Great line of the day

At Rising Hegemon, Attaturk asks Who the fuck is this monster in the White House?

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be . . . Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality." Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States." . . . "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.

They tortured an insane person to make George W. Bush look good. Good luck explaining that one to Jesus, Dubya!

Emphasis mine.

Funny, funny

Isn't it fun finding great blogs?
Of course, I hope you return to this one, but I would understand if you couldn't because you were laughing too hard.
Cynic flagged one the other day that I love - Chase me, ladies, I'm in the cavalry - and here another -- Whatever It Is, I'm Against It. Sample:

Speaking of monkey gods, George Bush is visiting Austria for the very first time. He keeps looking for kangaroos. He had a press conference with his good friend, Austrian Chancellor Schüssel (“I call him Wolfgang, he calls me George W.”). Near as I can figure it, Bush was in Europe to send messages to non-Europeans. He told Iran, which says it will respond to the nuclear proposal by August 22: “It seems like an awful long time for a reasonable answer -- for a reasonable proposal, a long time for an answer.” Yeah, George, like you’re such a fast reader. He told North Korea it should “not fire whatever it is on their missile.” Kimchee? Bush was shocked and offended to hear that Europeans consider the US the biggest threat to global stability. “Absurd” he called it, chuckling. “It’s a -- we’re a transparent democracy. People know exactly what’s on our mind.” And you don’t see any correlation between people knowing what’s on your mind and them considering you a threat to global stability, George? He added, “For Europe, September the 11th was a moment; for us, it was a change of thinking.” And, let’s face it, a change of underwear.

"It's not happening here but it's happening now"

Today in Iraq links to this site, Roads to Iraq, which describes a new Amnesty International advertising campaign in Europe. They are using transparent bus-stop ads with the tagline "It's not happening here, but it's happening now" and here are some of the startling images:

Lie and die

Yes, that just about sums up the Republican policy for Iraq these days.

Great line of the day

Steve Gilliard writes the truth about America in Iraq:

Bush thinks that he can stay in Iraq until we win. We are not going to win . . . Our president's illness, his need to beat his father, is driving this war more than any other factor, and it is getting worse. We are facing a question of character here, one where we descend into the typical brutality of a colonial war, or of the Eastern Front, only to lose in the end. Are we going to hang Iraqis in town squares and burn their villages, murder whole families to keep the weak government in power? As if the resistance will react passively.
They mutliated, read as castrated, the soldiers they caught, then cut off their heads and then booby trapped the bodies. A horrible way to die.
Those who say we must now stay in Iraq are fools. People debating amnesty are wasting their time. An amnesty from a government which has no power means nothing.
Iraq will have a civil war, kill many, many people and the hard men with guns will win. We can never be as savage as people fighting an invader of their home. It is useless to even contemplate that.

Emphasis mine.

Good news

The Episcopalians will continue to support gay bishops.
As I reported on last month, the whole basis of the anti-gay movement in the Anglican Church is not relgious but political; just a few ultra-conservatives want to twist the Anglican Church toward the Religious Right's political agenda, so that everyone will dance to their tune:

Millions of dollars contributed by a handful of donors have allowed a small network of theologically conservative individuals and organizations to mount a global campaign that has destabilized the Episcopal Church and may break up the Anglican Communion.

Well, the Episcopalians would not be bullied.

Episcopal degates snubbed Anglican leaders' request that they temporarily stop electing openly gay bishops . . . a majority of deputies voted against a measure that would have urged dioceses to refrain from electing gay bishops . . . the Rev. Susan Russell of Integrity, the Episcopal gay and lesbian caucus, said she feels proud that the church is willing to affirm its commitment to fight injustice. "The vote says we're not willing to make sacrificial lambs of our gay and lesbian sisters and brothers, and that has to leave me feeling pretty grateful and very proud," she said.

Oh, and the Presbyterians have done the right thing, too:

The critical vote in the Episcopal Church occurred on a day when another Protestant denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), decided at a session in Birmingham to allow gay clergy, lay elders and deacons to work with local congregations.

I think the churches are finding out that, as that religious philosopher John Lennon once said, all you need is love.

Loney speaks out

Sometimes what an organization doesn't say is more revealing than what it does say.
People will call James Loney paranoid when he accuses the Knights of Columbus of shutting down a youth leadership camp where he worked rather than employ an openly gay man.
And yes, it could sound plausible to explain, as this story postulates, that maybe liability concerns are actually to blame for the closure.
But the tip-off is this -- the liability-cost explanation did not come from the Knights of Columbus themselves.
They actually won't say very clearly at all why they suddenly decided to close the camp when its funding was in place and applications from campers were being accepted.
So, no, I don't think Loney is paranoid.
I think he is probably right.

"Goodwill and generosity"

Harper gets it --"Canada's diversity, properly nurtured, is our greatest strength" he said at the opening of the UN World Urban Forum.
Exactly.
I was thrilled to hear him say this. Harper didn't take the political path, one which seems to be particularly easy for conservatives, and particularly easy for Bush-bots, of blaming immigration for social problems, amplifying fear and divisiveness, pandering to people who want to slam the door and keep out everyone black, brown or yellow.
Instead, Harper has turned the terrorist arrests into an opportunity to lead Canada toward a broader vision -- perhaps also recognizing that some of the members of his own party are most in need of this leadership:

Some commentators have blamed Canada's open, multicultural society for spawning the alleged terrorist network, Mr. Harper added. "They have said it makes us a more vulnerable target for terrorist activity." But rather than shutting out those from other countries with different ethnic backgrounds and religions, Canada should maintain its long-standing, open-door policy, he said.
"It is true that somewhere, in some communities, we will find . . . apostles of terror, who use the symbols of culture and faith to justify crimes of violence . . . the terrorists and their vision will be rejected "by men and women of good will and generosity in all communities," Mr. Harper affirmed to loud applause.

A great speech -- and, perhaps for the first time, I can be proud that the man who made it is Canada's prime minister.

Today's pop quiz

1. Is the Iraq insurgency treating captured American soldiers with same respect that American soldiers have shown to Iraqi prisoners?
2. How is this going to end?

Afghanistan writings

James Wolcott quotes from a couple of good articles about Afghanistan and what it means to the United States -- and to us, too, of course.
First, a July, 2006 article by Stewart Nusbaumer "Unfinished Business" at the American Conservative magazine:

. . . in Afghanistan and Iraq the Bush administration was clueless about the wars it faced, declaring victory before the real wars began. The neocons wrote a silly script that had Afghans and Iraqis pulverized by our hi-tech war machine and quickly capitulating, as if the Vietnam debacle never happened, as if the world's guerrilla fighters never learned how to stymie and slowly bleed the world's premier conventional military.

Then a flashback to what Ted Rall wrote in December, 2001:

'It would take billions of dollars to even begin rebuilding this country,' an American officer who refused to give his name noted while his driver worked on a flat tire. 'Billions of dollars and many, many years. We don't have that kind of attention span. Bombing Iraq will be a lot sexier than teaching Afghans how to read.'
And so we've lost this war, not because they're good or we're not, but because of who we are. The American Empire can't spend the bodies or the time or the cash to fix this crazyass place, because in the final analysis, election-year W. was right—we're not nation builders. Guys who once called themselves Talibs switch to something called the Northern Alliance, and we call this a victory. We know it isn't so, but like Nixon's peace with honor, it'll have to do.
Both the Russians and the English lost everything to Afghanistan, but it doesn't have to end that way for us. After all, the same thing happened to us in Vietnam, our first Afghanistan, but we survived it. True, our economy was never the same. Undeniably, it replaced an American Century with postmodern alienation and ironic detachment. But if those estimates are correct and this war is costing a mere billion bucks a month, we ought to tally our dead, write up our losses, and count ourselves lucky to still be called a superpower.

At the end, Wolcott notes "Five years later, our luck may have run out."

I am Canadian-born

Today's topic is racism.
The CBC is doing it again -- they're educating Canadians about Canada, even the parts of it we don't want to know about. I caught the tail end of a newscast tonight, a story about immigration, I think, and I heard a woman saying something sanctimonious about how "Canada today isn't the Canada I grew up in".
Yes, I thought, and I'm glad its not -- the Canada I grew up in had FLQ bombs blowing up mailboxes in Montreal, and gay people were unmentionable, and abortion was illegal, and women weren't paid equally and . . . but of course this wasn't what she meant.
What this woman meant by the phrase "the Canada I grew up in" was code for "white".
The Canada I grew up in was white, too -- I don't think I knew a single Aboriginal person until I was in my 20s. There were no Aboriginal people living in our neighbourhood, and very few Muslim people, or East Indian people, or Asian.
What a loss that was -- maybe not for them, but for me, and for my neighbourhood, and for Canada.
The Canada I grew up in was the one which initially covered the Air India disaster as though it happened to a bunch of foreigners rather than to Canadians -- I will never forget my shock at Macleans on the week of the disaster, with a tiny little banner at top right saying "Air India disaster" and just a one-page story inside.
The Canada I grew up in was the one that refused to apologize to Japanese Canadians for internment or to Chinese Canadians for the head tax.
The Canada I grew up in took Aboriginal children away from their families and sent them to residential schools.
The Canada I still live in cannot seem to provide decent drinking water to Aboriginal reserves.
The quicker that Canada changes, the better.
But we haven't changed it all yet, and Canadians need to realize this. When I checked out the CBC website to see if I could find more about that news story, I found instead Heather Mallick's recent column, which referred me to Robert Fisk's eye-opening Independent article How Racism Has Invaded Canada.
Fisk was writing about the media coverage of the "terrorist cell" arrest news stories. In particular, he noted the offensive term "brown-skinned" to describe the Muslim suspects:

What is “brown-skinned” supposed to mean — if it is not just a revolting attempt to isolate Muslims as the “other” in Canada’s highly multicultural society? I notice, for example, that when the paper obsequiously refers to Toronto’s police chief and his reportedly brilliant cops, he is not referred to as “white-skinned” (which he most assuredly is).

Fisk is right about how offensive this term is. How easily such terminology creeps into our discourse when it is used approvingly by the media.
He notes another term which we should also all be aware of:

. . . a very unpleasant -- albeit initially innocuous -- phrase has now found its way into the papers. The accused 17 -- and, indeed their families and sometimes the country's entire Muslim community -- are now referred to as 'Canadian-born'. Well, yes, they are Canadian-born. But there's a subtle difference between this and being described as a 'Canadian' -- as other citizens of this vast country are in every other context. And the implications are obvious; there are now two types of Canadian citizen: The Canadian-born variety (Muslims) and Canadians (the rest).

He is right. I was born here too. And I always thought of myself as Canadian, not just "Canadian-born".
But if the term "Canadian-born" is to be used to denigrate those terrorist suspects and turn them into second-class citizens then I have no choice -- I'll just have to adopt it for myself, too.
"I am Canadian-born" doesn't have quite the crispness and style needed for a beer commercial, but I suppose we'll get used to it.

Thanks, Dad

Ross over at The Gazetteer has a beautiful Father's Day post:

My old man was a Union man.
And the folks in the Union fought like bastards...and they fought constantly, usually for the tiniest of things in each successive contract...And when I was a kid, especially during that time when I was a barely no-longer-a-teenager-aged kid, I thought the folks from the Union were just a little bit off their nut. . .

And he goes on to describe how he understands now why they fought so hard:

And most of all, I now get the fact that my Dad was, and is, my hero.

His description of his Dad reminded me a bit of my own father, a man who grew up during the Depression and spent his life as a farmer with a Grade 9 education, but who re-invented himself and his family as urban, self-educated, knowledgeable, thoughtful, opinionated, humourous. A lifelong member of the CCF and supporter of the Wheat Board, who lost and made thousands playing the stock market and the futures market, a gambler who played a mean game of bridge and poker -- enough so that when I met one of my dad's old poker buddies years later, he said to me "So you're Art's daughter, are you? I bought your shoes all through high school!" Most of all, he was a man with an utter distain for anything that struck him as BS whether it came from the right or the left -- and there is plenty of that in our society. He and my mother gave me my own progressive outlook and I thank them for it.

Great line of the day

Tristero at Hullabaloo writes about Gore's Moral Imperative and has this to say about the Democratic Kewl Kids Konsultants:

. . . the latest bundle of snoozers packaged into an "agenda" by the Democratic party's utterly inept national political consultants is a major league embarassment. It's almost as if the party consultants concluded that since the world is facing an energy crisis, the Democratic party should set an example and not have any.

Emphasis mine.

A thousand ways to die

Here's the latest news from the Baghdad morgue, which is receiving 1,000 bodies a month, mostly people violently murdered. With so many people dying every day, the individual stories of loss and despair will likely never be told:

Samir Mehdi Matar, a 40-year-old father of four, is a Shi’ite schoolteacher. Married to a Sunni woman . . . Shortly after leaving for work last April he received a phone call. His house had been wrecked by an explosion. His two daughters, Samaa, 16, and Zahraa, 4, were killed by a bomb that had been placed on a windowsill below the room where they slept.

Najda Abdul Razzak makes no apology for wishing to tear out the eyes of the killer of her son Hani, a 31-year-old Sunni professor of engineering at Baghdad University. Najda was in her kitchen preparing breakfast last week when her son answered a ring at the door and died in a hail of gunfire.

“Every day we have to kill a Shi’ite to show them who we are and that we mean business,” he told a Baghdad contact who cannot be named. “Nobody can stop us.” When the contact saw a body that had apparently been left to rot on the street, he asked Abu Muawiya why nobody had moved it. He was told that it was because the body was Shi’ite and anyone who touched it would be killed. A few hours later the contact saw a man shot dead for removing a piece of cardboard hiding the face of a second body and informing the victim’s family. Abu Muawiya showed no remorse. “We do not want their bodies cleared from the streets,” he said. “We leave them there for the dogs to eat, just as they dump Sunni bodies in rubbish heaps to be devoured by animals.”

Mohammed Saleh al-Duleimi, a 61-year-old Sunni businessman . . . concluded a few weeks ago that it was too dangerous for him and his family to stay in Baghdad. The day before he was due to leave for Turkey, he went to find an electrician who could help to shut down his house. He was found two days later in the morgue with a bullet hole in the back of his head and his hands tied behind his back.

And here's the saddest story -- warning, this will make you ill:

. . . As the doctor talked to his friend, a police pickup truck pulled up with a dozen or more bodies piled in the back. “I could not believe that the dead were brought in such a way,” Siddique said. “They were one on top of the other like animal carcasses.”
When the police found that no porters were available to help, they threw the bodies off the truck. It was then that Siddique noticed the corpses of two boys aged about 12 lying in the pile on the ground.
“Each had a piece of knotted green cloth tied around his neck and I could see they’d been strangled,” the doctor said. He also noticed round holes that were slightly inflamed in several parts of their body, a sign that they had been tortured with electric drills before being killed. “Even their eyes had been drilled and only hollow sockets remained,” he said.
When he pointed out the injuries to his friend, the pathologist shrugged and took another drag on his cigarette, saying this was now routine.
“We have turned into a zoo,” Siddique told me. “What level have we sunk to, to kill people in such a manner and hardly to notice any more?”
The doctor sat with me for a long time, silent and seemingly unable to move. Then he began to give voice to his thoughts.
“Did those children scream in pain? Did the torturers laugh as they drilled? If we ever had a just cause as a country occupied by foreigners, it was lost the moment the resistance started beheading and drilling human beings. No matter how noble their cause when it began, they have now reached a dead end.”

The story also notes that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi professionals are simply leaving, going to Jordan and Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

Goodbye cruel world, I'm off to join the circus*

What a wonderful story -- Quebec's own Cirque du Soleil is a social movement helping at-risk youth around the world as well as a circus:

. . . the initiative has expanded to 19 countries. 'We don't want a uniform program around the world, but one in sync with the rhythm of the country and its culture,' explains Michel Lafortune, co-ordinator for the Cirque du Soleil's international social circus programs.
The programs' team works with circus-arts instructors to teach troubled youth how to clown around, juggle and do more advanced circus techniques. Kids learn to use their imagination and balance, and to test their own physical limits.
The instructors help them improve self-esteem, develop social skills and gain a sense of humour. They also teach self-control and discipline, and channel risk-taking and adrenaline in a positive way.

*