The other day, the audience at Glenn Greenwald’s blog expressed their outrage over the relative silence of the TV newsfolks at their “independent” military analysts being revealed as puppets, specifically NBC News’ Brian Williams.
Glenn sees this, and does what any self-respecting blogger of his capabilities would do: approaches Williams, forms his prowess at uncovering lies into a shape akin to a 357 Magnum, and proceeds to pistol whip the living SHIT out of him with it. Read the whole thing.
George Will, in the process of trying to argue that Jeremiah Wright is somehow, and in fact ever was, relevant to the presidential election, says the following:
In yesterday’s speech at the National Press Club, Wright repeated — decorously, by his standards, but clearly — his accusation, made the Sunday after Sept. 11, that America got what it deserved. His answer yesterday to a question about that accusation was: “Whatsoever you sow, that you also shall reap” and “you cannot do terrorism on other people and expect them never to come back on you.”
As evidence that “our government is capable of doing anything,” he strongly hinted that he has intellectually respectable corroboration — he mentioned several publications — for his original charge that the U.S. government is guilty of “inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.” But yesterday he insisted that he is not anti-American: It is, he said, Americans’ government, not the American public, that is a genocidal perpetrator of terrorism. So, he now denies that America has a representative government — that it represents the public. He believes that elections constantly and mysteriously — and against the public’s will — produce a genocidal, terroristic government.
Perhaps George should look into a hearing aid, because if he was paying attention he would’ve known that Wright’s “reap what you sow” comment was a Bible quote — he is a pastor, after all*. His point was clearly an attempt to make a religious example out of the event, alluding to the US government’s history of playing Risk for real as the sowing. That this also has a secular meaning seems to confuse some people.
When I addressed Wright’s 9/11 comment before, I took issue due to the non-involvement of the innocents killed in the attack. Now Wright clarifies, and turns out to agree with my view of it more than I thought, and Will takes offense with his explanation, lampooning it as crazy talk — “What? How could this FOOL say that We The People did not and do not approve of absolutely everything that the government does?”. This view explodes once you consider that the majority of people don’t actually pay attention to what’s going on in the world, the mass media shuns the idea that any government action can have bad intentions behind it, the political elite is single-minded on most issues (this is why “wedge issues” even exist: to amplify what little difference there is), and until rather recently background info on government actions didn’t come out until all the principle actors were dead. By his logic, taking as a given that voting = the epitome of representation, then those Iraqi women selling butt for less than the average pizza in the US costs just to stay alive are simply entrepreneurs in action.
Terrorism, by the accepted common sense definition, is violence for political purposes. To ignore states in this is to dismiss most of the terrorism that has actually been committed throughout history, as political violence is the essence of what they are.
(* - This would be a perfect example of something that much of the Right — and increasingly Wright himself, I might add — simply does not understand: a symbiotic relationship between religion and politics is stupid. In that church where Wright first made this point, it was immediately understood as his interpretation of scripture; injected into secular politics in the form of a soundbite it looks like he’s cheering al-qaeda. The two simply operate off of completely separate ground rules. BTW: before anyone barks, the reason this is not equivalent to what the likes of Pat Robertson said about 9/11 is because he reversed the equation, claiming that legalized abortion & gay rights — political decisions, both — pissed off Gawd.)
For some reason, inbetween basketball games today, at one point I watched 60 minutes. Maybe I got whiff of second hand crack smoke or something, who knows. Anyway, they were interviewing Scalia about various topics — “originalism” (for the most part a crock of shit, since no two originalists seem to agree on much), the Bush v Gore decision (the ironic NYT analysis showing that if the votes were counted the way either of them wanted the other one would win should’ve deaded this as an issue. Kinda late to care now anyway), etcetera. The subject of torture came up, and he nonchalantly let fly not just a whopper, but a triple whopper with cheese. Bear witness to the Stupid, in its full glory:
“I don’t like torture,” Scalia says. “Although defining it is going to be a nice trick. But who’s in favor of it? Nobody. And we have a law against torture. But if the - everything that is hateful and odious is not covered by some provision of the Constitution,” he says.
“If someone’s in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized by a law enforcement person, if you listen to the expression ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ doesn’t that apply?” Stahl asks.
“No, No,” Scalia replies.
“Cruel and unusual punishment?” Stahl asks.
“To the contrary,” Scalia says. “Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don’t think so.”
“Well, I think if you are in custody, and you have a policeman who’s taken you into custody…,” Stahl says.
“And you say he’s punishing you?” Scalia asks.
“Sure,” Stahl replies.
“What’s he punishing you for? You punish somebody…,” Scalia says.
“Well because he assumes you, one, either committed a crime…or that you know something that he wants to know,” Stahl says.
“It’s the latter. And when he’s hurting you in order to get information from you…you don’t say he’s punishing you. What’s he punishing you for? He’s trying to extract…,” Scalia says.
“Because he thinks you are a terrorist and he’s going to beat the you-know-what out of you…,” Stahl replies.
“Anyway, that’s my view,” Scalia says. “And it happens to be correct.” (emphasis mine)
The unspoken acknowledgment here is that punishment is something you do to people who have been proven guilty. Sure, if there was some crime where the penalty was to have fire ants placed on your genitals, then you could have a case based on whether its cruel and unusual punishment. The way torture is actually talked about though is in applying it to extract information from a suspect, who by definition has not been proven guilty*. If anything, it is WORSE than cruel and unusual punishment; as an attempt to get self-incrimination by force, torture is pre-emptive punishment.
Seeing the paradox here in deliberately hurting people who haven’t been found guilty of anything, and thus rejecting it, is what separates us from authoritarian regimes. Why do I realize this and not Scalia?
(* - As someone who staunchly opposes the entire process by which we reached this point in history, I’d be the wrong person to bark at with “what would you do?” comments, or spewings of “KSM was tortured, didn’t that help?” For one, my 1st answer would be “I’d not occupy and manipulate the middle east for 60 years and expect the people there to smile and take it”, and my second would be “By that logic you should be promoting that tactic for domestic enforcement, give me a reason you don’t other than a] thinking you can’t get away with it yet or b] “but OMG scary mooslims!”". If you sincerely want a view on the LEGAL question, context free, then fine, here goes: technically, once they ADMIT that they are not recognized combatants, then you can yank their fingernails and then shoot them in the head, and based on my admittedly slight understanding of Geneva you wouldn’t be that far off the line. But this is not a context-free world, we are not knights in shining armor, they are not inhuman Terminators with turbans, and philosophically the Geneva Convention, the UN, the army field manual & the ICC are about as relevant to me as who led the MLB in home runs in 1979. The only questions that matter involve whether there’s anything left worth defending if it takes committing atrocities to do so, and how far things have to go before principled, open anti-imperialism goes mainstream.)
Y’know, for as much as people gripe about rap videos today being nothing but ass-shaking and materialism, that video had more ass in it than I remembered. Thanks to that period of my life, my personal view on the whole video content fuss is that an MCs bling and video-skank count should be proportional to his skills. Applied to modern artists, this would mean Nas or Andre 3000 could wear so many chains they can’t stand up & have more scantily clad chicks than the entire Hooters franchise, whereas Rich Boy would be in front of the camera by himself, standing by a Pinto with flat tires.
Florida wants to offer devout Christian drivers a distinctive…mark:
Florida drivers can order more than 100 specialty license plates celebrating everything from manatees to the Miami Heat, but one now under consideration would be the first in the nation to explicitly promote a specific religion. The Florida Legislature is considering a specialty plate with a design that includes a Christian cross, a stained-glass window and the words “I Believe.”
Rep. Edward Bullard, the plate’s sponsor, said people who “believe in their college or university” or “believe in their football team” already have license plates they can buy. The new design is a chance for others to put a tag on their cars with “something they believe in,” he said.
If the plate is approved, Florida would become the first state to have a license plate featuring a religious symbol that’s not part of a college logo. Approval would almost certainly face a court challenge.
The problem with the state manufacturing the plate is that it “sends a message that Florida is essentially a Christian state” and, second, gives the “appearance that the state is endorsing a particular religious preference,” said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.
I’m not all that enamored of vanity plates myself — unless I can get “Fuh Cue”. Still, my own common sense tells me that an easy way to have their cake & eat it too would be to offer this kind of mark for any religious group. That way, it wouldn’t be promoting a particular religion, since any religion could have their own mark.
Bullard, the plate’s sponsor, isn’t sure all groups should be able to express their preference. If atheists came up with an “I Don’t Believe” plate, for example, he would probably oppose it.
…well Fuh Cue then.
This is why these things always result in huge conflicts, people know that when some Christian Statist proposes something like this they never have in mind the fact that not everyone in the US prays how they do, if at all. Thus, the appropriate thing to do when they throw a tantrum is ignore them.
BTW: see those links on the word “mark”? I wanted to segue from this to a larger point about how ironic it is that supposed Christians want to be identified by the State, let alone that they support the State at all and try to co-opt it, and how IMO any group wanting to be identified as a certain religion or lack thereof on a government-issued identification is wasting time at best, if not practically BEGGING for trouble in the long-term (check out the second “mark” link: nuff said), but by now I figure that should be obvious. Besides, it’s enough that at least in the case of Christians it boldly contradicts that book they claim to love so much.
Just today, nine of them declared evidence discovered during searches that state law says are illegal is admissible in court. What’s that? There’s only nine justices? Ouch…:
The Supreme Court affirmed Wednesday that police have the power to conduct searches and seize evidence, even when done during an arrest that turns out to have violated state law. The unanimous decision comes in a case from Portsmouth, Va., where city detectives seized crack cocaine from a motorist after arresting him for a traffic ticket offense.
David Lee Moore was pulled over for driving on a suspended license. The violation is a minor crime in Virginia and calls for police to issue a court summons and let the driver go. Instead, city detectives arrested Moore and prosecutors say that drugs taken from him in a subsequent search can be used against him as evidence.
Cue Scalia promoting the Eric Cartman view of law enforcement in 3…2…1.
“We reaffirm against a novel challenge what we have signaled for half a century,” Justice Antonin Scalia wrote.
Scalia said that when officers have probable cause to believe a person has committed a crime in their presence, the Fourth Amendment permits them to make an arrest and to search the suspect in order to safeguard evidence and ensure their own safety.
Virginia law said that for what they pulled this person over for, they were supposed to issue a summons, nothing more. A failure on the part of the state of Virginia to assume that anyone driving on a suspended license is a suspect of other crimes, to Scalia, smacks of endorsement of the streets running red from random murder & children smoking crack in the open. Isn’t that what he reads into everything?
John Cole, noting the sudden “don’t cross me, Mahmoud!!” statement from Hillary, asks a really damn good question:
Are the roles reversed anywhere else in the civilized world- is there some place where candidates, on their respective national television channels, play out their war fantasies in which they nuke the United States?
What’s amusing about this is that even Iran doesn’t make this kind of threat. Most they say referring to the US is “if you invade us, we’ll make you regret it”, and that comes out of a position of fear and weakness anyway, akin to threatening to throw a sock at someone if they don’t stop beating your wife.
CNN has been showing this clip from a “first time voters” forum, discussing candidate preferences, reasons why, the usual. When the Iraq war came up as a subject, specifically “should we have invaded in the first place?”, some dude in the back gave the standard pseudo-humanitarian pro-war schpeil: “But it was run by a dictator who used WMDs on his own people!”
Question: How does someone flunk recent history so badly? You’re going to be helping pick the next person with access to The Button and you seriously think the purpose of the US military is to “liberate” people & don’t know that Saddam was a former friend of the US government? How do you manage to remember to breathe?
In case anyone has been under a rock and still wonders about the credibility of those TV military analysts…:
Many U.S. military analysts used as commentators on Iraq by television networks have been groomed by the Pentagon, leaving some feeling they were manipulated to report favorably on the Bush administration, The New York Times said in Sunday editions. A Times report examining ties between the Bush administration and former senior officers who acted as paid TV analysts said they got private briefings, trips and access to classified intelligence meant to influence their comments.
“Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks,” the newspaper said. […]
Many of the commentators also have ties to military contractors who are vested in U.S. war efforts, but those business links are seldom disclosed to viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks on which they appear, the newspaper said. (emphasis mine)
Dunno which one is worse, that I expected this all along or that it took this long for anyone in the media to figure it out.