I’m gone till Sunday

And posted a bunch of stuff before leaving!

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Rumsfeld falls on his sword

A senior Republican source close to both congressional leaders
and the White House said Rumsfeld has reason to worry. “This is not the
end, but it’s the beginning of the end for Rumsfeld,” the source said.

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Video shows prison dog attacking non-resisting inmate

Officials revealed Thursday that they were pushing prosecutors to file criminal assault charges against an officer for allowing his police dog to attack an inmate who was not resisting.

And where did this happen? Iraq, maybe? Some godforsaken hellhole? Well, yeah. It happened in the California Youth Authority.

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Damn

The Midnight Special, a much beloved bookstore in LA, just announced it is closing for good. Forced to move last year because of rising rents, they re-opened a few months ago at a new location, but the startup costs have proven too huge.

They’ve been in Santa Monica for 34 years and will be deeply missed.

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Think again. al Qaeda

From the august Foreign Policy magazine. Read the whole article, it’s one of the best I’ve seen.

The mere mention of al Qaeda conjures images of an efficient terrorist network guided by a powerful criminal mastermind. Yet al Qaeda is more lethal as an ideology than as an organization. “Al Qaedaism” will continue to attract supporters in the years to come—whether Osama bin Laden is around to lead them or not.

The major points of the article are:

Al Qaeda Is a global terrorist organization. No

Capturing or killing Bin Laden will deal a severe blow to Al Qaeda. Wrong.

The militants seek to destroy the West so They Can Impose a global Islamic state. False

The militants reject modern ideas in favor of traditional Muslim theology. No

Since the rise of Al Qaeda, Islamic moderates have been marginalized. Incorrect.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Is central to the militants’ cause. Wrong

Sort Out Saudi Arabia and the whole problem will disappear. No

It is only a matter of time before Islamic militants use weapons of mass destruction. Calm down.

The West is winning the war on terror. Unfortunately, no.

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Sue me, asshole

The new book from Fair Use Press

This
book’s title is aimed at California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as
well as his attorney, Martin D. Singer. Recently Singer threatened to
sue Todd Bosley, the maker of a bobble-head caricature of the governor,
for infringing on Schwarzenegger’s “publicity” rights. Yes, you read
that right: Singer and Schwarzenegger feel that the California governor
is the first politician in history to be immune from caricature.

The
book is only $1, available from the website via PayPal! As of this
posting, the site proudly announces “Days without lawsuit: 4″

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Maybe drought is the norm for the West

At five years and counting, the drought that has parched much of the West is getting much harder to shrug off as a blip.

Those who worry most about the future of the West — politicians, scientists, business leaders, city planners and environmentalists — are increasingly realizing that a world of eternally blue skies and meager mountain snowpacks may not be a passing phenomenon but rather the return of a harsh climatic norm.
 
Continuing research into drought cycles over the last 800 years bears this out, strongly suggesting that the relatively wet weather across much of the West during the 20th century was a fluke. In other words, scientists who study tree rings and ocean temperatures say, the development of the modern urbanized West — one of the biggest growth spurts in the nation’s history — may have been based on a colossal miscalculation.

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Quote of the Day

From Political Wire

“Acting militarily, we have created more terrorism than we have eliminated.” 

Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-SC), quoted in the Columbia State.

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Louisiana is on the guard against yet another menace 

Louisiana to ban saggy, butt-crack-exposing pants. File under “only in Louisiana” — snip:

Wearing sagging or baggy pants that expose your underwear or buttocks would make you a criminal under a bill approved by a House panel Thursday. “I don’t relish the idea of seeing the beginning of people’s pubic hair,” Westwego City Councilman Glenn Green told the House Criminal Justice Committee on Thursday. “I don’t relish seeing the beginning of the crease of people’s buttocks. And I don’t enjoy watching young men letting their sexual organs show through their red or black silk underwear,” Green said. Link

Um, sounds to me like he’s spent considerable time pondering young men in silk underwear. And it must be noted that no mention was made of being upset by young women who show their butt cracks.

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Confirmation: The Iraqi women rape photos are from a porn site

A porn site called IraqBabes.com, now thankfully offline, which specializes in photos of Iraqi women being raped. I’m speechless that some are so depraved and despicable as to have a website like that.

Here’s a cached link (not family friendly)

(Thanks to a reader who posted the link in comments here)

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Orwell would love the upcoming Republican convention

Via MediaChannel.org newsletter

Bush plans to lock down NYC for convention

AP reports: “Midtown Manhattan around the site of the Republican National Convention could be locked down for blocks, with major avenues closed and nearby residents and workers required to show identification, officials said Tuesday as they outlined tentative security plans for the four-day event.”

What a spectacle. Block upon block of deserted barricaded streets, heavily patrolled by police and maybe even military, while one million protestors roam Manhattan, and Republicans are brought into the convention under heavy armed guard. Yeah, that’ll send the world a message.

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Seymour Hersch: “It’s going to get much worse”

On O’Reilly, of all places.

First of all, it’s going to get much worse. This kind of stuff was much more widespread. I can tell you just from the phone calls I’ve had in the last 24 hours, even more, there are other photos out there. There are many more photos even inside that unit. There are videotapes of stuff that you wouldn’t want to mention on national television that was done. There was a lot of problems.

There was a special women’s section. There were young boys in there. There were things done to young boys that were videotaped. It’s much worse. And the Maj. Gen. Taguba was very tough about it. He said this place was riddled with violent, awful actions against prisoners.

There were two previous investigations

The fact of the matter is it was the third investigation. There had been two other investigations.

One of them was done by a major general who was involved in Guantanamo, General Miller. And it’s very classified, but I can tell you that he was recommending exactly doing the kind of things that happened in that prison, basically. He wanted to cut the lines. He wanted to put the military intelligence in control of the prison.

In reading the transcipt I am struck that O’Reilly wasn’t combative, and said, yeah it was torture, and like the rest of us appeared to be wondering just what the hell is going on.

US soldiers rode elderly woman like a donkey in prison

U.S. soldiers who detained an elderly Iraqi woman last year placed a harness on her, made her crawl on all fours and rode her like a donkey, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s personal human rights envoy to Iraq said Wednesday.

A right wing friend who was wounded in Vietnam said, “that little girl didn’t act on her own. She’s a private. Privates don’t do things like that on their own. Someone told her to do it.”

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The Walls of My Old Cell

by Maria Guardado ( who was was kidnapped, brutally tortured, and left for dead by American-assisted death squads in El Salvador.)

If the walls
Of my old cell spoke
They would be loyal witness
Of my public petition

Against he squadrons of Death
Of my bloodied neighborhood
And the mercenary
who in the name
of the “Great Democracy”
A “media lengua” gave
the orders for my tortures
Bitter, Bitter

And I would say
that I only screamed
At the first of each one
And that my terrified screams
Were confused
With the screams
From the adjacent cells!

If those wall could talk
They would say that in my agony
I asked for water
And that somone with a satanic laugh
Responded “Here it is “
And there were blows from a gun
On my face!

Breaking and loosening
My teeth
For which I cry and miss
Imposing “placas”
Does it seem small
My brother, my sister

They dragged me
To a cold, cold shower
to wash off perhaps
The blood
That my body spilled
Before the silent walls!

That when they are stained
With blood
Democracy washes them
To say
In bourgeous courts
Here it is clean and tranquil
And nothing, nothing, has happened!

But Christ
That first comrade
Wanted that from the grave
I would rise
To ask you
Citizens of the United States
To come with me
To the U.N. to demand
That they send to the Hague
Those terrorists
For crimes against humanity
And have tranquility
On this planet
That is extinguished by them!

What sad truth
And the walls do not speak
But my body and my mind
have genuine proofs
As an example of that Holocaust
Of the offense
“Por tanto”, against our common enemy
Your solidarity and I
Will judge him
Even though they do not speak

A documentary
has been made about her life. She now lives in LA where she continues
her tireless activism. I took the photo of her last May at an immigrant
rights march.

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American gulag

Sidney Blumenthal in the Guardian

Bush has created what is in effect a gulag. It stretches from prisons in Afghanistan to Iraq, from Guantánamo to secret CIA prisons around the world. There are perhaps 10,000 people being held in Iraq, 1,000 in Afghanistan and almost 700 in Guantánamo, but no one knows the exact numbers. The law as it applies to them is whatever the executive deems necessary. There has been nothing like this system since the fall of the Soviet Union.

And, “Private contractors, according to the Toguba report, gave orders to US soldiers to torture prisoners.”

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