Indefinite Detention for “Belligerents”
If this even makes it to Obama’s desk, he will have found himself in the cross-hairs that were once reserved for George W. Bush. I’m getting pretty tired of making these comparisons, and would be relieved to see Obama craft his own brand of totalitarianism instead of piggybacking on the foundations of a dictatorship that were laid by the cowboy from Crawford.
This disturbing tidbit that’s getting zero talk from either team is a Senate bill that would allow the government to indefinitely detain persons (be they U.S. citizens, immigrants, “terrorists,” - anyone) without charging them with a crime, and while denying them the right to a trial. Oh, and they can hold you for as long as they want - that’s what the word indefinite means.
The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010, introduced by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), would also create an entirely new system of interrogation by requiring intelligence officials to be consulted about how to handle terrorism suspects after their capture. The legislation would have a “high value detainee” team, made up of members of different intelligence agencies, interrogate and determine whether alleged terrorist suspects are “unprivileged enemy belligerents.” If so, and if the suspect is then charged, the legislation would mandate the use of the discredited and unconstitutional military commissions.
Indefinite detention is the reason we still pay for tens of no-name Afghans and Iraqis to be interrogated and imprisoned in Cuba, something Bush deemed necessary (and for which he was excoriated) but which Obama is happy to sanction and receive a pass on.
Your Politics Were Boring: Start the Presses
I’ve just finished work on Your Politics Were Boring: 2009. It’s off to the editor and will be for sale so damn soon. This collection of columns has turned out to be incredible. You’ll read all about environmental hysteria in God Save the Green, the totalitarian tip-toe in Impending Doom, the ongoing dollar woes in An Economy on Life Support, the distant memory that is Obamamania in Hope & Change: Good While it Lasted, and so much more. There are tons of the best pictures from last year, and new commentary on just about every article in the book.
Here are some stats!
-Features columns by Myself, Justin, Masque, Michelle, & Absit
-Convenient pocket-size 6″ x 9″ paperback format (May not fit all pockets)
-172 delicious pages (pages not for human consumption)
-A bargain at $14.95 US / 16.95 Canada (”free” health care must mean more money for books, eh?)
You’ll know as soon as they’re printed up, as there will be a large and possibly obnoxious announcement showing you how to purchase your copy right here on the site. Thanks to everyone for the support.
Podcast: Blowback
This week it’s the homegrown domestic “terrorist” that flew a plane into the IRS office in Austin, Texas, as well as some other noteworthy stories from around the web. Don’t miss it.
We Must Redeclare Our Independence
In the immortal words of one Lisa Simpson, “The city of Washington was built on a stagnant swamp some 200 years ago, and very little has changed. It stank then, and it stinks now.” Call me cynical, passive, gutless. I am on the cusp of admitting defeat on behalf of the American people, but not in the way you might think. The forces of corruption and the will of the economic elite that have been running this puppet show for about a century now are threatening our very survival. But how do we reclaim what we’ve lost?
Obviously we must identify that which we strive to cultivate. We must organize. We must educate and solidify movements in the hope that there is still strength in numbers. But if the system itself is what’s rotten, if the gears of the establishment are rusted over and immobile, what hope is there for the people to replace it?
Podcast: The Party’s Over
This week’s episode covers some Big Brother-ish stories that cropped up this week, the always unspeakably boring shill that is Sarah Palin, and the ongoing oppression and tyranny in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Enjoy.
The Zero Point of Systemic Collapse
A must read column today by Chris Hedges over at AdBusters. His always-spot-on and mostly frightening analysis is no different today, as he sums up humanity’s battle against the forces of power and corruption by noting, “They won. We Lost.” Instead of focusing on activism and attempts to change the political system from within that system, perhaps we should be turning out attention to creating sustainable local communities. Here are some of my favorite bits:
Aleksandr Herzen, speaking a century ago to a group of anarchists about how to overthrow the czar, reminded his listeners that it was not their job to save a dying system but to replace it: “We think we are the doctors. We are the disease.” All resistance must recognize that the body politic and global capitalism are dead. We should stop wasting energy trying to reform or appeal to it. This does not mean the end of resistance, but it does mean very different forms of resistance.
Democracy, a system ideally designed to challenge the status quo, has been corrupted and tamed to slavishly serve the status quo. We have undergone, as John Ralston Saul writes, a coup d’état in slow motion. And the coup is over. They won. We lost. The abject failure of activists to push corporate, industrialized states toward serious environmental reform, to thwart imperial adventurism or to build a humane policy toward the masses of the world’s poor stems from an inability to recognize the new realities of power. The paradigm of power has irrevocably altered and so must the paradigm of resistance alter.
…Too many resistance movements continue to buy into the facade of electoral politics, parliaments, constitutions, bills of rights, lobbying and the appearance of a rational economy. The levers of power have become so contaminated that the needs and voices of citizens have become irrelevant. The election of Barack Obama was yet another triumph of propaganda over substance and a skillful manipulation and betrayal of the public by the mass media. We mistook style and ethnicity – an advertising tactic pioneered by the United Colors of Benetton and Calvin Klein – for progressive politics and genuine change. We confused how we were made to feel with knowledge. But the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers mistake a brand for an experience. Obama, now a global celebrity, is a brand.
Go Read.
Move Along, The Party’s Over
I’m so sick of hearing about the “tea party” movement. It’s completely non-cohesive, totally unorganized, and full of just enough (I know, not the majority) crackpots, birthers, closet racists, and regular ol’ ignorant people to discredit the whole “movement” (which as far as I can tell doesn’t know what it wants other than lower taxes).
It was a nice dream while it was alive, to actually have a genuine grassroots movement, wasn’t it? To have a large group of people who were incensed with both parties, but who actually had a cohesive strategy and a unified response to the establishment? Alas, the whole tea party fiesta has been nothing but noise, with nails being driven into its coffin by Fox News who, following the strategy I predicted in this article, has hijacked whatever agenda existed in an attempt to revamp the partisanship of the whole affair. It’s hopeless.
Podcast: Februrary Starts, Laura Calle Speaks
This week’s podcast covers Pakistan and Obama’s foreign policy tap-dance, and features a special guest to talk about some thought-provoking subjects. Also, the podcast is now appearing in the iTunes store, which means you can subscribe via iTunes conveniently by clicking this link. Enjoy.
Free Speech, Inc.
Promised a new video, and here it is. Spread this one around and make as many people as possible aware that we’re not even pretending we have a participatory democracy. There are numerous petitions you can sign and movements you can align with to address this disturbing decision, most notably Free Speech for People.
Download in HD | Subscribe @ YouTube
Pakistan is Now Obama’s Third War
Three American soldiers were killed today, but their deaths ocurred not in Afghanistan and not in Iraq. An improvised bomb detonated, killing three GIs and wounding two others in…Pakistan. Obama and the Pentagon have yet to send ground troops into Pakistan, and the administration has said that such is not their intention. Instead, Obama has employed the use of unmanned predator drones, far more than was done so by the Bush administration. American drones killed 123 Pakistani civilians last month, while managing to kill a mere 3 Al Qaeda members. And we wonder why Pakistan hates us.
“There is a red line,” said special envoy [and Council on Foreign Relations director] Richard Holbrooke. “And the red line is unambiguous and stated publicly by the Pakistani government over and over again: No foreign troops on our soil.”
Information coming out today reveals a troubling testamony as to how our entanglement with Afghanistan’s nuclear-armed nieghbor is becoming more and more in the open. The U.S. Air Force now routinely flies over Pakistani soil. American security contractors operate inside the country. Air strikes are becoming more frequent, and more deadly.
Pakistan is Obama’s third front; it is the Empire’s next muddy footstep, and the people deserve to know the truth about what’s going on there. To quote the folks at Wired, “Maybe at one point, this conflict could’ve been swept under the rug as some classified CIA op. But that was billions of dollars and hundreds of Pakistani and American lives ago.”
Persiapocalypse Update: February 11th Approaches
Mark February 11th on your calendar. It was that day over 30 years ago when America’s dependable dictator, Shah Reza Palavi, who was not-so-neatly installed in Iran in 1953, was brought down under the weight of protesters nationwide. The Ayatollah was returned from exile that year, which culminated in the Iranian Embassy Hostage Crisis - inevitable blowback after decades of American meddling, and a direct response to our allowing the Shah to enter the United States.
Iranian Opposition leaders are calling on demonstrators to protest on February 11th, in much the same spirit of the 1979 revolution. The people feel that they are not only not being represented, they’re being misrepresented, except this time instead of an American puppet protecting oil and geo-strategic interests, they’re under the thumb of a puppet with the hands of religious fanaticism and apocalyptic ambition up its backside.
Podcast: State of the Union 2010
The first episode of Your Podcast is Boring, in quite a while…I know, be lucky I still have the ability to sit long enough to do it. This week (yes it will hopefully be weekly from here on out), we’re talking about pretty much nothing other than Barack Obama’s embarrassing State of the Union speech. Stick around for the end for some announcements about the site and some projects to come in the future. Hat tip to Michelle Robertson for a good conversation today, as usual. Enjoy.
Liveblogging the State of the Union Address
If you’re like me and you don’t pay for cable, you can stream the speech here. Keep refreshing this page for updates.
8:50 PM: Pelosi is banging her gavel furiously. The last thing she’s done that too in quite a while, I imagine. Biden’s there too helping to announce members of the escort committee. Hair plugs looking good, Joe.
9:00 PM: Much a’schmooze about nothing. Seriously it’s like an AARP mixer in here.
9:04 PM: The buildup is tense. I’m starting to reconsider my decision to take part in HuffPo’s drinking game.
9:06 PM: MADAM SPEAKAH! Here he comes. Wow. Michelle looks strangely displeased. I’m watching him make his rounds and I can’t help but wonder if they gave Joe Wilson an aisle seat.
Breaking: “Ellie Light” Is a Dude?
A man by the name of Winston Steward is claiming to have sent all the letters attributed to Ellie Light, called in to yesterday’s talk radio program disguising his voice as a woman, and denying being married to the woman whose name he used as cover. Suddenly White House propaganda doesn’t seem so far-fetched.
“I am Winston Steward and have been sending the letters from Ellie Light,” he told The Plain Dealer in an e-mail late Tuesday, following a phone interview in which he said the same. “I hope this ends any confusion and sets the record straight.”
At one point Tuesday, the person who had been using the name acknowledged it was fake — but then said her real name was Barbara Brooks. The person spoke in a husky voice that could pass for either gender.
Public records searches and phone interviews have led to the identity of Steward, the husband of one Barbara Brooks, who says her husband was “using her name because he was afraid he might be attacked by ‘right-wing crazies up in Bakersfield.’”
Now Steward denies that he and Brooks are even married, something Babs takes issue with:
“He’s making up all kinds of garbage,” she said. “We’re not divorced. We’re not separated. He just doesn’t want anybody to trace him because he’s afraid of the right-wing crazies up in Bakersfield.”
I refer you to Ben Smith at Politico: “…while some conservatives have drawn from the saga the lesson that the White House runs a stealthy, ubiquitous, Alinskyite propaganda arm the real lesson is the opposite: Obama’s so hard up for advocates these days that this is the best he can do.”
Internet Censorship Around the World
An thought-provoking look at internet censorship around the world and the technology that permits it. This video is courtesy of GOOD and Lifelong Friendship Society. Safeguard these rights here at home, and don’t think it’s can’t happen here.
