Thursday, September 28, 2006

It's Over

In a wonderful example of our representatives doing what's best for the American and the American way...the Senate has rejected an amendment to the pending "Torture bill" which would have allowed detainees to challenge their detention.

In other words, if you're locked up as a suspected terrorist, you can't question why you've been taken in. It's called Habeus Corpus. The use of Habeus Corpus has basically ensured that everyone gets a day in court. It's been a common concept since 1305 - or for the mathematically challenged, it's been around for 700 years! And America has stood for the best of this concept since day one. Not any more though.

Okay, just so I don't come off looking like a partially informed idiot, Habeus Corpus still applies to regular crimes, but it would no longer be common law for any one who has supported terrorist activity. But let's also be clear here, the government has made it pretty easy to call anyone a suspected terrorist. If you've donated to a charity which later is identified as possibly supporting terrorism, then you're on the hook and could be taken in. Heck, if you've ever talked to a brown man with a beard and turban, you're on the hook. So that may not happen much, but it has happened since 9/11 and don't be fooled into thinking it's just a corner case. Is this the start of a slippery slope? Umm, in case you were sleeping, we're half way down the slope and should be fearful of hitting bottom.

In fact, this torture bill that's coming through right now allows the government to take in a US-born citizen for anything deemed to be in support of terrorism. And don't expect a court date because a suspected terrorist doesn't have to be tried in court. They can be held indefinitely unless and until the govt decides to charge them with a crime. And that's the only time it can be challenged.

Good stuff here.

So you say, well, we need to make sure the terrorists don't get us. Well, let's be clear here, the government has always had the ability to detain suspect terrorists in a time of war. There have always been rules and protocal which could be followed to spy on anyone and to arrest them before they start blowing shit up, especially in a time of war. Beyond in addition to everything else, this bill allows all this non-sense to occur at any time, war or not.

Here's a great run down of so many little tidbits about this bill: Dan Froomkin's White House Briefing is a great daily read, but today's version just left me shaking my head. I'm beyond pissed...I'm dazed. Spend 10 minutes and read his pretty thorough summary about where this bill takes us.

And in case you haven't put two and two together, this was rushed through Congress at the urging of Pres. Bush before Congress adjourns for their elections push. Of course, now they can go back to their districts with this feather in their hats. Yeah, as we all cheer on our representatives to electoral victory, we can be assured that the terrorist next to us could be taken in and just disappear. No court date, no charges. Nothing. And then be tortured with clarity until a confession is extracted.

All for a mid-term elections push.

Game Over.

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Tuesday, September 26, 2006

It's On

Not bad...only two months of being too lazy and distracted to post on my blog. But it's on now.

As usual, there have been a few random topics that I've thought about blogging, but none of them drove me to click "New Post". Except Pres. Clinton's interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News. If you haven't seen it, have fun. I happened to be flipping channels Sunday night trying to avoide a hangover from too an afternoon of wine tasting and I came across a re-run of the Fox news program. It's not something I usually watch, but I had to stop there since Clinton was on and it's not an everyday thing to see him on Fox. Anyways, I was glued and as I expected, it's been all over the news since then.

But this post isn't really about the interview. Everything to be said about it has been said. I'll only add that I was smiling during the whole thing since Clinton said what so many others haven't been willing to say.

What really got me to click back to Blogger after so long is the Newsweek International site (Via).
Check out the image grab I've got here. It's a listing of the current (Oct 2) global issues of Newsweek. Notice something odd? The non-US versions carry a cover highlighing the "Jihadistan" article within while the US version highlights a piece on Annie Leibovitz. So just to be clear, both articles are in all versions of Newsweek globally, but Americans don't have to deal with another reminder of where we are with our fight against terror.

Seeing this difference didn't make me think that the media is fucked up. There are certainly some jacked up things which the media presents to us all the time. But this is really about we as Americans and, more generally, about human nature. As a whole, we just don't want to hear this bad stuff, especially when it relates directly to the War on Terror. Sure it's a downer, but it's still happening. And I keep noticing more and more instances of us blinding ourselves to the reality of the situation.

I had not really been focusing too much of my attention on the assessment of where we are. This was mainly because I felt like I already knew things were bad and not too many new facts have been coming out which would convince nay-sayers that things really are pretty fucked up. But seriously, Clinton's interview got me riled up. Just like Clinton handled Chris Wallace in a "Fuck That!" type of attitude, I'm pretty much in that same mindset. Fuck That!

We've been too soft on how fucked up our current admin has made things and MUCH MORE IMPORTANTLY we've been too soft on ourselves for the role we have to play as citizens.

Anyways, I'm always reading so much on politics, the war of terror, and general state of things...I'm going to try to highlight the most interesting stuff over the next few weeks. We've got elections coming up and it's our job to know as much as possible in order to go to the polls as an informed populous.

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