Who the F***?

I've been reading a lot lately... books even, aint that quaint... I suppose it has distracted me from writing but sometimes the stuff out there is just so good it leaves me speechless. Billmon has been on fire lately and soothes my savage breast, Atta J. Turk makes me laugh and cry, he is a true American, he cares about his country more than most and remains unafraid and uncompromising. Professor Alterman has found a new, more appropriate home away from the compliant and conniving corporate Bush enablers of MSNBC, he is my blogfather in the sense that he woke me up to the mendacity, hubris and ignorance of this administration. Fear also has no home here, here or here. They are all remarkable in their persistance, relevance and reliability meaning, they actually fact check and research their material, which is not always the case with traditional media. DKos, MyDD and FDL have been a constant comfort for me the last few years, I just require honestly presented information, no BS and they provide that... I don't consider any of the above mentioned to be extreme, they may be construed as such by the traditional medias and by right wing froth mouths intent on polluting the world with misinformation and innuendo but, if you read a DKos or Atrios or Billmon on a regular basis you find wit, wisdom, insight and positivism... something we all need and should aspire to in these dark days. I have pretty much eschewed the main stream forms of information dissemination and rely, pretty much, on alternative media sources for objective, reliable news reporting. Is this 'modern' or just a reaction to 'conglomonewsspeak' irrelevance? Discuss... Art by Peter Bruegel (The Elder) Philosopher-Artist.

The American Inquisition

This post may be a little incoherent at times but, that is how I feel... I feel dislocated, confused, agitated and depressed. I never thought I would see the day that torture and what constitutes it, what defines it would be debated as a means to passing a law to institutionalize it. It boggles the mind that our congress would even contemplate such legislation never mind conceive an alternative bill that may appear more palatable to their delicate dispositions. I understand that we are in trying times, mostly self-imposed, but trying times all the same. We lost close to 3,000 innocent people a few years ago and approach the three thousand milestone in Iraq this year. We have young men and women out there, fighting and dying in a quagmire and we must protect them anyway we can but, we have just put them in further danger, maybe not in Iraq but in the next battlefield of our choosing or maybe not in a battlefield at all and perhaps not even a soldier... we have endangered all Americans throughout the world, we have conspired to relinquish any shred of decency or credibility we have managed to maintain through this trying time that may have prevented a terrorist or a regime or non-compliant government to restrain themselves when confronted with the capture and detention of an American subject. If we think that terrorists have acted like animals in the past, think what they may be capable of now armed with our own belligerent attitude towards torture and interrogation. This is not even an argument about moral high grounds or ethical standards, it is black and white... Americans do not torture period. There is absolutely no evidence that torture has ever provided this nation or any other nation any substantive material that could effect the outcome of a real or perceived threat to its well being. Torture may have proved useful in the pursuit of witches (see: midwives) or Catholic heretics (see: Protestant Reformation) but as a tool of credible information gathering its purported success is risible... By its very definition, it is a tool of coersion, used by despots to gain confessions from political, religious or familial opponents, once again real or perceived. That this administration wishes to codify and thus legalize extreme forms of 'aggressive interogation' actuates their fall from marginalized ideologues to all out tyrants. That they acted only because the CIA and Army refused to continue these techniques until they were sure that they could not be prosecuted for war crimes, of which they surely knew they were guilty of by any definition of the Geneva Conventions and our own Statutes, is a remarkably damning idictment of how low they have sunk. And that this Administration has had to force through a bill that ultimately saves their own skins from future prosecution because by ordering these techniques in the first place they are guilty of the same crimes, we know they know their actions are criminal and punishable by all international agreements and laws. That they are extracating themselves from the same procedures and proceedings that they will deny entirely to 'enemy combatants' that they and they alone determine provides sufficient evidence that they consider themselves above not only international law but the laws of this land that 140,000 men and women now fight for. Their conceit is unbridaled, their arrogance beyond contempt. We, the American people, must abide by the laws passed down to us from generation to generation, good laws that are easy to abide by and grant us freedom from tyranny and oppression, laws enacted by reasonable men to ensure our liberty and unfettered pursuit of happiness. Our current government considers some of these hard fought for laws inconvenient and even 'quaint', they will circumvent the ones they see as encumbering them and create new laws to save their hides... this is not government, it is totalitarianism.