Did you know, I never knew that the Third Reich meant Germany. I mean it's just drenched with historical goodies like that... But we've got to do something about that third act - they're losing the war! Its too depressing!"I couldn't find this clip on YouTube, but here's another great one:
I've written many times about tasers. I honestly don't understand why people are so complacent about the fact that we are allowing the police to torture citizens into compliance, completely based on their own judgment and with no threat of sanction. Even if you kill someone with one, the authorities defend you.
This is a barbaric practice that should be ended. I know they can be a useful tool if used correctly. But they've been out there for years, there has been ample evidence of abuse and torture with them, and nothing gets done. At this point the police have lost the benefit of the doubt --- they refuse to adhere to strict guidelines and always rush to defend the psychos who happen to get caught using them for no good reason. They've left no choice but to ban them.
There has been a vacuum in American foreign policy and international relations for some time now. . . the rest of the world is heartily sick of it and has stopped talking to George and Dick. At the last several international conferences, our President has been shunned publically; there are photo after photo showing him sitting alone staring off while all around him other leaders are engaged with each other in conversation.The only thing that bringiton missed was that our very own Yo Harper is still BFF with GeeW. Isn't that special?
That smart-ass simpering cocaine and alcohol addled inarticulate dime store cowboy embarrassment that we’ve all grown to loath is not an act; that is GeeW, right out front and real, and nobody wants to put up with him anymore. Even Maliki, the tenuous prime minister whose status in office, and indeed his very life, depends on the continued support and good will of 150,000 of the most dangerous military troops on Earth who are occupying his country, jumped at the chance to defy and rebuke both Bush and McCain at the first opportunity for a face-to-face sit down with Obama. . . .
Since the outcome of the Democratic primary became clear, Maliki has stood up to Bush on the oil contracts, on the status of forces agreement, on insisting that a “time horizon” be negotiated, and has now embraced Obama’s proposal for a major forces troop exit at 16 months . . . The negotiations for the future of Iraq are now being conducted between the Prime Minister and a US Senator, who is not even his party’s official nominee as a candidate for the presidency.
The same thing with Karzai in Kabul . . . For years Karzai has called for more troops, more reconstruction, more infrastructure advancement, and those calls have been echoed by every military commander in country and every UN and NGO relief organization on the ground. Bush has done nothing but make one mistake after another in Afghanistan, again perhaps deliberately and perhaps not, but the net result is another disaster. Karzai is also now talking directly to and openly negotiating with Obama, another head of state in another critical situation who has abandoned any pretense of wanting to deal any more with the actual President of The United States. . . .
In the longer term . . . it is not a good thing on principle for anyone other than the Chief Executive or his delegate to be making these kinds of agreements – and agreements they are. . . .
In the short term it is beyond horrific that the sitting President has so completely alienated the entire world and all of its leaders . . . Obama has stepped into the void left Bush and Cheney to seize the power representing America in both Afghanistan and Iraq. So far, and I say this with fingers crossed, he has succeeded in negotiating agreements with Maliki and Karzai that conform to what needs doing, get out of Iraq and clean up Afghanistan. Sounds good, but then one never knows what will actually happen once he is in office. Still, it seems to me that having an adult take charge is probably better than simply leaving a void. The Plutocrats handed the remote control for the Imperial Unitary President Monster to Bush, an untreated coke-head alcoholic, and Cheney, a victim of multiple strokes in the last stages of cardiac failure; the boys lost it, big surprise, and now Obama has picked it up.
. . . Just to be sure we have this in perspective; Obama is not the first non-President to assume such a role. Ronald Reagan was conducting secret, unauthorized foreign policy negotiations, in direct contrast to the best interests of America and American citizen hostages, while he was running for the office. Obama, at least, is being open about it and thus far appears to be moving things in the direction any sane person would want. Woodrow Wilson’s second wife, Edith, took on the role of gatekeeper for him after his stroke and kept him isolated from the Vice President and his Cabinet, selecting what issues were presented to him and relaying his decisions to others; or at least her interpretation of his wishes. Obama, at least, is an elected United States Senator.
This isn’t a good deal for anyone, but it isn’t entirely unprecedented either.
Obama is more socially enlightened than the other guy. He is many other good things domestically more than the other guy. But in international affairs he will be sitting atop an unstoppable tragic juggernaut that is already controlling him more than he will ever control it. Well: they are unstoppable internationally until the rest of the world finds the sense and the courage to stop them.
. . . this is what drives me nuts about [the Harper] government: seeing everything through their own partisan lenses is all they ever seem to do. As far as I can see, they have never, except nominally, settled into being the Government of Canada; they are always and only the Conservative Party, and all they seem to care about is hating the Liberal Party . . . At this point, I'd just like to see an actual government, please.
"Let's just be honest with each other this one time," said a Canadian Security Intelligence Service agent. . . He urged Mr. Khadr to reveal his role in the deadly battle in Afghanistan, saying the teenager should have run away from the fight.Then they try to get him to implicate his family:
But Mr. Khadr said that at age 15, he was "too young" to quit the fundamentalist fighters to whom his father — an al-Qaeda suspect — had entrusted him.
That prompted an angry retort from the CSIS agent. "You're not too young; you're a man," he said.
He added: "Your dad dropped you off there for a reason … you think it's fine what you did."
"I didn't do anything," Mr. Khadr replied. "What did I do? I was in a house."
When Mr. Khadr breaks down on tape, a Canadian agent is heard telling him that the solution to his pain is talking. "We can't protect you if we don't know what it is you have to say," he said. The CSIS agent added that if the detainee truly cared about his family he would talk, so that "other members of your family … don't end up as the same situation you are in."The worst part of the article is this:
The last shots, taken after the Canadian agents left the room, show Omar Khadr putting his head into his hands and weeping.Ooh, scary, isn't he?
