PLENTY — especially a word like “torture,” for instance. In the alternate reality of Bu$hCo., words don’t have the same meaning they used to. As regards “torture,” Dubby doesn’t know exactly what that means — he says it’s hard to define … and it should be noted that he said that with an impatient, crazed and cruel look on his squinched up little mug that made my mouth drop open. He is eager … yes, eager … to get on with this torture business.
And worse, if Bush drop-kicks this torture bill through his Stepford Congress, then it will be he, himself, who Decides what torture is. He won’t just be the Decider, he’ll be the Definer … and that ought to scare the bejesus out of the entire world! The man who won’t even tell us where he was while he was supposed to be serving in the United States military … who refuses to take blame for any of the failures and debacles of the last six years … who can’t even pronounce the big words let alone explain their context … will redefine the concepts of habeas corpus that have led the Enlightenment from before the establishment of the Magna Carta.
Brian Cooney, a Professor of Philosophy, nailed that possibility in a recent article:
When Bush refuses to call his “alternative” methods torture, when he wants to clarify “cruel” and “degrading” as allowing waterboarding, he reminds me of what Humpty Dumpty told Alice in Wonderland: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.”
Some say that the Founder’s are rolling over in their grave, never having imagined someone as psychologically brittle and philosophically flawed as George Walker Bush leading this nation — I disagree. They expected him! That’s why they gave us a painfully clear and specific Constitution and Bill of Rights, divided the government into three separate parts that could police one another. Which leads us to an examination of another word.
“Craven.” It’s not a word used much in contemporary speech. From Webster’s, “To make recreant, weak, spiritless, or cowardly.” That would be the Majority in Congress, self-protecting, moving in mindless lock-step, and doing the bidding of the radical coup in the White House. Some of them, to their credit, are nervous about it. But not nervous enough to listen to their Higher Angels and rebel against their pact with rigid partisanship.
The judiciary is nervous though, count on it. Stephen Breyer and Sandra Day O’Connor were recently on Charlie Rose, discussing the worrisome movement that is bullying judges and seeking to redefine the Constitution. O’Connor has made that something of a mission, and is speaking freely on the topic … Breyer, still seated, cannot be as vocal in his concerns, but he is clearly disturbed. He should be. WE should be.
Even bypassing the implications of a moral disembowelment of this nation by adopting torture as policy, it’s difficult not to call it callous and stupid, designed to lead to misinformation and failure. When the facts tell us repeatedly that our own actions are creating a wave of new enemies among a people who define their resistance as religious, we will adopt as law a redux of the Spanish Inquisition. We will snatch thousands of innocent men, women and children, call them “evil,” and treat them like animals in the name of “good.” We will strap them to a board, tilt it down so their head is on the floor and pour buckets of water up their nose to simulate drowning [wonder how many folks actually DID drown before we perfected that little practice.] In a culture where modesty is a major tenant of religious practice, we will strip them naked and humiliate them sexually. We will hold them in brightly lit rooms with no windows and blast rock music at them to keep them from sleeping for days on end … and once they’ve gone psychotic, they’ll be ready to talk. We will sell our national Soul to extract the babblings of men gone mad with pain. That should be valuable information … ya think?
The Dubby thinks so … and he’s eager to get on with it. I suppose a man lost in the bubble of his own self-importance will be pleased enough with that which he wants to hear — none of it is sane, of course. And don’t believe for a moment that this kind of behavior will be saved for only the most dangerous “enemy combatants.” Once the genie is out of this bottle, the arguments against brutality are moot. That’s the “new reality.” Which brings us to the last word we’ll examine.
“Infamy.” That is a word meaning “a state of extreme dishonor.” It’s usually assigned to defining national and world events. Pearl Harbor. Kristallnacht. And — Heaven help us — it may well be a word used to describe the next few days in America — because the craven are poised on embracing torture. And that will be the infamous day that the 299,853,493 men, women and children living in the United States of America will be sacrificed on the alter of Darkness, made to betray their contract with civility and become enemies of the entire world.
The New York Times, Molly Ivins, Cent Yunger and other important reads, below.
Jude
Rushing Off a Cliff
NYT’s editorial
September 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/opinion/28thu1.html
Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.
Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.
It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.
Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.
These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:
Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.
The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.
Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.
Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.
Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.
Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.
Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.
•There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.
We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.
They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts. ++
A Vote That Will Live in Infamy - Who Will Betray Their Country Today and Who Will Stand Up for America?
Cenk Uygur
Sep 28 2006
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/1147
You must read the New York Times editorial on the detainee bill that Senators will be voting on today. They are not the only ones saying this, it is just a simple summary of the one of the worst bills in American history. This piece of legislation guts what this country is founded on.
As the New York Times explains, it is our Alien and Sedition Acts.
There is no excuse. Democrats who vote for this bill because of cowardly political expediency will forever be tainted. We will never forget. This is the most un-American bill I have ever seen. Republicans have proven themselves to be craven sycophants who will do Vice President Cheney’s bidding no matter what, over and over. There is almost no hope for any of them. They will go down in history as the leaders of the worst Congress of all time. But the Democrats …
For the love of God, you are supposed to be our last line of defense. You are about to gut our whole system of government. Torture. Indefinite detentions. Unlimited and arbitrary executive power. What on God’s green earth is American about any of that? You’re going to let them turn us into a third rate banana republic.
I can understand if the average citizen doesn’t comprehend the idea of habeas corpus, but a United States senator? It is the foundation of western government. An accused must be allowed to see a judge. If the executive branch has the sole authority to hold people indefinitely without ever charging them, we cease to be a civilized country. That is nearly the textbook definition of tyranny. What is left of America?!
What have you let Al Qaeda do to us? You let them win by destroying who we are.
No more excuses. Any Republican who votes for this tomorrow can never be called anything but radical. Any journalist that calls any of them moderate again should be fired on the spot. Any Democrat who votes for this is the worst kind of coward. I am tired of giving them one more chance. Stand up, you spineless weaklings. You have the right to filibuster to protect all of us against this very thing. Use it!!!
It is your job to protect the republic. Do your job!
The House has already voted and already passed the bill. They have betrayed us. Only 7 brave Republicans stood against the bill. Some of them are as conservative as it gets and I vehemently disagree with them on fundamental issues. Nonetheless, I will forever see them as American heroes. There is a bottom line. This is it.
34 useless Democrats voted for the bill. One of them is Harold Ford, Jr. who was a classmate of mine in college. One of them is Sherrod Brown who has been very helpful to our show and appeared many times with us. But this is not the time for personal friendships to get in the way of what is right. They have abdicated their duty. They have let us down. This is not the time for political expediency. This is the time for men of courage.
How many will we find tomorrow? Who will vote for this atrocity? Who still up against it? Who has enough courage to say — not on my watch. Somebody, for the love of God, filibuster this thing. If you don’t, you will live to regret it forever. Not because of political implications, but because of what it says about you. When it counted, were you willing to sell out America and all that she stands for? ++
Twilight Struggle: Finally Standing Up as the Republic Crashes Down
Chris Floyd
Sep 28 2006
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/1144
So the New York Times has finally roused itself and laid out the straight facts about the presidential tyranny that has been erected around the pathetic figure of George W. Bush: Rushing Off a Cliff. The Times is be lauded for this eloquent and powerful depiction of our degraded political state, and we’ll quote it liberally below. But a few vital points must mitigate our praise of this otherwise remarkable editorial.
First, and most importantly: it comes very, very late in the game – perhaps too late. All of the tyrannical powers enumerated by the editorial were claimed – and put into practice – by Bush and Cheney five years ago. I began writing columns about these very claims in October 2001. In November 2001, I wrote of Bush’s claim that he could not only declare anyone on earth an “enemy combatant” and jail them forever in black holes without charges, but he could also have them summarily killed. This was not classified information that I got from some bold Ellsbergian whistleblower; these were claims being made openly and proudly by “senior Administration officials” to – the New York Times, among others. I’ll be writing more on this point later in the week.
Second, the editorial, as strong as it is, doesn’t go far enough: We not looking at “our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts” as the newspaper puts it; things are much farther gone than that. What we are looking at is the death knell of the constitutional republic of the United States. Bush has long claimed dictatorial powers in secret; if Congress writes these liberty-gutting strictures into law, then the fundamental nature of the American state will be transformed. It will not be, in any sense – not even formally – a free country anymore. All of our rights and liberties will be the “gift” of the President, who can bestow them – or revoke them – as he sees fit.
Third, many legal experts note that the language of the laws in question here does not specifically exclude their application to citizens of the United States. Although Bush’s willing executioners of liberty among the Senate leadership – such as Lindsay Graham, John McCain and the lipless, cat-torturing, money-grubbing excuse for a man named Bill Frist – insist that these draconian powers will apply only to “furreners” (as though that made it all OK), Cheney and his minions have in fact ensured that the measures can be used against American citizens as well – as they already have been, over and over, during the past five years.
The Times has taken a good, strong first step; now they need to march forward boldly and tell the rest of the truth. Bush’s “War on Terror” is coming to the Homeland, and its target is the American people. Bush and his handlers want to destroy the ability of anyone to oppose their hard-right – and overwhelmingly unpopular – agenda. It’s the only way the Faction can maintain its domination – and avoid prosecution for its many crimes. They’re fighting for their freedom – so they’ll take ours. They’re fighting for their lives – so they’ll take ours.
Next time, the NYT should put a piece like this on the front page – and end it with a call for mass marches in the street, exhorting the American people to rally for their liberty and bring down the bloodstained tyrants who have usurped the Republic and dishonored our name. ++
Beyond the pale
Administration hypocrisy on torture justifies comparisons to Nazis
Molly Ivins
09.28.06
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=21429
AUSTIN, Texas — Oh dear. I’m sure he didn’t mean it. In Illinois’ 6th Congressional District, long represented by Henry Hyde, Republican candidate Peter Roskam accused his Democratic opponent Tammy Duckworth of planning to “cut and run” on Iraq.
Duckworth is a former Army major and chopper pilot, who lost both legs in Iraq after her helicopter got hit by an RPG. “I just could not believe he would say that to me,” said Duckworth, who walks on artificial legs and uses a cane. Every election cycle produces some wincers, but how do you apologize for that one?
The legislative equivalent of that remark is the detainee bill, now being passed by Congress. Beloveds, this is so much worse than even that pathetic deal reached last Thursday between the White House and Republican Sens. Warner, McCain and Graham. The White House has since reinserted a number of “technical fixes” that were the point of the putative “compromise.” It leaves the president with the power to decide who is an enemy combatant.
This bill is not a national security issue — this is about torturing helpless human beings without any proof they are our enemies. Perhaps this could be considered if we knew the administration would use the power with enormous care and thoughtfulness. But of the over 700 prisoners sent to Gitmo, only 10 have ever been formally charged with anything. Among other things, this bill is a CYA for torture of the innocent that has already taken place.
The first reported case of death by torture by Americans was in The New York Times in 2003 by Carlotta Gall. The military had announced the prisoner died of a heart attack, but when Gall actually saw the death certificate, written in English and issued by the military, it said the cause of death was homicide. The “heart attack” came after he had been beaten so often on this legs that they had “basically been pulpified,” according to the coroner.
The story of why and how it took the Times so long to print this information is in the current edition of Columbia Journalism Review. The press in general has been late and slow in reporting torture, so very few Americans have any idea how far it has spread. As is often true in hierarchical, top-down institutions, the orders get passed on in what I call the downward communications exaggeration spiral.
For example, on a newspaper, a top editor may remark casually, “Let’s give the new mayor a chance to see what he can do before we start attacking him.”
This gets passed on as, “Don’t touch the mayor unless he really screws up.”
And it ultimately arrives at the reporter level as, “We can’t say anything negative about the mayor.”
The version of the detainee bill now in the Senate not only undoes much of the McCain-Warner-Graham work, but it is actually much worse than the administration’s first proposal. In one change, the original compromise language said a suspect had the right to “examine and respond to” all evidence used against him. The three senators said the clause was necessary to avoid secret trials. The bill has now dropped the word “examine” and left only “respond to.”
In another change, a clause said that evidence obtained outside the United States could be admitted in court even if it had been gathered without a search warrant. But the bill now drops the words “outside the United States,” which means prosecutors can ignore American legal standards on warrants.
The bill also expands the definition of an unlawful enemy combatant to cover anyone who has “has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” Quick, define “purposefully and materially.” One person has already been charged with aiding terrorists because he sold a satellite TV package that includes the Hezbollah network.
The bill simply removes a suspect’s right to challenge his detention in court. This is a rule of law that goes back to the Magna Carta in 1215. That pretty much leaves the barn door open.
As Vladimir Bukovsky, the Soviet dissident, wrote, an intelligence service free to torture soon “degenerates into a playground for sadists.” But not unbridled sadism — you will be relieved that the compromise took out the words permitting interrogation involving “severe pain” and substituted “serious pain,” which is defined as “bodily injury that involves extreme physical pain.”
In July 2003, George Bush said in a speech: “The United States is committed to worldwide elimination of torture, and we are leading this fight by example. Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes, whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit.”
Fellow citizens, this bill throws out legal and moral restraints as the president deems it necessary — these are fundamental principles of basic decency, as well as law.
I’d like those supporting this evil bill to spare me one affliction: Do not, please, pretend to be shocked by the consequences of this legislation. And do not pretend to be shocked when the world begins comparing us to the Nazis. ++
A Soul Defying, Tacit Approval Of Torture: How Did We Come To This?
Phil Rockstroh
Sep 28 2006
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/1138
“True sanity entails in one way or another the dissolution of the normal ego, that False Self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality … and through this death a rebirth, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer.”
~ R. D. Laing
The pathology of American culture is as ubiquitous as its strip-mall ugliness. It is abundantly evident, in almost every aspect of contemporary life. From the predatory (to the point of psychopathic) practices of its morally scurvy pirates at the helm of the corporate/governmental ship of state, down to the pandemic enervation and proliferate anomie of its galley slaves languishing in their soulless cubicles — from the genitalia-devoid mascots at Disney World to the genitalia-obsessed torturers of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo — the soul-sickness spreads before us like George W. Bush’s taunting, executioner’s smirk.
Ronnie Laing’s profound dictum leaves us confronting many poignant questions regarding the true nature of the psychic lives of us so-called ordinary citizens of The United States of America and our ability to function within this corrupt and crumbling empire. In short, is it sane to be able to adapt to an insane culture?
Moreover, it begs the following question. If an individual’s conformity to group, cultural, and national pathology is rewarded — thereby encouraging the formation of the “False Self” — how might one, stranded within the dysfunctional dynamic, resist it all and begin to work towards an awareness of their own essential nature, then perhaps arriving at an individual reckoning involving how to live, flourish, and subvert the life defying demands of the present era.
First off, what engenders the formation of the False Self? Laing grasped: When we were children, authority, in the form of parents, educators, clergy, loomed before us. Alternatively menacing and comforting, these powerful figures could just as easily have crushed us as comforted us.
Tragically, all too often, they perpetrated the primary. Hence, to accommodate the overwhelming demands of authority, we learned how to curry favor from these baffling, seemingly implacable forces by the creation of a cipher persona, a False Self, a tricky and/or obsequious, tap-dancing, little apple polisher, who strives to garner approval and acceptance, thereby avoiding punishment, rejection and scorn, by means of the reflexive subjugation of his true nature.
The victims of False Self adaptation are the quintessence of the corporate/consumer citizen. Although, they’re presence is far from benign: While they are compelled to show an agreeable face towards unyielding authority, this trope merely serves to mask a mind seething with misplaced resentments and shallow subterfuge.
Doesn’t this read like a personality profile of Condoleezza Rice or any other member of that present day Executive Office cast of Lord of the Flies known as the Bush administration?
This process of metaphysical identity theft begins in childhood. Then, as now, the presence of individuality-decimating authority can create irreconcilable anxieties within us, because the actions and activities of authority figures seem as overwhelming and unpredictable as nature itself.
Now add this to the already haunted landscape of childhood — our present day government’s campaigns of perpetual fear mongering, plus the dominate corporate culture’s modus operandi of commercial exploitation — and we’re left with one freaked out populace – one comprised of both children and alleged adults.
Consequently, this fear-ridden existence has rendered us a society of grotesques: In the present day United States, children have grown as fat as steroid-fed, corporate-farmed livestock; this has transpired because we overfeed them a diet consisting of steroid-fed, corporate-farmed livestock — as well as – myriad other variations of nutrient-devoid, calorie-laden faux food dispensed at a mall’s food court, through a drive-thru window, or out of a cardboard box delivered by a franchised junk food chain.
Our motives for doing this shouldn’t be a mystery to us: We habitually shovel high fat, high carbohydrate, high sugar-content junk into their grousing gobs, in a desperate, futile attempt to stuff down the boredom, the anxiety, the lassitude they suffer due to their confinement inside the commercially branded, repressed, empty, holographic facsimile of childhood we have created for them.
This is the reason why our children overeat like neurotic domestic pets. As is the case with housebound, bored, anxious domestic animals, what do they have to look forward to — but dinner? Accordingly, the corporate food industry provides plenty (at a bloated profit, of course) of junk food — the table scraps fallen from the table of the ruling elite of our fat-ass empire – in order to keep them (and all the rest of us) obese, obedient, and anxiously waiting by our master’s table for more.
And these proto-fascist, behavioral control tricks are not just for kids. Corporate Capitalism has left us Americans psychologically arrested in a pathetic simulacrum of childhood where our inchoate fears of being preyed upon by our (so called) protectors (who we internally and accurately recognize as monsters) are displaced into compulsive consumerism (including overeating) and a reflexive fear of outsiders.
If we were to awaken to this subterfuge, we would apprehend: Our individual uniqueness is being robbed from us on a daily basis due to our enslavement to a mindless system that lives for no other reason than it lives — a system that eats its fatted young (giving new meaning to the term consumer economy) — and exists only to perpetuate itself — a system that has become a soul-devouring monster — the embodiment of Alan Ginsburg’s Moloch.
Why do we accept this soul defying situation? For most of us, the price we would have to pay for confronting authority would be far too prohibitive; hence, we learn it is acceptable (as well as politically useful to our power mad leaders) to displace our anger and fear upon outsiders. Ergo, the so-called Clash of Civilizations is unloosed and slouches, by way of the Washington Beltway, to Iraq, Iran and beyond to be born.
This is the manner that we as a society came to believe we can “compromise” on acts of torture committed in our name and not fear the loss of our souls as a result of our complicity. Although, the loss of our national soul would only prove redundant: Years ago, we decided our souls, both individual and national, were somewhat less than useful to us – and not nearly as compelling as a new widescreen, plasma TV and the like — hence they were discarded into the reeking landfills of this toxic country like an old appliance.
These actions are what the corporate/military/consumer empire demands of us: For it does not take long for us to learn which aspects of our personalities are accepted and rewarded, and, conversely, which ones will be punished and scorned. In essence, the roles we’re expected to play in exchange for being loved, fed, clothed, and sheltered.
This exchange insures us that we’re given a “safe” place within the community — not cast out into the wilderness and fed to the wolves. This fear is not an outrageous fantasy: It is, in fact, a primal memory. Due to the fact, numerous forms of infanticide were once common practices in nearly all cultures, including the act of abandoning outcast children to die in the wilderness.
Moreover, this knowledge still lingers within our psyches, where the memories of such terrors still howl just beyond the tree line of our waking awareness, instilling within us the terror of ridicule, of failure, of being ostracized. Far too many of us succumb to these fears and begin playing the roles circumscribed by their families, communities, and cultures. Tragically, their true selves, for all practical purposes, were smothered in their cribs.
In itself, the False Self, as well as other varieties of habitual self-centeredness, is a variety of imprisonment. The world is spread before the cell of the self, yet we prisoners cannot leave the confines of our small, self-involved anxieties; therein, mind, heart and imagination become atrophied by a lack of experience, empathy and spontaneity. The bars of the cage might be invisible, yet the sense of confinement is palpable across our corporatized culture. Ergo, a collective numbness and apathy levels upon the land – and ultimately our desensitization to genocide and torture.
To begin to free oneself from the bondage of the False Self, one must become aware of one’s own fraudulence. That being: the awareness of one’s desperate machinations before exploitive authority.
Self-knowledge can provide us with a point of entry to the act of empathy. Yes, even extending it towards one as loathsome as George W. Bush. Years ago, the sorry ass son of a bitch put on a mask (its contours, both menacing and ridiculous) in a vain attempt to shield himself from being crushed by power. Imagine having his parents: that soulless cipher of a father and blood-freezing Medusa of a mother. Try to imagine the psychological carnage involved. It’s the same trauma we experience daily due to our own powerlessness against the dictates of the corporate state and its threats, both implied and overt, to cast us into the howling wilderness of financial ruin, poverty, and homelessness.
(A caveat: The proffering empathy to Dick Cheney would be pushing the parameters of empathy to the breaking point: Upon being subjected to Cheney’s glowering, reptilian aura, even Mahatma Ghandi would be reaching for a pair of brass knuckles.)
Even in this fear-ridden era, there are some among us — types such as non-conformists, creative thinkers, and artists — who welcome (rather than cower before) the metaphorical wolves (that are recognized, each to each, as fellow outcasts). Instead of being eaten by the wolves, they are suckled and raised by them.
Nourished by their outsider status, the creative spirit thrives when freed from the constraints of a mindless adherence to groupthink. The dark terrain of societal abandonment becomes their natural habitat: they howl at the moon; they reject the daylight world of bland consensus; they learn to see in the dark, apprehending their own interior darkness and, as a result, gain an understanding into the hearts of darkness beating within those in power.
The wilderness of political activism, of poetry, of art becomes their home: they don’t clean-up nicely for polite company; they don’t let themselves be bred down (as a few domesticated wolves did) to yapping Toy Poodles, in exchange for a few food scraps.
Yes, when you’re looking at a Toy Poodle — you’re looking at a former wolf, as when your looking at the corporate press corps, you’re looking at folks whose ancestors long ago were journalists.
One moment, you’re loping through the woods, snout held high, smelling the scent of fresh game on the wind, then the next thing you know — you’re being led around on a leash and collar, encrusted with tacky rhinestones and you’re salivating at the sound of an electric can-opener. One moment, you’re a child, entranced in play, hardwired to eternity — the next thing you know, you’re sitting at work and your passions, hopes, and yearnings have been shrunk down to Toy Poodle-sized agendas … You’re truckling for your boss’s approval; you’re counting the minutes until break time, when you can devour some junk food. Like a domesticated pet, or an unfortunate animal incarcerated in a zoo, you are no longer a noble animal – you’re a Thing That Waits For Lunch.
To resist, we must cast off the fear of being an outcast. I remain hopeful: There is yet a molecule or two of the wild wolf left within us cringing, cloying Toy Poodles.
One must always remember this: We human beings are of nature too. Accordingly, within us lies an indomitable self, encoded with the grace and fury of the natural world, and, if acknowledged and respected, it will awaken and arise. Then the real dogfight begins: The fur will fly, as we fight, fang and claw, to retake our own essential natures, and, by extension, begin the struggle to restore health, imagination and empathy to a nation of cage-accepting, torture-countenancing sick puppies. ++
Bush Presses Senate on Anti-Terror Bill
ANNE PLUMMER FLAHERTY
Sep 28
http://tinyurl.com/hjhpy
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush urged the Senate on Thursday to follow the House lead and approve a White House plan for detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects, saying, “The American people need to know we’re working together to win the war on terror.”
Bush met in the Capitol with Senate Republicans the day after the House passed the legislation that Republicans likely will use on the campaign trail to assert that Democrats want to go too easy on terrorists.
“People shouldn’t forget there’s still an enemy out there that wants to do harm to the United States,” Bush told reporters after the closed-door meeting.
Barring any last-minute hiccups, a Senate vote Thursday would send the legislation to the president’s desk by week’s end. The House approved a nearly identical measure Wednesday on a 253-168 vote.
Standing with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, both Republicans, Bush spoke briefly and took no questions.
He said the House-passed legislation “will give us the capacity to interrogate high-value detainees and at the same time give us the capacity to try people in our military tribunals.”
“I urged them to get this legislation to my desk as soon as possible,” Bush said. He said discussion of the legislation occupied “much of my discussion” with the majority-party Republicans.
Senate Republicans agreed on the measure with the exception of whether to allow terrorists the right to protest their detentions in court. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, contends the ability to file a “habeas corpus” petition is considered a fundamental legal right and necessary to uncover abuse.
Other Republicans contend that providing terror suspects the right to unlimited appeals would weigh down the federal court system.
Four Democrats and Specter were being given opportunities to offer amendments Thursday, but all were expected to be rejected along party lines.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., told CBS’”The Early Show” that he expected the bill would be approved Thursday to ensure continued interrogation of high-level terrorism suspects - “maybe the most important program we have” - and avoid the risk of classified information being divulged at terrorism trials.
Democrats have said the legislation would give the president too much latitude when deciding whether aggressive interrogations cross the line and violate international standards of prisoner treatment.
The legislation would establish a military court system to prosecute terror suspects, a response to the Supreme Court ruling in June that Congress’ blessing was necessary. While the bill would grant defendants more legal rights than they had under the administration’s old system, it nevertheless would not include rights usually granted in civilian and military courts.
The measure also provides extensive definitions of war crimes such as torture, rape and biological experiments, but gives the president broad authority to decide which other techniques U.S. interrogators may use legally. The provisions are intended to protect CIA interrogators from being prosecuted for war crimes.
For nearly two weeks the White House and rebellious Republican senators have fought publicly over whether Bush’s plan would give a president too much authority. But they struck a compromise last Thursday.
After Wednesday’s mostly party-line vote in the Republican-run House, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said in a statement that Democrats who voted against the measure “voted today in favor of more rights for terrorists.”
He added, “So the same terrorists who plan to harm innocent Americans and their freedom worldwide would be coddled, if we followed the Democrat plan.”
In response, Jennifer Crider, a spokeswoman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Democrats feared the House-passed measure could endanger U.S. soldiers by encouraging other countries to limit the rights of captured American troops, and be vulnerable to being overturned by the Supreme Court.
“Speaker Hastert’s false and inflammatory rhetoric is yet another desperate attempt to mislead the American people and provoke fear,” she said, adding that Democrats “have an unshakable commitment to catching, convicting and punishing terrorists who attack Americans.”
Pelosi and other Democrats said the bill would give the president too much power to decide whether interrogation standards go too far.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said, “This bill is everything we don’t believe in.”
Overall in the House, 219 Republicans and 34 Democrats voted for the legislation, while 160 Democrats, seven Republicans and one independent voted against it.
The House resolution is HR 6166. The Senate bill is S 3930. ++
Republicans Hell-Bent on Passing Bush Torture Bill
Bob Geiger
09.28.2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-geiger/republicans-hellbent-on-_b_30452.html
In an almost straight party-line vote, the Republican-led U.S. Senate yesterday shot down an effort by Democrats to substitute legislation for the White House’s Military Commissions Act of 2006, which passed the House of Representatives on Wednesday. The White House-backed bill will allow the Bush administration to continue down the path of secret prisons, cruel treatment of prisoners and allowing evidence obtained through torture to be used against detainees.
Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) proposed S.Amdt. 5086 — which passed the Senate Armed Services Committee by a bipartisan 15-9 vote — to replace the Military Commissions Act, but Levin’s bill was swept aside by a vote of 54-43. Every Republican except Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) voted against the Levin bill. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and, as we’ve come to expect, Ben Nelson (D-NE) voted with the GOP to move forward with the harsher, Republican bill on Thursday.
“The changes that appear in the bill which is now before us, taken together, will put our own troops at risk if other countries decide to apply similar standards to our troops if they are captured or detained,” said Levin, in arguing against the White House bill.
Levin also commented that the compromise reached between President Bush and three Republican Senators — John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham — has produced legislation that enables an administration that “has been relentless in its determination to legitimize the abuse of detainees and to undermine some of the cornerstone principles of our legal system.”
The Military Commissions Act, which passed the House 253-168, is being widely protested by human rights groups as institutionalizing the use of torture by America and was written by Republicans in response to a U.S . Supreme Court ruling in June that struck down the Bush administration’s military tribunal system, as a violation of both U.S. and international laws.
Levin admitted that his substitute bill, based on the original legislation proposed by Warner, McCain and Graham and approved by the Armed Services Committee, had its own flaws — such as an unacceptable provision on the writ of habeas corpus for detainees who believe they have been unlawfully detained. But he also maintained that his bill was the best Democrats could hope for and better than the one being pushed through by the White House.
“The military commissions that it established would have met the test of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Hamdan case and provided for the trial of detainees for war crimes in a manner that is consistent with American values and the American system of justice,” said Levin.
“Unlike the Administration bill, the Committee bill would not have allowed convictions based on secret testimony that is never revealed to the accused,” Levin continued. “The Committee bill would not have allowed testimony obtained through cruel or inhuman treatment. The Committee bill would not have allowed the use of hearsay where a better source of evidence is readily available. The Committee bill would not have attempted to reinterpret our obligations under international law to permit the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody.”
But that’s now off the table and the Senate convenes today to debate and vote on the Republican bill, with only five amendments to be considered that may water it down.
Among those amendments are one from Arlen Specter (R-PA) that would provide for some rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees to have court hearings on their incarceration and treatment and another by Ted Kennedy (D-MA) to define acceptable interrogation methods for the CIA.
“The Senate Armed Services Committee produced bipartisan legislation supported by America’s uniformed military lawyers that would have ensured the President has the tools he needs to fight terrorism and would have finally brought the accused masterminds of 9/11 to justice,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in reacting to yesterday’s defeat of the Levin bill. “It is regrettable that the Republican Congress has rejected this tough and smart plan to give the American people the real security they deserve.”
Indeed. And it’s also regrettable that it now looks like we’re going to have a law passed that, barring intervention from the courts, will leave it to George W. Bush to interpret what types of interrogation techniques violate the Geneva Conventions.
And just how scary is that? ++
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
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September 28th, 2006