Tin Foil Hat in Jail – Moon of Alabama

September 15, 2004

Tin Foil Hat in Jail

In July I wrote a piece Tin Foil Hat Required about “Jack” Idema and friends torturing and running a private prison in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Today Idema and his folks were sentenced to 10 years in comfortable Afghan prison cells.

Soj of Flogging the Simian has researched and written extensively on the issue. The story makes most spy / terror / comedy fiction look like scientific papers. Take some time to follow her trail.

Posted by b on September 15, 2004 at 19:19 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Wow. What a comprehensive story she pieced together – really impressive. And astonishing too. As she noted, makes one wonder how many more of these guys are out there?

Posted by: maxcrat | Sep 16 2004 2:32 utc | 1

Sorry to be the barrer of bad tidings, but i have now changed my position (flip-floped) to believe that Kerry is toast.
He is using Shrum who is again running the most innept campaign since Dukakas. They are getting their asses kicked at all facits of the campaign.
Bush is the most flawed f—– idiot in history of WH occupancy and Kerry is getting his ass kicked.
I have e-mailed the DNC to attack Bushie, attack that drug addict Limbaugh. Attack, attack, attack. This whole campaign should be a referendum on Bush, yet, it has become a referendum on Kerry. My god, what the hell id the DNC doing?
Man, I sure don’t want another four years of Bush. I am sad, and pissed at the same time.
The middle class will shrink somemore and Bushies rich buddies will get preferential treatment. That piss head frat boy is ruining our country faster than it can be corrected, with the concurrence of that asshole Delay, and the big asshole Frist.
We are f—– for four more years.

Posted by: jdp | Sep 16 2004 2:48 utc | 2

Afghan court jails US bounty hunter who claims to have tracked down Bin Laden

Posted by: Fran | Sep 16 2004 5:07 utc | 3

O/T but …
Some people think (and I am leaning towards them lately) that it should be much better if we have Bush 4 more years, to fuck -up things completely (nationally and internationally)…they say it must lead to a change…big change…grand scale…(I am not sure what the exact price would be in lives and money etc.)
If we have Kerry for next 4 years, things will degenerate slowly and this agony will last too long.

Posted by: vbo | Sep 16 2004 8:40 utc | 4

I am one of the ones whom think Bush needs to win. We will never rid this planet of primates like his ilk if we don’t let his kind show their madness. This afterall is the year of Kali. Kali the destroyer.
We (humanity) needs a movement to a higher state of consciousness for humans, a higher vibrational frequency for the planet, and a new “Golden Age” on the Earth. The aspects of destruction and war we are now undergoing are a kind of clearing of the way. A birthing process with all the blood and guts and discharge and mucus we can stand. From the Jungian perspective, it is a projection of the unintegrated shadow of the human psyche into material form. By 2012, the shadow must be fully seen and integrated.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 16 2004 9:25 utc | 5

Yeah, well, I’m all for cleansing this planet of morons like W. The bad news is that we simply can’t let them on the commands in the hope they’ll show how bad they are and the rest of mankind will wake up. They will run the planet into the ground and destroy it way before people are aware enough to react.
I mean, way back in 2000, there were a sizable part of the leftists who said “Let Bush rule for 4 years, then people will flock to the left because they’ll see how bad he is”. Well, we’re in 2004 and now people say “Give him more rope to hang himself”. What will they say in 2008? “Well, in 20 years, people will have learned”? In 1932/33, people said “Let Hitler rule, so that people will see how incompetent he is; then they’ll vote Communist”.
Let’s face it: most people are friggin morons and vote badly. That won’t change just because Bush is president. Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results: here, we had 50% people thinking Bush was a great guy in 2000, and 50% people thinking Bush is still a great guy in 2004; hoping that people will turn on the Reps in 2008 after giving them 4 more years of free rule is wishful thinking.
Sometimes, you have to wonder which side people really are on, with mankind, or with the Evil Empire?

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Sep 16 2004 10:22 utc | 6

jdb & vbo & Uncle$cam
For what it’s worth (absolutely nothing) – I think it is going to take a lot longer than 4 more years of degeneration to fuck things up to a point where there will be any substantive reaction – let alone the prospect of a new Golden Age.
I haven’t read any Jung in the last 35 years – but talk of states of consciousness – along with the general undertone of “spiritual beings” shite that is often promulgated by otherwise intelligent and aware individuals in these threads – I think only adds to the cancer of this age.
The modern era was born from the Age of Enlightenment. I will stand corrected by any serious historian, but my understanding of this is that in reality, it was the birth of humanism, reason, and logical analysis.
The fact that in the 21st century were are engaged in a re-run of the medieval crusades, in a world where religious shit is gaining ground rather than being consigned to the trashcan of history, seems to me to be a colossal failure on the part of the “intelligentsia” (for want of a better word) – to live up to the heritage bestowed on them by the men who forged the modern era.
All of the greats of Western Philosophy were finally left to rest in peace by the seminal work of Bertrand Russell in the early part of the 20th century, yet here we are in the 21st century, where there are few (in any) willing or able to take any stand against the Torah, the Bible, or the Koran.
New Age nuts probably led the charge of the anti-intellectual assault. People of such timorous and fearful nature, that they would embrace anything from the Upanishads to the Book of the Dead, to magic crystals or sacred trees, anything – except embrace an understanding that they are mortal and without any cosmic significance.
I was brought up as a Protestant (in a non-American, agnostic fashion). I note this only because we are all molded regardless of how much we think of ourselves as individuals. But as a moderately educated ‘thinking person’ – I am almost numb with incredulity that these perverse middle-eastern religions are the centerpiece of a comic-tragedy that may yet lead us to a new Dark Age.
4 more years? This sounds like eternal optimism – a belief in the American Way – that after just 4 more years you will be able to dump the jerk and it’s back to Happy Days.
I fear not.

Posted by: DM | Sep 16 2004 11:35 utc | 7

Uncle $cam rightly said this before on WA:
Quote:
“NONE OF THIS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH RELIGION, ITS ALL ECONOMIC! But they use Religion as a front.”
———-
And this to be applied anywhere anytime…
Quite a few people are morons and even more of them are rotten (even intellectuals)…We can’t change people…no one can…but atmosphere can be changed and thinking can be channeled.
I am just not sure if it’s going to take millions of dead and half of the planet destroyed.

Posted by: vbo | Sep 16 2004 13:23 utc | 8

As much as I respect and enjoy Billmons writing I personally don’t need a moses to lead me anywhere. I resonate much w/his prose, but as the saying goes “If the followers lead, the leaders will follow.”
Their are no saviors, save yourself smuck!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 16 2004 21:45 utc | 9

Uncle: “If the followers lead, the leaders will follow.”
Hail, yes!

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Sep 16 2004 22:02 utc | 10

jdb, vbo, Uncle $cam
I enjoy and learn from your posts, and although I sympathize with your despair over the US electorate and its choices, I have to say that change at a point of near balance is always preferable to change after holocaust.
If we are doomed to suffer that holocaust, then we will have to face that. But let’s not go down welcoming the blows to our eyes and our gonads. The only way to lose your humanity is to welcome the attack on you.

Posted by: Citizen | Sep 17 2004 4:31 utc | 11

Posted by: Citizen | Sep 17 2004 4:38 utc | 12

Previewed once and sent once. Not sure why I’m getting doubles here. My apologies.

Posted by: Citizen | Sep 17 2004 4:39 utc | 13

Citizen, while I appreciate your point of view and I waver on mine somewhat, (mostly out of distress)meaning, I go back and forth with my thoughts on my theory of voting bush.
It is an honest struggle. I’m reminded of systems thinking and organizational change theory. After reading Sir Karl popper’s THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES I feel different in knowing that organizational change theory and systems thinking holds the key to a better future. Afterall, watching the kelptocrat’s both repub and demo fleese our nation for the last thirty years continually, stratify and compartmentalise us against each other and ourselves watching the demo move further and further to the right while the right move even futher, where
the system is starting to eat itself.
Which is a classic symptom of a closed society.
Open systems are freqently capable of change and resist entropy. They can be said to practice creative self-destruction. open systems which is what we certainly haven’t had in a long time, are neglected until the system breaks-down or discentagrates. Trying to change a system (like our political system) by changing its content is called First Order Change. In this case, people try to change what an individual element does, try to reorganize a specific organization, or change the people who work for an organization. These types of change alter only the look of the system, not its actual behavior. It is called “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” However you arrange the chairs, the ship will still sink.
Homeostasis is an unconscious process by which systems seek to maintain the status quote. All elements within the system interact to keep the system from changing. Any effort toward system change will result in homeostatic responses from within the system to block the change.Which is what I feel is the left/right Bush/Kerry binary logic. Most system change strategies tend to fail because they do not address the interactions within the system. When a change effort fails, (which it has again and again)the most common response is to try the same (or the same type) of strategy again.A forever feed-back loop that stagnates and falls anyway.
To understand a system, study its content, to change a system study its context. I feel what the good intentions of the progresives and open minded people here at the bar and elsewhere seem to get caught up in is study of content and not it’s context. How long must we play this lessor of two evils game? Until the world falls apart?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 17 2004 5:10 utc | 14

Addendum : House votes to give itself pay raise these people are so out of touch it’s not even funny. Lets have a show of hands , how many here knew that the “leaders” don’t pay into social security, nor do they care about it. How many people know that the “leaders” spouses continue to get their partners pay even after they die. How may people know that the executive branch gets their pay for life even after leaving office. Just wondering…
Tell me is this truely a system “of and for an by the people”

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 17 2004 5:24 utc | 15

America’s Board of Directors
I’m only 50 pages into Zbgniew Brzezinski’s “The Grand Chessboard” and one thing quickly becomes apparent to the perceptive reader: just how irrelevant democracy is in America.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 17 2004 5:33 utc | 16

I like your posts of early this morning Uncle. Anyone with a modicum of inteeligence knows by now that our beloved system is crashing around us as we gaze in confusion. No way to stop it, not that I would want to.
Let me propose that even though the crash may finalize itself sooner with another Bush term, the pain it causes could be much greater too, and more permanent. Whatever its details, the agenda of the current regime includes a lot of death and destruction. We know this.
There are better paths to the future, even if one of them has to wind through Kerry and the Dems for awhile.
Yes I hear the rationale that one should give them free rein so they have a chance to prove how bad they are. I don’t buy that argument at all; the end will come in any case and it is better if bushco is not in charge when it happens.

Posted by: rapt | Sep 17 2004 14:46 utc | 17

@ Uncle $cam
Tell me is this truely a system “of and for an by the people”
I’m about 3/4’s of the way through “The Creation of America : Through Revolution to Empire” by Francis Jennings which makes quite clear that the answer to your query is a definitive NO because it was never intended to be so, unless the use of the term “people” is qualified as being a white gentry/merchant/slaveholder. Just thought I’d through this reference into the mix b/c, as you say, context is the key. Great links!

Posted by: b real | Sep 17 2004 15:04 utc | 18

@Uncle $cam
I agree that politicians of both parties are revoltingly arrogant (a pay raise, now? yeesh). But when I used to go to bars alone in Seoul, I would always make friends with the biggest soldier there who had an air of calm assurance, and no matter what happened in the bar I was always in the right place, always okay. There are always allies to be found when you are clear about avoiding ignorance and hot tempers (own included). Kerry and the Dems have problems, but they look like the ally in this bar, tonight.
@b real
Excellent contexting.
But about context, as important as it is to know the context, it is probably a fool’s mission to expect to change the context in a single step. Rather, we can change ourselves, we can make and transform our immediate friends and enemies, and then this grows big enough to start becoming the context. So my first question (in my wise moments) is – how do my plans change me? That is why I am suspicious of wishing for the greater of two weevils to win, because it would pervert me. And that seems to be the surest path to missing my goals, to betraying what matters, to choosing the wrong friends and wrong contexts.
Short version: If I hang out with the jerks at the bar, I will get what’s coming to them.

Posted by: Citizen | Sep 17 2004 17:48 utc | 19

I may be too late for this thread, but I wanted to respond to one of Uncle $cams points above.
“How may people know that the executive branch gets their pay for life even after leaving office?”
Not exactly sure what you are getting at there, Uncle, but political appointees in the executive branch do not get their pay once they leave their job, and may or may not get some sort of retirement/benefit payment out of it down the road. The way they really make their money is when they cash in after leaving office and become lobbyists or otherwise go work for the industries they previously regulated or otherwise oversaw while in the government. (Tom Scully is a good example.)
Career executive branch employees in the federal civil service, a/k/a “faceless bureacrats”, of which I am one, have a pretty decent pay scale and benefits package, but notwithstanding the the bad rap we have with the public, a lot of us actually do work for it.

Posted by: maxcrat | Sep 17 2004 23:51 utc | 20

You are correct, I stand corrected. As of 1983 the exectutive branch does indeed pay into social securtiy.But It looks like is some cases they can draw up to 80% of their pay as pension. Nice, that one.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 18 2004 6:38 utc | 21

Democracy Now spends the hour today [2004.09.23] on the Idema case and the questions surrounding the trial, w/ Fogelnest back in the States & in the studio.
And here’s a link to part 19 of the ongoing Soj updates.

Posted by: b real | Sep 23 2004 16:49 utc | 22

Back to Main