Fact-esque

And Osama Scampers Free

From MSNBC:

The FBI says it sometimes gets the wrong number when it intercepts conversations in terrorism investigations, an admission critics say underscores a need to revise wiretap provisions in the Patriot Act.

The FBI would not say how often these mistakes happen. And, though any incriminating evidence mistakenly collected is not legally admissible in a criminal case, there is no way of knowing whether it is used to begin an investigation.

Dear FBI,

I apologize for the following conversation you may have been forced to listen to due to "technical errors":

Hi.

Hi.

What's going on?

Nothing.

That's good.

Yeah. No news is good news.

How are the kids? How's the baby?

All good. Baby's good. Kids are good. Thank goodness.

(sneeze) God bless me.

God bless you. What are you having for dinner?

Stir fry.

Ooh, that sounds good. I should make that.

It's really easy.

I know but the kids only like it half the time.

(child's voice, inaudible)

Okay, okay, okay. I have to go. We never have time to talk.

I know. Bad time of day.

Yep. Dinner, homework.

Okay. Call me later if you have time.

Okay.

Big hugs.

Big hugs. Love you. (kissing sound)

Congress Cuts Block Grant Program

It's late and I'm exhausted. Listen to NPR's story about the House's 50% cuts to community service block grants. Tom Harkin has some good quotes.

Quick! What Comes Next? Washington, Kennedy, Lincoln and ...

Photo credit: Osman Orsal/Associated Press

Of course, BushCo!  What?  Who would you put in that fourth slot?   Jefferson?   FDR?   Millard Fucking Fillmore?   Well, that's why you're not working for the Office of Strategic Revisionism and Colonial Affairs and Karen Hughes is. 

The above photo accompanies a Steven Weisman NYT story wrapping up Hughes' Magical Listening Tour.  The article is a riot, mostly because it's a propaganda piece written about a propaganda mission and so we get gigantic contradictions (and inconvenient realities) smoothed over - like this:  (emph mine)

A study two years ago by a panel led by Edward P. Djerejian, a retired diplomat, indicated that anti-American sentiments around the world had risen to alarming levels. Mr. Djerejian said recently that 80 percent of the hostility derived from American policies, especially on Israel, Iraq, the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by Americans at Abu Ghraib prison and the detention of people captured by the Americans at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

"Karen understands that 'it's the policies, stupid,' " Mr. Djerejian said in a recent interview. But the other 20 percent, he said, could be addressed by a sophisticated media strategy that Ms. Hughes should be able to provide. This trip, though, showed the problems she faces as well as the opportunities.

 There's the lede, n'est-ce pas?  We're aiming for a 20% success rate, which should push our approval in the Middle East to something around 27%.  Our policies - endless war, peace through death and the wholesale looting of the region's resources - are set in stone.  But that other 20%, the 20% that thinks we don't smile or hug hard enough, that's going to be ours.

To be fair, Mr. Weisman did mention the unavoidable: Mommy's messages aren't selling,  proving that despite the stories of the Arab Street's readiness to buy into any conspiracy theory that floats into their airwaves, they are very good at spotting the differences between policies and propaganda, war and peace, hugs and dangerously simple-minded, condescending rhetoric.  In other words, it doesn't matter if Mommy turns out to be a gal they'd want to have a beer with.

If only our electorate shared the same level of sophistication.  But Mr. Weisman is on that too.  He explains our gullibility as a design flaw in our system:

She addressed several policies, but in concise sound bites rather than sustained arguments. In American campaigns, such messages repeated over and over can have an effect because a presidential candidate dominates the news with every statement he makes, and if that fails to work, money can be poured into saturation advertising.

I told you the story was a riot.  I wonder if his wife  and the rest of the Kewl Kidz will appreciate being left out of the equation so completely and unfairly. 

Blind Eyes

Thomas Nephew at Newsrack has two excellent posts (1, 2) about torture in American prisons.   The horrible fact they expose is that we shouldn't be surprised by anything that happens in prisons in Iraq when we have the same torture policies going on within our legitimate borders.   

The first article that Thomas cites is this one by Laura LaFay.  It's about Wallens Ridge prison in Virginia and the man who built it, Ronald Angelone, who is a comer in Virginia Republican political circles:   

When Albuquerque, N.M., lawyer Paul Livingston first saw the now-infamous photos of the naked Iraqi prisoner being menaced by American soldiers with dogs in Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib Prison, he immediately thought of Virginia.

Livingston represents 66 of 108 New Mexico inmates shipped to Virginia’s Wallens Ridge prison in 1999. The cases, he says, involve inmates who were non-violent offenders and have since been released. Nevertheless, Virginia prison guards beat them, shot them with stun guns and rubber bullets, slammed them against floors and walls, chained them to their beds for days at a time, subjected them to racist verbal abuse, and threatened them with sodomy and vicious dogs. This was done as a matter of policy, Livingston says, “just to show them who was boss and how terrified they should be.”

But while the Abu Ghraib abuse photos provoked international outrage and apologies from President George W. Bush, published reports of incidents in Virginia and other states have left both the president and the public largely unconcerned.

"Largely unconcerned" is an understatement.   Prison conditions, including rape, have become an easy joke in our popular culture.  Largely unconcerned?  We're largely unconcerned about Avian Flu and the use of depleted uranium weapons.  We strongly support the torture of our prisoners at home and abroad.  And the link between those two sets of inmates is a clear one. LaFay's story mentions Ivan "Chip" Frederick, a former corrections guard at the Buckingham Correctional Center in Dillwyn, VA.   Last year I wrote about this NYT story that outlines the professional path of Lane McCotter:

The experts also point out that the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours.  The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time. The Utah official, Lane McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq as part of a team of prison officials, judges, prosecutors and police chiefs picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to rebuild the country's criminal justice system. Mr. McCotter, 63, is director of business development for Management & Training Corporation, a Utah-based firm that says it is the third-largest private prison company, operating 13 prisons. In 2003, the company's operation of the Santa Fe jail was criticized by the Justice Department and the New Mexico Department of Corrections for unsafe conditions and lack of medical care for inmates. No further action was taken.

There are no suprises here, which is the most horrible aspect of the story.  Thanks to a "largely unconcerned" public; cruel and unproductive "tough on crime" prison policies and "tough on terrorism" foreign policies (all designed more for manipulating a terrified public to win their votes than for solving any actual social problems related to crime or terrorism) and a corporate media that doesn't see the profit in exposing the medieval conditions of our prison system, we will continue to torture anyone unfortunate or anti-social enough to fall into our clutches.  God bless America.

Prince of Pork + the Misplaced Perception of Character = Six More Years. We Have an Alternative.

This article about Man-on-Dog is making the rounds via Capitol Buzz.  It's popular because of the high school photo of our fearful leader and because it's got some wild gossip about the guy Mrs. Man-on-Dog was living with before she fell in love with our hero.  But what it should be popular for is the following two snippets that explain exactly why Casey will lose to Man-on-Dog in '06: (emph mine)

Plus, Santorum is a prince of pork, having pulled millions upon millions of dollars of federal money back into Pennsylvania, which among other things have helped spur redevelopment in Chester. Santorum also has a successful track record bringing funding and assistance to faith-based anti-poverty partnerships in Philadelphia.

...

Here at the Harrisburg Hilton, Santorum takes the stage to a frenzied round of applause. 

"You have always believed in me," he tells the room full of supporters. "I know I haven't made it easy all the time … but you know where my heart is, now let's go get a big win next year."

People don't vote Choice.  They vote two things - their  pocketbooks and character.   Man-on-Dog will crush Casey on both counts.  As a close friend of his says:

"The Democrats are so hungry to defeat Santorum," says Green, that "they have cashiered their basic beliefs."

And that's a losing strategy.  I Joe Willy guarantee it.

Chuck Pennacchio, a real Democrat,  is running against Casey in the primary.  He's being shut out by the national leadership and by some other people who should know better because he's "not electable."  Haven't we seen this movie  before?  We know how it ends, right?   Today is the last day of Pennacchio's two-week fundraising drive.  Chuck's campaign is fully funded by us, the grassroots and not by PACs.  He is not accepting money from PACs.  He will not owe any corporations when he is elected to office, he will be accountable to us, his constituents.

Five bucks, which is all I can give at the moment, is enough.   I have a dog in the fight since I live in PA.  But no matter where you live, if you care about Progressive politics and if you want to send a message to the Dem leadership and let them know that you, by definition, will tell them who is electable and who isn't, you can do so right now, right here.

 

Recording Katrina

Have you been to Recording Katrina lately?   Thomas has been finding some great stuff, including a link to Operation Eden.  I was heading over from Just a Bump in the Beltway, where I found the link, to post it at Recording Katrina, but Thomas beat me to it.  That's why he gets the big bucks.

Operation Eden is the brainchild of Clayton Cubitt, a photographer who is selling some of his prints to raise money for his family.  They survived the storm but lost essentially everything they owned.   

Operation Eden is also Cubitt's "personal chronicle of what hurricane Katrina has done to my poor proud people."  It's a staggering look at what the aftermath of a hurricane looks like on the ground.   He's also got some fantastic portraits of survivors.  Go look.  Buy a few.

What are Pictures Worth?

Pictures are in the news today.

Team BushCo has been dealt another setback to ignore:

Saying the United States "does not surrender to blackmail," a judge ruled Thursday that pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison must be released over government claims that they could damage America's image.

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein ordered the release of certain pictures in a 50-page decision that said terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven they "do not need pretexts for their barbarism."

We aren't going to see those pictures any time soon and it's a real shame because we need to see them.  And these as well.  To get an idea how much, look at what National Mommy, Karen Hughes was told during her U.S.A. #1! Tour's stop in Turkey:

"War makes the rights of women completely erased, and poverty comes after war -- and women pay the price," said Fatma Nevin Vargun, a Kurdish women's rights activist. Vargun denounced the arrest of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq, in front of the White House this week.

Hughes answered with empty rhetoric - the kind of empty rhetoric that works like a charm here at home:

"You're concerned about war, and no one likes war," Hughes said. But "to preserve the peace, sometimes my country believes war is necessary," she said. She also asserted that women are faring much better in Iraq than they had under the rule of deposed president Saddam Hussein.

That War is Peace fairy tale didn't wash with the women and they let Mommy know it: 

Tuksal said she was "feeling myself wounded, feeling myself insulted here" by Hughes's response.  "In every photograph that comes from Iraq, there is that look of fear in the eyes of women and children. . . . This needs to be resolved as soon as possible."

When's the last time you saw a photograph in the corporate media of an Iraqi woman and child suffering the effects of the war?   Mommy might be right when she says "no one likes war."  What's for sure is that we like it even less when we watch it happen.  But when it's kept out of sight, well, you the rest.

Josh Rushing, the former Marine and subject of the film, Control Room,  who just signed on with Al Jazeera, seems to agree:

Control Room captured Rushing's growing respect for Al-Jazeera's staff, particularly senior producer Hassan Ibrahim, with whom he had many philosophical debates. In one scene, Rushing talked about how revolted he was by Al-Jazeera showing dead American soldiers and interviews with American prisoners of war. Then he noted that he had seen video of Iraqi casualties on the network and not been affected by what he saw.

"It upset me on a profound level that I wasn't as bothered as much the night before," he said in the film. "It makes me hate war."

When the film was released in 2004, reviewers commented on Rushing's candor. Rushing told The Village Voice that American media don't tell the whole story when they cover a war. "In America war isn't hell — we don't see blood, we don't see suffering. All we see is patriotism, and we support the troops.  It's almost like war has some brand marketing here," he said in that interview.

Right.  Almost.

      

 

Why Don't They Love Me? I Hate Them So Much. If Only They'd Vote for Me. Then I'd Show'em!

Does Tom Friedman have any regard for human suffering?   Remember his seminal moment in the debate over BushCo's War in Iraq?   It came when he was defending BushCo's lying us into the war in the first place.  It was this bit of genius, which should follow him to the grave:

The "real reason" for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn't enough because a terrorism bubble had built up over there — a bubble that posed a real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured. This terrorism bubble said that plowing airplanes into the World Trade Center was O.K., having Muslim preachers say it was O.K. was O.K., having state-run newspapers call people who did such things "martyrs" was O.K. and allowing Muslim charities to raise money for such "martyrs" was O.K. Not only was all this seen as O.K., there was a feeling among radical Muslims that suicide bombing would level the balance of power between the Arab world and the West, because we had gone soft and their activists were ready to die.

The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world.  And don't believe the nonsense that this had no effect. Every neighboring government — and 98 percent of terrorism is about what governments let happen — got the message. If you talk to U.S. soldiers in Iraq they will tell you this is what the war was about.

He also thought that there was a right reason: we needed a progressive partner in the Middle East and a moral reason: MASS GRAVES!  Well, that's all fallen by the wayside now since the Sunnis refuse to be grateful for being chosen to become America's progressive Arab partner.  They just refuse to see the benefits of being smashed.   And it looks like that "every neighboring government got the message" line may have been a tad overstated.   But now the doubters willl pay because Friedman's got a new plan:

So, folks, we are faltering in Iraq today in part because of the Bush team's incompetence, but also because of the moral vacuum in the Sunni Arab world, where the worst are engaged in murderous ethnic cleansing - and trying to stifle any prospect of democracy here - and the rest are too afraid, too weak, too lost or too anti-Shiite to do anything about it.

Maybe the cynical Europeans were right. Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won't, then we are wasting our time. We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind. We must not throw more good American lives after good American lives for people who hate others more than they love their own children.

That line about throwing  "good American lives after good American lives" is  particularly offensive to all parties but gives some good insight into how little  human life means to Friedman. 

On the other hand, let's give some credit where it's due.  He was able to wedge nearly all his assinine and failed theories into two paragraphs:  We can still get a "decent" outcome in Iraq.  But it's racist and cynical Europe's fault for not clapping hard enough.  And it's the Sunnis fault for refusing to be liberated from power.   It's all of Iraq's fault for hating others more than they love their kids.  If only he had crammed in his pet line about washing a rented car and linked the whole stupid mess back to his flat world theory, I'd have nominated him for a Pulitzer myself.

What an screaming embarassment this man has become to his paper, his profession and the country. 

Prince Spaghetti Makes a Perfect Late Supper

There's a whole bunch of stuff going on at Casa del Logo.  Weird, strange, sick, twisted, eerie, godless, evil stuff.  As a result, the blogging was light today.  Light blogging ahead for tomorrow with a 30% chance of whining, so bring your umbrellas. 

At the Street I managed to get up two quick and brilliant posts that will solve all the problems of our New American Century.  If only you people would listen.
 

There Are No Words

via Yelladog