Survival Versus Doom

“Who are these people? Who are these useless hanks of bone and fat that call themselves Senators of the United States? Let’s call them what they really are, let’s speak the truth about what they’ve done today with their votes on the bill to enshrine Bush’s gulag of torture and endless detention into American law.” (Chris Floyd, via Jonathan Schwarz, via Tom Tomorrow)

The other day we lost rights that we had for 800 years, and if we don’t get real clear about what’s happening and act acordingly, we’re liable to lose more.

The purpose of gulag and torture is to defend the indefensible. It’s to make people afraid. First them, then more of us, and then everybody.

Will the electoral process save us, as we deperately hope? Or is that a straw to grasp at? I don’t know, but as Emile de Antonio put it, we’d be a lot worse off without elections.

Fortunately, the electoral process is not all we have to work with.

The beginning of resistance and the recovery of our rights is in ourselves. What are we going to do about it? What are you going to do about it? What can we do about it? Read the rest of this entry »

Glenn Greenwald’s account here. There’s a good point by point summary of the bill in today’s New York Times editorial, of all places. It calls the bill “… a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy.”

The Administration, with the acquiescence of the Democrats, is “on the verge of consolidating some of the most tyrannical powers a government can have, literally.” Glenn Greenwald

The vote is expected today or tomorrow. Email or preferably phone (Capitol switchboard # is 202-224-3121 or 202-225-3121) or fax your Senators AND Representative, or go here.

One provision of the bill “would bar detainees in U.S. custody anywhere around the world from challenging the legality of their detention or their treatment via habeas corpus actions, even if they have been subjected to torture. Innocent people could be locked up forever, without ever having the facts of their case reviewed by an independent court. If held to be constitutional, this provision would result in more than 200 pending cases being ejected from the courts, including the case that resulted in the Supreme Court’s landmark detainee ruling in June. Moreover it gives carte blanche to the Pentagon to call anyone an ‘unlawful enemy combatant.’” (Human Rights Watch)

The Center for Constitutional Rights points out that the bill allows for attorneys representing Guantanamo detainees to be designated and imprisoned as enemy combatants.

Survival Versus Doom pundit and fiend, The Joker, of the Doom Institute, sums it up: “To preserve freedom, we have to become a tyranny.”

Update: House Passes Bill. Senate Vote Expected Thursday.

“I’m an optimist,” says scientist James Lovelock, formulator of the Gaia hypothesis which holds that the Earth is an interconnected planetary system. “I think that after the warming sets in and the survivors have settled in near the Arctic, they will find a way to adjust. It will be a tough life enlivened by excitement and fear.”

The good news is the military no longer will resort to harsh or extreme illegal methods to obtain information. The bad news is that the CIA will. Story here.

Successful that is except that it had to be postponed until the weather was favorable; the incoming missile was not designed to take evasive action nor was it hidden in a volley of decoys; this was the latest in a tradition of missile defense fake “tests” (i.e. pr events); and oh yeah, the target missile had a homing device implanted in it to direct the “anti-missile” to itself. But what do you want for $100 billion? Doomer pundit Lex Luthor’s advice to the Pentagon: “Next time, don’t skimp.”

We’ve said it before (actually Billmon said it), we’ll say it again here: “It is a stunning testament to the political devolution of this country that the most effective anti-war movement in America is inside the walls of the Pentagon or buried deep in the bowels of the CIA! But that is the reality…” Hyperbole? Here’s the latest:

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon’s top uniformed lawyers took issue Thursday with a key part of a White House plan to prosecute terrorism detainees, telling Congress that limiting the suspects’ access to evidence could violate treaty obligations. Read the story here.

What’s new in Ramadi (See also this), from Stars and Stripes, the armed forces newspaper:

RAMADI, Iraq — Call it urban renewal Ramadi style.

“This is what we live for,” said Cpl. Kevin Booth, 27, an engineer attached to the 3-8 Marines. “We learn to do demolitions in school and mine clearing. This is the enjoyable part of the job.”

Plans call for the construction of a soccer field and a narrow, grassy mall complete with water fountain in the space where the buildings once stood. Removal of the buildings and the cultivation of a public space is intended to lend credibility and security to the municipal center, which is the seat of government for all of Anbar province.

Before that can happen though, engineers must remove more than a half-million tons of rubble from the scene — a task that is likely to take months to complete.

Ramadi is a densely populated city of roughly 400,000….

Update: Anbar Province ‘Politically Lost’ Read story here.

    I and the public know
    What all schoolchildren learn,
    Those to whom evil is done
    Do evil in return.
       W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939

On August 26 we posted an item linking to an article, “Why Bush Will Make War on Iran,” by former CIA analyst Ray Close. Here is a link to an article by David MacMichael, another former CIA analyst who, like Close, is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

MacMichael argues that there is enough opposition from Russia, China, and the European Union to make it unlikely that the United States will wage war on Iran, and that the crisis will probably be resolved diplomatically. (MacMichael does not discuss the possibility of Israel undertaking a massive bombing campaign of Iran’s enrichment facilities, which are said to be spread over 400 possible targets.)