NEON GODS

The UC-Davis incident summed up in one graphic

[copied from a WaPost article which did not credit the artist who photoshopped this]

--Trakker

The Bush administration, showing their true Christian ethics.

Paul Krugman writes on his NYTimes blog:

After reading John Yoo’s attack on the president for not taking Osama alive and bringing him to Gitmo, I thought I might take a minute to explain something I sometimes say. Once in a while I mention, in passing, that the Bush administration saw torturing people as a plus, not a cost. ...

From day one of the War on Terror (TM), it was clear that the Bush people reveled in the notion that they were tough guys, willing to Do What Needs to be Done. They were all wannabe Kiefer Sutherlands. Far from showing qualms about suspending the rule of law and using torture to extract information, they obviously enjoyed the idea that they were willing to go all the way, unlike those wimpy liberals.

Of course, they never admitted that, probably not even to themselves. But did you ever see the slightest hint of reluctance or discomfort? Or did you see tremendous self-satisfaction as the acts became ever more abusive?

And so they are, inevitably, deeply upset that someone who isn’t a tough guy by their standards seems to be doing a better job of getting the terrorists than they did.

Yes, the Republicans are furious that Obama won't praise the Bush's administration's embrace of torture and credit it's use for finding Osama bin Laden. 

It just reminds me how all those good Christians on the right don't have any qualms about torturing fellow human beings to get what they want.  Torture!  Is that what their Jesus would do?  Doesn't it want to make you barf when Christians tell you how much they trust their God to keep them safe from all harm?  They tell us we should all put our lives in Jesus's strong hands and then we would never have to worry again?  Next thing you know these same hypocritical cowards are then demanding that we taxpayers fund a huge expensive military with all kinds of nuclear weapons to keep them safe!  And when that fails they resort to torture to punish and question anyone they deem to be an enemy!

I'm sorry.  Bush and his fellow right wing Christians disgust me for gleefully engaging in waterboarding anyone with dusky skin and arabic name.

--Trakker

WikiLeaks: Assange, Manning

This article in the NY Times has me wondering if the charges filed against WikiLeaks head, Julian Assange, by two Swedish women, might in fact be real.  If what the two accusers claim is true then Assange should be extradited and put on trial.  The timing of this still makes me suspicious.

Worse by far is the treatment of the Army guy, PFC Bradley Manning, who supplied the classified documents to WikiLeaks (via Manning's lawyer, David Coombs).

PFC Manning is currently being held in maximum custody. Since arriving at the Quantico Confinement Facility in July of 2010, he has been held under Prevention of Injury (POI) watch.

His cell is approximately six feet wide and twelve feet in length.  The cell has a bed, a drinking fountain, and a toilet. ...

At 5:00 a.m. he is woken up (on weekends, he is allowed to sleep until 7:00 a.m.). Under the rules for the confinement facility, he is not allowed to sleep at anytime between 5:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. If he attempts to sleep during those hours, he will be made to sit up or stand by the guards.

He is allowed to watch television during the day. The television stations are limited to the basic local stations. His access to the television ranges from 1 to 3 hours on weekdays to 3 to 6 hours on weekends.

He cannot see other inmates from his cell. He can occasionally hear other inmates talk. Due to being a pretrial confinement facility, inmates rarely stay at the facility for any length of time. Currently, there are no other inmates near his cell.

But here's the worst part,

PFC Manning is held in his cell for approximately 23 hours a day.

The guards are required to check on PFC Manning every five minutes by asking him if he is okay. PFC Manning is required to respond in some affirmative manner. At night, if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure he is okay.

He receives each of his meals in his cell.

He is not allowed to have a pillow or sheets. However, he is given access to two blankets and has recently been given a new mattress that has a built-in pillow.

He is not allowed to have any personal items in his cell.

He is only allowed to have one book or one magazine at any given time to read in his cell. The book or magazine is taken away from him at the end of the day before he goes to sleep.

He is prevented from exercising in his cell. If he attempts to do push-ups, sit-ups, or any other form of exercise he will be forced to stop.

He does receive one hour of “exercise” outside of his cell daily. He is taken to an empty room and only allowed to walk. PFC Manning normally just walks figure eights in the room for the entire hour. If he indicates that he no long feels like walking, he is immediately returned to his cell.

When PFC Manning goes to sleep, he is required to strip down to his boxer shorts and surrender his clothing to the guards. His clothing is returned to him the next morning. [emphasis mine]

This is clearly cruel and unusual punishment, possibly even torture.  Remember, in America, this man, like all of us supposedly, is innocent until proved guilty!   This is chilling, especially when we consider how the Bush Administration treated "innocent until proved guilty" detainees.

What is happening to my country?  Where is this mean, hateful, bullying streak coming from? Even if PFC Manning is guilty of a terrible crime, shouldn't he be treated as a normal innocent citizen until he goes to trial?  Which brings me to the next obvious question, is this cruel treatment now normal procedure for innocent prisoners in in military prisons these days?  If not, then why is PFC Manning being treated this way? 

Fortunately Glenn Greenwald has been on top of this and it's beginning to get some traction in the press.  Somehow we've got to get people to realize that one of the most admirable things about America in the past was our insistence that all human beings be treated with dignity and that our basic human rights should never be violated.  When we allow the authorities to abuse the rights of people they don't like, it's just a matter of time before that might include ourselves or a loved one.

--Trakker

For Shame!

From today's NY Time's editorial:

Five men who say the Bush administration sent them to other countries to be tortured had a chance to be the first ones to have torture claims heard in court. But because the Obama administration decided to adopt the Bush administration’s claim that hearing the case would divulge state secrets, the men’s lawsuit was tossed out on Wednesday by the full United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The decision diminishes any hope that this odious practice will finally receive the legal label it deserves: a violation of international law.

It ends with:

All too often in the past, the judges pointed out, secrecy privileges have been used to avoid embarrassing the government, not to protect real secrets. In this case, the embarrassment and the shame to America’s reputation are already too well known.

THIS is one of then bigger reasons why the left is pissed off at the Obama adminstration.  I'm proud of the left for making this an issue and threatening to stay away from the voting booth this Novemeber.  Using the states secrets doctrine to avoid embarrassment like this is WRONG and if the Democrats take a big hit this election, all I can say is tough shit.  In my America there are lines that must not be crossed and this is one of them.  Just because the big bad Republicans will use something like this to skewer Obama and the Democrts to win elections is no reason to cave on something this important. For Shame!

UPDATE: This is Andrew Sullivan writing about this decision on his blog.

But Obama's insistence on protecting every Bush era war criminal and every Bush era war crime from any redress or even scrutiny is a sign both of how cold-blooded he can be, but more, I think, of how powerful the security state now is, how it can protect itself, how it exists independently of any real accountability to anyone, how even the metrics of judging it are beyond the citizen's reach or understanding.

I tried valiantly not to believe this of Holder and Obama for months; I tried to see their legitimate concerns about exposing a war machine when it is still at war; I understand the need for some extraordinary renditions; and the necessity for executive power in emergencies to act swiftly, as the Founders intended. Yes war requires some secrecy. But Obama has gone much further than this now. The cloak of secrecy he is invoking is not protecting national security but protecting war crimes. And this is now inescapably his cloak. He is therefore a clear and knowing accessory to war crimes, and should at some point face prosecution as well, if the Geneva Conventions mean anything any more. This won't happen in my lifetime, barring a miracle. Because Obama was a test case. If an outsider like him, if a constitutional scholar like him, at a pivotal moment for accountability like the last two years, cannot hold American torturers to account, there is simply no accountability for American torture. When the CIA actually rehires as a contractor someone who held a power-drill against the skull of a prisoner, you know that change from within this system is impossible. The system is too powerful. It protects itself. It makes a mockery of the rule of law. It doesn't only allow torture; it rewards it.

This is no longer our country. The rule of law means nothing anymore.  We are a country that eagerly jails thousands of powerless young Americans for non-violent crimes, but turn a blind eye to the powerful acting in our name who commit war crimes. WAR CRIMES!

--Trakker

Technology is Making it Harder to Herd Cats

Today Glenn Greenwald posted a column titled, "The Obama officials blocking accountability for Bush crimes".

Sadly, it's becoming painfully obvious that President Obama wants to sweep the atrocities and war crimes committed during the previous administration under the rug.  I believe this is a huge mistake and could even be the issue that negatively defines his presidency for future generations.  

Obama should realize that trying to control a herd of cats - which is what this whole CIA/torture/war crimes issue is analogous to - is doomed to failure. Maybe he hopes that the news of each escaped cat will eventually become old news and the public will tire of it. Then the remaining cats can escape with little notice or fanfare except among, what John Brennan in Greenwald's column condescendingly refers to as, "the Cheeto-eaters" (aka bloggers).

Ha. What Brennan, Obama and the MSM don't seem to realize is that "the Cheeto-eaters" are in ascension here, and around he world, while the traditional corporate news outlets are fast becoming dinosaurs, doomed to extinction. In fact anyone in government today who doesn't understand that the new electronic mediums like blogging, Twittering, texting, YouTubing - and new technologies yet to germinate - are creating a new type of populist democracy that cannot be controlled by governments or corporations. Secrets will be harder to keep, and government lies and propaganda will be exposed using a wide variety of tools available to the masses, from "the sniff-test" to sophisticated statistical analysis.

Any person who is serious about running for office or running a government anytime in the future should pay close attention to what is happening in Iran and elsewhere. Revolutions (be they peaceful or armed) happen when people realize they are being screwed by their leaders and further realize their anger is shared by a critical mass of others like them.  Today's technology greatly facilitates this process.

No nation can thrive these days without employing the incredible efficiencies and information afforded by electronic technologies like computers, the Internet, and cell phones.  Yet this same technology allows individuals to communicate and share information and opinions too - not just across town but across borders too.

It's obvious that governments and large corporate media outlets are losing control of the news.  There are now literally millions of people reporting news as it happens on blogs or Twitter or sites like YouTube.  There are hundreds of thousands of people who are monitoring these and traditional news sources, analyzing the news, and reporting their conclusions or opinions on their blogs throughout the day.  These blogs in turn are read by millions of people, and over time those blogs that do the best job investigating, analyzing and reporting the news rise to the top.  Also, Twitter allows hundreds of thousands of people to know whats going on in real time.  This is what is making it harder and harder for relatively open governments like ours to keep complex issues like the war crimes that were committed a secret and making it equally hard to steal elections in places like Iran (if in fact it was stolen).

Back to Obama and his apparent desire to sweep these war crimes under the rug.  He should realize the following: 1) everything that happened will eventually be leaked or declassified someday no matter how hard the government tries to prevent it, 2) far from becoming old news, the attempts to cover it up appears to make each new revelation more interesting, and the drip, drip, drip of information just keeps this issue alive, 3) it's quite possible that a foreign government will successfully begin an independent investigation of possible war crimes that could end up pitting the rest of the world against Obama's desire to ignore it, 4) even if no one is ever prosecuted or held accountable for these heinous activities, those who approved it will almost certainly be identified and castigated forever by historians and future generations the world over, 5) anyone (yes, even you President Obama) who tries to ignore these atrocities and block attempts to hold those responsible accountable will be tarred with a similar brush as those who committed the crimes.

I believe Barack Obama has the intelligence, unflappable personality, and political skills to become one of our best Presidents ever, but his policy of actively blocking the investigation and prosecution of those guilty of war crimes could result in future generations seeing him as a brilliant but cowardly President, just as the many admirable domestic accomplishments of Lyndon Johnson's administration are vastly overshadowed by his role in escalating the disastrous Vietnam War.

--Trakker

Case Closed.

Eric Martin at Obsidian Wings reduces the whole torture "debate" to this:

...we should resist the urge to engage the frame of discourse that Cheney has sought to impose: Assessing the desirability of implementing a torture regime based on whether or not torture "works."  In short, it shouldn't matter.  Although many respected experts in the realm of interrogation best practices contend that building a relationship/rapport is a more effective of extracting reliable information (rather than false confession), the reason that we, as a nation, should abstain from torture is because torture is a morally reprehensible practice.

Does it work sometimes? It doesn't matter, it's morally reprehensible.

--Trakker

She Knew. She Could Have Stopped It (Maybe).

So Pelosi was told about our use of torture back in 2002?

This just confirms how cowardly the leaders of the Democratic party are.

There can be no doubt that if Nancy Pelosi objected to the use of torture around the first anniversary of 9/11, the Republicans and the press would have crucified her.

She was already labeled as a liberal - which in 2002 was tantamount to "traitor". Imagine if she would have come out publicly against torture!

So it would have taken extraordinary courage for her to object to torture, but isn't that what defines real patriots?  At what point do you put country before your career?  (Of course, she wasn't the only one who was told and could have spoken out.)

UPDATE: More about this here at ThinkProgress.

UPDATE: And more from Emptywheel. This throws some doubt into what Pelosi knew and when she knew it.

--Trakker

Religion Makes People Less Moral (when it comes to torture).

This is something I've felt in my gut for a long time but now a new poll confirms it: atheists are more moral than religious people, at least when it comes to torture.

Get this, the more often a person attends religious services, the more they believe torture might be necessary!  The group with the lowest percentage of respondents who believe torture is often or sometimes justified are those who rarely or never attend religious services!  (...and it's no surprise that white evangelicals are the most enthusiastic supporters of torture)

--Trakker