Is Bush planning to see 2005 out with a bang?

And no, I'm not talking about him doing the horizontal mambo with Laura. We all know he only did that once; other than that he's got JimmyJeff and Scotty in a sling.

No, Bush's hard-on as we head into New Year's Eve is for even more war, and Der Spiegel is saying that it's going to be Iran this time:

Recent reports in the German media suggest that the United States may be preparing its allies for an imminent military strike against facilities that are part of Iran's suspected clandestine nuclear weapons program.

It's hardly news that US President George Bush refuses to rule out possible military action against Iran if Tehran continues to pursue its controversial nuclear ambitions. But in Germany, speculation is mounting that Washington is preparing to carry out air strikes against suspected Iranian nuclear sites perhaps even as soon as early 2006.

[snip]

According to Ulfkotte's report, "western security sources" claim that during CIA Director Porter Goss' Dec. 12 visit to Ankara, he asked Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide support for a possibile 2006 air strike against Iranian nuclear and military facilities. More specifically, Goss is said to have asked Turkey to provide unfettered exchange of intelligence that could help with a mission.

According to DDP, during his trip to Turkey, CIA chief Goss reportedly handed over three dossiers to Turkish security officials that purportedly contained evidence that Tehran is cooperating with Islamic terror network al-Qaida. A further dossier is said to contain information about the current status of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program. Sources in German security circles told the DDP reporter that Goss had ensured Ankara that the Turkish government would be informed of any possible air strikes against Iran a few hours before they happened. The Turkish government has also been given the "green light" to strike camps of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iran on the day in question.

The DDP report attributes the possible escalation to the recent anti-Semitic rants by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose belligerent verbal attacks on Israel (he described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map") have strengthened the view of the American government that, in the case of the nuclear dispute, there's little likelihood Tehran will back down and that the mullahs are just attempting to buy time by continuing talks with the Europeans.

Same old damn story, with one exception: the element of needing to go to war because the Iranian president dissed Israel and is a Holocaust denier. Well, so is Joerg Haider, but you didn't see us invading Austria when he was running things there, now, did you? This is going to be an unpopular opinion in some places, but isn't it time that we started allowing Israel to fight its own battles? After all, they do it so much better than we do. Their leaders are smarter and more organized, and they aren't the chronic fuckups of the ilk which populates the current American regime.

No, when the chips are down, Bush needs to kill a few thousand people to make himself feel better. And it looks like his New Year's gift to the world is going to be an expanded war.

He's going to need a distraction of this magnitude, because Forbes is reporting that Jack Abramoff is getting ready to sing like the late Harry Caray at the 7th Inning Stretch at Wrigley Field:

Federal prosecutors and lawyers for Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff consulted briefly Friday with a federal judge in Miami as they put the finishing touches on a plea deal that could be announced as early as Tuesday, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.

The plea agreement would secure the lobbyist's testimony against several members of Congress who received favors from him or his clients.

For months, prosecutors in Washington have focused on whether Abramoff defrauded his Indian tribe clients of millions of dollars and used improper influence on members of Congress.

In a five-year span ending in early 2004, Indian tribes represented by the lobbyist contributed millions of dollars in casino income to congressional campaigns, often routing the money through political action committees for conservative members of Congress who opposed gambling.

Abramoff also provided trips, skybox fundraisers, golf fees, frequent meals, entertainment and jobs for lawmakers' relatives and aides.

Kidan and Abramoff bought SunCruz from Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, who was slain in 2001 in a gangland-style hit in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Investigators say Boulis and Kidan were fighting for control of SunCruz; Kidan has denied any involvement in Boulis' death.

Three men were arrested in September on murder charges in Boulis' killing and are awaiting trial.

Michael Scanlon, another former Abramoff associate, pleaded guilty in November in a separate case in Washington.

Scanlon said he helped Abramoff and Kidan buy SunCruz by persuading Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, to insert comments into the Congressional Record that were "calculated to pressure the then-owner to sell on terms favorable" to Abramoff and Kidan.

Abramoff knows where all the bodies are buried. Depending on whether he sings the 45-second "Rock 'n' Roll Girlfriend" section from "Homecoming", or if he's planning on singing "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida", Republicans could be dropping like flies.

But will anyone notice while we're nuking Iran?

Why does Pfizer hate Jesus?

Gee whiz, you'd think all the anti-sex Christofascist Zombies would be all up in arms about Pfizer's new Viagra ad campaign, which is essentially, "It's New Year's Eve! Get Laid!" But they are sileng; it's AIDS groups saying the ad gives the impression that Viagra is a party drug:

A major AIDS advocacy and treatment group on Friday asked drugmaker Pfizer Inc. to pull advertisements encouraging use of the impotence pill Viagra on New Year's Eve, blasting the ads as recklessly encouraging recreational use of the drug.
"What are you doing on New Year's Eve?" a smiling gray-haired man asks in a full-page advertisement that ran in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. The ad reads: "Fact: Viagra can help guys with all degrees of erectile dysfunction -- from mild to severe."

The Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation criticized the latest print ads as promoting Viagra as a party drug and encouraging risky sexual behavior.

"Not only does sending this reckless message contribute to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, but it is also part of a pattern of irresponsible direct-to-consumer advertising by the drug industry," said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS group, in a statement.

And here I thought sexual restraint was part and parcel of the Christofascist agenda. I guess that only applies to women.

Wil Wheaton's heart-to-heart with his folks

Wil Wheaton's Salon article (on which I blogged last week) created a bit of a shitstorm in his family. So at Wheaton's request to all who blogged on the story, I'm linking to his follow up at Daily Kos.

I think Wheaton is wearing a bit too much hair shirt here, triggered by the use by his parents of the Guilt-o-Matic 5000 WiFi Gnawing Self Doubt Generator, but I think that if publication of this story made his parents examine their views a bit and open some family dialogue, it's not a bad thing.

Letting the Butcher of Uzbekistan do our dirty work

Remember the meme that we had to get rid of Saddam Hussein because he was a Very Bad Man? This meme of course succeeded the one about having to get rid of Saddam Hussein because he had weapons of mass destruction.

Well, we've been cozying up to another Very Bad Man in the person of Uzbekistan president Islam Karamov. The Bush Administration really likes Karamov a lot, because like them, Karamov really gets a woody from torturing people.

I'm reposting from Americablog, with permission:

**********************************************
Markos has the story, and I'm repeating the gist of it here to help get it out there. Feel free to copy and past this entire post on your blog.

Basically, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, is livid about the fact that the US and the British governments have been gladly accepting information from Uzbekistan procured by torture. You may remember that Amb. Murray was none too pleased with the horrendous human rights situation in Uzbekistan - the country is one of the most repressive on the planet - and as a result the Tony Blair, most likely with some US nudging, had Amb. Murray removed from his job. (You can read a chilling speech by Ambassador Murray detailing the Soviet police state that we are supporting in Uzbekistan.)

Well, today Ambassador Murray gets his revenge.

Amb. Murray has published a number of confidential British government documents proving that the US and the UK were conding torture in that abominable country. Tony Blair is now striking back, pulling down Amb. Murray's Web site. UK bloggers responded by doing a coordinated leak to get the documents out to the public. Markos has republished the docs to make sure they remain public, and I'm doing the same below.

Our government is sanctioning and benefiting from torture in one of the most repressive regimes in the world. A regime that we openly embraced after September 11. A regime that many of you will recall was torturing gay journalist and human rights advocate Ruslan Sharipov (the Uzbek government arrested Ruslan for being a human rights advocate, then, after beating him, threatened to rape him with a bottle and inject him with AIDS). These are the people that George Bush has buddied up to to fight this honorable war. The worst governments on the planet - people who make the Soviets look downright nice.

And who else do you think personally was sucking up to the Uzbek dictator just a couple of years ago? Donald Rumsfeld. The same man who sucked up to Saddam Hussein before we decided he was evil.



This is not America.

UK Torture Memos

Source.

The first document contains the text of several telegrams that Craig Murray sent back to London from 2002 to 2004, warning that the information being passed on by the Uzbek security services was torture-tainted, and challenging MI6 claims that the information was nonetheless "useful".

The second document is the text of a legal opinion from the Foreign Office's Michael Wood, arguing that the use by intelligence services of information extracted through torture does not constitute a violation of the UN Convention Against Torture.

Craig Murray says:

In March 2003 I was summoned back to London from Tashkent specifically for a meeting at which I was told to stop protesting. I was told specifically that it was perfectly legal for us to obtain and to use intelligence from the Uzbek torture chambers.

After this meeting Sir Michael Wood, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's legal adviser, wrote to confirm this position. This minute from Michael Wood is perhaps the most important document that has become public about extraordinary rendition. It is irrefutable evidence of the government's use of torture material, and that I was attempting to stop it. It is no wonder that the government is trying to suppress this.

First document: Confidential letters from Uzbekistan

Letter #1
Confidential
FM Tashkent
TO FCO, Cabinet Office, DFID, MODUK, OSCE Posts, Security Council Posts

16 September 02

SUBJECT: US/Uzbekistan: Promoting Terrorism
SUMMARY

US plays down human rights situation in Uzbekistan. A dangerous policy: increasing repression combined with poverty will promote Islamic terrorism. Support to Karimov regime a bankrupt and cynical policy.

DETAIL

The Economist of 7 September states: "Uzbekistan, in particular, has jailed many thousands of moderate Islamists, an excellent way of converting their families and friends to extremism." The Economist also spoke of "the growing despotism of Mr Karimov" and judged that "the past year has seen a further deterioration of an already grim human rights record". I agree.

Between 7,000 and 10,000 political and religious prisoners are currently detained, many after trials before kangaroo courts with no representation. Terrible torture is commonplace: the EU is currently considering a demarche over the terrible case of two Muslims tortured to death in jail apparently with boiling water. Two leading dissidents, Elena Urlaeva and Larissa Vdovna, were two weeks ago committed to a lunatic asylum, where they are being drugged, for demonstrating on human rights. Opposition political parties remain banned. There is no doubt that September 11 gave the pretext to crack down still harder on dissent under the guise of counter-terrorism.
Yet on 8 September the US State Department certified that Uzbekistan was improving in both human rights and democracy, thus fulfilling a constitutional requirement and allowing the continuing disbursement of $140 million of US aid to Uzbekistan this year. Human Rights Watch immediately published a commendably sober and balanced rebuttal of the State Department claim.

Again we are back in the area of the US accepting sham reform [a reference to my previous telegram on the economy]. In August media censorship was abolished, and theoretically there are independent media outlets, but in practice there is absolutely no criticism of President Karimov or the central government in any Uzbek media. State Department call this self-censorship: I am not sure that is a fair way to describe an unwillingness to experience the brutal methods of the security services.

Similarly, following US pressure when Karimov visited Washington, a human rights NGO has been permitted to register. This is an advance, but they have little impact given that no media are prepared to cover any of their activities or carry any of their statements.
The final improvement State quote is that in one case of murder of a prisoner the police involved have been prosecuted. That is an improvement, but again related to the Karimov visit and does not appear to presage a general change of policy. On the latest cases of torture deaths the Uzbeks have given the OSCE an incredible explanation, given the nature of the injuries, that the victims died in a fight between prisoners.

But allowing a single NGO, a token prosecution of police officers and a fake press freedom cannot possibly outweigh the huge scale of detentions, the torture and the secret executions. President Karimov has admitted to 100 executions a year but human rights groups believe there are more. Added to this, all opposition parties remain banned (the President got a 98% vote) and the Internet is strictly controlled. All Internet providers must go through a single government server and access is barred to many sites including all dissident and opposition sites and much international media (including, ironically, waronterrorism.com). This is in essence still a totalitarian state: there is far less freedom than still prevails, for example, in Mugabe's Zimbabwe. A Movement for Democratic Change or any judicial independence would be impossible here.

Karimov is a dictator who is committed to neither political nor economic reform. The purpose of his regime is not the development of his country but the diversion of economic rent to his oligarchic supporters through government controls. As a senior Uzbek academic told me privately, there is more repression here now than in Brezhnev's time. The US are trying to prop up Karimov economically and to justify this support they need to claim that a process of economic and political reform is underway. That they do so claim is either cynicism or self-delusion.

This policy is doomed to failure. Karimov is driving this resource-rich country towards economic ruin like an Abacha. And the policy of increasing repression aimed indiscriminately at pious Muslims, combined with a deepening poverty, is the most certain way to ensure continuing support for the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. They have certainly been decimated and disorganised in Afghanistan, and Karimov's repression may keep the lid on for years – but pressure is building and could ultimately explode.

I quite understand the interest of the US in strategic airbases and why they back Karimov, but I believe US policy is misconceived. In the short term it may help fight terrorism but in the medium term it will promote it, as the Economist points out. And it can never be right to lower our standards on human rights. There is a complex situation in Central Asia and it is wrong to look at it only through a prism picked up on September 12. Worst of all is what appears to be the philosophy underlying the current US view of Uzbekistan: that September 11 divided the World into two camps in the "War against Terrorism" and that Karimov is on "our" side.

If Karimov is on "our" side, then this war cannot be simply between the forces of good and evil. It must be about more complex things, like securing the long-term US military presence in Uzbekistan. I silently wept at the 11 September commemoration here. The right words on New York have all been said. But last week was also another anniversary – the US-led overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile. The subsequent dictatorship killed, dare I say it, rather more people than died on September 11. Should we not remember then also, and learn from that too? I fear that we are heading down the same path of US-sponsored dictatorship here. It is ironic that the beneficiary is perhaps the most unreformed of the World's old communist leaders.
We need to think much more deeply about Central Asia. It is easy to place Uzbekistan in the "too difficult" tray and let the US run with it, but I think they are running in the wrong direction. We should tell them of the dangers we see. Our policy is theoretically one of engagement, but in practice this has not meant much. Engagement makes sense, but it must mean grappling with the problems, not mute collaboration. We need to start actively to state a distinctive position on democracy and human rights, and press for a realistic view to be taken in the IMF. We should continue to resist pressures to start a bilateral DFID programme, unless channelled non-governmentally, and not restore ECGD cover despite the constant lobbying. We should not invite Karimov to the UK. We should step up our public diplomacy effort, stressing democratic values, including more resources from the British Council. We should increase support to human rights activists, and strive for contact with non-official Islamic groups.

Above all we need to care about the 22 million Uzbek people, suffering from poverty and lack of freedom. They are not just pawns in the new Great Game.

MURRAY

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter #2
Confidential
Fm Tashkent
To FCO

18 March 2003

SUBJECT: US FOREIGN POLICY
SUMMARY

1. As seen from Tashkent, US policy is not much focussed on democracy or freedom. It is about oil, gas and hegemony. In Uzbekistan the US pursues those ends through supporting a ruthless dictatorship. We must not close our eyes to uncomfortable truth.

DETAIL

2. Last year the US gave half a billion dollars in aid to Uzbekistan, about a quarter of it military aid. Bush and Powell repeatedly hail Karimov as a friend and ally. Yet this regime has at least seven thousand prisoners of conscience; it is a one party state without freedom of speech, without freedom of media, without freedom of movement, without freedom of assembly, without freedom of religion. It practices, systematically, the most hideous tortures on thousands. Most of the population live in conditions precisely analogous with medieval serfdom.

3. Uzbekistan's geo-strategic position is crucial. It has half the population of the whole of Central Asia. It alone borders all the other states in a region which is important to future Western oil and gas supplies. It is the regional military power. That is why the US is here, and here to stay. Contractors at the US military bases are extending the design life of the buildings from ten to twenty five years.

4. Democracy and human rights are, despite their protestations to the contrary, in practice a long way down the US agenda here. Aid this year will be slightly less, but there is no intention to introduce any meaningful conditionality. Nobody can believe this level of aid – more than US aid to all of West Africa – is related to comparative developmental need as opposed to political support for Karimov. While the US makes token and low-level references to human rights to appease domestic opinion, they view Karimov's vicious regime as a bastion against fundamentalism. He – and they – are in fact creating fundamentalism. When the US gives this much support to a regime that tortures people to death for having a beard or praying five times a day, is it any surprise that Muslims come to hate the West?

5. I was stunned to hear that the US had pressured the EU to withdraw a motion on Human Rights in Uzbekistan which the EU was tabling at the UN Commission for Human Rights in Geneva. I was most unhappy to find that we are helping the US in what I can only call this cover-up. I am saddened when the US constantly quote fake improvements in human rights in Uzbekistan, such as the abolition of censorship and Internet freedom, which quite simply have not happened (I see these are quoted in the draft EBRD strategy for Uzbekistan, again I understand at American urging).

6. From Tashkent it is difficult to agree that we and the US are activated by shared values. Here we have a brutal US sponsored dictatorship reminiscent of Central and South American policy under previous US Republican administrations. I watched George Bush talk today of Iraq and "dismantling the apparatus of terror… removing the torture chambers and the rape rooms". Yet when it comes to the Karimov regime, systematic torture and rape appear to be treated as peccadilloes, not to affect the relationship and to be downplayed in international fora. Double standards? Yes.

7. I hope that once the present crisis is over we will make plain to the US, at senior level, our serious concern over their policy in Uzbekistan.
MURRAY

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter #3

CONFIDENTIAL
FM TASHKENT
TO IMMEDIATE FCO

TELNO 63
OF 220939 JULY 04

INFO IMMEDIATE DFID, ISLAMIC POSTS, MOD, OSCE POSTS UKDEL EBRD LONDON, UKMIS GENEVA, UKMIS MEW YORK

SUBJECT: RECEIPT OF INTELLIGENCE OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

SUMMARY

1. We receive intelligence obtained under torture from the Uzbek intelligence services, via the US. We should stop. It is bad information anyway. Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the US and UK to believe, that they and we are fighting the same war against terror.

2. I gather a recent London interdepartmental meeting considered the question and decided to continue to receive the material. This is morally, legally and practically wrong. It exposes as hypocritical our post Abu Ghraib pronouncements and fatally undermines our moral standing. It obviates my efforts to get the Uzbek government to stop torture they are fully aware our intelligence community laps up the results.

3. We should cease all co-operation with the Uzbek Security Services they are beyond the pale. We indeed need to establish an SIS presence here, but not as in a friendly state.

DETAIL

4. In the period December 2002 to March 2003 I raised several times the issue of intelligence material from the Uzbek security services which was obtained under torture and passed to us via the CIA. I queried the legality, efficacy and morality of the practice.

5. I was summoned to the UK for a meeting on 8 March 2003. Michael Wood gave his legal opinion that it was not illegal to obtain and to use intelligence acquired by torture. He said the only legal limitation on its use was that it could not be used in legal proceedings, under Article 15 of the UN Convention on Torture.

6. On behalf of the intelligence services, Matthew Kydd said that they found some of the material very useful indeed with a direct bearing on the war on terror. Linda Duffield said that she had been asked to assure me that my qualms of conscience were respected and understood.

7. Sir Michael Jay's circular of 26 May stated that there was a reporting obligation on us to report torture by allies (and I have been instructed to refer to Uzbekistan as such in the context of the war on terror). You, Sir, have made a number of striking, and I believe heartfelt, condemnations of torture in the last few weeks. I had in the light of this decided to return to this question and to highlight an apparent contradiction in our policy. I had intimated as much to the Head of Eastern Department.

8. I was therefore somewhat surprised to hear that without informing me of the meeting, or since informing me of the result of the meeting, a meeting was convened in the FCO at the level of Heads of Department and above, precisely to consider the question of the receipt of Uzbek intelligence material obtained under torture. As the office knew, I was in London at the time and perfectly able to attend the meeting. I still have only gleaned that it happened.

9. I understand that the meeting decided to continue to obtain the Uzbek torture material. I understand that the principal argument deployed was that the intelligence material disguises the precise source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual who is tortured. Indeed this is true – the material is marked with a euphemism such as "From detainee debriefing." The argument runs that if the individual is not named, we cannot prove that he was tortured.

10. I will not attempt to hide my utter contempt for such casuistry, nor my shame that I work in and organisation where colleagues would resort to it to justify torture. I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there is any doubt as to the fact

11. The torture record of the Uzbek security services could hardly be more widely known. Plainly there are, at the very least, reasonable grounds for believing the material is obtained under torture. There is helpful guidance at Article 3 of the UN Convention;
"The competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the state concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights." While this article forbids extradition or deportation to Uzbekistan, it is the right test for the present question also.

12. On the usefulness of the material obtained, this is irrelevant. Article 2 of the Convention, to which we are a party, could not be plainer:

"No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

13. Nonetheless, I repeat that this material is useless – we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful. It is designed to give the message the Uzbeks want the West to hear. It exaggerates the role, size, organisation and activity of the IMU and its links with Al Qaida. The aim is to convince the West that the Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, that they should keep the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and that they should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic reform.

14. I was taken aback when Matthew Kydd said this stuff was valuable. Sixteen months ago it was difficult to argue with SIS in the area of intelligence assessment. But post Butler we know, not only that they can get it wrong on even the most vital and high profile issues, but that they have a particular yen for highly coloured material which exaggerates the threat. That is precisely what the Uzbeks give them. Furthermore MI6 have no operative within a thousand miles of me and certainly no expertise that can come close to my own in making this assessment.

15. At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.

16. I have been considering Michael Wood's legal view, which he kindly gave in writing. I cannot understand why Michael concentrated only on Article 15 of the Convention. This certainly bans the use of material obtained under torture as evidence in proceedings, but it does not state that this is the sole exclusion of the use of such material.

17. The relevant article seems to me Article 4, which talks of complicity in torture. Knowingly to receive its results appears to be at least arguable as complicity. It does not appear that being in a different country to the actual torture would preclude complicity. I talked this over in a hypothetical sense with my old friend Prof Francois Hampson, I believe an acknowledged World authority on the Convention, who said that the complicity argument and the spirit of the Convention would be likely to be winning points. I should be grateful to hear Michael's views on this.

18. It seems to me that there are degrees of complicity and guilt, but being at one or two removes does not make us blameless. There are other factors. Plainly it was a breach of Article 3 of the Convention for the coalition to deport detainees back here from Baghram, but it has been done. That seems plainly complicit.

19. This is a difficult and dangerous part of the World. Dire and increasing poverty and harsh repression are undoubtedly turning young people here towards radical Islam. The Uzbek government are thus creating this threat, and perceived US support for Karimov strengthens anti-Western feeling. SIS ought to establish a presence here, but not as partners of the Uzbek Security Services, whose sheer brutality puts them beyond the pale.

MURRAY

Second Document - summary of legal opinion from Michael Wood arguing that it is legal to use information extracted under torture:

From: Michael Wood, Legal Advisor

Date: 13 March 2003

CC: PS/PUS; Matthew Kidd, WLD

Linda Duffield

UZBEKISTAN: INTELLIGENCE POSSIBLY OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE

1. Your record of our meeting with HMA Tashkent recorded that Craig had said that his understanding was that it was also an offence under the UN Convention on Torture to receive or possess information under torture. I said that I did not believe that this was the case, but undertook to re-read the Convention.

2. I have done so. There is nothing in the Convention to this effect. The nearest thing is article 15 which provides:

"Each State Party shall ensure that any statement which is established to have been made as a result of torture shall not be invoked as evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture as evidence that the statement was made."

3. This does not create any offence. I would expect that under UK law any statement established to have been made as a result of torture would not be admissible as evidence.

[signed]

M C Wood
Legal Adviser

Is this what we want our country to stand for? Is this how the Bush Administration thinks we're going to sell the American way to the world?

Americans have tolerated the most vile kinds of atrocities from our leaders in the name of "fighting the war on terror." We have been frightened into submission by the events of 9/11/01, but instead of those events making us want to fight for what America stands for, we have been complicit in turning our country into the same kind of ruthless, repressive, outlaw regime we profess to be fighting. That our leaders read the Bible and theirs read the Koran doesn't matter. Both sides are led by evil men. In order to successfully fight the evil men on the other side, we have to work to remove the evil men on our side from office.

American Idiots

Who would have thought back in 1994 that a punk version of Paul McCartney would pen the song that best encapsulates America in the Bush years?

Read these poll numbers and weep:

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Dec. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- More than four years after the
attacks of September 11, 2001, many U.S. adults still believe some of the
justifications for the invasion of Iraq, which have now been discredited,
according to a new Harris Poll. For example:

-- Forty-one percent (41%) of U.S. adults believe that Saddam Hussein had
"strong links to Al Qaeda."
-- Twenty-two percent (22%) of adults believe that Saddam Hussein "helped
plan and support the hijackers who attacked the United States on
September 11."
-- Twenty-six percent (26%) of adults believe that Iraq "had weapons of
mass destruction when the U.S. invaded."
-- Twenty-four percent (24%) of all adults believe that "several of the
hijackers who attacked the United States on September 11 were Iraqis."

Now, these numbers hovering around 25% are the solid core of Bush supporters -- the women who wish they could be his Monica Lewinsky, the Christofascists who think he's one of them, the people who, like George W. Bush, can't admit that they were wrong, and those still so fear-crazed about Scary Arab Men that they can't see they have more to fear from the dictatorial ambitions and the sheer ineptitude of the current Administration. But still -- one in four people still believing this is pretty damn scary.

(hat tip: Atrios)

Brokeback Mountain is doing just fine without the protests, thank you

The Christofascist zombies who thought that Brokeback Mountain would die a quiet death if they just ignored it must be gnashing their teeth, because on a per-screen basis, Ang Lee's film boasted a higher per-screen average than either of the big "family-friendly" films King Kong OR The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:

The Ang Lee film, which follows the 20-year forbidden romance between two roughneck ranch hands, earned $13,599 per theater, compared with $9,305 for weekend winner “King Kong” and $8,225 for “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”

[snip]

“It delivered very strong growth in what is truly a highly unforgiving, competitive, cruel market at this Christmas period,” said Jack Foley, president of theatrical distribution for Focus Features. “It showed it has breadth beyond the gay community.”

Distributors planned to roll out the film slowly. It opened in just six theaters, where it earned an “unprecedented” $109,000 per venue, said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office tracker Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc.

The film expanded to 69 theaters the following week, then to 217 over the holiday weekend, reaching suburban audiences in Portland, Dallas, Denver and Atlanta.

The gradual release allows moviegoers to talk up the film’s appeal, Foley said.

And it seems to be working.

“This is a film that builds through word of mouth and critical acclaim,” Dergarabedian said. “People want to see what all the fuss is about.”

Response has been so robust that distributors are expanding the film’s rollout ahead of schedule. It will show on 269 screens this Friday, and reach an additional 80 markets the following week, Foley said.

Still, he acknowledges that bringing a homosexual love story to the Bible Belt presents its own set of challenges. Various Christian groups voiced opposition to the film before its release.

Ted Baehr, who reviews films for the Christian Film & Television Commission, called the film “abhorrent” and “twisted, laughable, frustrating and boring neo-Marxist homosexual propaganda” in a review on the Commission’s MovieGuide Web site.

But based on the film’s reception in Atlanta and Dallas, Foley said he expects it will be well received in other markets.

“We’re rolling it out ahead of schedule because the demand is there,” he said.

Ever-building buzz can only help “Brokeback,” Dergarabedian said.

Granted, per-screen average isn't necessarily the statistic on which most people focus, but it does indicate a pattern of supply and demand, and clearly the demand is there for this film. Whether it's simple curiosity, a desire to see the most talked-about film of the season, the kind of groundswell that a film which really IS that good ordinarily generates, or the word-of-mouth which reassures the potentially squeamish that there is NOTHING in this film to make anyone but the most rabid Christofascist closet case upset, Brokeback Mountain is so far looking like the milestone it promised to be. Whether this is the beginning of a trend or a one-shot remains to be seen, but the film's success does show that the right-wing noise machine has overestimated its ability to influence popular culture where gay issues are concerned.

Honey, I'll keep the icepick warm till you read this blog entry

This one's for Mr. Brilliant, who is a huge Miles Davis fan.

Seems that an old album cover in which Miles is holding a cigarette is a bad influence on America's youth, so in a new compilation CD, the cigarette has been Photochopped.

Amanda at Pandagon found it, and she says:

What exactly is the point of this? Is this some kind of attempt to convince novice jazz fans that there's nothing sexy cool about lounging around with a contemplative look on your face and a cigarette in your hand? If there is, odds are it's too late--someone who's picking up a Miles Davis compilation, whether they are already a fan or not, probably already has an image of jazz being a music made under a cover of cigarette smoke.

Next up: A new Jerry Garcia compilation in which he's eating fruit roll-ups.

A new twist on "Buh...buh...buh...but CLINTON..."

Now we don't only justify anything the Bush Administration does by saying "Clinton did it too" or "Clinton did something worse", now we hang the suit of clothes on Clinton to say what he WOULD have done:

Appearing on "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert this week, two broadcast veterans, Tom Brokaw of NBC and Ted Koppel, agreed that the press shouldn't be faulted too harshly for not questioning more deeply the claims of WMD in Iraq -- and declared that Bill Clinton would have gone into Iraq just like George Bush if he was still president after 9/11.

Along with Russert, they also argued that it was a "uniformly held belief" that Saddam Hussein had WMD when the Iraq war began.

Here is the relevant excerpt from the transcript.

***

KOPPEL: Do we have a right to ask critical -- not just a right; do we have an obligation to ask critical questions? And did we fall short of that prior to the Iraq War? That's a perfectly legitimate point, and I think we all have to plead guilty, to one degree or another, to having been, you know, a little bit soft on the administration beforehand.

But in large measure, when the president and his top people tell you, as they did, "Here's our perception of what exists. Here's our perception of the danger to the United States. Here's our perception of a relationship between this guy who has weapons of mass destruction and the group that just blew up the Pentagon and the World Trade Center," I don't know that reporters as a whole can sit there and say, "Oh, hokum. You know, it's just not true." We can raise questions, and I...

BROKAW: Given the absence of hard evidence.

KOPPEL: Hard evidence. Right.

BROKAW: There was not -- you know, the French intelligence were sharing the same conclusions with the administration. I thought -- I agree with you that I don't think that we pushed hard enough for vigorous debate. I think that on Capitol Hill that the debate was anemic, at best. You had -- Ted Kennedy and Senator Byrd, really, were the only ones speaking out with any kind of passion in the Senate, the people who...

RUSSERT: And they were not questioning whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

BROKAW: No. No. No.

RUSSERT: That seemed to be a uniformly held belief.

BROKAW: Right. Yeah.

KOPPEL: Nor did the Clinton administration beforehand.

BROKAW: No.

KOPPEL: I mean, the only difference between the Clinton administration and the Bush administration was 9/11.

BROKAW: Right.

KOPPEL: If 9/11 had happened on Bill Clinton's watch, he would have gone into Iraq.

BROKAW: Yeah. Yeah.

And these are the eminences grises of American journalism. Jesus H. Christ on a Bicycle. My eyeballs are incapable of rolling far enough. Journalists? These guys sound like the nimrods in my town who sit around the A&P drinking coffee after watching Fox and Friends in the morning.

Is Mike Malloy's icepick handy? I need to drive it into my own skull to stop the pain.

(hat tip: Americablog)

King George

Problem is, Bush really thinks he IS the king:

As I was saying to a fellow peasant just the other day, it is ironic that this country should rebel against one King George only to bow down before another monarch of the same name more than 200 years later.

That our own King George -- he of the House of Bush -- is truly of royal blood has become clear in recent days with the announcement that he has empowered the National Security Agency to spy on whomsoever and whatsoever it wishes under royal decree.

Happily for him if not his subjects, this cannot be challenged by the picky laws and constitutional concerns that rule us poor common folk. It cannot be challenged because he says so, which is the traditional way of kings.

Previously, before His Majesty assumed his sovereign powers, the president -- as he was then quaintly known -- had to go to a secret court if he wanted permission for his agents to snoop on enemies within the realm. The esteemed judges of this court would take out their official rubber stamp, and the matter would be handled satisfactorily for all concerned except for the knaves and scoundrels, hopefully not all of them Democrats.

Although a rubber stamp administered in secret was about the same covering for civil liberties as a lace pasty applied to an exotic dancer, the common people nevertheless rested easily, because a genuflection had been made to their beloved Constitution.

But kings do not bow down before anyone or anything. It is for us, the commoners, to prostrate ourselves before their highnesses. Thus did King George decree that it was too risky for the security of his kingdom to rely on a rubber stamp, which, after all, might wear out.

Moreover, it was insulting for his agents to be kept waiting while the judges came in from the golf course.

So he reasoned that, as he was fighting a war, one that conveniently for him was never going to end, he could do anything he liked because he was the king, or the commander in chief in the old manner of speaking. Laws, shmaws -- what were they to one so noble?

Now everything is changed. Faith-based policies have rediscovered the divine right of kings. I hope the royal court realizes that I am writing this in the groveling position like the uncouth but humble person that I am.

To show my fealty, I tug my forelock in the old ritual of subservience except that I haven't got a forelock, as a result of male pattern baldness, and therefore, as a substitute, I tug my back mullet-lock in all honor and obedience.

I pray King George for his gentle forbearance because he has said that even discussing his new royal powers may aid the enemy. Of course, the last thing I wish to do is aid the enemy. It's just that the old habit of free speech dies hard.

Now that King George has enthroned himself, it is only right that he assume the other trappings of monarchy. May I, his lowly and worthless servant, suggest a coat of arms? Perhaps a church built on the ruins of the wall of separation between church and state. Maybe lobbyists rampant on a field of money.

More...

An embarrassment of 8 PM programming riches

Because I am a semicentenarian, and can no longer burn the candle at both ends and still show up for work the next day, I can't stay up till midnight to watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, so we usually watch it the next night at 8 PM.

The problem is that Keith Olbermann is on at 8 PM. Good thing TDS and TCR are in reruns this week, because otherwise we would have missed Olbermann's smackdown of both Bill O'Reilly AND John Gibson last night. It was truly a thing of beauty. If you didn't see it, Crooks and Liars has the video, or you can read the transcript:

At the end of June we began to devote about 90 seconds out of each news-hour to a feature called "The Worst Persons In The World."

The mighty and the anonymous alike have made the nightly list -- from Robert Novak to Scott Peterson to the Ronald McDonald who held up a Wendy's.

And up until now, though well over 200 people have earned the dishonor, we've never had a complaint.

Our number three story on the Countdown: we have a complaint.

Evidently John Gibson and Bill O'Reilly of Fox News don't like being considered among the Worst Persons In The World, even though they clearly are.

O'Reilly first.

He was funnier.

Last week the Big Giant Head did some sort of year-end wrap-up of his rants and distortions.

It was a self-loofah'ing of congratulation, for the nightly disaster his program means for the truth.

"Speaking of disasters, our competitor at MSNBC is a notorious smear merchant. So far this month, December, The Factor's third rerun at 4:00 in the morning has beaten the MSNBC's original 8:00 program more than 50 percent of the time. Unbelievable."

A couple of things here: We never claimed O'Reilly's program doesn't draw vastly more viewers than does this one. To borrow a phrase -- hey, 800 billion flies can't be wrong.

But it is curious, isn't it, that he brands me a "smear merchant" and yet instead of trying to refute even one of the hateful things we've quoted him as saying or doing, he instead turns to the ratings.

That's probably because the only things we've "smeared" O'Reilly with have been his own quotes.

To borrow another phrase -- when you're as guilty as he is... change the subject.

Unfortunately I now have to change the subject to John Gibson, and this is greatly painful because I really don't know why he's decided to try to destroy himself, but he has.

O'Reilly, after all, is one of those blissful idiots who can rationalize anything. That doing this enough usually results in a nervous breakdown, is well-known, and his clock is clearly ticking, in that regard.

But even he is not so functionally stupid as to deny saying things that are preserved on tape, which is what Mr. Gibson is doing. Let me flash you back to the day he made the Worst Persons list.

But the winner, and this one comes with great personal pain, because we were friends when he worked here and thereafter, John Gibson.

Selling his new book about this phony baloney war on Christmas, John revealed a very ugly side to himself. He is one of those people who think all religions but his are mistaken. You know, the way a lot of these religious nut bag terrorists think. I would think, Gibbie said on a syndicated radio show. if somebody is going to be -- have to answer for following the wrong religion, they are not going to have to answer to me. We know who they're going to have to answer to.

I'd tell you which religion, John, thinks is the only one that's right, but what's the difference? It's not the faith that's the issue. It's the intolerance. John Gibson, today's worst person in the world.

John first complained about that on his radio program. Then he went to town on television.

"I find myself being misquoted or the actual words I've said taken way way way out of context in order to build outrage against me...

Names like 'fathead' and the 'worst something or other' for things I really did not say…

Today one of my former colleagues repeated a misquote to justify saying some truly disgusting things about me. Condescendingly, he 'tisk tisked' that he used to like me. I frankly doubt it. Otherwise, why would he be so willing to believe trash?"

Well, John, I believed it because it's true. And it's on tape.

I'm afraid he is, at best, suffering from amnesia. At worst, he's just flat-out pretending something never happened.

John Gibson's remarks about religions being wrong and those who believe them having to answer for them, came on a show hosted by a Janet Parshall, broadcast by Salem Radio Network, on November 17th -- and they're on tape. The website Media Matters for America has a transcript and an audio link, and I'm afraid there's no ambiguity whatsoever.

GIBSON: The whole point of this is that the tradition, the religious tradition of this country is tolerance, and that the same sense of tolerance that's been granted by the majority to the minority over the years ought to go the other way too. Minorities ought to have the same sense of tolerance about the majority religion -- Christianity -- that they've been granted about their religions over the years.

PARSHALL: Exactly. John, I have to tell you, let me linger for a minute on that word "tolerance." Because first of all, the people who like to promulgate that concept are the worst violators. They cannot tolerate Christianity, as an example.

GIBSON: Absolutely. I know -- I know that. PARSHALL: And number two, I have to tell you, I don't know when they held this election and decided that tolerance was a transcendent value. I serve a god who, with a finger of fire, wrote, he will have no other gods before him. And he doesn't tolerate sin, which is why he sent his son to the cross, but all of a sudden now, we jump up and down and celebrate the idea of tolerance. I think tolerance means accommodation, but it doesn't necessarily mean acquiescence or wholehearted acceptance.

GIBSON: No, no, no. If you figure that -- listen, we get a little theological here, and it's probably a bit over my head, but I would think if somebody is going to be -- have to answer for following the wrong religion, they're not going to have to answer to me. We know who they're going to have to answer to.

PARSHALL: Right.

GIBSON: And that's fine. Let 'em. But in the meantime, as long as they're civil and behave, we tolerate the presence of other religions around us without causing trouble, and I think most Americans are fine with that tradition.

Now, there is always the possibility -- however remote -- that that wasn't John Gibson, but merely some kind of professional John Gibson Impersonator.

In which case, that guy is clearly the Worst Person of All-Time.

Or an evil twin, maybe.

Otherwise... that's really the whole shebang right there. That phrase "wrong religion" actually sounds worse in context, doesn't it?

It's the same kind of misunderstanding and perversion of religion to which we react in horror when we see it in terrorists who have twisted religions for their own purposes.

Might as well have been commentators on some All-Access Al-Qaeda show on Al-Jazeera talking about infidels.

And by the way, don't you get this creepy feeling of embarrassment when somebody trying desperately to be holier-than-thou, promptly mis-quotes the bible?

"I serve a god who, with a finger of fire," you just heard Janet Parshall say, "wrote, he will have no other gods before him.

Actually, Ms. Parshall, as any of us who've actually read the bible know, the first commandment is "thou shalt have no other gods before me."

That's not just a difference in pronouns. He's demanding exclusivity from those who believe in him. Nothing in there saying other people can't serve other gods in which they believe.

Sorry. I've strayed from the main topic, probably because it is awfully painful.

Whether he thinks me insincere or not, I really did like Gibby. Hard-working, always there to cover a shift, or help out in any way he could. Now, instead, he's denying he said some truly despicable things -- things recorded for posterity -- and worse, he's now trying to blame those hateful things on me.

Ordinarily when somebody gets caught saying something as intolerant as this, their choices are a) to apologize, b) to resign, or c) to make sure there's no tape and try to lie their way out of it.

John chose "d" -- blame it on somebody else.

The audio clip is the definitive answer, and I would hope John would now have the self-respect to acknowledge what he said, and to leave the airwaves for good.

Because, between the remark and the denial, he has -- sadly -- forfeited his right to stay here.

He. Was. Not. Kidding.

As much as I love Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, methinks they must needs be relegated to the PVR box...

Mission Accomplished

What Bush hath wrought in Iraq:

Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan.

Five days of interviews with Kurdish leaders and troops in the region suggest that U.S. plans to bring unity to Iraq before withdrawing American troops by training and equipping a national army aren't gaining traction. Instead, some troops who are formally under U.S. and Iraqi national command are preparing to protect territory and ethnic and religious interests in the event of Iraq's fragmentation, which many of them think is inevitable.

The soldiers said that while they wore Iraqi army uniforms they still considered themselves members of the Peshmerga -- the Kurdish militia -- and were awaiting orders from Kurdish leaders to break ranks. Many said they wouldn't hesitate to kill their Iraqi army comrades, especially Arabs, if a fight for an independent Kurdistan erupted.

''It doesn't matter if we have to fight the Arabs in our own battalion,'' said Gabriel Mohammed, a Kurdish soldier in the Iraqi army who was escorting a Knight Ridder reporter through Kirkuk. ``Kirkuk will be ours.''

The Kurds have readied their troops not only because they've long yearned to establish an independent state but also because their leaders expect Iraq to disintegrate, senior leaders in the Peshmerga -- literally, ''those who face death'' -- told Knight Ridder. The Kurds are mostly secular Sunni Muslims, and are ethnically distinct from Arabs.

Their strategy mirrors that of Shiite Muslim parties in southern Iraq, which have stocked Iraqi army and police units with members of their own militias and have maintained a separate militia presence throughout Iraq's central and southern provinces. The militias now are illegal under Iraqi law but operate openly in many areas. Peshmerga leaders said in interviews that they expected the Shiites to create a semi-autonomous and then independent state in the south as they would do in the north.

The Bush administration -- and Iraq's neighbors -- oppose the nation's fragmentation, fearing that it could lead to regional collapse. To keep Iraq together, U.S. plans to withdraw significant numbers of American troops in 2006 will depend on turning U.S.-trained Kurdish and Shiite militiamen into a national army.
The interviews with Kurdish troops, however, suggested that as the American military transfers more bases and areas of control to Iraqi units, it may be handing the nation to militias that are bent more on advancing ethnic and religious interests than on defeating the insurgency and preserving national unity.

There will be no western-style unified democracy in Iraq. Iraq is now, thanks to George W. Bush's Oedipal issues and the lunatic drive for empire of the PNAC crowd, the second coming of Yugoslavia -- a land full of warring factions, who were held together by a less-than-savory dictator, who are now loaded for bear to pick up right where they left off.

Have we won yet?

The terrorists have already won

If they wanted to destroy American democracy and American freedom, they've succeeded. If they just wanted to help their good friend George W. Bush consolidate dictatorial power, they've succeeded.

One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help.

If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled.

Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat -- and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated.

If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas -- and call such procedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them.

If someone had predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marie Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy -- and that the populace would be more interested in whether Angelina is about to make Brad a daddy -- I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy.

That's no America I know, I would have argued. We're too strong, and we've been through too much, to be led down such a twisted path.

What is there to say now?

All of these things have happened. And yet a large portion of this country appears more concerned that saying ''Happy Holidays'' could be a disguised attack on Christianity.

[snip]

President Bush recently confirmed that he has authorized wiretaps against U.S. citizens on at least 30 occasions and said he'll continue doing it. His justification? He, as president -- or is that king? -- has a right to disregard any law, constitutional tenet or congressional mandate to protect the American people.
Is that America's highest goal -- preventing another terrorist attack? Are there no principles of law and liberty more important than this? Who would have remembered Patrick Henry had he written, ``What's wrong with giving up a little liberty if it protects me from death?''

Bush would have us excuse his administration's excesses in deference to the ''war on terror'' -- a war, it should be pointed out, that can never end. Terrorism is a tactic, an eventuality, not an opposition army or rogue nation. If we caught every person guilty of a terrorist act, we still wouldn't know where tomorrow's first-time terrorist will strike. Fighting terrorism is a bit like fighting infection -- even when it's beaten, you must continue the fight or it will strike again.
Are we agreeing, then, to give the king unfettered privilege to defy the law forever? It's time for every member of Congress to weigh in: Do they believe the president is above the law, or bound by it?

Bush stokes our fears, implying that the only alternative to doing things his extralegal way is to sit by fitfully waiting for terrorists to harm us. We are neither weak nor helpless. A proud, confident republic can hunt down its enemies without trampling legitimate human and constitutional rights.

Who needs terrorists? We have an insane president with royalist AND dictatorial ambitions, and a pussyass frightened population that doesn't give a rat's ass about the precepts the country they profess to live stands for.

(hat tip: Americablog)

The Seven Things meme

I've been tagged by Pam:

Seven Things To Do Before I Die
* finish my first novel
* write my second novel
* write my third novel
* get all my novels published
* Finally do that damn refacing job on my kitchen cabinets. I've had the doors and veneers for a year and a half now.
* Have enough money to retire so I can read
* Cruise the Greek Islands
* Stay healthy and sharp into my 90's

Seven Things I Cannot Do
* put my leg behind my head
* watch more than 1/2 hour of South Park
* watch Stephen Seagal movies
* remember how to program in C
* remember everything I have to do
* left-crossovers in ice skating
* kung-fu

Seven Things That Attract Me to...Blogging
* I need to rant on a regular basis
* I'm a compulsive talker
* It allows me to embrace my inner geek
* It's a hell of a lot easier than 'zine culture was
* Everyone is entitled to my opinion
* Bloggers are the nicest people. (Well, mostly)
* If I can get myself together to update my template, it's even creative.

Seven Things I Say Most Often
* Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle
* Maggie, shut the fuck up*
* Maggie, put a sock in it*
* Maggie, get out of the sink*
* Have I mentioned today how much I hate these people?
* Good morning, sweetie
* All right, where the hell did I put my keys?

*Maggie is a cat

Seven Books That I Love
I wish I had more time to read...
* The Stand
* Susan Howatch's Church of England series
* Keeping Faith (Jodi Picoult)
* The Secret Life of Bees
* God Knows
* Studs Lonigan
* The original L. Frank Baum Oz books

Seven Movies That I Watch Over and Over Again
* The Shawshank Redemption
* A Clockwork Orange
* It Happened One Night
* Empire of the Sun
* The Limey
* Jude
* Club Paradise

Seven People I Want To Join In Too
* ModFab
* Nick
* Beth
* Lynn
* Tami
* Tata
* Deb

A seductress, a transvestite, a cop, Kris Kringle, and Judge Reinhold jerking off

These are some of the indelible images from films deemed by the National Film Registry to "continue to have cultural, historical or aesthetic significance".

The films are:

“Baby Face” (1933)
“The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man” (1975)
“The Cameraman” (1928)
Commandment Keeper Church, Beaufort, S.C., May 1940 (1940)
“Cool Hand Luke” (1967)
“Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (1982)
“The French Connection” (1971)
“Giant” (1956)
“H2O” (1929)
“Hands Up” (1926)
“Hoop Dreams” (1994)
“House of Usher” (1960)
“Imitation of Life” (1934)
Jeffries-Johnson world championship fight (1910)
“Making of an American” (1920)
“Miracle on 34th Street” (1947)
“Mom and Dad” (1944)
“The Music Man” (1962)
“Power of the Press” (1928)
“A Raisin in the Sun” (1961)
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975)
San Francisco earthquake and fire, April 18, 1906 (1906)
“The Sting” (1973)
“A Time for Burning” (1966)
“Toy Story” (1995)

I wonder if the 32% who cited Fast Times at Ridgemont High as their favorite from this list are the same 32% who still think Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11 and that George W. Bush is a good, honest, Christian man.

Don't get me wrong; I can deconstruct the Jeff Spicoli Family Tree of Movie Stoners with the best of them, but as charmingly dour as Fast Times is, I don't know that I'd put it ahead of The Sting or Cool Hand Luke.

And where the hell is Say Anything on this list, anyway?

Pres. Clinton's cat was subject to more House oversight than Bush's illegal wiretaps

Pensito Review:

Compare and contrast:

1995: Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), then chair of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, investigated whether taxpayers were footing the cost of stationery and postage for the fan club dedicated to President Clinton’s cat, Socks. (They were not - and it turns out Barbara Bush’s dog Millie had a fan club too.)

2005: Two weeks ago, President Bush admitted he willfully flouted a law that requires him to get warrants before wiretapping U.S. citizens. His justification for ignoring the law appears to be nobless oblige. In reaction, Republicans in charge of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced on Friday that they are planning “oversight” hearings into the matter.
The president has admitted he broke the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) hundreds of times. Isn’t it a bit late for “oversight?”

Somehow I don't think these people are targets of NSA spying

via Frederick Clarkson from Daily Kos comes a story about a women's health clinic bombing -- a story you probably didn't hear about on your evening news, because it didn't involve Scary Arab Men:

Shreveport fire investigators today asked the public for help in finding the people who threw a firebomb outside an abortion clinic.

The Dec. 12 incident did not hit the Hope Medical Group for Women clinic on Kings Highway.

Security camera videotape, released by investigators today, shows a car pull into the parking lot and a woman get out on the passenger side. She is seen throwing the device at the clinic and then fleeing.

No arrests have been made.

"This is not a crime to be taken lightly," Shreveport Fire Department spokesman Brian Crawford said. "It's an arson crime -- and because of the nature of this crime, someone could also be charged with domestic terrorism as well."

I guess in George W. Bush's America, people who bomb health clinics in the name of "saving babies" aren't really terrorists. Bicycle messengers and antiwar marchers, however, are.

2006@B@B

As 2005 lumbers towards an end and we heave a sigh of relief, it's going to be a slow news week -- a good time to reveal some of our plans for B@B in 2006, assuming I can get my semicentenarian act together enough to do them all.

First, we're going to have the Brilliant 25 of 2005, later this week. While by no means an exhaustive list, these are some of the people who made 2005 bearable, whether through their political courage or their role as entertainers bringing the fun to life in America.

Then, in 2006, we are going to have a radical redesign. This canned template has served us well, but its time is long past, so we'll be redecorating. I figure if I'm going to be continuing to get my physical world house in order, it's time to get my virtual one in order.

We're also going to start featuring some advertising, to which I hope you'll click through so this site can start generating a few shekels.

Most importantly, you're going to see B@B reflect more cultural phenomena in 2006. Those of you who know me know that I have been doing online movie reviews since 1998, most of that time at Mixed Reviews, along with my blogbrother Gabriel from Modern Fabulousity. Mixed Reviews is still going to exist in some form or another, and its archives will remain available. But we're hoping to retool it into a culture blog portal, which you can visit to see what's going on at the best cultural blogs. I'll be continuing to write periodic movie reviews, largely filtered through a cultural context, along with the occasional foray into television and music. And the popular Mixed Reviews feature Critics Over Coffee will be cross-posted here and at ModFab. You'll see our thoughts on Casanova ("the OTHER Heath Ledger movie") later this week.

I hope you'll all join me in this journey.

Looks like Total Information Awareness is alive and well after all

The Administration hasn't just been conducting illegal wiretaps, they're data mining on a huge scale:

The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified.

In other words, when they have no leads and nothing concrete on threats, they want to just continually monitor ALL communications of ALL Americans. And they expect us to trust them that they are ONLY looking for patterns that might point to terrorist suspects? What a crock...especially since we KNOW that they're spying on left-leaning groups.

(Speaking of which, it turns out that the story of the Dartmouth student being visited by Homeland Security because he requested Mao's red book from the library is a hoax. Friggin' asshole kid. He's just set it up so that now the Sabbath Gasbags can claim that there's no validity to ANY of it.)

Meanwhile, in other Big Brother is Watching You news, we now know the real reason the Bush Administration wants Samuel Alito to be comfirmed -- and it has nothing to do with Roe v. Wade:

The attorney general should be immune from lawsuits for ordering wiretaps of Americans without permission from a court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, wrote in a memorandum in 1984 as a government lawyer in the Reagan administration.

The memorandum, released yesterday by the National Archives, made recommendations concerning a lawsuit against former Attorney General John N. Mitchell over a wiretap he had authorized without a court's permission in 1970. The government was investigating a plot to destroy underground utility tunnels in Washington and to kidnap Henry A. Kissinger, the national security adviser.

The White House said yesterday that the issues discussed in that memorandum were not the same as those posed by President Bush's orders to the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on international communications without warrants.

"Judge Alito's memo regarding a purely domestic threat is completely different from N.S.A.'s efforts to thwart threats from foreign terrorist organizations," said Steve Schmidt, a White House spokesman.

In a letter to Judge Alito, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said yesterday that he would question him vigorously about his current views on whether the attorney general and other top officials "have absolute immunity from suits based on even willful unconstitutional acts."

In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled that wiretaps without warrants in the context of domestic intelligence surveillance violated the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. The court did not address international communications.

"I do not question that the attorney general should have this immunity," Judge Alito wrote in 1984, arguing that top officials should not be subject to liability for damages for decisions relating to national security, including when they knowingly violated the law. But he counseled against appealing the issue to the Supreme Court, for two reasons.

"Absolute immunity arguments are difficult to pursue successfully," he wrote. "Because we now must argue that the official should be immune from violating clearly established legal standards," there is a "high risk of failure."

A second reason for not appealing, he wrote, was a 1978 law, the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, that "clarified the procedure in this area and probably reduced in large measure the potential for future litigation."

That law, which is at the center of the current controversy, created the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, which considers and issues warrants for gathering intelligence in the United States. The administration did not seek permission from that or any other court for the recently disclosed monitoring.

In his 1984 memorandum, Judge Alito urged his superiors to await a different legal vehicle, presumably one not tied to the abuses of the Nixon administration, to make the argument that top officials were free to violate the law.

"Our chances of persuading the court to accept an absolute immunity argument would probably be improved in a case involving a less controversial official and a less controversial era," he wrote.

Alito is right in synch with the Bush/Cheney vision of the imperial, unaccountable, dictatorial presidency. THAT'S why they want him.

Any Democrat or libertarian-leaning Republican who votes to confirm this guy ought to be run out of town on a rail next November.

This is what should have happened here in 2000 and 2004

It seems Iraqis value the process of democracy more than we do:

Large demonstrations broke out across the country Friday to denounce parliamentary elections that protesters say were rigged in favor of the main religious Shiite coalition.

Several hundred thousand people demonstrated after noon prayers in southern Baghdad Friday, many carrying banners decrying last week's elections. Many Iraqis outside the religious Shiite coalition allege that the elections were unfair to smaller Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups.

"We refuse the cheating and forgery in the elections," one banner read.

During Friday prayers at Baghdad's Umm al-Qura mosque, the headquarters of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a major Sunni clerical group, Sheik Mahmoud al-Sumaidaei told followers they were "living a conspiracy built on lies and forgery."

"You have to be ready during these hard times and combat forgeries and lies for the sake of Islam," he said.

Sunni Arab and secular Shiite factions demanded Thursday that an international body review election fraud complaints, and threatened to boycott the new legislature. The United Nations rejected the idea.

Their demand came two days after preliminary returns indicated that the current governing group, the religious Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, was getting bigger-than-expected majorities in Baghdad, which has large numbers of Shiites and Sunnis.

They really do think they're above the law

It's clear that the Bush Administration believes that when Congress gave it authorization to use military force in response to the 9/11 attacks, they were being granted full dictatorial power over the entire government.

I have no use for Tom Daschle, but in today's WaPo he shoots holes in the Bush Administration's claim that Congress authorized its program of illegal wiretaps:

As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.

On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.

The Bush Administration has used this very specific and targeted resolution as justification for its illegal war in Iraq, and now for its surveillance of groups and individuals that oppose Administration policy.

That they are so breezily admitting that they violated the law indicates that they expect to be able to do so at any time, and they are just daring anyone to do something about it:

The Justice Department acknowledged yesterday, in a letter to Congress, that the president's October 2001 eavesdropping order did not comply with "the 'procedures' of" the law that has regulated domestic espionage since 1978. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, established a secret intelligence court and made it a criminal offense to conduct electronic surveillance without a warrant from that court, "except as authorized by statute."

There is one other statutory authority for wiretapping, which covers conventional criminal cases. That law describes itself, along with FISA, as "the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . may be conducted."

Yesterday's letter, signed by Assistant Attorney General William Moschella, asserted that Congress implicitly created an exception to FISA's warrant requirement by authorizing President Bush to use military force in response to the destruction of the World Trade Center and a wing of the Pentagon. The congressional resolution of Sept. 18, 2001, formally titled "Authorization for the Use of Military Force," made no reference to surveillance or to the president's intelligence-gathering powers, and the Bush administration made no public claim of new authority until news accounts disclosed the secret NSA operation.

But Moschella argued yesterday that espionage is "a fundamental incident to the use of military force" and that its absence from the resolution "cannot be read to exclude this long-recognized and essential authority to conduct communications intelligence targeted at the enemy." Such eavesdropping, he wrote, necessarily included conversations in which one party is in the United States.

Unbelievable. It's no surprise to me that this Administration thinks it's above the law, but the extent to which these people are thumbing their nose at the law and at the American people, all in the name of 9/11, is simply breathtaking, even to my cynical eye.

Meanwhile, we know that the kind of surveillance that has been conducted has NOT been limited to "conversations in which one party is in the United States" and the other presumably somewhere in the Middle East, but has been conducted on gay rights groups, environmental groups, animal rights groups, and college students doing papers on Communism.

This scandal, which I will now dub Stalingate, is NOT Watergate, nor is it Nixonian. At least Nixon's henchmen knew enough that what they did was wrong that they attempted to cover it up. This bunch doesn't even try to cover it up. They truly believe that they can do anything they want, eviscerating the Constitution, stealing taxpayer money to stuff their pockets with no-bid government contracts, and do it all over the corpses of the people who died on 9/11.

This is no less than a coup d'etat by a dictator and his henchmen. Who will stop them?

Great letter

Letter in today's New York Times:

To the Editor:

Let's say that you are the president of the United States and you are given a briefing that says a known terrorist who has struck America's interests in the past is determined to strike within the United States' borders. What do you do?

If you are George Bush you do not go into a state of "high alert." You go cut brush on your ranch since it is August 2001 and you are on vacation.

Roger A. Binion
Moscow, Dec. 22, 2005

The right-wing war against American families

I've always been very lucky in terms of family and politics. When I was growing up, my parents worshipped two deities: Adlai Stevenson and Edward R. Murrow. They weren't crazy about the Kennedys, but they were good old fashioned New Deal liberals all the way.

Sure, some of the 1960's stuff freaked them out, but I think some of that was inevitable when raising kids in a world seemingly gone mad. Some of it also was envy, because I think my parents both really wanted to be bohemians and didn't have it in them to buck the expectations of the system.

Mr. Brilliant wasn't as lucky. His dad was the kind of right-wing conservative who had a photograph of Ronald and Nancy Reagan on his TV instead of one of his kids, so family gatherings with him tended to be the sort of tense affairs in which everyone tries mightily to stay away from politics.

Wil Wheaton (yes, THAT Wil Wheaton, of Star Trek and Stand By Me fame writes in Salon today about dealing with parents who used to take him to nuclear freeze rallies and then were snatched during the Reagan years and replaced by bloodthirsty pod people:

I think the change began in 1980, when my parents both became Reagan Democrats. My mother took me with her into the booth when she voted for Mondale in 1984 (she was still an anti-nuke activist then, after all), but when talk radio exploded in the late '80s, it caught my parents and took them away. The people who drove me all over the American Southwest in their 1971 VW bus to visit our national parks were replaced with RNC talking-points pod people. As a result, I don't just tune out O'Reilly and the rest of the Republican screaming heads. No, I don't just tune them out: I hate them. I hate them with the same passion and the same fury that my dad exploded at me, because before those people got rich exploiting Karl Rove's (er, excuse me, I mean George Bush's) black-and-white, with-us-or-against-us fantasy world, my parents and I could discuss issues and amicably agree to disagree with each other.

But not anymore. I thought Tookie Williams was probably guilty and deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison. I wasn't defending him; I was just voicing my opposition to the death penalty. My dad acted as if I loaded the gun for Tookie and helped him aim it at my sister. We weren't able to have a respectful discussion about the death penalty, because my dad wouldn't allow it. Bill O'Reilly must be so proud of the world he's helped to create.

Now here is the terrifying thing: my dad is a really smart guy. He's so smart, in fact, he should see right through it when these right-wing noise-machine guys throw out facts in favor of emotional arguments to manipulate their audience. He should know when Rush is full of shit the same way I know when Michael Moore is full of shit. He is a perfusionist who holds people's lives in his hands every single day when they have open-heart surgery. He helped develop a process called ECMO for newborns, which reduced the infant mortality rate by something like 90 percent. He is a brilliant accountant, too, handling all the finances for everyone in the family, while running his own very successful business. And he is a great dad. He loves all of us (and my brother, sister and I all love him), and there is nothing in the world I like more than getting a call from my dad to blow off work and go to a Dodgers game together, so we can holler at the bums from right behind their dugout, where my family has had seats since the stadium opened. He's also a surfer, a fly-fisherman and a hell of a blackjack player. If I haven't made it clear, I love and admire my dad ... but when it comes to politics, whatever critical-thinking ability he has just vanishes, and he becomes an editorial cartoon caricature.

[snip]

I want to make something clear, here: I know I'm not the only 33-year-old liberal who has watched his parents grow older and more conservative, and I know that I'm not the first guy to have political disagreements with his father. In fact, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with people who don't see the world the same way I do. My best friend, a libertarian who thinks he's a Republican, is living proof. But I also think it's worth identifying who is really waging the war on Christmas -- and it's not Target, for having the temerity to wish its shoppers "Happy Holidays." And it's not people like me, who use "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays" and "Season's Greetings" interchangeably, hoping that the recipient of my good wishes will understand that I'm really saying, "I'm not religious, but I hope you have joy and love in your life, good health and happiness." The one waging the war is right-wing talk radio and its relentless drive to polarize and divide our country, and our holiday dinners, and make a nice profit while it does. Come to think of it, maybe I'll get my dad an iPod and a stack of Surf CDs for Christmas. It'll be a gift for both of us.

Wheaton touches on the corrosive effect of the kind of political polarization we're seeing in this country. When people like Bill O'Reilly and Joe Scarborough and Rick Santorum and Pat Robertson set aside the doctrine of "intelligent people of goodwill can disagree", and insist that everyone who doesn't toe the right-wing party line is somehow an enemy of not just America, but all that is Good and Holy in the world, they make the kind of detente that makes it possible for millions of families to get through the holidays impossible. They set father against son, parent against child, sibling against sibling, husband against wife -- because to the culture warriors, dialogue is toxic and tolerant understanding is for pussies. They are about playing for keeps; they are about beating the crap out of anyone who disagrees.

They talk about family values, but they refuse to see what the political climate THEY have created is doing to very real American families. It's time American families stopped inviting these hatemongers into their homes.

If America is a conservative country, then Bush is a popular president

Jim Hightower debunks the "America is conservative" meme:

It doesn't get covered by the corporate media (imagine that), but mainstream polls consistently find that big majorities of Americans are not meek centrists, but overt, tub-thumping, FDR progressives who are seeking far more populist gumption and governmental action than any Democratic congressional leader or presidential contender has dared to imagine. In recent polls by the Pew Research Group, the Opinion Research Corporation, the Wall Street Journal, and CBS News, the American majority has made clear how it feels. Look at how the majority feels about some of the issues that you'd think would be gospel to a real Democratic party:

65 percent say the government should guarantee health insurance for everyone -- even if it means raising taxes.

86 percent favor raising the minimum wage (including 79 percent of selfdescribed "social conservatives").

60 percent favor repealing either all of Bush's tax cuts or at least those cuts that went to the rich.

66 percent would reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

77 percent believe the country should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment.

87 percent think big oil corporations are gouging consumers, and 80 percent (including 76 percent of Republicans) would support a windfall profits tax on the oil giants if the revenues went for more research on alternative fuels.

69 percent agree that corporate offshoring of jobs is bad for the U.S. economy (78 percent of "disaffected" voters think this), and only 22% believe offshoring is good because "it keeps costs down."

69 percent believe America is on the wrong track, with only 26 percent saying it's headed in the right direction.

Americans might not call themselves progressive -- but there they are. On the populist, pocketbook issues that are rooted in our nation's core values of fairness and justice, there's a progressive super-majority. It flourishes in red states as well as blue, cutting through the establishment's false dichotomy of liberal/ conservative.

So why do Democrats persist in buying into this meme and running as if what they're supposed to stand for is anathema to most Americans?

A giant leap forward into the 1920's

Actual headline:

Evolution named 2005's top scientific breakthrough

Two days after a U.S. judge struck down the teaching of intelligent design theory in a Pennsylvania public school, the journal Science on Thursday proclaimed evolution the breakthrough of 2005.

Wide-ranging research published this year, including a study that showed a mere 4 percent difference between human and chimpanzee DNA, built on Charles Darwin's landmark 1859 work "The Origin of Species" and the idea of natural selection, the journal's editors wrote.

I guess this is because it looks like Tamiflu may not be the be-all and end-all of addressing avian flu after all.

While they were spying on gays, PETA, Greenpeace, and war protesters...

...400 pounds of high-powered plastic explosives, including 150 pounds of C-4 have been stolen from a bunker in New Mexico.

You think I'm kidding?

Officials are investigating the theft of 400 pounds of high-powered plastic explosives in New Mexico. The material was stolen from a bunker owned by a bomb expert who works at a national research lab outside Albuquerque, N.M.

ABC News has been told it's one of the most significant thefts of high-power explosives ever in the United States.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed today they are investigating the large theft from Cherry Engineering, a company owned by Chris Cherry, a scientist at Sandia National Labs.

The theft was discovered Sunday night by local authorities. The thieves used blowtorches to cut through thick steel walls at the bunker, authorities told ABC News.

The missing 400 pounds of explosives includes 150 pounds of what is known as C-4 plastic, or "sheet explosive," which can be shaped and molded and is often used by terrorists and military operatives.


"It is a very dangerous material, we want to keep this off the streets," Cherry told ABC News.

Also, 2,500 detonators were missing from a storage explosive container, or magazine, in a bunker owned by Cherry Engineering.

Authorities have no leads in the theft and said there is no indication terrorism is involved.

Unlike the gay group that was planning a kiss-in, which IS regarded by this bunch as being connected to terrorism.

Who, other than terrorists, would have a need for 150 pounds of C-4, 250 pounds of other plastic explosives, and 2500 detonators?

Well, maybe women's health clinic bombers. But of course in Bush's America, those people don't count as terrorists. In their world, only environmentalists, people who ride bicycles in New York and gay college students are terrorists.

(Hat tip: Who else? Americablog)

I liked it better when I could dismiss Christopher Hitchens as a deluded born-again neocon drunk

I would have liked to have made it to last night's Laura Flanders-sponsored debate between Hitch and Scott Ritter in Tarrytown, but it was the night for Mr. Brilliant's and my annual Winter Solstice exchange of gifts.

If I've never extolled the virtues of Mr. Brilliant sufficiently, here's the kind of guy he is: He's a guy with a fair amount of musical knowledge, how knows how music is put together, who's a pretty fair electric bass player, who actually UNDERSTANDS what Miles Davis was doing when he recorded Agharta (a work that makes me want to stick icepick in own forehead and repeat unto death) -- and yet got me Green Day's new Live CD/DVD set Bullet in a Bible, even though he knows it's crap and it's ridiculous for a 50-year-old to listen to said crap. (But it's really GREAT crap, Mrs. Pressky...)

That's just the kind of guy he is. Of course, in my equal fabulousness, I don't ask that he listen to it.

So if you want to sustain a relationship over 20+ years, note well. Also, don't have kids.

But enough about me. Let's talk about Christopher Hitchens, who not content to eviscerate Sanctimonious Joe Scarborough on his own show, brings his poison pen to Slate today to continue his War on the War on Christmas:

Not long after I'd swallowed this bitter pill, I was invited onto Scarborough Country on MSNBC to debate the proposition that reindeer were an ancient symbol of Christianity and thus deserving of First Amendment protection, if not indeed of mandatory display at every mall in the land. I am told that nobody watches that show anymore—certainly I heard from almost nobody who had seen it—so I must tell you that the view taken by the host was that coniferous trees were also a symbol of Christianity, and that the Founding Fathers had endorsed this proposition. From his cue cards, he even quoted a few vaguely deistic sentences from Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, neither of them remotely Christian in tone. When I pointed out the latter, and added that Christmas trees, yule logs, and all the rest were symbols of the winter solstice "holidays" before any birth had been registered in the greater Bethlehem area, I was greeted by a storm of abuse, as if I had broken into the studio instead of having been entreated to come by Scarborough's increasingly desperate staff. And when I added that it wasn't very Tiny Tim-like to invite a seasonal guest and then tell him to shut up, I was told that I was henceforth stricken from the Scarborough Rolodex. The ultimate threat: no room at the Bigmouth Inn.

This was a useful demonstration of what I have always hated about the month of December: the atmosphere of a one-party state. On all media and in all newspapers, endless invocations of the same repetitive theme. In all public places, from train stations to department stores, an insistent din of identical propaganda and identical music. The collectivization of gaiety and the compulsory infliction of joy.

[snip]

And yet none of this party-line unanimity is enough for the party's true hard-liners. The slogans must be exactly right. No "Happy Holidays" or even "Cool Yule" or a cheery Dickensian "Compliments of the season." No, all banners and chants must be specifically designated in honor of the birth of the Dear Leader and the authority of the Great Leader.

By chance, the New York Times on Dec. 19 ran a story about the difficulties encountered by Christian missionaries working among North Korean defectors, including a certain Mr. Park. One missionary was quoted as saying ruefully that "he knew he had not won over Mr. Park. He knew that Christianity reminded Mr. Park, as well as other defectors, of 'North Korean ideology.' " An interesting admission, if a bit of a stretch. Let's just say that the birth of the Dear Leader is indeed celebrated as a miraculous one—accompanied, among other things, by heavenly portents and by birds singing in Korean—and that compulsory worship and compulsory adoration can indeed become a touch wearying to the spirit.

Our Christian enthusiasts are evidently too stupid, as well as too insecure, to appreciate this. A revealing mark of their insecurity is their rage when public places are not annually given over to religious symbolism, and now, their fresh rage when palaces of private consumption do not follow suit. The Fox News campaign against Wal-Mart and other outlets—whose observance of the official feast-day is otherwise fanatical and punctilious to a degree, but a degree that falls short of unswerving orthodoxy—is one of the most sinister as well as one of the most laughable campaigns on record. If these dolts knew anything about the real Protestant tradition, they would know that it was exactly this paganism and corruption that led Oliver Cromwell—my own favorite Protestant fundamentalist—to ban the celebration of Christmas altogether.

Since once again I didn't get around to sending cards in time, I want to wish all my friends, and yes, all my foes, a very Merry War on Christmas. Just in case, in my menopausal brain fog, I forget to do so before Saturday.