Guantanamo goes mainstream

Wednesday night I watched one of my favorite shows, NYPD Blue. The plot of this episode was disturbing and horrifying.
An Army recruiter is shot in front of a school, and the first suspect found by the detectives is a teenager - 17 years old - who had argued previously with the recuiters because his brother died in Iraq. And the boy admitted he had learned how to shoot in Scouts. Oh, and he also had taken a school trip to Spain and Morocco the previous summer.
So, according to the Army CID guy helping the NYPD investigate the case, the boy fit the profile of an "enemy combatant" and the CID was therefore entitled to use "special interrogation methods" to force him to confess. The good detectives of the squad, though, wanted to investigate a little further. and of course they finally found the real culprit. And in the end, the boy went up to the recruiter and basically apologized for causing so much trouble.
What was horrifying about it was, first, that on the basis of coincidence, with zero evidence, the Army CID type concluded the boy was guilty and was all set to ship the boy to Guantanamo, and second, that everybody else in the squad accepted without a murmur the right of the CID to do this. They all acted like torturing the boy and condemning him without a trial would be perfectly OK if they couldn't find a better suspect.
I was reminded of this plotline when I read Digby today writing about Death in Life "We are disappearing people, rendering them to friendly governments that aren't afraid to put the electrode to genitals and threaten with dog rape. And we are building our own infrastructure of torture and extra legal imprisonment. It is a law of human nature that if you build it, they will come. This infrastructure will be expanded and bureaucratized. It's already happening. And when they decide, as Professor Yoo has already decided, that an election is a sanctioning of anything the President chooses to do in the War on Terror, it is only a matter of time before internal political enemies become a threat.
And then it will be us."
Perhaps it is time for people like Digby and Kos and Atrios and BOP and Frog and the other progressive bloggers to start making some back-up plans, like European mirror sites. And does anyone know if the Weathermen safe houses still exist? Canada would welcome you all, of course.

"I'm not a journalist but I've played one at the White House"

AMERICAblog summarizes the Gannon coverage. Spiderleaf at Daily Kos provides the timeline which shows how Gannon was a major player in twisting the Plame leak story. For me, this is much hotter stuff than the "military escorts men for men" angle, though your mileage may differ.
UPDATE: Digby blows away the "poor conservative journalist targetted by the liberal blogosphere" spin, which isn't going to survive the sh*tstorm now directing attention squarely where it belongs, on the White House press office, which I assume will shortly be approached by the Daily Show for credentials.

Nothing is taboo for these guys

Pogge has a good post about the latest missle defense moves: Peace, order and good government, eh?: Let's not let the facts influence our decision
What frustrates me about the missile defense discussion is Canada's pious insistence that even if it does participate in the "defense" part, it would not participate in the weaponization of space, oh no, never, and besides the Americans say they don't want to put weapons in space anyway.
My question is -- why wouldn't they?
For the last 40 years, the American military has worked to weaponize everything else -- just tonight, on Countdown I think, there was a laudatory story about how US unmanned planes can fire missiles at Iraqi snipers, on orders from corporals sitting in bunkers a thousand miles away. One of the big scare stories in the Iraq war buildup was the "discovery" of some torpedo-like tubes which the Americans said were Iraqi prototypes of unmanned aircraft which the Iraqis were planning to use to attack the US -- of course, they turned out to be nothing of the kind, but it shows what the Americans were thinking. And they're working hard making nuclear weapons that they can actually use, that will, for instance, burrow underground.
So why wouldn't they want to be able to put weapons in space? In fact, some think they already are doing this -- its the final frontier, for one thing, and besides, they likely think they will need such weapons to win the war against China which they probably think America will be fighting in about 20 years.

Bring it on

My Blahg: American Intrusion provides an excellent roundup describing how America's so-called "pro-family" groups are issuing ultimatums and funding advertising campaigns opposing Canada's gay marriage law, and the blogs which are blogging against this.
I hadn't realized how bad this was getting until I read this post. Canadians, including Canadian politicians, will have to come to grips with an unpleasant truth -- Canada's attempt to legalize gay marriage is becoming another symbolic battle for America's Christian Right. We rank right up there with Spongebob and Janet Jackson as a American cause celebre.
To my mind, this makes the success of the gay marriage bill even more important -- imagine being able to strike a decisive blow for Canadian civil rights AND undermine the whole American Christian Right take-over-the-world agenda, just with one measly little vote supporting gay marriage!

The protesters won

All those protesters at the world's economic summits over the last few years have been reviled and trivialized by the media and dissed by the politicians and teargassed by the police.

But now they have won -- The Globe and Mail: Canada offers debt-relief plan: ". . . despite the confusion and disagreement at this weekend's summit, it will be remembered as the moment when the rich countries agreed to take on all the debt of the poorest economies. 'What will be known as the '100-per-cent debt summit' owes its progress to the millions who have campaigned for justice, for the strength of their resolve, the vision of their leadership, their determination in pursuit of a great cause' . . . "
They haven't won everything, of course, but they have succeeded in forcing the finance ministers from the richer countries do what the world needs done.

The devil is in the details

Said the cowboy to the debutante "Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?"
"Well, OK" said the debutante.
"Would you sleep with me for $10?"
"Absolutely not! What do you think I am?"
"We already know what you are, ma'am. We're just haggling about the price."
I was reminded of this old joke when I read LiberalOasis: The Dangers Of Getting Cute and Tacking Right
Liberal Oasis is absolutely correct -- the danger for the left in accepting the right's frame is that the argument becomes one of details rather than of principle.
And he is right that this becomes particularly important when dealing with the abortion issue. I have blogged about this before. The core issue for abortion rights is not "what choice" but rather "whose choice" -- supporting abortion rights is not support for whether abortion itself is moral or immoral, but rather support for the right of women to decide for themselves, based on their own moral compass, whether or not to have an abortion. I can, as a person, agree or disagree with another woman's choice. I can even, as a mother, argue with her about whether abortion is her best decision. But I believe absolutely that she has the right to make the decision for herself. This is the core principle that has to be fought for and maintained.

If I was a Democrat in Congress...

Yahoo! News - Bush Proposes Steep Cuts in $2.57T Budget
If I was a Democrat in Congress, house or senate, I would just simply vote against this horrible budget and do nothing else.
Its Bush's shell game -- propose a budget so horrible that the Congress won't vote for it, then blame them for raising the deficit.
So the Democratic response should be -- nothing. No negotiations, no massaging, no special pleadings to restore this or that program, no porkbarreling, no little quid-quo-pros that would add line items for my district back in so that I would vote in favour, no cooperation, no "bipartisanship", no nothing. Its a Republican budget all the way, so let them vote for it and live with it.
Of course, I live in a parliamentary system, where the governing party is always responsible and accountable for the budget it proposes and if they screw up, people always know who to blame for the mess.

The Islamic state of Iraq

To find out what is really going on in Iraq now, I go to Juan Cole's Informed Comment and to Today in Iraq.
Today, Cole is writing about the Sunday talk shows "The Republican Party spin machine was bouncing around the airwaves like an overloaded washing machine on Sunday attempting to obscure from the American public that they had by their actions managed to install a Shiite religious ruling class in Iraq."
My personal response to Cole's post, actually, was to wonder, to whom is this news? I guess its a surprise to the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, but not to anyone else with half a brain.
Of course the Shiites were going to elect a people who would write an Islamic constitution - its what they want. It's what they've always wanted. Its what Iran wants, too. And the Kurds don't care as long as they are left alone to keep democracy in their own way, which the new constitution will also ensure.

Straws in the wind

Buzzflash points to this important article -- Hunger for Dictatorship from The American Conservative magazine. Even conservatives are becoming concerned about the rising tide of American fascism:
"I don’t think there are yet real fascists in the administration, but there is certainly now a constituency for them —hungry to bomb foreigners and smash those Americans who might object. And when there are constituencies, leaders may not be far behind. They could be propelled into power by a populace ever more frustrated that the imperialist war it has supported—generally for the most banal of patriotic reasons—cannot possibly end in victory. And so scapegoats are sought, and if we can’t bomb Arabs into submission, or the French, domestic critics of Bush will serve."

No Way!

TheStar.com - Canadian troops to Iraq?
Not only would it be stupid in and of itself for Canada to send troops to Iraq -- because the US is the agressor and the occupier and the insurgents are right to want them to leave -- but it would also allow Bush to announce how Canada had finally seen the light and recognized that he was right and we were wrong, so there, nayh nayh nayh nayh nayh nayh big fat razzberry bzzzzzzz!
Thanks, Ross, for the heads up.
So what can we do about it? Who is organizing the protests?

"Outside agitators"

FOXNews.com - Politics - Capitol Hill Mulls 'Regime Change' in Iran
Does anyone else remember the times when US leadership at various levels was opposed to "outside agitators"?
This was the right-wing ephithet hurled at everyone from the union activitists who worked to get unions certified in factories, to civil rights workers who signed up Southern voters, to Communists and "fellow-travellers" who were supposed to be "infiltrating" various progressive groups like the Sierra Club and the Democratic Party and the peace movement in the 60s.
At that time, the "outside agitators" were awful, stirring up the poor folks and the darkies and the workers and the students, getting them to protest when they should have known better.
So now, the US is making itself into the "outside agitators" in Iran? Well, what goes around, comes around, I guess.

Iraqi sayings

LRB | Eliot Weinberger : What I Heard about Iraq
This is almost too painful to read, but it has a deadly fascination that keeps you going. From All Spin Zone.

The best thing Ted Kennedy has ever done

Ted Kennedy speaks out against that lying toady Gonzales -- MyDD :Kennedy Letter Claims 'Smoking Gun' Against Gonzales.
Read it all.

Two solitudes

Here is the Associated Press' SOTU story on the Yahoo website: Bush Urges Congress to Save Soc. Security
and here is the Associated Press' SOTU story in the Globe and Mail Bush's pitch only tells half the story
Both apparently written by the same organization, but opposite in their approach and content.

John Ibbitson's column

I can link to today's Globe article about gay marriage: Skip gay marriage vote, Liberal MPs told which buries the news that at least three Conservative MPs (Jim Prentice from Calgary, James Moore from BC and Belinda Stronach) will vote in favour of gay marriage.
But behind the Globe's firewall is John Ibbitson's great column.
Ibbitson makes the point that the Conservatives and the church leaders talking up their opposition to gay marriage are lying to people about the real basis of their concern -- hiding their anti-gay discrimination in a cloak of religious victimhood:

Why are some religious and political leaders deliberately trying to deceive voters by complaining that churches could be forced to perform same-sex marriages? The ministers, priests, rabbis, imans and Conservative politicians who are leading the fight against the same-sex marriage legislation introduced yesterday must know as a matter of plain fact that no religious institution will ever be compelled to marry a gay couple. They know this. Yet they don't seem to care.
Yesterday, they were at it again. "The protection for religious freedom is an empty promise," declared Janet Epp of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper echoed her: "The Liberal bill provides little in the way of assurance that religious freedoms will be protected if the legal definition of marriage is changed." Why do they say such things? Both referred to last December's Supreme Court reference, in which the court stated that "it would be for the provinces, in the exercise of their power over the solemnization of marriage, to legislate in a way that protects the rights of religious officials." Taken that far, it sounds as though only the provinces have the power to protect churches from compulsory marriage of homosexuals. But Mr. Harper and Ms. Epp neglected to tell you what the court said next: "Human rights codes must be interpreted and applied in a manner that respects the broad protection granted to religious freedom under the Charter." And "absent unique circumstances with respect to which we will not speculate, the guarantee of religious freedom in Section 2 (a) of the Charter is broad enough to protect religious officials from being compelled by the state to perform civil or religious same-sex marriages." The court couldn't be any plainer. Barring circumstances the judges can't even imagine, the Charter's guarantees of religious freedoms protect the clergy from being forced to marry anyone. The court went on to emphasize that the same protection would apply to religious spaces as well as religious figures. The added protections contained in the legislation are actually redundant. The Constitution provides the churches will all the protection they need.
So why do these religious and political leaders deliberately seek to mislead by claiming they could be forced to marry gays? Some Catholics and evangelical Protestants, in particular, hope to demonstrate the growing power of the religious right in Canada by winning a big political fight. But if they declared, "Homosexuality is evil. Same-sex marriage is a moral perversion," which is what they actually believe, a lot of people would turn away from them. Instead, they portray themselves as victims.
As for Mr. Harper and his advisers, part of their motive is sheer devilment. The same-sex issue is splitting the Liberal caucus in two. And it is a political maxim, which the Conservatives know only too well, that voters will not support a divided party.
More important, the Conservatives believe that fighting same-sex marriage will win them votes among immigrants from socially conservative countries. The Tories are desperate to win ethnic voters away from the Liberals. They are hoping that South Asian and Chinese immigrants in BC's lower mainland and in the riding around Toronto, in particular, are so uncomfortable with the idea of gays getting married that they will switch their support, delivering a dozen or more seats to the Conservatives in the next election. This is a dangerous strategy. Hands up, everyone who has a child more socially conservative than you are. The Tories risk permanently branding themselves as homophobes in the eyes of younger voters. But Mr. Harper obviously believes short-term advantage outweighs long-term harm.
We are about to get dragged through five months of agonizing debate on this legislation. We need to accept that people of goodwill can be found on both sides of this issue. But there is no goodwill in arguing that churches will be forced to marry gays. It is misleading. It is deceptive. It is a lie.

Right on, John. And as the months go on, keep reminding people about this deception.