Does This Make You Feel Proud?

Remember when Rush Limbaugh claimed that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were nothing more than the equivalent of fraternity hazings? I defy that fat, lying, morally bankrupt, anal-cyst-picking, drug addicted fuckwad to read this and claim that it's just the equivalent of fraternity hazing. And tell the Hillbilly Heroin Homeboy that it's not leftie propaganda; it's extracted from a 2000-page Army report, dig? Here's a sample that makes me, as a veteran, physically ill.

One captain nicknamed members of the Third Platoon "the Testosterone Gang." Several were devout bodybuilders. Upon arriving in Afghanistan, a group of the soldiers decorated their tent with a Confederate flag, one soldier said.

Some of the same M.P.'s took a particular interest in an emotionally disturbed Afghan detainee who was known to eat his feces and mutilate himself with concertina wire. The soldiers kneed the man repeatedly in the legs and, at one point, chained him with his arms straight up in the air, Specialist Callaway told investigators. They also nicknamed him "Timmy," after a disabled child in the animated television series "South Park." One of the guards who beat the prisoner also taught him to screech like the cartoon character, Specialist Callaway said.

Eventually, the man was sent home.

And I don't buy the Pentagon's bullshit that these are rogue warriors. This shit has official sanction, heavily implied when not explicitly ordered. That's how criminal regimes operate. One of the legacies of the Stalin regime is that Old Joe never actually signed a death warrant or any order explicitly calling for the death or imprisonment of enemies. His subordinates understood what they'd better do . . . or else. Since the Bushits are known for their extreme adherence to loyalty above everything else, what might be the likely outcome from El Presidente's utterances about prisoner treatment?

The platoon had the standard interrogations guide, Army Field Manual 34-52, and an order from the secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, to treat prisoners "humanely," and when possible, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. But with President Bush's final determination in February 2002 that the Conventions did not apply to the conflict with Al Qaeda and that Taliban fighters would not be accorded the rights of prisoners of war, the interrogators believed they "could deviate slightly from the rules," said one of the Utah reservists, Sgt. James A. Leahy.

"There was the Geneva Conventions for enemy prisoners of war, but nothing for terrorists," Sergeant Leahy told Army investigators. And the detainees, senior intelligence officers said, were to be considered terrorists until proved otherwise.

Voila! Bush is responsible for what happens under his watch, especially if his personal determination empowers his subordinates to commit war crimes.

He's bought himself and his cronies a ticket to the Hague as far as I am concerned.

Off to Get a Look Outside America

I don't know if anyone will notice, but for my one or two kind readers, I'm taking a research trip to Berlin and Prague over the next two weeks. The first part of the research is to give me the means to finish a short story collection about the Cold War. The second part is to get a perspective on the United States through the eyes of people not under the steady barrage of Michael Jackson coverage and surrounded by religious extremists trying to destroy the world before God summons them to his right hand in the Rapture. And third, perhaps I'm scoping out a home for future exile.

The Rapture Index, by the way, stands at 149, which means, according to Rapture Ready's website:

Rapture Index of 85 and Below: Slow prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 85 to 110: Moderate prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 110 to 145: Heavy prophetic activity
Rapture Index above 145: Fasten your seat belts

So tighten that sucker down, although if God is going to yank you out of your clothes, your toupee, your gold fillings and your pec implants, I don't see the need for a seat belt, but maybe I'm taking that warning too literally. Of course, that's the whole point for these folks, the "literal word of God," right? Well, they're full of shit, to put it bluntly. Here, from Matthew 24:35, they understood this much :

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

But they conveniently ignore the next verse, Mattew 24:36, which they also must take literally to be consistent, and of course we all know how consistency is a hallmark of the theofascist right wing, yes?

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

No man and no angel know when God will bring the apocalypse, but please, please don't be a dick and spoil the fun of the Rapture Ready people, or puncture the false piety and pretended belief of the likes of Bill "Cat Killer" Frist, or Tom "Giant Flying Cockroach" DeLay or George "I'm a Lying, Simpering, Costume-Wearing Poser" Bush, who play on the hopes and fears of the ignorant to execute their monstrous plans for our country. The apocalypse they will someday experience, if God is indeed just, will be something beyond their most terrible nightmares. And if it buys me a few more turns on the fiery spit over the eternal flames of Satan's blackest pit, I'm still going to gloat when it happens.

Don't spoil the surprise. Get 'em, God!

I'll be blogging as much as I can from Berlin and Prague whenever an internet cafe with good coffee or excellent beer opens upon my path, provided the money holds out, so look for firsthand reports from the former frontier of the Cold War. Since my time there in the 1970s, I am anxious to see if it is still true that "Berlin bleibt doch Berlin."

Newsweek Should Tell McClellan and His Boss Bushie to Fuck Themselves, a la Emperor Cheney

So Newsweek magazine published a story that may (according to Scottie "Mynah Bird" McClellan) or may not (according to Gen. Richard Myers, head of the Joint Chiefs) have contributed to riots in Afghanistan that left 17 people dead. The Bushit administration is going all out nuts on this story, screaming about a disputable and quite indirect effect while still playing us all for suckers when confronted with lies and crimes that have killed tens of thosands of Iraqis, over 1600 Americans, and tens of other coalition soldiers, not to mention while concurrently destroying our credibility worldwide, bankrupting the country, and appealing to a core of the most bigoted extremists in the country.

Am I to believe, then, that an erroneous story about flushing a book down a toilet is more damaging to the US image in the Muslim world than an illegal war, the murder of tens of thousands of innocent Muslims, the systematic and widespread torture of Muslims, many of whom arrested and detained with no due process, in addition to the many treaties pissed upon (Kyoto, ABM, etc.), attempts to jam John "I'm a Fucking Maniac and a Liar" Bolton into the UN, and on and on and on. A few inches in Newsweek merit more attention from the White House than all of that as damaging to our image abroad.

I would say that this in itself is equally, if not more, damaging to our image abroad, because now they know we're a totally deluded nation lacking any sense of proportion or responsibility for anything while we swing our considerable weight arbitrarily around the globe leaving death and rubble in our wake.

But getting back to what may have happened at Guantanamo with regard to the copy of the Koran, Molly Ivins reminds us of what conservative Andrew Sullivan wrote earlier this year:

On Jan. 9, 2005, Andrew Sullivan, writing in The Sunday Times of London, said: "We now know a great deal about what has gone on in U.S. detention facilities under the Bush administration. Several government and Red Cross reports detail the way many detainees have been treated. We know for certain that the United States has tortured five inmates to death. We know that 23 others have died in U.S. custody under suspicious circumstances. We know that torture has been practiced by almost every branch of the U.S. military in sites all over the world -- from Abu Ghraib to Tikrit, Mosul, Basra, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

"We know that no incidents of abuse have been reported in regular internment facilities and that hundreds have occurred in prisons geared to getting intelligence. We know that thousands of men, women and children were grabbed almost at random from their homes in Baghdad, taken to Saddam's former torture palace and subjected to abuse, murder, beatings, semi-crucifixions and rape.

"All of this is detailed in the official reports. What has been perpetrated in secret prisons to 'ghost detainees' hidden from Red Cross inspection, we do not know. We may never know.

"This is America? While White House lawyers were arguing about what separates torture from legitimate 'coercive interrogation techniques,' the following was taking place: Prisoners were hanged for hours or days from bars or doors in semi-crucifixions; they were repeatedly beaten unconscious, woken and then beaten again for days on end; they were sodomized; they were urinated on, kicked in the head, had their ribs broken, and were subjected to electric shocks.

"Some Muslims had pork or alcohol forced down their throats; they had tape placed over their mouths for reciting the Koran; many Muslims were forced to be naked in front of each other, members of the opposite sex and sometimes their own families. It was routine for the abuses to be photographed in order to threaten the showing of the humiliating footage to family members."

The New York Times reported on May 1 on the same investigation Newsweek was writing about and interviewed a released Kuwaiti, who spoke of three major hunger strikes, one of them touched off by "guards' handling copies of the Koran, which had been tossed into a pile and stomped on. A senior officer delivered an apology over the camp's loudspeaker system, pledging that such abuses would stop. Interpreters, standing outside each prison block, translated the officer's apology. A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans."

And by the way, Newsweek's source for their story, remember, was a government source.

I'm leaving for Berlin and Prague in a few days. I'm very interested to hear how Europeans view the ravings that pass for discourse in this country. I have the feeling that my little research trip is going to make my contempt for the mainstream media in this country so much greater that I may come back in an apoplectic state needing serious medication It is likely that my blog entries will be even more incomprehensible ravings. Consider yourselves warned.

Oh, and if you are one of those so offended by the Newsweek article, why don't you first weigh your outrage as if you were a Muslim: Newsweek mistake or tens of thousands of corpses. Come on, get that little peabrain working on it. Can you see the difference?

Back in the Saddle

Your pal Olaf, that is, I (and I shan't use the third person anymore, although it is tempting to adopt that style) have been off securing some semblance of a financial future by working across the divide between art and science. Yes, I've taken on a consulting job, which bangs the rust off some old technical joints and also will refuel the slowly depleting bank account. Although I'd thought I'd turned away permanently from the world of software engineering in late 2001 (terminal burnout combined with the tech implosion), an offer that I can't refuse and which will actually be fascinating and challenging work has plopped into my lap, thanks to an old friend whose generosity extends to giving me a chance to rehone my chops techwise.

So in the intervening days, I've been somewhat inattentive to the news, hustling around getting information, gear, and stuffing information into my noggin that actually will make me some money, as opposed to this solitary ranting that I send into the blogosphere in the hope that someone somewhere might actually read it. Then, after returning from a long day in the Big City, I happened to catch a rebroadcast of Bill Moyers' address last Sunday to the National Conference on Media Reform which had met in St. Louis. Watch this. Read the transcript. All the ranting I have made about mainstream media and how it has been coopted by power to oppress the working people is expressed by Moyers in such an eloquent, logical, and even entertaining manner that I have nothing to add. Here's a sample:

Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control using the government to threaten and intimidate; I mean the people who are hollowing out middle class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class to make sure Ahmad Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq’s oil; I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into Karl Rove’s slush fund; who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets; I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy. That’s who I mean. And if that’s editorializing, so be it. A free press is one where it’s okay to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence.

You're going to hear a lot about this. Mr. Moyers is not going to retire quietly. He recognizes the danger we are in and he knows its source.

This speech is going to go down in history as the watershed moment for the left, and even more importantly, for the beginning of the end of the theofascist extremist attempt at a coup. Mark my words.