Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Amnesty International Slams Canada on Afghanistan

From the CBC. In a report released Monday, November 12th, 2007, Amnesty International condemned Canada's lax investigations of allegations of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan, as well as the remarkable secrecy exercised by Canada about the barest information regarding what happens to the people we capture. Our fearful leaders cite "national security" concerns

I dealt with this moronic "national security" justification before. It remains just as brain-dead, just as nauseatingly Eichmannesque.

"We set up our detention policy in consultation with the Red Cross and Red Crescent, and we think, we believe, that's 26 democratic governments believe that it meets the appropriate international standards," he said from Brussels. "We, NATO, have no evidence of systematic torture of detainees turned over by ISAF, by the NATO force in Afghanistan, to the Afghan authorities. And I might add I've read the Amnesty report relatively carefully today and I don't see evidence in that report either."

Let's parse this bit of bureaucratic drivel, shall we?

[Note: I never did. 10/03/2019, 7:45 pm.]

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Destructive Harper

Sean in Saskatchewan has decided to compile a list of Harper's cuts to programs, institutions, and studies integral to Canadians' national values.

Indeed. Due to a number of fragile circumstances, Canada is a different political culture from the US. A far less debased, cruel, and stupid one. (This is not a slight against ordinary Americans. Half of them are so sickened by their political culture that they do not bother to vote, and much of the Democratic Party's rank-and-file are furious at their leaders' corruption, weakness, and dithering.)

But Harper, and the Conservative Party of Canada, supported by a loud, stupid minority, unrepresentative of the average Canadian, are working to to destroy this political culture and transform it into the shambling horror south of our border.

Monday, November 12, 2007

Maintaining Decorum

"Mr. and Mrs. Brown, we think we've got all the info we need to convict those assholes who kidnapped your kids."

"Okay. Hold it right there. Pack up all your so-called 'evidence' and just get out."

"Huh? But don't you want to ..."

"If you have to lower yourself to the level of personal invective and ad-hominem attacks, we want nothing to do with you. You've cheapened everything about your case, ... you've basically handed the other side the victory."

"I'm not sure I ..."

"It's simple. By coarsening the level of discourse, by debasing the tone of the debate, you've removed yourself now and forever from civilized conversation and interaction. I'd rather those people never be punished than that they be convicted in such a fashion."

"O-o-o-k-a-y-y-y then. We'll be in touch."

"You might want to see someone about that potty-mouth of yours. And that spittle-flecked chin, from all your raging."

(Door closes. End scene.)

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

"Harold & Kumar Go To White-Castle" was a college-age stoner movie with a bit of a difference. Besides some well-acted, unique minor characters (the volatile pick-up window attendant at the sub-par burger joint, the helpful "Freak Show," and all the cops and prisoners at the police station) and some interesting plot twists involving Doogie Howser and escaped zoo animals, it also dealt with the racism endured by second-generation North Americans (hey, it was filmed in and around Hamilton, Ontario Canada!) who just want to enjoy the same things white North Americans do. It's one of those comedies that pokes fun at the ridiculousness of white stereotyping of others (in this case a South Asian and an East Asian man).

It wasn't politically correct. There's a pervasive heterosexism, and women are presented as they always are in these movies, as beautiful, idealized objects of desire, or as party-girls flashing their tits. Still, it did manage to score some strong points on racism and politics while being a well-written example of the stoner-movie genre.

That's why I'm excited that these two cultural sign-posts have apparently gotten even more political their second time out. This time, they're confronting the absolutely hysterical racism that's been given a free ride since "9-11 changed everything." This time, our heroes have been shipped off to that blight on everything the United States imagines it stands for: the gulag at Guantanamo Bay. I'm interested to see how they deal with the subject.


Friday, November 9, 2007

Just Saying ....

If one really wanted to devastate an opinionated, loudmouthed moron, the best way to go about it wouldn't be to launch an obsessive campaign of stalking and mockery. The best way to deflate someone who is self-evidently proud of their views that they publicly hold forth on them would be to expose the glaring errors that make their entire case stupid and fraudulent.

When you are repeatedly invited to try and do that by the blowhard, and you are consistently exposed as incapable of it, it kinda makes the rest of the world think that maybe you're the moron, and your target's argument is the better one.

Just saying.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

Fire

What's funny is that in the movie "Hot Fuzz," when Timothy Dalton's villain character drives up to the burned-out mansion that the Sandford Neighbourhood Watch Association blew up, this song is playing on his car radio.


Tuesday, November 6, 2007

About Haditha

A while ago, I posted about [yet another] right-wing doughy pantload named Jason Mattera, who went to annoy democratic congressman John Murtha when he heard that charges had been dropped against some of the marines implicated in the Haditha Massacre.

Why? Why did this Mattera person go and bother Murtha upon hearing news about the Haditha accused?

Because when Murtha heard about the Massacre, in which crazed marines (angered at the immediately preceding death of a comrade from the explosion of a road-side bomb) went methodically from one house to another, shooting innocent, unarmed, men, women, and mostly children, sometimes execution style, Murtha said that US soldiers had been put in an impossible situation, in insufficient numbers, and some were cracking and killing people in cold blood and this had to stop.

Obviously, speaking this simple truth meant that Murtha hated the troops, hated America, wanted America to "lose" in Iraq, and on and on.

Murtha, speaking out from his position on the House Appropriations Committee's sub-Committee on Defense, has supposedly compromised these marines' rights to a fair trial. The right-wing is very concerned about due-process dont'cha know, just check out their silence on the case of Jose Padilla. They never called him a terrorist, or a "dirty-bomber," or anything, because the right-wing believes that rules are rules, and principles are principles, and actually, I'm being sarcastic. The right-wing doesn't give a shit about due-process. They wanted to sweep the massacre of innocent civilians, including children as young as two years old, under the carpet, and let the bullshit charade of US military justice against its mass-murdering heroes to do its work and exonerate as many of them as possible and limit punishment to the obviously guilty by as much as possible.

Because they're vermin.

And, because (as I suggested in that earlier post) Mattera and others as contemptibly stupid as he is must believe that those Iraqis shot themselves. (Which would make the marines' earlier lies about a desperate fire-fight all the more inexplicable.)

But what's going on in the trial of the Haditha accused? How have some of these massacre-participants managed to get the charges against them dropped?

Rahul Mahajan has recently written about the trial at his blog: "Empire Notes." Not surprisingly, this trial has been as big a whitewash as the Abu Ghraib trials, the Padilla trial, or any other trial under bush II's war on democracy and human rights:

The hearings have been a circus. First of all, they were held in Camp Pendleton, California, rather than in Iraq, so the Iraqis who witnessed the events couldn’t testify. Second, the families of the victims refused requests by military interrogators to exhume the bodies for forensic evidence. Third, Lt. Col. Paul Ware, who presided over the hearings, has been both excessively sympathetic to the defendants and excessively concerned with the effect that the verdicts will have on future Marine operations. Fourth, some rather odd plea bargains have been made.

Most recently, Ware recommended that all charges of murder (originally 13 counts) against Wuterich be dropped and replaced with charges of negligent homicide only for seven of the murdered women and children (many of them shot in their beds) – and has added that he doesn’t think Wuterich would be convicted on those charges either.

...

Earlier, Ware recommended dropping all charges against Sharratt, accepting his claim that the execution-style killings of the three men shot in the head occurred in self-defense in the heat of combat. He also wanted charges dropped on Tatum, even though fellow Marine Lance Cpl. Humberto Mendoza testified that Tatum had ordered him to shoot the seven women and children, even after being informed of their identity and that they posed no threat.

Charges were dropped against the two captains, Grayson is still under investigation, and Ware recommended that Chessani be charged with dereliction of duty, although with none of the actual murderers on trial, apparently, he was derelict in investigating nothing.



Aboslutely disgusting, and all-too common in bush II's United States.

Now then, in my post on Maretta-Murtha, one commentator ("anonymous") decided that I was blind to the irony of my harsh words about Maretta and my own condemnation of the morons who wanted Murtha hanged for treason:

"You, Maretta, are just some smirking, useless, stupid piece of shit."
Is what I said about Maretta. Following a summary of idiotic ravings about Murtha, I wrote:

"What happens to the "marketplace of ideas" when there's garbage like this in it, screaming louder than all the rest?"
To which "anonymous" wrote:

You wouldn't recognize irony if it bit you on the ass.
Where "anonymous" got confused is his equating a clearly (to an honest person with half a brain anyway) outlined detail of Maretta's stupidity (to whit; that Murtha responded with genuine outrage at the horrifying consequences of bush II's evil and incompetence, and the grave nature of a slaughter of this nature and these proportions, he did not implicate individual marines, he did not say he hated America, he did not jeopardize anyone's right to a fair trial, and that, regardless, marines on the site went on a killing spree and nobody investigated it until TIME Magazine found evidence of the massacre, and the marines clearly lied about the circumstances of the event. Somebody killed those innocent people. And they were among those marines present.)

"anonymous" equated that, with callous, sadistic, cretinous individuals who called for Murtha's hanging for expressing upset at the marines' slaughter of civilians, including some no-doubt hypocritical thugs who defended the slaughter as a fact of war.

So, the moral of that particular little story is that if someone from the reality-based community sees a piece of dogshit on the floor and says "It smells like shit in here. The dog shit on the floor." then that person is describing reality. But the right-wing will accuse that person of making an "ad-hominem attack," and all protestations that they are accurately describing reality will be met with snorts of derision. (The right-winger will try to outlast the normal person, hoping they will leave the room in a huff, whereupon the right-winger can dive towards the lump of dog-shit and merrily eat it.)

When some right-wing moron sees a bouquet of flowers on a table and says "They smell like shit." and you challenge them, "What do you mean? They're flowers. They smell like flowers." and they say, "You're unhinged. You're a moonbat. You hate America. You're an anti-Semite. You smell like shit too." and etc., etc., you'll find that you're experiencing the delight of the right-wing internet in 3-D! And if, in despair at their hopeless stupidity you turn and walk away, they'll crow about how you're unable to debate them, and that censorship is the natural inclination of the left, and how they always consider views from all sides of the spectrum. But by this time, they've proven themselves so completely idiotic that you couldn't care less what they're saying.