"Severed from its moral foundation"

It's not just me.
Here's how Guantanamo is described by Washington State writer Mike Whitney in this Smirking Chimp article 'Guantanamo: The calculus of human misery':

Guantanamo was intentionally shoved in the world's face to announce the arrival of the New World Order; the neocon phantasm of autocratic rule and perpetual war. It has become the foremost icon of the Bush regime; an ominous stone monument to human cruelty. It is cleverly disguised as a prison facility but, in fact, Guantanamo is a state of the art laboratory where the parameters of human suffering are explored by a highly-trained staff of professionals. To be precise, it is a "Torture-lab" replete with all of the modern gadgetry required for enhancing pain . . . psychiatrists, psychologists and other medical professionals worked intimately with the military at Guantanamo "advising officials on how to conduct harsh interrogations of detainees". Their experimentation focuses on establishing the limits of human endurance; trying to gauge, through original and highly-controversial techniques, the maximum agony their subjects can withstand before they die or become unresponsive. This is not merely torture, but the science of sadism; a finely-tuned regimen of systematic abuse, the calculus of human misery. It has become a vital adjunct to the new American foreign policy . . . Guantanamo is the truest expression of Bush's America; a looming block monolith where the crimes of empire can be carried out with impunity. It has become the primary symbol of the global onslaught on international law, personal liberty and human decency. Languishing beneath the blood-striped standard, the gun-towers and concertina wire depict an America that has changed at its very core; a rogue nation severed from its moral foundation; executing the coercive policies of the state.

And today it was announced that the Pentagon is not going to follow a judicial order to release more Abu Ghraib photos and videos. In June they asked the judge for more time so they could redact the faces in the photos; now they are asking for an exemption not to release anything -- "to withhold law enforcement-related information in order to protect the physical safety of individuals."
This is a laugh -- NOW they're worried about people's physical safety?
These new photos and videos apparently show, in Rumsfeld's own testimony to congress as quoted in a 2004 news story "acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhuman". The news story quotes NBC news as saying that the unreleased images show American soldiers beating one prisoner almost to death, apparently raping a female prisoner, acting inappropriately with a dead body, and taping Iraqi guards raping young boys. It also quotes Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham "We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience; we're talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges.'' Seymour Hersch said last year that the videos cover "women who were arrested with young boys/children . . . The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking."
Its probably their own safety that Rumsfeld and the Pentagon staff are worried about.

Pandering to our Inner Joe

' Ontarians to have say in whether province changes daylight saving time'. This stikes me as meaningless pandering to Canadian ego, our Inner Joe -- 'I don't change my watch when Americans do! I am Canadian.'
The Ontario attorney general Michael Bryant is quoted in this story as saying "Our government's going to do what's in Ontarians' interests, which does not necessarily mean automatically following in lockstep with the United States government's change to daylight saving time."
So I guess it is in Ontario's interest to dither, causing disruption and anxiety to businesses across the province before making the obvious decision, eh?
Can anyone give me any reason for Ontario, or any other Canadian province which is already on DST, to not just follow the American hours for Daylight Savings Time? Most provinces have significant US border trade plus Ontario has industrial involvement in US industries like the auto industry, so why on earth would Ontario NOT want to be on the same time as Detroit and Buffalo and New York?
Being in Saskatchewan myself, where we don't bother to switch times anymore, we feel that time is just an arbitrary constructed concept anyway.
We don't change our clocks because of the very early evening or very late morning which DST would cause to half of the province. Being on Manitoba time in the winter means Yorkton isn't dark by the time school lets out, while being on Alberta time in the summer means Lloydminster gets longer summer evenings. It works out for everything except the TV schedules.

Stand and deliver

The Senate is trying to hijack the defense spending bill to do somthing about torture, so naturally the White House is threatening to veto the bill.
Let Bush bluster and threaten -- what odds would anyone give me that Bush would actually issue his first veto in five years over the 'principle' that the president should be able to imprison and torture people at whim?
And its about time the Senate stepped up. The issue is this: the US Senate is reviewing a $442 billion expenditure for US defense programs. Republicans John McCain and Lindsay Graham are working with Armed Services Committee chair John Warner to add amendments to the bill to standardize treatment of prisoners, to define the legal status of the Guantanamo prisoners, to barr the holding of "ghost" detainees, to codify a ban against cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, and to use the Army manual as a basis for all interrogations. Democratic senator Carl Levin also wants to add an amendment to establish a commission on abuses, which the Pentagon says would be just "political theatre".
So now the White House has announced that such amendments would "interfere with the protection of Americans from terrorism by diverting resources from the war." and has threatened veto "if legislation is presented that would restrict the president's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bring terrorists to justice."
I think the Pentagon and the White House will find that their 'political capital' on the torture issue is long since spent. McCain, Graham and Levin aren't going to let their own presidential campaigns be hijacked over torture and Guantanamo.
Not to mention, of course, that stopping all this stuff is the right thing to do. In the past, Congress and the American people could expect that their executive branch would defend the American constitution -- in his oath of office, the president swears to protect and defend the American constitution. But the Bush gang demonstrated their basic contempt for the constitution when they responded to 911 by so quickly and eagerly embracing the characteristics of dictatorship -- torture, imprisonment without trial, and abandonment of habeas corpus. More than any other issue, this revolting stampede to abandon constitutional principles has caused a substantial loss of US respect and prestige around the world, and rightfully so.

Dueling leaks

If the Supreme Court nominee announcement was intended to distract everyone from Plamegate, it worked.
For about 24 hours.
Here's Thursday's front page story in the Washington Post -- 'Plame's Identity Marked As Secret' which describes the State Department memo that Powell was supposedly carrying around Air Force One on the trip to Africa and which said that "The paragraph identifying [Valerie Wilson] as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the 'secret' level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as 'secret' the names of officers whose identities are covert . . . Anyone reading that paragraph should have been aware that it contained secret information . . . It is a federal crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for a federal official to knowingly disclose the identity of a covert CIA official if the person knows the government is trying to keep it secret."
I also have the impression from this story that the Fitzgerald investigation staff (and maybe Powell, too) are countering with their own leaks the heavy spinning of leaks from the GOP usual suspects about Rove's Sargeant Schultz imitation -- he knew nu-thing, NU-THING!

"Delayed indefinitely" or "still on the docket"?

The Globe and Mail: Mad-cow case delayed indefinitely
Well, I'm not sure I would use the term "indefinitely" for this delay -- when the written reasons why the appeal court overturned Judge Cebull's injunction are received, then the Judge will decide whether to schedule another hearing.
The Billings Gazette reported the story this way last Friday: "A hearing on a request for permanent injunction against Canadian live cattle entering the United States is still on the docket of U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull in Billings. The judge will make no decision on the July 27 trial until he has reviewed the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' reasons for dissolving his preliminary injunction, issued March 2, his law clerk said Friday afternoon. "
Cebull's injunction in March was pretty supportive of R-CALF's case in just about every respect.

The USDA has evidenced a preconceived intention, based upon inappropriate considerations, to rush to reopen the border regardless of uncertainties in the agency's knowledge of the possible impacts on human and animal health. Deference cannot be given to an agency that has made the decision to open the border before completing the necessary scientific analysis or risks to human health. The USDA cannot favor trade with Canada over human and animal health within the U.S. . . Plantiff has demonstrated the numerous procedural and substantive shortcomings of the USDA's decision to allow importation of Canadian cattle and beef. The serious irreparable harm that will occur when Canadian cattle and meat enter the U.S. and co-mingle with the U.S. meat supply justifies issuance of a preliminary injunction preventing the expansion of imports allowed under the Final Rule pending a review on the merits. As the States of Connecticut, New Mexico, North Dakota, Montana, Nevada, South Dakota and West Virginia have stated in the Amicus Curiae Brief: "The threats are great. Delay is prudent and largely harmless."

As well as the brief from seven states, the U.S. congress also passed in March a joint motion of disapproval of the border reopening.
So I don't think we can assume we are out of the woods quite yet.

"It coulda been worse" -- what a resounding endorsement!

Yale law professor Robert W. Gordon provides some initial reactions to Bush's supreme court nominee John Roberts:

Roberts is a very conservative nominee. Both business and social conservatives will support him strongly . . . his career locates him solidly on the far right of today's Court, the Rehnquist-Scalia-Thomas wing . . . All the indications are that he will become another vote to expand presidential power in national-security affairs, to limit the federal government's authority to regulate business and the environment and protect civil rights, to make it harder for women, minorities, labor and the disabled to pursue practical remedies in the courts, and to favor a larger role for religion in public life and as object of public subsidy. He is most likely to do this incrementally, case-by-case, rather than by sweeping new doctrines. My guess is that he would not vote to overrule Roe v. Wade but would sustain state efforts to chip away at abortion rights. On economic liberties, however, he might well be a more adventurous innovator. He wrote articles as a law student suggesting that courts use novel theories of the Takings and Contracts clauses of the Constitution to strike down state action affecting business (such as legislation creating new rights for workers). He has done advisory work for right-wing public-interest firms like the Washington Legal Foundation. He may well be a quiet but effective influence for the piecemeal demolition of the regulatory welfare state. Because his style is quiet and low-key, he is more likely to attract votes of fellow Justices than the inflammatory Scalia and the mediocre Thomas. Roberts will be very hard to challenge, because all Bush's choices were bound to be bad and this one could have been much worse.

Actually, maybe not. Sure, Bush could have pandered to the Christian Right by nominating Judge Roy Moore, but he, like Bolton, is such a controversial figure that he would never have been confirmed. A stealth conservative like Roberts will attract just enough Democratic support to be confirmed -- just in time to rule on these cases, and perhaps also on Rove's conviction.

It's all going according to plan -- but it's Iran's plan

Robert Scheer writes about Iraq's dangerous new friend, Iran.
So the United States has destroyed their army as an effective fighting machine and strangled their economy and destroyed their reputation for abiding by the rule of law and killed or injured tens of thousands of people -- all for the sake of establishing in Iraq a religious fundamentalist regime which prefers to ally with Iran.

Forced democratization of Iraq, according to its neocon architects, was supposed to secure oil for the U.S., protect Israel, open markets to Western corporations and, oh yeah, maybe even decrease terrorism. After the invasion, however, the U.S. . . . was loath to allow elections, because their outcome would probably not produce a pliant government. Then Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the Shiite religious leader, threatened to take his followers into the streets against the foreign occupation if one-person-one-vote elections were not allowed. And when it became clear the "wrong" guys might win the elections the U.S. was forced to hold, the Bush White House, according to an investigative article by Seymour Hersh in the current New Yorker, tried to buy the vote for former CIA asset Iyad Allawi. When Allawi's slate was soundly defeated, what was Bush to do? With absolutely nothing having gone right in Iraq between the successful military invasion and the inspiring election nearly two years later, he had no choice but to embrace the winners — mostly Shiite, mostly fundamentalists — as the saviors of a free and democratic Iraq. Sadly, they are nothing of the sort. In Basra, where they have been in power since the U.S. invasion, religious thugs are in de facto control, applying more oppressive theocratic rules over women's behavior and other basic human rights than neighboring Iran. Even worse, their victory has fueled fierce Sunni resentment, and the accompanying insurgency has begun targeting Shiite civilians with the clear goal of fomenting ethnic war. Over the weekend, more than 100 people were killed by suicide bombers. Sistani himself denounced what he ominously said was now a "genocidal war." Facing that hideous possibility, is it surprising to find the Iraqi government looking for help from powerful Iran? No, but it certainly poses a problem for the White House, which now finds itself putting American soldiers' lives on the line every day to prop up an active ally of the country that we claim, with some plausibility, funds anti-Israeli and other terror groups and is bent on making its own nuclear bomb. Somewhere a guy named Osama bin Laden must be laughing.

And Iraqi prime minister Jafari paid tribute to the shrine of Ayatollah Khomeini.

'The difference is to the human spirit'

Canada adopts gay marriage law
Next step is royal assent.

The Senate erupted in a loud cheer as it adopted the Liberal government's Bill C-38, which will give gay and lesbian couples the right to marry in courthouses and city halls across the country. The 47-21 vote came after years of court battles and debate that divided families, religious groups and even political allies. Three senators abstained. There are currently 95 sitting senators and 10 vacancies. The final word in the debate came from a Liberal senator who read to the hushed chamber an e-mail from a Yukon constituent. 'You have no idea what a difference it makes to the human spirit to know that you are treated equally under the law,' said Ione Christensen, the 71-year-old senator from Whitehorse.

But even now, some just do not get it.

"Let the country speak at the next federal election," Tory Senator Gerry St. Germain said hours before the bill passed. "Let's not pass this legislation now. Let's wait. Let's make (the election) a referendum on this bill."

Equal rights are NOT a voting issue. Rights are an expression of law, not of opinion.
We can have elections about government policies and government actions, like war or peace, trade, protectionism, immigration, interest rates, wage controls, federalism, etc etc -- these are things over which government has a choice, so it is quite right that Canadians should decide on what policy they want government to follow. But once the courts have declared that the charter mandates equal rights, it is no longer a matter of government choice whether to follow the court decision or not -- the court decision is the law of the land unless the notwithstanding clause is enacted.

Rice? Are you kidding?

Buzzflash links to this story - Some in GOP Hope Rice Runs for President - by titling its link this way "Some in GOP Want Someone Who Was Warned of 9/11 and Did Nothing to Replace the Man in Charge of Our National Security Who Was Warned of 9/11 and Did Nothing". Says it all, really.

Hate-preach

Is there something in the communion wine these days that makes Anglicans and Catholics and now Baptists so prone to hate-preach?
From Steve Gilliard, we get notice of a sermon by Washington DC Baptist minister Willie Wilson, who is noted in Washington now for trying to organize another Million Man March. So he decided it was timely and appropriate for him to hate-preach against gay people, as described in this story - Minister's fiery anti-gay sermon riles activists.
Two quotes from the speech just cry out to be highlighted:

Lesbianism is about to take over our community. I’m talking about young girls. My son in high school last year, trying to go to the prom, he said, ‘Dad, I ain’t got nobody to take to the prom because all the girls in my class are gay. There ain’t but two of them straight and both of them are ugly. I ain’t got nobody to take to the prom.’ Now, can I talk here? I ain’t homophobic, because everybody in here got something wrong with him . . .

Well, no wonder nobody would date this boy -- just how attractive does he sound to you? Telling a boy you are gay may have become the ultimate turn-down line in high school these days. And here's another quote, even funnier:

Can't make no connection with a screw and another screw. The Bible says God made them male and female . . . there is something unique to man and unique to woman and it takes those two things to complement each other. You can't make a connection with two screws. It takes a screw and a nut!

Well, I'll say!

Westmoreland gone at last

Vietnam-Era Commander Westmoreland Dies
There are many things written in this article that upset me, but mainly that Westmoreland lived to be 91 when Americans and Vietnamese died by the hundreds of thousands 35 years ago. Here one of the most annoying parts ot this story: Westmoreland "contended the United States did not lose the conflict in Southeast Asia. 'It's more accurate to say our country did not fulfill its commitment to South Vietnam,' he said. 'By virtue of Vietnam, the U.S. held the line for 10 years and stopped the dominoes from falling.' " 60,000 Americans dead and this jerk wanted more to die just because he could not bring himself to admit that Vietnam was simply not 'winnable' against the North Vietnamese.

Hooray!

CBC Saskatchewan - Truckload of Canadian cattle enters U.S.: "A truck carrying live Canadian cattle crossed the border from Ontario into the United States on Monday morning, after a ban of more than two years was lifted."
Finally.

POWs this time?

'Canada's JTF-2 to hunt al Qaeda in Afghanistan' and when we catch some, are we going to turn them over to the US again, to disappear in Guantanamo or some other secret US prison, or will we treat them as prisoners of war, the way they are supposed to be treated?

This Canadian Press photo shows JTF2 soldiers with Afghan prisoners in 2002, who apparently were turned over to the US.

Pining for the good old days

Ohhh, poor babies!
In this story about the Senate hearings on the gay marriage bill, "Church to restrict baptism of gay couples' children", a Catholic cardinal complains about all the problems that it will cause when Canada requires that everybody be treated fairly and equally. "If I take the example of the ceremony of baptism, according to our canon law, we cannot accept the signatures of two fathers or two mothers as parents of an infant," Cardinal Ouellet told the committee. "With a law that makes these unions official, situations of this will multiply and this threatens to disturb not just the use of our territory, but also our archives and other aspects of the life of our communities."
Ohhh, isn't that just so sad, too bad. It would have been so much easier to continue to discriminate, I guess, rather than to review your church policies and maybe consider changing them. If only Canadian society didn't insist on gay people being treated like everybody else, then the Catholic church would be free to continue to treat gays like dirt. Damn you, Canadian society!
So difficult to live in the 21st century, isn't it, when you really want to live in the 17th or 18th -- when Catholics and Protestants were slaughtering each other across Europe and the Inquisition was running around burning people at the stake. Ahhh, the good old days.

What's it all about, Georgie?

Frank Rich, in his column Follow the Uranium, cuts through the bullshit and focuses on what it'a all about -- the lies told by Bush and Cheney to start the war in Iraq.

. . . we shouldn't get hung up on [Rove] . . . [or] Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or . . . Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players. This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit . . . is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war . . . and its omniscient author is Dick Cheney. . . Once we were locked into the war, and no W.M.D.'s could be found, the original plot line was dropped with an alacrity that recalled the "Never mind!" with which Gilda Radner's Emily Litella used to end her misinformed Weekend Update commentaries on "Saturday Night Live." The administration began its dog-ate-my-homework cover-up, asserting that the various warning signs about the uranium claims were lost "in the bowels" of the bureaucracy or that it was all the C.I.A.'s fault or that it didn't matter anyway, because there were new, retroactive rationales to justify the war. But the administration knows how guilty it is. That's why it has so quickly trashed any insider who contradicts its story line about how we got to Iraq, starting with the former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill and the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke. Next to White House courtiers of their rank, Mr. Wilson is at most a Rosencrantz or Guildenstern. The brief against the administration's drumbeat for war would be just as damning if he'd never gone to Africa. But by overreacting in panic to his single Op-Ed piece of two years ago, the White House has opened a Pandora's box it can't slam shut . . .