when the status quo frustrates.

Justice delayed

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

If you’re outside of Canada, you might not be hearing much these days about the case of the Toronto 18, or the Toronto 17, or the Toronto 11 (the number of suspects charged keeps dwindling as the case against them collapses). They are 15 men, mostly in their early 20s, and five kids, all Muslim, charged in 2006 with an absurd plot to storm the CBC and Parliament and behead the Prime Minister. Two years ago, the mainstream media was congratulating the RCMP for averting disaster, but after charges against four of the men were stayed and one man was acquitted, it is grudgingly coming around to the position that maybe some rights may have been violated here.

I’m not boasting of much when I tell you that I called bullshit from the beginning. I’m not convinced that real terrorists strategize in chat rooms or over e-mail. And more to the point, it appeared even early on in the case that the informant who went to the RCMP, Mubin Shaikh, was compensated rather generously for his help and was likely the mastermind behind the plot, a.k.a. entrapment. He certainly needed the money, given his little cocaine habit. Also, the supposed “terrorist training” that the men and boys engaged in was apparently paintball.

My prediction? The charges against all of them will likely be dropped within the next year or so. I don’t think that there was much of a case to begin with. Whether those responsible—the RCMP, Shaikh, and so on—for what is almost certainly a momentous fuck-up and a miscarriage of justice will ever be held accountable, and whether the accused suspects will see any compensation for their ordeal is a different story. We rest too easily when we think: “Oh, it’s okay, it took awhile but they were acquitted.” Some of these kids were still in high school when they were arrested. What support will they have to get on with their lives?

Anyway, if they didn’t have a reason to storm Parliament in 2006, they might have a little more cause now.

Won’t somebody think of the phone companies?!

Saturday, January 26th, 2008

Hooray! The extremely popular White House wielded its unstoppable positive momentum again this week:

A White House plan to broaden the National Security Agency’s wiretapping powers won a key procedural victory in the Senate on Thursday, as backers defeated a more restrictive plan by Senate Democrats that would have imposed more court oversight on government spying.

The vote moves the Bush administration a step closer toward the twin goals it has pursued for months: strengthening the N.S.A.’s ability to eavesdrop without court approval, while securing legal immunity for the phone companies that have helped the agency in its wiretapping operations.

[...]

After the more restrictive measure was defeated, Caroline Fredrickson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington office, said, “It appears the Senate is buckling under pressure from the White House.”

Pressure? What pressure is the White House in position to exert? This is like Muhammad Ali being sucker-punched by an 8-year-old with a bone disease. Bush remains as unpopular as Nixon ever was; can you imagine the post-Watergate Nixon strong-arming Congress into violating the Constitution *again* after said Congress was elected on a mandate to stop precisely this sort of nonsense?

Ah, but it doesn’t take long to find more evidence of my new favorite theme, the two-sides-of-the-same-coin-ery going on between Republicans and Democrats. Because, really, as the lobbyist with a briefcase full of cash and blow would say, can’t we all just get along?

But Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D., W.Va.) defended the immunity provision, which he supported after reviewing the documents requesting phone company participation. “The companies believed their cooperation was necessary, legal and would help stop future terrorist attacks,” Mr. Rockefeller said. “Whether you agree or not with the president’s legal rationale is a separate issue.”

Hey, that last part almost sounds like a criticism of the White House — Senator Rockefeller better watch out for the kid’s left hook!

Come on, Jay. No phone company could ever have honestly believed that warrant-less wiretapping was legal. Requests to expressly violate contract terms in ways even graduates of Regent University School of Law could see were unconstitutional wouldn’t have made it through their legal departments without being buried in red ink.

But I’m glad someone paid you to feel that way. Again.

McCain ad reveals his one shining moment… and the dirty fetish of GOP faithful

Thursday, October 25th, 2007

I want you to close your eyes and imagine, if you will, that you’re in the following situation…

…Okay, wait, open your eyes, because either you can read with your eyes closed or you’ve stopped reading this post all of a sudden; neither makes me comfortable.

*Anyway,* pretend you’re a doddering Republican presidential hopeful falling behind in the polls. If you were participating in a debate with the other Republican candidates, attacking which of the following topics would score you the most points:

a) Drugs.
b) Rudy Giuliani’s secret desire to be as hip and awesome as you.
c) Hippies. Dirty, commie-loving hippies.
d) Places where people learn things.
e) Spending public money on places where people learn things.
f) Rock music.
g) Fun.
h) Hillary Clinton.
i) All of the above.

Answer after the fold.

(more…)

We’re going back…back to the FUTURE!

Friday, July 27th, 2007

reefer
Lookin’ forward to seeing it in it’s proper musical form

Chasity rings and modesty fetishes aren’t the only way to bring back the ’50s – don’t forget about the scaremongering over the tawdry evils associated with the devil’s weed.

Using marijuana seems to increase the chance of becoming psychotic, researchers report in an analysis of past research that reignites the issue of whether pot is dangerous.

The new review suggests that even infrequent use could raise the small but real risk of this serious mental illness by 40 percent.

If you smoke pot, even once, years later you might go keerr-aazyyy! So kids, when you’re out at the ‘sock hop’ with your ‘steady’ dancing to the tribal rhythms of your ‘rock and roll’ music, you must remember to Just Say No to Mary Jane and hereditary disposition to mental illness or any number of other uncontrollable variables that may affect the validity of the conclusions of this certainly-not-political review of previous scientific literature.*

“The available evidence now suggests that cannabis is not as harmless as many people think,” said Dr. Stanley Zammit, one of the study’s authors and a lecturer in the department of psychological medicine at Cardiff University.

The researchers said they couldn’t prove that marijuana use itself increases the risk of psychosis, a category of several disorders with schizophrenia being the most commonly known.

There could be something else about marijuana users, “like their tendency to use other drugs or certain personality traits, that could be causing the psychoses,” Zammit said.

…They found that people who used marijuana had roughly a 40 percent higher chance of developing a psychotic disorder later in life. The overall risk remains very low.

How shocking! How terrible! How wrong we were lo this past twenty years! Why it’s a good thing these heroically impartial doctors did this literature review now, just at the perfect moment to do something about it!

In the U.K., the government will soon reconsider how marijuana should be classified in its hierarchy of drugs. In 2004, it was downgraded and penalties for possession were reduced. Many expect marijuana will be bumped up to a class “B” category, with offenses likely to lead to arrests or longer jail sentences.

Two of the authors of the study were invited experts on the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs Cannabis Review in 2005. Several authors reported being paid to attend drug company-sponsored meetings related to marijuana, and one received consulting fees from companies that make antipsychotic medications.

*What? Like the shorter DARE slogans are any more effective.

Send those dirty Arkansans back where they came from!

Friday, July 6th, 2007

Hey, you, in Arkansas. How come you talk funny? Where did that strange foreign language you warble out come from? Why don’t you just use English like a normal person?

These, apparently, were the sorts of thoughts running through the mind of Tony Snow yesterday, because his response to Senator Clinton’s lambasting of the dismissal of Libby’s sentence was this:

“I don’t know what Arkansan is for chutzpah, but this is a gigantic case of it,” presidential spokesman Tony Snow said.

Let us forget for a moment that Our Nation’s Leading Spokesperson made the abominable grammatical error “I don’t know what Arkansan is for chutzpah” when he meant to say “I don’t know what the Arkansan word for chutzpah is.” [Well, let us forget it after I make the following wisecrack: Gee, I wonder what's Tony Snow for 'I talk like shit?']

Let us forget that having real guts is a “case” of something to Mr. Snow, meaning he thinks (hopes?) it’s something he can catch.

And let us forget that the title of the article is “Bush aide pokes at Clintons,” which is a little gross and doesn’t even begin to describe who the man insulted.

Rather, let us concentrate on what he did say, which was that, apparently, Arkansans speak a different language than Mr. Snow. Did he mean for this to be a creative way to jab at the pardons issued by the Clinton administration? Of course. Did he wind up expressing it in a way that reveals his prejudice against those “funny talkers” in the South? Kinda looks that way to me.

So let us celebrate that the official spokesperson for the President, the same President who carried the state of Arkansas in 2000 and 2004, believes that the folks nestled in the bosom of Red country are damn near foreigners. And you know how conservatives feel about foreigners who speak different languages, don’t you?

“The risk is that it may resemble defeat.”

Saturday, June 30th, 2007

lowered expectations

From the AP, a truly baffling attempt at analyzing the Mess O’ Potamia: Only Iraqis can win the war. With an intriguing headline like that, I had to read it. I was brimming with questions: Is the AP’s military writer promoting a U.S. defeat? Which Iraqis, exactly, are capable of winning (and who are we supposed to be rooting for, again)? And how will we tell when the war’s over?

Predictably, the article neither raises nor answers any of those questions, but it’s a fine piece of creatively muddled thinking.

The harder President Bush has pushed to win in Iraq, the closer he has come to losing.

The question no longer is whether the U.S. military can fully stabilize Iraq. It cannot.

A promising enough start, if Burns didn’t go on to suggest, in the very next paragraph, that there was some sort of brief shining moment sandwiched between the toppling of Saddam and the beginning of sectarian fighting where the U.S. could have “won.” Rubbish, of course, as a passing knowledge of Iraqi politics tells us that Ba’athist dictatorship was the main factor in keeping the various factions from warring in the first place.

Now only the Iraqis can save Iraq.

They need the U.S. military’s help, no doubt. But the Bush administration has made no secret of the fact that the U.S. troop buildup in Baghdad is simply buying time for the Iraqis to sort out their differences, create a government of national unity and show they can defend themselves.

So it is not whether the U.S. can win the war. It is whether the Iraqis can, which is in great doubt.

Again, we don’t really know who “the Iraqis” are.

(more…)

Bush’s Reality-X coating wears off, facts no longer bead up on his surface to be wiped off with a clean rag. Tired nation neglects to throw joyous parade.

Sunday, March 4th, 2007

Recently, George Bush has been making the type of decisions that a real grown-up president would make. And it only took six years, (*sniff*) they grow up so fast.

I’m actually a bit tapped on outrage now, so it was with perfectly numbed feelings that I read this half-hearted attempt by the Washington Post to put some kind of positive spin on the news that it is “concern for his legacy” (as opposed to “concern for any other goddam person on the planet besides himself”, which I personally would prefer, but hey, you go on living under the leader you got, not neccesarily the leader you want) anyway, that it is “concern for his legacy” that has prompted this new, softer, reality-based behavior.

The same president who mocked the idea of talking with Iran and Syria as recently as two weeks ago is now sending emissaries to a regional conference to talk with Iran and Syria.

For President Bush, last week’s decision was the latest of several reversals on issues on which he once refused to budge…

“It’s not really surprising to me that they’re beginning to change,” said former congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), co-chairman of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, whose report in December recommended opening talks with Iran and Syria. “The realities of the situation are becoming more apparent to them. . . . Presidents begin to focus very much on their legacy, and he recognizes that insufficient progress has been made on some of these international issues.”

You know, I don’t want to be the one to point out the obvious here, but didn’t the PNAC people who architected this clusterfuck think about this for a few decades before they actually got to impliment it? And didn’t a bunch of them have exeperience with Vietnam? And only now, nearly four years after invading Iraq, are they begining to realize that hey, maybe history won’t remember them kindly and perhaps they should stop playing Rambo before the history books start placing Bush’s picture next to Nixon’s over a caption explaining how NOT to run a country during an unethical, unpopular, hopeless war?

I simply don’t have a level of disgust high enough to deal with this situation.

And the Washington Post, what the hell? Your heart is clearly not in your job of licking the administrations soft, warm balls, so why the gloss on this depressing crap? Why the chirping on how double-speak will once again save Bush from the dreaded charge of “flip-flopping” or how his generous concessions to reality will perk up those droopy approval ratings? I don’t expect you to run that “Mission Accomplished” picture over a caption that reads “It’s about fucking time he got his head out of his ass” but you could have put more emphasis on the “it took six years, six friggin’ years, for this guy to actually use diplomacy and it fucking worked and oh, my god, are you so callus as to frame your behaving like a real, live politician as concern for your fucking legacy you selfish prick’ angle of the story.

Dammit, Bob, your piss-poor Photoshopping is helping the terrorists win!

Thursday, February 1st, 2007

Color me utterly unsurprised:

The Bush administration has postponed plans to offer public details of its charges of Iranian meddling inside Iraq amid internal divisions over the strength of the evidence, U.S. officials said.

Back in the heady days of 2003, when Rumsfeld said we know where the weapons are, the Bush folks almost certainly counted on Americans being too wasted at victory parties and too hungover at Saddam parties to remember why we went to war in the first place. It must’ve come as quite a shock to realize that never producing any WMDs would come back to haunt their credibility.

This time around, they’ve learned their lesson. You’ve got to build a credible case using something called evidence (pronounced ev-UH-dense).

Being new to it, their first attempt was particularly unimpressive:

Fortunately, peer review caught the mistakes:

“Jesus, Bob, that doesn’t look like blood.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No, it looks like he’s holding up a wad of silly string. And I don’t think you can actually write a description into the photo. That kinda tips off the doctoring work.”

“Oh.”

“Also, Khomeini’s been dead for almost 20 years, Bob.”

———————————

A return to the drawing board produced Iran Evidence 2.0:

Which also met with disapproval:

“What the hell is this, Bob?”

“Iran’s march into Iraq. The color shows the march.”

“Iran hasn’t marched into Iraq, Bob. That’s not the message.”

“No offense, but maps don’t lie.”

———————————

To wage war with Iran, perhaps the American people just need something that hits home a little heavier, something that shows their interests aren’t just in Iraq, but in our national treasures:

“Oh. My. God.”

“Scary, right?”

“Get the President on the phone. I think we have our evidence. Nice work, Bob.”

———————————-

Just remember, you head it here first.

Let’s make loss and death sexy again!

Saturday, January 13th, 2007

Advertising is as American as apple pie made from the blood of infidels. We are the land of product placement. Our biggest sporting event of the year is equally known for its commercials. And, by God, we’ve got Man Laws.

So it makes sense that the president, facing staunch opposition in and out of his own party, has decided all his delusional double-time death march into Iraq needs is a little salesman spit-shine to get the country on board:

US President George Bush has invited the Republican congressional leadership to his Camp David retreat to shore up political support before a potentially epic constitutional clash over his Iraq troop increase.

With the clamour of protest showing no sign of dying down and senior members of the Bush Administration grilled for a second day in the Senate, the White House embarked on a major effort to try to win back support.

The actual title of the article is even funnier: “Bush faithful to brainstorm ways to sell troop increase.”

As I hear it told in the history textbooks, when the leaders of this country need help, Americans roll up their sleeves like Ronald the Riveter and get to work. Allow me, then, to assist the president and his droogs by offering a few brainstorms of my own on how we might sell the troop increase to our people.

(more…)

Bush administration shows deepening love for Soviets by stealing their mail (policy)

Saturday, January 6th, 2007

Welcome to the new USPS! Formerly the United States Postal Service, the only (official) moneymaking sector of our government has re-christened itself at the behest of the Bush administration as the Unnecessarily Sneaky Privacy Shitter-on-ers:

The White House on Thursday defended a policy allowing the government to open mail without a warrant, despite criticism that the crime-fighting tactic might lead to privacy breaches.

Whenever I talk about privacy, I feel like the curmudgeonly old-timer shaking his stick at the young-uns. “In my day, we valued and protected these things called individual rights! All you kids today, all you care about protecting is your right to myspace and the next season of American Idol. Harrumph.” [shakes cane]

It’s a dead notion, isn’t it? I mean, even if you still care about protecting privacy, do you really still believe it’s possible? If someone wants to find out something about you, they can and will. These days, privacy can only be realized through true anonymity or tremendous wealth. The rest of us are hanging out with the diving guy in the fish bowl, waiting for someone to look at us.

I also find it amusing that the administration famous for blowing the kneecaps off habeas corpus is now taking heat for rummaging through your junk mail, as though they’ve made a sudden and surprising leap off the cliff of integrity. At best, this is just another branch they’ve hit during the descent.

Don’t get me wrong, though. It still sucks.

Bush administration and Postal Service officials said citizens’ mail remains constitutionally protected from unreasonable search and seizure. But White House spokesman Tony Snow said the United States needs to have the power to inspect mail in emergencies.

Ah, emergencies. Right. Based on their response to Katrina, Bush’s famous facial expression after being told of the attacks on the World Trade Center, and the level of risk Saddam Hussein actually presented to the United States, this executive branch may need help understanding what an emergency actually is.

Perhaps a checklist would be helpful:

  1. Have lots of people died, or are they presently dying?
  2. Will the federal government’s failure to act or intervene certainly cause many more people to die?
  3. Are you making up your answer to question #2?
  4. Seriously, have you checked with someone who doesn’t stand to make lots of money off the answer to question #2?
  5. Have more people died since you started reviewing this checklist? If so, this is probably an emergency.

The mail controversy erupted Wednesday after a report in the New York Daily News that President Bush on Dec. 20 attached a so-called signing statement to a new postal law. The statement grants the government the authority during emergencies to bypass a law forbidding mail to be opened without a warrant.

Snow said Bush was simply reiterating authority the government already has under the law.

Because manufacturing redundant laws through unconstitutional means is an ancient tradition of the office of the president.

U.S. Postal Service spokesman Thomas Day concurred. “The president is not exerting any new authority,” he said.

He also added, “And they told me if I didn’t say that, they’d feed me to Dick Cheney’s soul demon.”

Snow did not say what emergency circumstances might warrant inspections of the mail.

I would refer Mr. Snow to the checklist for assistance.

Brian Walsh, a lawyer at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the authority likely would only be used in extreme cases, such as if police learned a bomb or an envelope containing anthrax or another biohazard was in the mail.

If the government didn’t have the authority for prompt inspections, the mail — particularly overnight delivery — could become “a courier service for drug dealers or terrorists,” Walsh said.

Could become? Every time the Post Office delivers mail to or from the White House, it’s already acting as a courier service for terrorists. I’d also wager more than one anti-choice or NRA nutjob has sent a call to violence through our postal service. It would really help if Mr. Walsh got current on the haps, particularly the strong conservative move towards terrorism.

Bottom line: bad shit is going to get sent through the mail no matter what, and no amount of privacy destruction will stop it. The most annoying part about that is most wingnuts know this. Without the postal service, they’d have a much tougher time getting their child porn.

The American Civil Liberties Union said such “deliberate ambiguity” was troublesome.

I bet I know whose mail’s getting searched first!

Pat Robertson: liar, terrorist, or messenger of a dickweed?

Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007

Ah, the new year. A time of resolutions and rejuvenation. For the first bit of January, it seems like everyone’s an optimist about the upcoming 12 months.

After all, who knows? Maybe you’ll get that new job you’ve been angling for. Maybe that itch will turn out to be just a rash. Or maybe we’ll all get blown to bits:

Evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday that God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would cause a “mass killing” late in 2007.

“I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” he said during his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network.

“The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”

Robertson said God told him about the impending tragedy during a recent prayer retreat.

God also said, he claims, that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.

(h/t Pam)

Now you know why Pat Robertson is my official patron saint of Christmas cheer:

I bring tidings of Jesus’ love to all the little boys and girls!

Unfortunately for him, Pat’s revelation leaves us picking from three options to believe, none of which make him look too good.

The first choice is that he’s full of something other than Jesus’s love — say, for argument’s sake, shit. In that case, there will be no bomb, there will be no mass death, and Pat’s just trying to see if he’s got the power to raise our alert level by himself. A cynical person might even say he’s attempting to scare voters into remaining loyal to the hate-and-war machine of the far right.

If so, Pat fumbled at the goal-line. I can practically hear the PA in his earpiece shouting “No, no! 2008! 2008! The presidential election’s in 2008!” after Pat muttered that terror will strike “sometime after September” in 2007, can’t you? Because, come January ’08, we’ll still be here, and all the folks who’ve been shivering in the corner for eleven-and-a-half months will be pissed enough to consider voting Dem.

The second choice is that Pat knows there will be an attack, but not because he’s in league with God. Rather, it’s because he’s in cahoots with the terrorists. This = bad for Pat for several reasons. One, if his version of God is real, that God’s gonna have the holy hell whupped out of ol’ Pat for eternity for helping the terrorists win. Two, those terrorists aren’t going to have much use for an elderly white Christian in the new regime of the DevilKoran. Three, Pat is clearly bad at keeping secrets (like, say, that a giant surprise attack is coming), which means it’s only a matter of time until he slips up and mentions his wicked awesome spelunking vacation in the foothills of Afghanistan with his buddy “‘Sama.” I doubt his other good buddy Howard Dean will appreciate that, don’t you?

The third choice is that Pat is telling the truth. He and God are tight, God gave him a heads-up about some major pending carnage, and Pat’s passing the dutchie on the left hand side. Should this be the case, Pat has finally given us proof that his God is an asshole.

Imagine if I told you your car was gonna blow up, and I knew when and where so you could avoid it, but decided not to give you that last little detail. You’d be pissed . And you wouldn’t truck with the old “you’ll learn a valuable lesson from this,” either.

I hope Pat knows that’s how a lot of us are going to feel about God if this comes true. The Bible’s full of His selfish, spiteful viciousness — the kind you see from spoiled rich kids who start torturing animals just so they can feel something — but I would like to think God’s done some growing up in the last couple thousand years. If Pat’s not fibbing, though, I’m left to conclude that God’s still an immature, manipulative prick and that I’d be happier hanging out with the Devil. At least you know what you’re getting with that guy.

Veiling (discussions by white people who don’t know what they’re talking about) sucks

Tuesday, October 17th, 2006

Reading this thread at Feministe made several highly salient points magically appear in my head about the Veiling Debate that’s been going on:

1) Why am I the only white person in the world it seems who knows that muslim women are not actually commanded by their religion to veil in front of children – which means she’s veiling to avoid the male gaze of her colleagues not the children – according to the Quran? I’m pretty sure I read a english translation of the Quran at some point unless I secretly learned arabic without me realising, so I’m kinda shocked to see so many people who are so utterly unclear about that point, I’d assume it’d be like having at least a passing knowledge of the bible – sort of fundamental to commenting about islam and most of the geo-political hoo-haa surrounding the various islamophobic pogroms really.

2) Last I checked it was illegal for a woman to wander around without a top on in most american states, where are the legions of anti-mandatory-chest-covering protestors? It’s the same principle and I really could have done with out the mandatory bra + shirt combo I had no choice about wearing back in the summer – covered breasts do also seem to send crazies (like ann althouse or John “The Pedobear” Derbyshire) into a complete tizzy so it would save everyone a lot of trouble really because so many people freak out at covered chests and just can’t stop staring for some reason.

Oh, and it’s fucked up to ingringe on people’s personal liberty to wear whatever the hell they like or not just because some crazy white asshole finds something offensive – like that’s anyone’s problem but their own.

3) If a class of 6 – 12 year olds needs to see the teachers lips to understand her (which I’m sure has nothing to do with a presumption by anyone about her ability to speak english – because I’m sure everyone knows that like all most (innit!) british muslims she speaks english better and more eloquently than pretty much any and all canadians ever will), then I assume she has the training to deal with a special ed class and when she say “the kids can understand me fine” (as she has done) we can pretty much take her word on it – and if she’s teaching deaf kids she should need to be able to sign anyway and that she wears a niqab is an incidental side note that isn’t really relevent.

But having said all that, I really do have to agree with all the rest of the knee jerk white reationaries that it’s about time Britain and America both started to deal with the scandal that is muslims wearing hoods on their head. (more…)