Enemy Combatant
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Let Me See If I've Got This Right:
Mild euphoric taken for medicinal purposes, not OK;
hallucinogenic tea taken for religious purposes, that's OK;
Hmmm . . . I predict an imminent upsurge in Rastafarianism among cancer and AIDS patients hereabouts . . .
It Just Keeps Getting Better!
Did some digging at the local library this afternoon, and the following quotes are from a 3-page outline about the United Arab Emirates found in a book entitled Global Studies: The Middle East (8th ed., Dushkin/McGraw Hill, 2000), on pp. 154-155:[The UAE is a] federation of emirates [which] came under British protection in the 1800s, and were given their independence of Great Britain by treaty in 1971. [. . . T]he Wahhabis, militant Islamic missionaries, spread over Arabia in the eighteenth century. Wahhabi agents incited the most powerful coastal group, the Qawasim, to interfere with European shipping. European ships were seized along with their cargoes, their crews held for ransom. To the European countries, this was piracy; to the Qawasim, however, it was defense of Islamic territory against the infidels. [ . . . S]oon the whole coast of the present-day UAE became known as the Pirate Coast. [. . . ] Under [a Defense Cooperation Agreement signed with the U.S. in 1994], a force of 300 U.S. military personnel is stationed in the emirates to supervise port facilities and air refueling for American planes patrolling the no-fly zone (the 36th parallel in northern Iraq). [ . . . ] Disagreements within the ruling families have sometimes led to violence or "palace coups," there being no rule of law or primogeniture.
So let me see if I've got this right: An unstable monarchial government with a long history of shipping piracy is considered so unstable, we made an agreement with them 12 years ago to have OUR military run THEIR ports, at least with respect to our military's duties out of those ports. And now, we're going to let THEM run OUR ports. Uh huh.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Sins Of The Fathers, Etc.: In Dubai-ous Battle
It's fascinating to watch the Bushco ship of state capsize and quickly begin to take water over their proposal to let the United Arab Emirates run six American shipping ports. Now, of course, we're getting the inevitable double-super-secret probation details leaked to us (I wonder by whom? And on whose "declassification" authority?). This revisionist history recounts how Admiral McGoo is supposed to have had -- all along! -- a "secret agreement" with the UAE over the ports deal, that he just finished telling us he first found out about only yesterday.
An inconvenient historical fact: In response to 9-11, this country detained over 250 UAE nationals without charge or trial. The majority of those people were still being held at the end of 2003. I'm not saying that mass detention was right or legal, but you've got to wonder about the secrecy and cronyism (not to mention the hypocrisy) of this administration, which one day hold hundreds of UAE nationals on (what can only be called) a presumption of terrorism, and shortly thereafter offers up our shipping ports to these same foreigners' less-than-trustworthy government.
But of course Bush is blind to just how closely this "business deal" of his skirts the line of treason -- hello? Whose grandfather, as a result of his "business dealings" during World War Two, was convicted of violating the Trading With The Enemy Act?
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
The Dark Dungeons Of The Internets, Chapter XXVII:
courtesy of AllHatNoCattle.net
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Dick Cheney Channels Aaron BurrWASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and wounded a companion during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas, spraying the fellow hunter in the face and chest with shotgun pellets.Added the Vice President, "Look, right now I'm basically subsisting on red meat, Scotch, Viagra, and Air-Force-grade amphetamines -- that, and updates on the daily body counts.
Harry Whittington, a millionaire attorney from Austin, was "alert and doing fine" in a Corpus Christi hospital Sunday after he was shot by Cheney on a ranch in south Texas, said Katharine Armstrong, the property's owner.
He was described as in stable condition by Yvonne Wheeler, spokeswoman for the Christus Spohn Health System in Corpus Christi.
"Harry said something to piss me off, and when my blood is up, watch out," he insinuated vaguely, in a hospital interview quickly quashed for "national security" reasons.
"Whenever feasible, I like to slip into Kabul or Baghdad, unannounced, and go 'off-rez' for a few hours; smoke a few 'ragheads' out in the 'dustbowl,' so to speak. Cleans out the pipes," he continued, while rituallistically cutting his chest with a machete and head-butting his fellow hunters.
"What can I say? I miss it," he added.
We Can Have The Rule Of Law. Or We Can Have The George W. Bush Regime. But We Can't Have Both.
Glenn Greenwald's excellent law blog, Unclaimed Territory, has become a daily read for me now. Besides being a clear writer on the profound legal issues (read: assaults on the Constitution) facing us today, Glenn has debated at least one defender of the warrantless NSA wiretaps on CSPAN.
Toward the end of a broader and deeper piece on the burgeoning NSA scandal, Greenwald had this to say:
The right-leaning Jon Henke at QandO provides further evidence that one need not ascribe to a liberal political philosophy in order to find the Administration’s excesses and deceit repugnant to the values on which this country was founded. Jon points to a new article from National Journal reporting that only a small minority of detainees at Guantanamo had anything to do with Al Qaeda, and that the Administration’s assurances regarding who it was who was detained there were fundamentally false. As Jon concludes:
This is why we have due process. This is why we have transparency. This is why a free people who want to remain that way ought to insist we apply due process and transparency even to suspected terrorists. Instead, we've largely stood by while the Bush administration has run roughshod over innocent people; while the Bush administration detained innocent civilians and lawful combatants, and abused them into false confessions. And then that administration had the temerity to say that legislation removing legal recourse by those people "reaffirm[s] the values we share as a Nation and our commitment to the rule of law"....
Remember: the people who told us that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay were all Taliban, captured on the battlefield or otherwise terrorists are the same people who swear, really, that the domestic surveillance program is "solely for intercepting communications of suspected al Qaeda members or related terrorist groups."
A commenter here a few days ago remarked that he never really cared about political issues until recently, but has almost been forced into caring by the radical and extremist measures taken by the Administration, which truly threaten our most basic political values. I feel the same way. I am far more engaged politically now than I was, say, five years ago, because I really perceive that not just political differences, but the kind of country we fundamentally want to be, is what is at stake in our current controversies.
I fully share these sentiments expressed the other day by Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings:I have spent my life loving this country for its values, among them the right not to be tossed in jail at the whim of some ruler, but to be guaranteed the right to live free from searches, wiretapping, surveillance, and arrest unless some official could convince a judge that there was probable cause to believe that I had committed a crime. I could scarcely believe it when Padilla was locked up: I was as shocked as I would have been had Bush asserted the right to ban Lutheranism, or to close down the New York Times. It was such a complete betrayal of our country's core values that it took my breath away.I couldn’t agree more. For me, the real trigger - the final straw - was the due process-less but indefinite detention of U.S. citizen Jose Padilla in a military prison with no access to lawyers or even charges of any kind, while the Administration argued that he no right to even have a court review his detention, which occurred on U.S. soil. To me, nothing is more un-American than that – nothing.
I feel the same way about the NSA story.
And the rationale on which those actions were predicated are exactly the same as the rationale on which warrantless eavesdropping and a whole host of other excesses are predicated. If someone isn’t opposed to these things and isn’t willing to fight against them, it’s hard for me to see how someone can claim to believe in the values and traditions of this country.
It's good to see that there are other lawyers out there who recognize, and will say plainly on television, that after 9-11, we went right Through The Looking Glass, constitutionally-speaking. (Some of us, in fact, date the dawn of the Lewis Carroll Era from the decision in Bush v. Gore.)
Thursday, February 09, 2006
It's a GOP thang; you wouldn't understandIs there a hotline for black people to call to get eulogy approval? Or approval on how to behave during a hurricane? Or for approval on how many kids we have? Or for what we name our kids? That would make my life so much easier, even though I don't work, but I still have kids and they don't have fathers, but I digress.
As an uneducated black woman, and by uneducated I mean that I want to learn how not offend the likes of Kate O'Beirne, Tucker Carlson, Chris Matthews, Don Imus, Matt Drudge and any other offendables, even if they themselves have made racist comments or done things to hurt the world. Oooops, I should remember my place. Sorry about that last dig. I did not mean it.
it hurts | 02.08.06 - 1:11 pm | comment poster at firedoglake
The day we start to worry about what this cowardly psychopathic incompetent finds personally offensive, is the day our democracy dies.
So what, he got his little wingnut bubble burst? 'Bout fuckin' time!
Thursday, February 02, 2006
All Voters Are Equal, But Some Voters Are More Equal Than OthersHouse Republicans are taking a mulligan on the first ballot for Majority Leader. The first count showed more votes cast than Republicans present at the Conference meeting.
Idiots! I mean, the instructions for voting couldn't be simpler! They should just throw out all their votes!
(Oh, I guess those rules only apply to Democrats in Florida, eh?)
