May 20 2009
From RawReplay today:
Ventura takes waterboarding ‘school’ to Fox & Friends
A day after talking about waterboarding on ABC’s The View, Jesse Ventura took his case for prosecuting torture to Fox News.
“You are worried about [the terrorists’] welfare,” accused Fox’s Brian Kilmeade.“No. I’m not worried about their welfare. I’m worried about what our country stands for,” Ventura responded.
This video is from Fox’s Fox & Friends, broadcast May 19, 2009.
May 20 2009
(Crossposted from The Free Speech Zone)
The statement drew wide notice. The Bush administration’s military commission system was often criticized because detainees were required to be represented by military defense lawyers appointed by the Pentagon and assigned to a special office of military defense lawyers for Guantánamo. Some detainees have refused to work with the lawyers, saying they are uniformed representatives of their enemies.
The filing showed that the Obama administration had not made a substantial change in the restriction.
It said that a detainee would be permitted a lawyer “of the accused’s own choosing.” But it added that the requested lawyer must be assigned to the Pentagon’s office of military defense lawyers for Guantánamo.
Maj. David J. R. Frakt of the Air Force, another defense lawyer for a Guantánamo detainee who is facing charges, said that change indicated that several of the Obama administration’s alterations to the Bush administration’s system were what he called “minor cosmetic changes.”
Get your hip waders on, I wanna open the shit valves….
May 20 2009
Before I and my pardners here started Docudharma, I spent months with a group of blogging luminaries trying to start a truly community owned blog. We ran into many obstacles, from tech issues, since Soapblox was at that time a truly inferior platform, (which still has issues) to the inability endemic to the Left, lol, of actually agreeing on anything.
But it was a noble effort and it is time to consider it again.
I certainly don’t need to tell the Refugees why we need a truly communally owned blog, lol. But above avoiding the intellectual repression inherent in the occasional purge…there are other advantages to a community owned blog as well.
We need a true Town Square. We need a Commons. We need a true democracy where every one has an equal voice.
The internet is the most powerful tool we have to achieve true equality and freedom. For the first time in human history, regular people from all around the globe can connect without the filter of a medium owned by the Ruling Class. For the first time, ordinary people have a theoretically unfiltered way to make themselves heard and to join together in solidarity, or at least flame wars. For the first time, the citizens of the world can join together to, if they so wish, oppose the Ruling Class.
They have the guns, but we have the numbers, as Morrison sang. For the first time, we have a way to truly USE those numbers…..other than armed revolt, lol. Which rarely turns out well for us.
For the first time, we CAN truly be heard, can truly have a voice, and can use that voice to yell louder for real change.
But that can’t happen as long as someone OWNS it. As long as one person has the power to control the conversation, it is not a REAL Conversation.
May 19 2009
The CS Monitor reports in order To meet the June deadline, the U.S. and Iraqis redraw city borders.
On a map of Baghdad, the US Army’s Forward Operating Base Falcon is clearly within city limits.
Except that Iraqi and American military officials have decided it’s not. As the June 30 deadline for US soldiers to be out of Iraqi cities approaches, there are no plans to relocate the roughly 3,000 American troops who help maintain security in south Baghdad along what were the fault lines in the sectarian war.
“We and the Iraqis decided it wasn’t in the city,” says a US military official.
See problem solved! Just wait until 2011 when the U.S. and Iraqis redraw the borders of Iraq so American troops can remain. “If our long-term goal is strategic partnership in Iraq, I would suspect beyond 2011 we would have some kind of long-term presence here,” a senior US commander said.
The Washington Post reports Missile defense in Europe is ineffective a scam. A joint analysis done by a team of top U.S. and Russian scientists have found the planned missile shield in Europe “would be ineffective against the kinds of missiles Iran is likely to deploy”. Not only is Iran more than five years away from building any such missile and nuclear warhead that could threatten Europe, “if Iran attempted such an attack, the experts say, it would ensure its own destruction.” Duh.
“If Iran were to build a nuclear-capable missile that could strike Europe, the defense shield proposed by the United States ‘could not engage that missile,’ the report says. The missile interceptors could also be easily fooled by decoys and other simple countermeasures, the report concludes.”
Four at Four continues with an update from Pakistan and an overhaul of federal emissions and fuel efficiency standards.
May 19 2009
(Cross posted from over at teh kos)
“But it’s enhanced interrogation…”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But investigations would be a witch-hunt…”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But prosecutions of Republicans would be bad politically…”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But most Americans don’t support torture investigations…”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But Pelosi lied…”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But the CIA SAYS Pelosi lied…”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But Democrats knew too…”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But the lawyers were just giving legal opinions…”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But the Bush administration really thought they were protecting America…”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But a ticking time bomb…”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But it would be bad for terrorists to know our tactics…”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But President Obama is unAme-”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But John McCain doesn’t think we should prosecute and he was tortured.”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But how bad were these techniques really?”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But they’re terrorists…”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But dunking them in the water…”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But prosecuting a policy decision…”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But Democrats and Republicans BOTH…”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
“But this might get some high ranking people currently serving in trouble in both parties.”
We tortured and it’s illegal.
It’s illegal. It’s torture. It’s not allowed. We prosecute torturers.
Simple.
May 19 2009
I was banned at Dailykos a couple of days ago, for writing two-in-a-row recommended diarires, one which pointed out how much of the 9/11 Commission Report’s “information” was obtained through torture and which is therefore completely unreliable, and the other about an upcoming book written by a Commission Report insider in which he claims that the entire Report is “almost entirely untrue”.
May 19 2009
A week or so ago, as noted in this story and a few diaries, Frank Luntz, the other side’s wannabe equivalent to George Lakoff (apologies in advance to George, who is sincere in his efforts to make us effective speakers, unlike Dr. Luntz, who is a whore), published a talking points manifesto. It is intended for those who – lacking any actual plan or constructive suggestion regarding healthcare – ceaselessly bloviate on the topic nonetheless, and to suggest how they might successfully torpedo any honest efforts at fixing our healthcare mess. It is essentially a talking points manual for the talking heads of the Party of No on how to kill healthcare reform.
I would love to be searingly derisive of this effort, but there is much that can be learned from it which, no doubt contrary to Dr. Luntz’s intentions, can be used to sabotage the saboteurs. Let me clarify that my healthcare reform may not be your’s. I am a universal single-payer advocate. But it is likely that our mutual truths are informed by this examination and commentary.
Let the fun begin!
(cross posted on the DailyKos)
May 19 2009
Unless you are the President.
But for the rest of us….This is NOT a Time For Moderation!!!
.
LOL, there I go being a Shrill Liberal again, dammit. There I go Yelling for Change again. Why….it is almost as though I thought that this was a key point in world history and the history of our nation or something!
]Simulposted at Daily Kos ]
Oh wait….it is.
.
Which is why a democratic president must appear to be calm, cool, collected and competent. Why he must present a clear contrast to the Radical Republiban Insurgents…as they handily destroy themselves. He needs to calm the nations nerves and the nerves of a nervous world while we all…..whether we know it or not…deal with the massive anxieties inherent in being at such a historical turning point. A strong calm hand on the tiller is exactly what is needed right now. Both politically, to complete the defeat of the Radical Right and ensure they don’t come back to power through their favorite medium….fear. and pragmatically….because the Shit IS about to Hit the Fan in so many ways. Obama is actually doing the smart thing, by presenting himself as a Moderate, and believe me, I am no fanboy.
As for the rest of us?
We need to be yelling our fucking heads off!
May 19 2009
Yeah, that title’s probably not the best sidle-in for a first essay, though I did get my account here more than a year ago. Mostly just a reader, until I got banned from DKos.
No, it wasn’t a 9-11 CT diary. I’ve long known better than to get involved in those, kept my opinions about that to myself. It was just an overview of things viral (i.e., influenza), how vaccine research works – and sometimes doesn’t – with a semi-humorous overtone that indeed was sort of conspiratorial in a Tom Cruise-ish way. I’m an auguste clown… tend to see humor in places the pompous white-face takes way too seriously. Occupational hazard.
May 19 2009
Well it seems like there is more evidence that Speaker Pelosi for all her failings is not actually complicit in the Bush era State Sponsored Torture program. Zach Roth of the Talking Points Memo Muckraker section has found a former Intel official who points out that the Orwellian euphemism of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” was only coined in 2006 when the Bush administration started to get worried (sensibly) that their war crimes would come back to haunt them. You can find the whole article here.
May 19 2009
cross posted from The Dream Antilles
Aung San Suu Kyi
Evidently, the military junta running Myanmar (Burma) has decided to make life for Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years, even worse. Today was the second day of her trial. The New York Times reports:
May 19 2009
The Dog has talked about the downward spiral of the Republican party but until yesterday it was all based on gut feeling and perceptions of their actions filtered through a lifetime of political thinking and work. Now Gallup has come out with some data which confirms not just that the Gopasaurs are in trouble but that they are in trouble in every single demographic!