Tag: accountability

Prediction: No Senior Official will Ever be Prosecuted for Torture

I like to think of myself as a realist. That doesn’t mean that I don’t subscribe to ideals, or that I don’t work hard in my own way to bring those ideals to fruition. In my youth, the way I worked was different, perhaps best described by lines from the song:

Once there was a silly old ram

Thought he could punch a hole in the dam

No one could make that ram scram

He kept buttin’ that dam

‘Cause he had high hopes…

Somewhere along the way, however, I kinda realized that the tag line to the song wasn’t quite correct; that old million kilowatt dam never did go kerplop, and all I had for my efforts — both figuratively and literally — was a bloody head.  

They Hanged Julius Streicher Didn’t They?

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I would like to take an opportunity to recommend a piece from a friend of mine, William Cormier who has written today on the role of the mouthpieces in the fascist propaganda machine in the crimes that they so eagerly encourage. Such an essay is especially important to bring awareness to with the $40 million a year ‘populist’ spokesman for the anti-American virulent Republican party form of dead-ender fascism that is the last bastion of scoundrels trying to save their think tank paymasters, the malefactors of great wealth who have subsidized their careers and purchased the media from which they belch their hate and bile. Now with the paymasters of the extremist right in The Homeland doing their damn level best to incite violence, revolution and a crusade against the hated libruls, brown-skinned devils, commies, gays and every other scapegoat that could be invoked at the snakepit of sin and stupidity that was this week’s CPAC bund conference it is imperative that we ask the forbidden question.

How complicit are the establishment hatemongers in the crimes that they have done so much to endorse and in many cases encourage? In my personal opinion, and I have brought this up recently in my own writings – the propagandists and the whores in the media should no longer be able to cower behind the defense of free-speech as a shield as they and the oligarchy that employs their sordid services use the First Amendment as a shield from behind which they can use their money as ‘free speech’ while seeking to destroy the rights of everybody else.

So without further adieu, I present the following with the request that it be taken into account just how complicit that the purveyors of hatred are in the crimes of those that they encourage to commit.

Denial is no excuse, not any longer, not when the stakes are this high. The smell from those smokestacks downwind from Auschwitz wasn’t from freshly baked apple pie.

Trials for Torturers

Re-banning torture is fine – but it’s hardly enough.

The-Whole-World-is-Watching

Torture is one of those words that is just too easy to say.  The facility with which it slides off the tongue belies its terrible gravity.  

The act of torture is cruelty personified.  It is easily among the most horrific deeds of which we are capable.  What could be worse?  Murder and genocide I suppose…but little else.

Not ready to “Make Nice”

The music is easy music but the underlying motivation for having posted it is one of great unease.

JeffLieber opined on DD that it is our own fault we have no influence on government.

THEY are avoiding us because they simply do not think that we — the FAR LEFT — can be reasoned with.

THEY believe, and somewhat rightly so, that we are much more interested in clinging to our self-righteous fury then in being able to manage our disappointments and seeking compromise so they show up when its time for the cash or the grass-roots jolt of energy and then disappear when it comes time to legislate.

THEY believe we are the extremists, no more “reality based” than those at Little Green Footfungus because every slight seems to wipe away YEARS of good governance on issues we care about.

I will counter below, as OPOL did brilliantly in his own counter-essay. I’ll let his delineation of the crimes stand. He said it perfectly, and spoke for me on that account.

We have to deal with these guys…and not by making nice with them.  These people are dangerous.  Our laws are meant to protect us from people like this, and we need to see that they do.  This is no time to look the other way.

Do I want truth and reconciliation?  No sir!  I want trials and convictions.  We can talk about reconciliation after we’ve settled a few accountability issues.  How about someone taking responsibility for a change?

The video will tell you I’m not ready to make nice either.

Naked Emperors and Shoeless Heroes



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In the story of The Emperor with No Clothes, it was a child, in the end, who was the only one who spoke up. The Emperor in all his “glory” paraded down the street wearing nothing but the self-delusion of his grandeur, and still not one soul had the courage to call the man for what he was – less than an empty suit.

And as the citizenry watched in horrified silence as their emperor strutted his detachment from reality down the street, it was a child who, in her young innocence of political correctness and the social pecking order had the common sense to ask, “Why isn’t the Emperor wearing any clothes?”

At which time all hell broke loose.

Truth and Reconciliation My Ass! America’s Accountability Moment

I believe in compassion, mercy and forgiveness…but when great and grievous wrong has been done, you don’t skip straight to forgiveness.  No, the first stop on the path to redemption is called justice.

When former governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and secretary of state of Alabama, Don Siegleman gets thrown in federal prison for 9 months for being a progressive democrat and has to go around the country begging for justice once they finally let him out on appeal bond (fruitlessly I might add – they never did vote contempt for Karl Rove) then something is desperately wrong in this country.

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In Their Boots

Brave New Foundation: In Their Boots Webcast 18

Topic: Employment After Service Beyond Basic Training Chapter 1

Originally aired on October 29th, 2008

Beyond Basic Training

After being medically retired from the Army, Iraq veteran Kevin Randolph and his family are without options. They move to a transitional housing facility, and Kevin must enter one of the worst job markets in recent history to support his wife and their new baby.

the “A” word

i’m miles away from home. it’s morning here and the polls haven’t opened back home yet. i wonder how late i can stay awake tonight…

cross posted at Daily Kos and Wild Wild Left

Urgent Message for America from Woody Guthrie

America has been stolen from us by our own filthy rich.  My grasp of the dismal science of economics is simple and unsophisticated but I’ve spent far too much time among thieves not to know theft when I see it.  In what is by far the biggest robbery in history, the ‘haves and have mores’ have taken not only all that we have, but all that we’ll ever have.  They have stolen the very future from our children and grandchildren.  If we continue to take it lying down, we deserve what we get.  

It wasn’t supposed to be this way in America.

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Bad Pragmatism pt. 3: Common Sense Principles for a Crappier World

I know your attention is probably better devoted to some good, popular diaries which have made the rec list today: One Pissed Off Liberal’s jeremiad against the crooks, for instance, or Nightprowlkitty’s harrowing story of detention.  This is simply a short reflection upon the recent history of bad pragmatism, the political trend which decks itself out in colors of “realism” and “pragmatism” (while attempting to present a moral face to the world) but is in fact just plain wrong.

This diary will only confront three rhetorical principles of bad pragmatism: “bipartisanship,” “teacher accountability/ test them every year” and “fiscal prudence.”  More will be forthcoming.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

“I don’t swim in your toilet, so don’t pee in my…”

On January 12, 2008, I posted a piece titled Smarter Parts: Improving Efficient Energy Use and Demand? that touched upon an experimental program sponsored out of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The essence of the program was to create a home energy system that could respond to changing prices and peak demand loads by dialing back energy consumption. The system would be accessible via the internet so homeowners could make changes in absentia. An update to the story included another article indicating that in 2009, California regulators may have direct access to homeowner thermostats via radio-controlled devices in new or substantially modified houses and buildings to manage electricity shortages — a plan cooked up by the California Energy Commission (CEC).

I opened a discussion thread for the piece in a few places, including several Delphi forums. In one thread,1 some energy and water efficiency ideas came up. One in particular spawned the short poll that you’re about to see. Please read on, and take the poll; results will be published at the end of next week and included in another piece that I will cross-post in all areas where this appears.

Time to DEMAND Accountability

As Congress voted to grant telecoms immunity, I ask myself… what does this mean, in the larger sense?

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