Author's posts
Jul 24 2009
Former Iraqi Weapons Monitor Describes U.S. Abuse For First Time
Crossposted from MY LEFT WING
From the Huffington Post
By Michael Bronner
… Amin’s story of his incarceration, related here for the first time, offers another instructive chapter in the scandalous history of detainee treatment — one that encompasses both physical torture and the more subtle moral quandary of leaving prisoners to languish indefinitely without any meaningful legal process, the status quo for prisoners at U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. It again raises key questions the Obama Administration has yet to fully answer as it assumes control of America’s unconventional wars: How can it square urgent, real battlefield needs with the rule of law and the spirit of the nation’s ideals?
You simply MUST go read the rest. It has to be read to be believed. You don’t know how bad it got till you read it.
(Though I do have one bone to pick with Michael Bronner, the author of the piece, about the part I’ve excerpted: “…the more subtle moral quandary of leaving prisoners to languish indefinitely without any meaningful legal process???” Just what, exactly, is SUBTLE about that moral “quandary,” may I ask? Just, you know, wondering. But… I digress.)
May 14 2009
Change We Can Believe In… And the Beat Goes On
Crossposted from MY LEFT WING
A front page contributor on My Left Wing named Konopelli used this picture in a post the race baiting going on in right wing talk radio right now — specifically, on Rush “Douchebag of the Decade” Limbaugh’s right wing hatefest:
The people in that picture…
Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Apr 25 2009
Oh, FUCK, I Have to Defend David Duke
Crossposted from MY LEFT WING
David Duke Detained in Prague On Suspicion of Denying the Holocaust
PRAGUE – Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke was detained by police in the Czech Republic on Friday on suspicion of denying the Holocaust.Police spokesman Jan Mikulovsky said the action was taken because Duke does that in his book “My Awakening,” which is punishable by up to three years in Czech prisons.
Duke traveled to the republic to promote the book’s Czech translation of the book at the invitation of neo-Nazis.
Oh, GOD. I loathe David Duke. I find Holocaust deniers appalling, disgusting, laughable, execrable — I think they should be put in stocks, for chrissakes, so that little children will know that THESE PEOPLE ARE HORRIFYING.
Okay, not so much that last part.
But listen… now I have to reprint an essay I wrote last summer, about just this very thing… and — and — oh, GOD — in defense of DAVID DUKE, of all fucking people. Because, as someone once said: Principles only mean something if you stand up for them when it’s PAINFUL.
And THIS… is painful.
Apr 20 2009
I Was Wrong
I’m too fucking depressed to write anything more than this right now, but I couldn’t leave it any longer; fact is, since about half an hour after I posted my last comment in the discussion of the last essay I left here, I knew I was wrong — and after today’s disgusting revelation, it’s been cemented.
So, I just had to post SOMETHING here by way of a mea culpa. If anyone cares to discover just HOW fucking awful I’ve been feeling about all this, you have only to peruse my assorted commentary at My Left Wing to see for yourself.
So. There it is.
Christ.
Apr 13 2009
Just Like Bush? My ASS. Obama Lifts Cuba Travel Restrictions
Crossposted from MY LEFT WING
Halle-fuckin’-LUJAH!
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is allowing Americans to make unlimited trips and money transfers to family in Cuba and easing other restrictions Monday to usher in a new era of openness toward the island nation ruled by communists for 50 years.
The formal announcement was being made at the White House Monday afternoon, during presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs’ daily briefing with reporters, a senior administration official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity before the announcement.
With the changes, Obama aims to lessen Cubans’ dependence on the Castro regime, hoping that will lead them to demand progress on political freedoms, the official said. About 1.5 million Americans have relatives on the island nation that turned to communist rule in 1959 when Fidel Castro seized control.
Jesus fucking christ, it is about goddamned time.
Sep 12 2008
Call the Spade a Bloody SHovel
Crossposted from MY LEFT WING
To call a spade a bloody shovel means more than speaking plainly; rather, it means saying something that is true but unpalatable — or impolitic.
During an otherwise stellar appearance on David Letterman’s show last night, Barack Obama missed an opportunity to deliver a kidney punch to John McCain. In my view, this missed opportunity vividly exemplifies a weakness in the election style Democrats have used over the past three decades.
(I’m not saying Obama’s campaign exemplifies this style; to the contrary, despite a few missteps — and who among us could do better? — I submit that, given the fact that Barack Obama has steamrolled over every obstacle thus far, this man just might know better than anyone how to correct the Democratic Party’s mistakes of the past and finally, FINALLY beat these bastards in this rigged game. But I’m making a point here, so… bear with me.)
Letterman asked, and I’m paraphrasing,
“If you’d been able to pick your Vice-Presidential running mate after McCain picked Palin, would you have chosen differently?”
Obama answered — and again, I’m paraphrasing:
“I chose the person I want in the room with me, giving me wise advice and different points of view…”
Intelligent, cogent and sincere.
But I think he should have phrased it thusly:
“Maybe this is another difference between Senator McCain and me:I didn’t pick my running mate because I thought he would help me WIN; I picked him because I thought he would help me GOVERN.”
Stark, simple and true. Did John McCain pick Sarah Palin because he thought she was the best of all possible candidates for the role of Vice-President in a McCain Administration?
The very suggestion is a joke. Nobody could make that suggestion with a straight face unless he worked for McCain or Fox News. McCain picked Palin to help him win the election.
Just one more in an endless series of proofs that John McCain’s campaign slogan of “Country First” is an empty, shallow and insulting lie.