Dismembering Justice

In my last article on the torture conducted by the Bush administration, I may have left out another important reason for a full and complete reckoning for all involved at every level of government. It was in my last article I explained why I understand that Obama won't prosecute the agents that carried out the torture. To reiterate, we need our agents in the field to be able to do their jobs without worrying about the outcome of the next election and whether their actions will become unpopular.

However, of course that was the plan of the Bush administration all along. It now appears that from the beginning they planned on denying any responsibility for the torture by arguing that they had only asked how far they could go legally and it was the nefarious Department of Justice that told them to torture. Though, the new information seems to indicate that those lawyers were pressured to produce opinions that indicated torture was legal.

Given the amount the DOJ was politicized by the Bush administration it is highly unlikely that any advisory opinion that emanated from that DOJ was free of undue influence. Also, why would the DOJ have generated this opinion if it werent asked? And why would the question have been asked if it werent abundantly clear what the "correct" answer was?

Though if you believe the story being sold to us by the former administration through MSM is true, that every lawyer "consulted" by the Bush administration agreed that the techniques were legal, that does not make it so. The DOJ does not make the law. Congress makes the law. And Congress has made torture illegal. As I have explained in my previous article, waterboarding and the other techniques used were and still are torture.

Spying On The Innocent

This article details some of the absurdity of the Maryland terrorism list wherein peaceful people who never committed any crime and never planed to do so were labeled as terrorists. Remember, people still claim that the president has the power to indefinitely detain a U.S. citizen living in the United States after merely labeling them an enemy combatant. A term the government was unable to define even at the Supreme Court. Also remember that the people detained as enemy combatants are tortured prior to determination of guilt or complicity in any criminal act.

We don't have any examples yet of someone being detained and tortured merely for exercising their First Amendment rights by expressing a liberal opinion and hopefully we will never see any. This is still the danger we have to be aware of when a government takes these kinds of powers for itself. The above article details how intelligence that repeatedly says these people were not dangerous leads to them being labeled as terrorists and in many cases misidentifies what these people were involved with and where they were. If these cops really thought these people were terrorists and a danger to the country I would hope that they would be more careful with the information they gather so as to actually know where someone was on a certain day rather then place them on the opposite side of the continent. Here we are seven years after 9/11 and we still haven't learned the lessons about putting quality people between us and the enemy and not wasting time and taxpayer dollars on witch hunts.

The Afterglow

I have made the analogy before that the campaign was like being hit on by a drunken sociopath. In the aftermath of the election it seems even more so with various special interest groups and media outlets remembering various promises made by Obama while on the road to the White House. They seem like an expectant lover on the morning after, hopeful that this impulsive decision to get in bed with this beautiful person who said all the right things will turn into a healthy relationship. All the while the recipient of the lover's attention hurriedly prepares to move on with his agenda while assuring the lover that, "that was all pillow talk baby." We can at least hope that Obama doesn't spurn the voters like a one night stand. But he is a politician and I won't hold my breath.

John Stewart made the observation to Obama that the country isn't what it was when he started this race. Truly Obama is inheriting a sloppy shit sandwich from one of the most hated presidents in history. Unfortunately for the discontent, Bush is scheduled to leave office and they will loose a symbol of everything they dislike about U.S. policy. But the problems he created will remain. What happens if Obama fails? Do we loose the meager gains we have made in race relations? Does the country swing wildly back to the politically extreme right? Will there be much left of the country after four years if he can't get a hold on these various crises?

Parts of the country started to reflect Bush's low approval ratings by going blue this election. My question is whether these states who were red in 2004 have an indelible sin on them for causing the last 4 years of unnecessary downward spiraling of the nation. Ohio and Pennsylvania, I am looking at you.

As usual, I have nothing positive to say.

The Urban Shaman

In days long past and in parts of the world untouched by the corporate monoculture there are psychopomps and shamen who know the spiritual secrets of the Earth and can walk between the worlds. These men and women gain access to a spiritual dimension through chanting, ritual, drugs, or raw spiritual power. They walk in a dangerous world in between life and death where they are alive, yet not. Where they walk among the dead and the not-yet born. They are able to pass through this liminal state of not-being without loosing their soul because of their wisdom and spiritual power.

It occurs to me that airline travel has become one such a dangerous liminal state in this post 9/11 world. In a world where one can be apprehended and shipped off to a foreign country or secret prison to be tortured based on faulty intelligence, mistaken identity, or no evidence at all, airline travelers face a very real danger. When one enters an airport they pass within a barrier that the public cannot penetrate. The traveler only enters into this parallel land by performing arcane rituals and by passing the arbitrary and ever changing tests of the gate keepers. They pass into a world where names and shapes are familiar but strange. The worst part is that no one knows whether you will come out on the other side.

The difference is that air travel isn't like this because of the immutable laws of nature and of the spirit but because of the actions of wicked men.

The Walk of Shame: A Shameful Roundup

Saving the best for last.

First, a new study shows that half of all American doctors prescribe a placebo to their patients, and most of them that do, do not inform the patient that the medication will not do anything for their condition. The study goes on to say that doctors usually use pain medication, vitamins, or stress medications rather than the sugar pill one usually associates with placebo.

This throws into question medical ethics and the doctrine of informed consent. It would be possible to meet the standard of informed consent and still get the beneficial effects of a placebo. It also raises questions of further wasting money in the already inefficient American medical system.

This strikes me as similar to the use of tazers since in both cases a professional with a fiduciary duty to the people is using a device as a shortcut around dealing with the psychological difficulty's of the individual they are faced with at the time. It's lazy. It's laziness that has harmful consequences.


Second, the McCain campaign volunteer who claimed to have been attacked and beaten by a black man who carved a "B" into her face to signify Barrac Obama, admitted to lying about the attack. Apparently the woman is mentally unstable and probably did it to herself.


Lastly, we have the Maryland police spying scandal. The state police went to public meetings of politically left protest organizations and entered the names of participants in a database of persons suspected for involvement in terrorism. So essentially what we have is a law enforcement body labeling as terrorists, U.S. citizens who are exercising their constitutionally guaranteed first amendment rights without any evidence that any crime had or would be committed.

The ACLU were the ones credited with this story seeing the light of day because of an information request. This week the state started sending out letters to people who's names are on the list. There are varying accounts of what the letters say or what their purpose is. Questions need to be answered like; why were these people targeted, was it because they were politically liberal, why not investigate groups like the KKK which is already listed as a terrorist group, what prompted this spying, will the victims be able to see what is in their file, what criteria are used to determine someone is a terrorist, how does someone get their name off the list, is it possible to remove someones name?

This again gives an answer the question, "if you aren't doing anything wrong, what do you have to fear?" These people were not doing anything wrong. One officers reports even showed that these people were not planning on doing anything wrong. Yet they were labeled as terrorists. At this point we still do not know why. Again, most people don't concern themselves with the draconian methods of dealing with suspected terrorists since 9/11. Except we have been repeatedly shown that one does not need to do anything wrong to be labeled a terrorist and be subjected to torture. But then again, this woman seems to think that protesters, or anyone that is vocal about their political opinions deserves to be given the third degree.

The Friday Bacon: A Bonus Bacon!

If we can't send bacon to our congressmen as an insult, then the terrorists have won.

The video is less hilarious than it should be.

The office of House Minority Leader and Ohio Representative John Boehner was evacuated on Monday because of a box of bacon. Apparently an angry constituent sent this as a commentary on the pork laden Wall Street Bailout. I wonder how many more taxpayer dollars will be wasted on overreactions to imaginary threats.

America Keeps Inching Back Toward Justice

There have been some gains for freedom and for the American people lately that have been overshadowed by the free fall in the stock market. The important thing is that these small steps show that our system still works, even if it draws its inspiration from molasses.

The Justice Department has completed its investigation into the firings of the nine U.S. attorneys and decided that since the Bush administration refused to cooperate with its investigation, Justice would appoint a special investigator. Whether this new investigator will have the power to get the information required to get to the bottom of this remains to be seen, and whether any power given will be effective is a whole other question.

Yesterday, U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina ordered the release of the Uighers into the United States. What is significant about this ruling is that last part about being released into the U.S. These are Chinese Muslims that were captured in Pakistan during the early days of the war in Afghanistan. The U.S. government has not considered them "enemy combatants" for some time now but will not release them into the United States and will not send them back to China. So the Government has been looking for, and failing to find, any country that will take them in. As with any promising ruling, there are still many appeals to go through.

The Security Situation

For those of you dealing with apologists for the foolish security measures of the Bush administration here are two direct examples of why innocent people do have something to fear from draconian security measures such as those that have already been enacted. Not only were these people not doing anything wrong, two of them fought to defend our freedoms.

Terrorism

Earlier this week I was thinking about the racism that is frequently concealed within anti-terrorism rhetoric. Particularly among Fox pundits. People are so willing to forget that Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, and the Anthrax scare was perpetrated by a white American. Then I came across this story which recounts that the Bush administration tried to get the FBI to ignore the whole investigation thing and blame it on al Quaeda. You know, because they care about security. The images are mostly things i have come across on the Internet related to 9/11 and making light of the situation. The one with the Muppet's was a joint creative venture between Th'Dave and APPhilosophy.

The Walk of Shame

In the past I have posted articles detailing problems at the TSA to illustrate the problems with too much "security" and power in the hands of government, or as examples of why the innocent do have something to fear from the depths our privacy has been invaded by the Bush administration. However I have never specifically intended to attack the TSA as an institution. I always assumed the problems were a bottom-up problem resulting from the quality of person they hire and the low wage they pay. Based on this article, it seems that I was mistaken and perhaps it is time to attack the TSA.

Obama (D-IL), Yea

That is the sound of Obama voting to set your freedom, privacy, and security back to the days before Nixon. Again a major piece of legislation is pushed through with no real discussion and no in depth understanding of what the law does. Instead the Bush administration and the power hungry, do-nothing senators push their message of fear that has inexplicably continued to work for them for seven years. It helps that there isn't any press coverage.

Remember these are the same people who had sufficient intelligence to prevent 9/11 but failed to. Yet they continue to say they need to listen in on to all of our calls. They continue to say that we need to give protection to the phone companies that may have broken the law in their rush to give all of our information, calls, Internet traffic, and emails to the government. They also continue to say that if you aren't doing anything wrong you don't have anything to worry about. Ahh the old standby of the people who want a police state and the conformists who support them. In case you weren't paying attention in elementary school that is the kind of shit we don't stand for in America. The fourth amendment was the founding fathers declaration that Americans should not have to be subject to such a weak red herring. I have also explained in previous posts why law abiding persons have every reason to have lawful secrets and to fear a government with too much power or information. For example, what if the Democrats decide to create a political smear machine and hunt out every gay conservative through the massive amount of information this will create? Then the law abiding, republicans will see what they have to fear from the fruits of their own fear mongering and lust for power.

What I really came here to do is rail against Obama for voting for fear and against freedom. I was really excited by Obama after his first speech regarding the racist conspiracies circulating in his church. That speech showed real leadership and had the potential of elevating the national dialogue regarding race. I was particularly excited because after months of hearing nothing but the words "hope" and "change" I finally knew something of substance about Obama. I was beginning to understand the rock star level of excitement that surrounded him. The last week has completely eliminated any enthusiasm I once had. Despite the "embarrassing pejorative" Jessie Jackson leveled at Obama, it is true that he has been giving up his convictions to appear more mainstream. Obama has been a crusader against gun rights, and even though I disagree with him, I was disappointed to hear his quiet measured reaction to the decision by the supreme court that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to own a handgun. Then later it was announced that Obama was in favor of the death penalty. I don't particularly have an opinion on the issue but I do know that if you want to get elected in this country, especially at the national level, you better be in favor of the death penalty. Combined with his taking the side of the freedom haters in congress this all spells out that Obama is another political robot just to act as a face. He is the dickless face of a party with no balls. Hows that for a pejorative?

Hand Wringing by Freedom Haters

After the Supreme Court ruled last Thursday that the Second Mendment protects an individual right to own a handgun for self defense there was much hand wringing from self righteous freedom haters across the globe. Editorial pages were filled with bias that dragged the national dialog down. The sense of loss was palpable among those who wished to ban guns. Even from news outlets that one would not particularly expect to have such a bias. Clearly they were upset that they have forever lost the possibility of not only banning guns, not only banning handguns, but also requiring trigger locks, and possibly also having to submit to concealed carry programs. All the editorials combined over the four days would be enough to give the impression that banning of handguns was a mainstream position without regard for whether or not it is true. One of the many reasons the MSM continues its fall from relevancy. Normally all this arguing that fear should trump freedom gets me really upset but now that the point is moot, I allowed myself to feel smug.

The worst hand wringing came from FBI director Robert Mueller who took the opportunity to go off topic and claim that universities are hotbeds for terrorist sympathisers. While he still maintained focus on what he was griping about, Mueller also managed to act as a fear monger when he wondered aloud whether guns would be allowed on university campuses. This after Scalia expressly stated in the majority opinion that gun bans on school and government property remained in effect and are reasonable restrictions on a citizens right to self defense.

Blood Diamonds

It may be beating a dead horse to talk about blood diamonds except people are still buying them, the artifical custom of the diamond engagement ring persists, and the average person does not feel blinded by rage when they see a commercial for diamonds. Also, you may be wondering what sparked this posting. I didn't just see the movie Blood Diamond and have my eyes opened to this tragedy and rush out to tell the ten people who accidentally come to this blog every day. I have been pissed about this injustice since I was a little high school hoodlum but I recently stumbled on my notes from last summer regarding this topic and I stumbled on this article on Fark.

That article recounts an older story regarding how the value of diamonds was artificially inflated and bullshit symbolism was imbued into the diamond. It recounts how a common stone with little intrinsic value was kept from the market in order to artificially create a low supply while some clever advertisers associated the diamond with eternity and love and forced every man in western society from then on to spend two months salary on a worthless crystal of carbon for fear of sending the wrong message to the woman he loves. Fortunately, for their trouble, those advertisers will have to crouch in the desert of sodomites for all eternity. Unfortunately love isn't enough to overcome the demands of consumerism in our culture, or informed women who truly loved their future husbands would insist on not wearing murder on their hands. They would not be able to look at their enggement ring and see the love of their husband but would instead witness blood flowing from the stone on their ring, the blood of the children who died in the mines and the men and women who were murdered when a new militia came and took over the mine.

Remember those anti-drug adds just after 9-11 where the Bush administration and John Ashcroft were trying to capitalize on nationalism in the war on drugs? They implied a connection within the drugs trade wherein money American teenagers spent on pot went into the coffers of the terrorists who had attacked us. The same is true of the diamond trade. If you buy diamonds, you are putting money into Osama Bin Laden's pockets.

What about the Kimberly process you ask? What are you some lobbyist for the diamond industry? For the rest of you, the Kimberly process is the method the diamond industry created to pretend they were doing something about blood diamonds as a public relations scheme. The process is entirely voluntary, completely self-administered with no accountability, and there are large financial disincentives to poor african countries to conform rigorously to the process's own loose guidelines. Given the fact that emeralds and rubies come from conflict ridden regions in Colombia and Burma respectively, and the gem industry turns a blind eye to the suffering inflicted on people in those areas, it is unsuprising that their own method of self monitoring the origins of diamonds is far from robust. This is what it looks like when evil people try to do good but can't stop thinking of their own greed.

The Walk of Shame: Bush Looses Again

The Supreme Court ruled against the Bush administration today. The high Court held that despite what the President and the Neo-Cons say, everyone has natural human rights. A foreign citizen has the same human rights that you and I have under the United States' legal system. A person cannot be drprived of those rights by having a certain lable applied to them such as, terrorist, or enemy combatant. Perhaps the Court realized that such things need to be proven beyond simple conjecture. The court also held that people cannot be imprisoned by the United States for an indeterminate period of time, and that anyone imprisoned must be charged with a crime. You know, basic things that are at the foundation of this country and our system of justice.

The Supreme Court came down on the side of freedom and justice today and has once again renewed my faith in our system of government.

Cleveland Ohio: Terrible American City, or The Worst American City? Impeachment Edition

Dennis Kucinich(D-Ohio), the elfin-looking, vegan, UFO-seeing, hot-wife-having Representative from Cleveland has introduced articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush.

I have mixed feelings about many things in that first sentence.

First, Kucinich is a profoundly inefectual represenative. None of the bills he has proposed has ever been passed. Which statistically boads ill for the prospects of these articles of Impeachment. Kucinich will propose any legislation that will get headlines. Kucinich's legislative strategy seems less directed at serving the people of his district but rather intended to provoke headlines that get him enough free attention for his reelection.

The things Kucinich champions with his doomed legislative action are the kinds of things that are the cause of the people, or crafted to promote peace and justice in simple language. So when these things are defeated it makes Kucinich look like he is a champion of the conserns of the common man. However, even if this is genuine and Kucinich really is a champion of the people he is rather Quixotic. Personally, I think the persona of a crusader for justice that tilts at windmills has been crafted by him to keep him in politics. That being said I am willing to live with an inefectual elfin-jester of a representative that loudly champions justice and freedom and peace rather than the typical congressman who is a shill to big industry and lobbying groups and justifies his corruption by dragging home as much pork as he or she can suck out of the public coffers. So even if the virtue Kucinich parades in front of the cameras is fake, Ill take fake virtue over unashamed corruption every day.

As for impeaching president Bush, thats a whole different ball of fishooks. I think President Bush should be impeached. He has been accused of exactly what Nixon did, and Republican party officials have been found guilty of manipulating the vote in Ohio in 2004. There is also the intelligence failure leading up to the 9/11 attack, extrordinary rendition, torture, the lies in the run-up to the war in Iraq, and so forth. However, much of that is just a deriliction of duty and does not amount to a crime. Furthermore, the stuff that he could be charged for is going to provoke a long hard legal battle.

This president has proven that he is beligerant in the extreme to any type of criticism or legal attack on his power. This is bolstered by the neo-con adgenda to make the office of the president extremely powerful. This adgenda is backed up by jmore than greed and evil but by long hours of thought and legal scholarship. This goal at inflating the power of the president is backed up by legal philosophy that argues that these cruel and wicked things that have been done by and on behalf of this administration are actually legal. The simplest way to explain this is that they believe anything the president says is ok, is legal. The insand and frustrating thing to know is that they have the knowledge and scholarship to back this madness up in court if that is what it comes to. The three attornys general that this administration has gone through are proof that there are many in high places already that subscribe to this philosophy of presidential preeminence. All this promises to produce a long and hard legal fight if the congress actually has the stones to follow through.

That is the other problem. The Democratic party hasn't had the testicular fortitude to stand for anything other than giving themselves a pay raise for as long as I have been old enough to read. They cant cut off the funds for the war and they are afraid of a long fight with the Bush administration. But they arent afraid because they will loose, these chicken-shit legislators are afraid of the fight itself. They arent afraid of the possibility that they will losse and this insane legal reasoning that the president's will is law will become the law of America. They are afraid of having to stand up for something other than giving themselves a pay raise. Sen. Feingold (D-Wisconsin) the only one in the senate chamber with cajones enough to still be called a man explained it best. He wrote to me that he believes that any attenpt to impeach Bush would be a waist of time. All impeachment proceedings would do is, distract the congress from repairing the damage he has done over his tenure in office. The long fight would be a circuis and all that would be accomplished would be sound bites and grandstanding. I can only assume that House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) believes something similar when she says that impeachment is off the table.

Much has been said of this kind of pragmatism and cowardice and is being played out in many editorials of this kind. I think the fight must be fought or these legal philosophies will slowly slime their way into the American legal system. Unless resisted this belief that power is greater than justice will destroy freedom.

Australia Withdraws from Iraq

Australia handed over their mission to U.S. command today and began withdrawing their remaining troops. At least they aren't capitulating to terrorism like the Spanish.

The Torture Debate

The national discussion regarding the use of torture and extreme rendition is often cut short by declarations that this is a time of war. Such declarations are not usually followed by any explination as to what significance that should have because most of the time they are made by people that have no interist in actually considering the value or appropriateness of torture. Though now it appears there are legal consequences of the torture that these people had previously been unwilling to think about. Unfortunately these are not the legal consequences of those being responsible facing justice. They are the natural consequences of the unreliable information that is gained from torture. Followed by the that information gained through torture being unusable in court because of the tainted nature in which it was obtained.

Even if you do accept that torture does work and that it is called for by the current situation, the torture debate is more than just an argument over whether extreme measures are acceptable during a time of war. There are at least two other issues.

First, intelligence failures prior to 9/11 indicate that the US intelligence community doea not need more information since they had enough to know the attack was coming, and they are too incompetant to use the information they do have.

Second, there are serious questions about whether the person being detained under suspicion of being a terrorist is actually guilty of anything. People have been spirited away, aparently based on nothing more than a muslim sounding name, tortured, and released after months when it is discovered a mistake was made and that these people were not criminals or if they were, after the CIA had fouled up the investigation.



Many people are not conserned with this because they don't have muslim sounding names and are merely mundane white people living in the heartland. This should consern everyone because it is the start of a slippery slope. If the people responsible for this get away with abducting and torturing innocent people for something as vaguely defined as being a suspected terrorist it is a small step to other criminal suspects and then another small step to the imprisoning and torturing of people for legal but unpopular behavior. And then you have the thought police.

These steps are smaller than most people want to believe because the first step has been so large. That people that are merely suspected of being terrorists are being tortured is highly significant. It causes the ensnarement of innocent people based on unchallenged circumstantial evidence.

Yager-bombing the Middle East

Aparently Hillary Clinton was able to drink McCain under the table in Estonia. This raises serious questions for the McCain presidential campaign. How can we expect a presidential candidate to be hard on the terrorists when they go easy on their own liver? While they both only consumed four(4) shots of vodka at least we can assume Hillary could out drink both Osama Bin Laden and Muqtada al-Sadr because muslims are not permitted to drink alcohol and we can assume they would not be prepaired for it. We have yet to hear of any exploits of Obama's capacitiy to imbibe intoxicants and this story raises the question. How much can Obama drink? For that matter how much can Ron Paul drink? Obama looks pretty lanky, and Ron Paul is no spring chicken but experience is what counts. Also, the story lacks information on how large a shot is in Estonia. I would assume that being married to President Bill Clinton would give one plenty of experience with keeping ones composure after consuming mass quantities of alcohol. So I was quite shocked to find that the contest had ended after four shots. Perhaps that is just when McCain threw in the towel. Which brings us back to the question. If McCain gave in to Hillary after just four shots of vodka, how can we believe his talk that he will stand strong against the terrorists and win the war in Iraq?

War and Business as Usual

When one learns of phenomenal profits reaped by elected officials during their tenure, the typical reaction isn't necessarily one of disgust. However, when one learns that several officials personally profited off of W's decision to go to war, any American citizen who claims to 'support our troops' should be incensed. Incredibly, to belabor the point with an altogether morbid and tragic twist, the fact that 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, one is left simply flabbergasted.

Why, after all, should the voters attempt to disregard an individual's rational choice? If the decision is presented that one must vote against or otherwise hinder and impede a potentially illegal invasion of another country yet lose billions of dollars (and counting) in the process, or wave a flag and cash the checks, the voters should not expect much.

Clearly, many American politicians are in the business of war, but how much of this business is really in the public interest?

random Chinese fortune

Sun Tzu says:

II.WAGING WAR

10.Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance. Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished.