a monkey could have passed the test with flying colors. It is deeply frightening that we are considering someone for the vicepresidency of this country and we are relieved by this performance. To me, there was nothing in her performance that did not confirm that she is still way out of her depth. It was a decent performance by high school debating standards, not by the standards of seeking the second highest office in the land.
In my estimation, Biden started rather cold and stiff and gained heat, clarity and momentum as the night wore on; she, on the contrary, started out pretty well and towards the end she sounded increasingly fake, shrill, desperate, incoherent and inarticulate. It's as if all the info she crammed in started to get all jumbled in her brain there (as she would put it). She reminded me a little of Hal the computer in 2001.
I give it to her, she applied herself and did her homework and memorized a bunch of facts and still had time to overuse to death that "aw, shucks" shtick that may work wonders in Alaska but is totally inappropriate for a Vice-head of state. At the sound of each grating, smug, small town inflected bullshit I was ready to put my fist through the TV set. Remember Bill Clinton? He knew how to wield that stuff. A smart man, he used down home speech naturally and smartly. With her, it's totally fake. Plus, she makes George Bush, with whom she shares the incapability of pronouncing the word "nuclear", sound like a scholar. This, contrary to what a lot of people think, is not a good thing in a vicepresident.
Do you expect your doctor, the teacher of your children, the architect that built your house, the engineer who builds roads and bridges to somewhere, surgeons, scientists, politicians, to be as dumb and ignorant and incurious as you are? I don't. I expect my leaders to be better prepared, more well read, well traveled and more intelligent than the rest of us. I've had it with this glorification of insularity and ignorance. As if being well educated all of a sudden has become a liability.
But let's talk about Joe Biden, 'cause he was freaking great.
1. He smartly did not stoop down to her level. He is a statesman, and he showed it. He did not have to belabor his experience or his qualifications. A couple of mentions here and there and it was plain for all to see.
2. He debated against John McCain and his party and not against her and her shortcomings. Classy.
3. While she was trying to do the cute bitch shtick with him, he was passionate, articulate, SPECIFIC and extraordinarily dignified.
He was vice-presidential. Hell, he was presidential. She was a hick.
4. He stuck to the strategy and he nailed it. And many of his answers were the real breath of fresh air:
• When asked about supporting equal civil rights for same sex couples, he did not hum and haw, and without hesitation he said: "Absolutely". And he explained why. By the way, I disagree with the Democrats' stance on civil gay marriage -- Biden saying that gays can marry through their faith is ridiculous -- but apparently this country is not evolved yet and these people have an election to win. Meanwhile, this petty, mean-spirited woman seemed a little thrown off by the whole deal. She assured us that she is very tolerant, as if homosexuals are a pest that needs to be tolerated. I found her response deeply offensive.
• At one point, when asked about what she'd do as vicepresident she said something like expanding the powers of the vicepresidency. AS IF!!! Biden really sank her on that one. He read her the riot act. He said that Dick Cheney was the most dangerous vicepresident that America ever had (prompting me to smooch him in the kisser), he explained the actual nature of the office, for her benefit, I'm sure, and said there was no reason to expand the powers of such office. He rocked.
• After Palin repeated her hockey mom cred like a parrot, as if that alone was sufficient to help run a country, Biden took the opportunity to remind her that he had been a single dad, that he had only one house, and that he too came from where everybody else comes from, he too has a son deploying to Iraq, and he reminded the American public (apparently, through the repeated use of the word "Scranton") that he was solidly in the camp of the working class (what the Democrats, afraid that they may be confused with communists, now call the middle class).
She tried to spin the disaster of the last 8 years into a looking back at the past, but I don't think that demagoguery convinces anyone. As Biden said, past is prologue, and the policies of the last 8 disastrous years are just coming back to haunt us NOW. Biden did well to not let people forget that. He also demonstrated impatience with the "maverick" fallacy.
In all, he creamed her. That she did not totally embarrass herself should not detract from the fact that he won this debate by a mile. It wasn't even a contest.

"One of those Hitler things"

No lighthearted posts for Easter, I'm afraid, my dears.
In preparation for the release of Standard Operating Procedure, the new Errol Morris film about Abu Ghraib, The New Yorker has an article by Morris and Philip Gourevitch, about Sabrina Herman, the soldier who took the infamous pictures at that horrid jail. This article should be required reading for every citizen of the US. It provokes, besides untenable outrage, several very interesting topics for pondering.
It's hard for me to write about this without flying into a shapeless rage, but I will attempt:
The writers concentrate on the power of the photographic images to make a larger point about this dark episode in the history of the US. When one of the national guardsmen attempts to describe the state of that jail when they first got there, he calls it "one of those Hitler things".
This is a kid who, like many others, joined the National Guard primarily to get money for college, so one supposes he had not read Hannah Arendt on the banality of evil. If it wasn't for the photographic documentation the Nazis, and later on, the liberating armies, took of the German extermination camps, this poor dude would not have a frame of reference for the hellish conditions he encountered in Abu Ghraib. This is why getting people acquainted with the infernal images of the Holocaust (or any other gross human misconduct) is essential. It opens our eyes and minds to the historical precedent of human evil. One would hope it gives us a moral compass; the images are so brutal and inhumane, one reacts with shame and disgust. One knows this is wrong. One refuses to debase oneself to that level.
But if you are soldier at war, trained to obey orders, if you are given orders that come from high levels and that nobody seems to question, what do you do? Reading the testimony of Sabrina Herman and others involved, I extrapolate that this is how many Nazi rank and file must have coped and lived with themselves after executing their daily duties of humiliation, torture and murder of other human beings. The Nazis invented a sophisticated apparatus of dehumanization to help themselves achieve their goals more efficiently, and the criminals of the US military intelligence, in their own modest way, did exactly the same thing. They deliberately sent to Abu Ghraib National Guard soldiers who were untrained in the handling of prisoners, who were not aware of the laws of the Geneva Convention, whose job description never mentioned enforcing torture in jail. They sent these poor, ignorant kids, who joined the National Guard to get ahead in life, perhaps with a sense of patriotic duty enhanced by 9/11, to do the dirty job for them. These kids paid with court martials and suspensions and demotions and the loss of their jobs and military careers, while the people who gave them the orders are still running around with not a care in the world, including Donald Rumsfeld, Satan himself (Dick Cheney) and even the president of this country, who has condoned and defended all of this.
As much as I abhor torture, I can't help wishing it, excruciatingly and until the end of eternity, on these gargoyles.
We all have been appalled by the photographs of the abuse at Abu Ghraib. The pictures Sabrina Herman took of herself smiling in front of Iraqi corpses are equally, if not more shocking. They provide an interesting parallel to the recently unearthed pictures of Nazis having a good time in Auschwitz. How can you sing songs and smile under the circumstances? What process has taken hold of your psychology that allows you to function emotionally in such conditions?
If you see the pictures without reading the article, you feel a sense of revulsion for this woman. She seems to be mocking the dead. She embodies the arrogant ignorance of America. But there is a story behind the photos. The article explains how a sane, young American woman can end up abetting torture and trying to live a "normal" life in the process. By making the conditions in Abu Ghraib commonplace, her superiors turned those kids into sadists. Into little Nazis.
So this is the other outrage of Abu Ghraib: American soldiers were brazenly abused by their own superiors (going all the way up to their Commander in Chief). They were demoralized with terrible living conditions, asked to perform orders that were not in their field, they were debased, mistreated and lied to. And then, when the scandal broke, they were publicly humiliated and disposed of.
If I were these people I would sue the Army, the government, The Axis of Weasel, God, someone.
I doubt that they have any recourse.
It is not easy to forgive someone like Sabrina Herman and her buddies. One is loath to exculpate people who perform cruelties in the line of duty, because then anything goes. "Oh, poor Nazis, they were just trying to cope". No. However, one must remember that before he even touched one Jew, Hitler abused, debased and sacrificed his own people by making them do his bidding (that many of them were happy to comply should be a warning for our own complicity and complacency).
In trying to destroy the Jews, he also destroyed the Germans. So when America engages in these criminal behaviors, under the pretext of national security, we need to remember that American soldiers and citizens, all of us, are victims too.
One would like to think that in Sabrina's shoes, one would act the Hollywood hero and refuse to follow orders, the Army be damned. But it is not so easy. Instead, these soldiers detached themselves from the prisoners, and some took their wartime frustrations out on them. Just as the prisoners were dehumanized, so were their captors, as they became numb to the humiliation and the abuse they had to mete out.
Sabrina, knowing there was something very wrong with this picture, took pictures.

Nazis are more popular than Britney

...and than Futalognkosaurus and much more than poor King Tut. At least on the internets. I know because plenty of my darling readers seem to have a keen interest on them, which I hope is fueled by antipathy and hatred. Otherwise, we are in trouble.
In any case, what's with the dictators acting up recently? Pervez basically dissolving the constitution and behaving quite perversely. I wouldn't be surprised if he was acting on the friendly advice of our very own VEEP, (aka Satan), who may want somebody to do somewhere else what he has not been able to do here, and not for lack of trying. And Hugo, who wants to change the constitution to reelect himself over and over and over. And then Fidel, who just won't die.
Isn't dictatorship really old fashioned? Doesn't it seem utterly anachronistic for our virtual, globalized times?

Elmer Fudd or Satan?

You decide.

The Answer to Cheney's Dilemma

It's very simple. The documentary Why We Fight elucidated this for me.
The reason why Cheney was against invasion in 1994, when he was Secretary of Defense, and his change of heart today can be summarized in one word: Halliburton. He became president of Halliburton and then he became VP of the US. As someone points out in the film, this is our system of legal corruption. The country is run by a defense contractor. This is the answer.
Greed is just a simplistic explanation. It is the unstopabble machinery of American business that has created such havoc.
The film also explains the otherwise mindboggling refusal of Congress to oppose the war: it's called the military-industrial complex, to which every member of Congress is beholden because this industry provides jobs to their state.
So now you know. Do not expect anything yo change anytime soon. As long as we collude with these people, as long as no one demands accountability, nothing will change. It's just business.

What the Fuck Happened, Dick?

I'm sure that by now I'm the last person to have seen this video (thanks Katya!), but I share it with you so you can feel the same nauseating goosebumps and hair rising at the back of your neck and shivers down your spine that I felt when I saw it. WTF happened between 1994, when this man was talking cogently and now, when he seems to have mutated into Satan? And please don't tell me 9/11 because I will smack you upside the head with a virtual zetz. Let me remind you that 9/11 has little to do with Iraq. And I say little (not nothing) because it was used as a pretext to get into the area and screw it up for eternity. On what grounds? I guess it would be good to ask Chaney what made him change his mind. Did they think that the area wasn't volatile anymore ? WHAT?

Alors...

At this point, I think I can understand the entire oeuvre of the French Encyclopedists in French. The immortal words of Rousseau, Montesquieu and Diderot. But a small child talks to me at the Place de Vosges and I can’t speak for shit. Voilá!
Par example: We went to see a movie without subtitles on the grounds that total immersion in French is suddenly going to make us speak like Moliere himself. The movie in question, Barbet Schroeder’s L’avocat du terreur (not the Avocado of Terror, but rather the Lawyer from Hell), is about the infamous Jacques Vergés, a man who was a personal friend of Pol Pot and who has made a career of defending the indefensible: Klaus Barbie, the butcher of Lyon; one famous Holocaust revisionist, sundry terrorists and dreadful, corrupt African leaders, among other vermin. In short: he’s never met an evil monster he didn’t like.
Mr Vergés gets ample screen time to explain himself. He obviously seems to relish controversy. I think what indicts him is what he said when asked if he would defend Hitler. He responded he would even defend George Bush. This is my view, categorizes him as a total asshole. As you know, dear lecteurs, I’m not a fan of G.W, to say the least, but I would never compare him or even Dick Cheney to Adolf Hitler. Similarly, I would not compare Fidel to Hitler, as loathsome as I find him, and I would also not compare the situation of the Palestinians to the Nazi extermination camps, etc..
But I digress. My point is that although sitting through this movie without subtitles was a formidable exercise for my brain (it was mush by the time the movie ended), I understood most of it. I gather the movie makes the point, quite credibly, that Vergés has not only defended indefensible assholes, (after all, nobody questions his professional duty), but that he has illegally aided and abetted terrorists like Carlos the Jackal and others above and beyond his responsibility as a lawyer. He’s one of those horrid radical commies who in the name of the cause excuses and justifies all kinds of gross abuses through idiotic rationalizations, such as the United States does it too, or is worse, or France also tortured people in Algeria. And who could possibly be friends with Pol Pot? Him you can compare to Hitler. However, it is evident that Vergés is a brilliant lawyer, and an interesting, if deeply disturbing man.
Yet, we go to see Julie Delpy’s bilingual romantic comedy, Two Days in Paris, and we can’t understand most of the French. Because it is daily, slangy, jokey French. We were kinda lost, just like Adam Goldberg, or whatever his name is, who plays Delpy’s neurotic boyfriend who doesn’t speak a speck of French.
So much for the adjectifs possessifs, and the objet indirect, and the verbes. I want to speak!

The Red Menace

A front page headline in the NYT today: "New Poll Finds That Young Americans Are Leaning Left".
Everybody stand up and sing the Internationale. You'd think our young are all sporting Che Guevara's beret and Fidel's fatigues, to judge from the ominous use of the word "left". What do you know, turns out the kids are a bunch of reds. See evidence above.
But, geez, aren't young people supposed to be liberal? Remember the peeps from the 60's and 70's in this country? Imagine a similar headline then: "Beware! Maoists in our Midst."
I think the right word would have been they are more liberal. Left is for Commies.
Did the poll expect to find 17 to 29 year olds voting for a party that uses them as cannon fodder, tries to take away their every human right when nobody's looking and messes with their private lives?
Of course the young should be more open minded. We are already in enough trouble as it is with their unbelievable indifference to the war in Iraq and their video-game induced torpor. I'd be totally freaking out if they announced en masse they are voting for Giuliani and taking up golf.

They, naively, in my view, think that a draft is more likely to happen with the Republicans.
Honeys, if Dick Cheney hasn't drafted you yet, it ain't going to happen.
However, if I and Charlie Rangel had our druthers, a draft would be in place tout suite. And all your tender asses would be required to show up at Fort Urfucked for compulsory military duty. Best way to end public support for a stupid war.

The results of the poll are not surprising. The young would vote for someone who had smoked marihuana. Duh. They would allow gay marriage or gay unions (very magnanimous on their part). They think global warming is very bad. They would vote for a black candidate or a woman (phew, progress in leaps and bounds). So far so good.
But 70% of them (and like all polls it's really like 650 people) said they would not vote for a gay or a lesbian. Why the fuck not?
What possible rationale makes them think a homosexual person is unfit for office?

Bring in the draft.

Seymour Hersh: Heartbreaker

You want to be horribly depressed? Scared out of your wits? Have your heart broken in tiny little shards?
Just read this prophet of doom's dispatches from the New Yorker. The latest is about the cover up of the scandal of Abu Ghraib. There is nothing we didn't know already. We know that the rank and file paid for the offenses of high ranking officials who were never punished for it. But in this account of General Antonio Taguba's principled investigation and his subsequent demotion and humiliation, what we knew all along is manifestly clear: that Donald Rumsfeld is a lying succubus from hell. Not only that, he is mean spirited, cowardly and revolting, as is the Bush regime.
One of the reasons why I was happy to leave Enchiladaland was because I felt that as a citizen I had no recourse in a land of corruption and impunity. Naively, I thought that here in the US this would not be the case. And it isn't, unless it involves two utterly evil people: Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and whoever is beholden to them (which includes, in the case of Cheney, the President of the United States).
It is not only that they do whatever the hell they please, running roughshod over the laws of this country, but that the whole tenor of their government is suffused with nastiness. They are arrogant, contemptuous of the citizenry, and they make a mockery of the office in which they serve. They have completely eroded whatever shred of decency or integrity this country can lay claim to. Maybe they have not been the first and only ones, but they are certainly the most brazen. They have used a national tragedy to subvert the laws and to consolidate power. They have used it to instill fear and to stifle dissent (and to kill our own young in a mistaken war).
After them, how many years will it take to cleanse the scum off words like "freedom" and "liberty" and "democracy"? And I'm not even talking about the real, irreversible damage of their foreign policy.
Some tyrants have a modicum of charm, or likability, of, at the very least, some redeeming quality. Not these miscreants. It is unfathomable to me that we continue to abide them.

Fire the boss

Why don't we just skip the charade and the brouhaha and fire the one person who is ultimately responsible for this mess: POTUS. While we're at it, we should fire Cheney and Rove as well. Of course Gonzales has got to go, but let's just cut to the chase. The rot comes from the top. Enough with fall guys like Scooter Libby and even Rummy, who deserved to have his ass fired long before it actually was.
Impeach the prez, incarcerate the VP. They're the ones to blame for everything.