Billmon:

All this amounts to a mountain of potential legal exposure, both for the bad apples at the top and the “little Eichmanns” (yes, I realize where the phrase came from, and I’m sticking with it) who dutifully carried out their illegal orders. Whether that will ever amount to more than a molehill of worry for the guilty parties is doubtful – although if I were them I wouldn’t plan on doing a lot of foreign travel after they leave office – but the damage done to America, and the struggle against terrorism, is incalculable, and probably irremediable.

The more important lesson, purchased at such great cost, is the essentially conservative lesson (conservative in the good old fashioned Burkean sense) is that no government can be trusted with the powers the Cheney gang asserted, not even when fighting an enemy like Al Qaeda – or especially not then.

Crime and Punishment

… Moon of Alabama.

Never thought this site would live this long.

News & views …

I am really relieved that this descision came down now, before Bush will be able to switch the court completely to the dark side.

Cont. reading: Champagne For All

IAF aircrafts also attacked a major Gaza City power station after midnight Tuesday, cutting power to much of the area.

Roughtly two-thirds of the Gaza Strip’s 1.3 million residents were left without electricity, said Walid Sayel, the executive director of Gaza’s power company.

The power outages also effected water supplies as many of the newer multi-story buildings in Gaza are dependent on electrical water pumps. Palestinian engineers said repairs could take six months.

Haaretz coverage

Art. 33. No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

Provisions Common to the Territories of the Parties to the Conflict and to Occupied Territories, The Fourth Geneva Convention

On April 20 the Germans attacked a factory area of the ghetto but were forced to retreat yet again when the Jews set off a mine. The Germans cut off the ghetto’s electricity, water and gas but still the Jews did not surrender, using as their motto “LIVE AND DIE WITH DIGNITY”.
The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt and others

Billmon:

Good Treason and Bad

Billmon:

Well, we’ve learned that the sadistic little shits at the The New Republic don’t know how to quit when they’re behind, that Right Blogistan is full of obsessive compulsives with way too much time on their hands, and that Mickey Kaus really, really wants to be part of the Wererabbit Elite Strike Force, but can’t, because he doesn’t meet the height requirement.

Star Crossed

Billmon:

Ordinarily, I’m sympathetic to the argument that public officials should be well compensated — because if the voters don’t pay up, somebody or something else will. (In Rep. Jefferson’s case, his freezer.) Also, congressional salaries basically suck. You could cover the entire payroll in both houses for about $90 million, which is less than what Dennis Kozlowski took home in one giddy year as Tyco CEO.

If one man can get paid that much money to drive an enormous, heavily leveraged organization straight into the ground, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to pay 535 people the same amount to do likewise. They’re just as good at it as he was.

Wage Earner

Billmon:

No tongue? No petting above the waist?

What the hell kind of date is that?

Not That Sort of Boy

Billmon:

Clem Snopes, NASA public affairs spokesman and a part-time student at Pat Robertson’s Regent University, urged Americans not to panic, saying there is little risk of a collision, given the flatness of the earth’s surface.

When Worlds Collide

Billmon:

Keeping It Up

Billmon:

It’s not that Kos (or Webb, for that matter) are outspoken critics of the special relationship [with Israel]. Far from it. But it is clear that the constituencies they represent, or hope to represent, are much more skeptical about U.S. intervention in the Middle East than the Democratic old guard — which, let’s face it, is practically welded to the Israel lobby. Even worse, this is all happening at a time when the Iraq quagmire is making the costs of our imperial role in the region painfully clear.

The Swiftboating of Kos

Billmon:

II:

Since America haters and terrorist sympathizers are now such a solid majority, maybe we should hold an election and disband the country — or better yet, declare the New Islamic Caliphate!

News Flash: Terrorists Win

I:

Or, as Richard Holbrooke is said to have recently predicted, Iraq will definitely still be a hot issue in the presidential election — of 2016.

Bait and Switch

The kingpin made me do this …

Billmon

[A]ll that only goes to show how thoroughly the official propaganda continues to shape the coverage — even when the journalists involved understand that the propaganda is misleading or flat wrong.

Breaking the cycle would require the herd to challenge the spin and disinformation they’re being fed, instead of letting it become the baseline that has to be timidly corrected later as the facts come to light. The burden of proof, in other words, would have to be put on the spinners, instead of reality. And it would have to be put there by the journalistic herd as a whole — or at least, by the dominant group within the herd — and not just by a few mavericks and dissidents.

But of course we no longer have that kind of journalism in this country [..]

Making the News Fit the Spin

Billmon

The Oceania News Network

Billmon

While an abrupt, overnight switch in the propaganda machine’s output from stay-the-course-forever to cut-and-run-to victory might grate on the ears of those of us who still haven’t quite adjusted to the Fox News era, I doubt the vast majority of the American people will care — or even notice. They’ll just be happy that the war is "over" and the boys and girls will be coming home, allowing them to forget the whole disagreeable business. Anyone who believes otherwise must have slept through the last few elections.

Sooner or later, of course, the clueless idiots will find out that the war — the real war, the war for the Middle East — isn’t over, and isn’t likely to be over in their lifetimes, or even their children’s lifetimes. But it’s probably safe to assume that the first Tuesday in November will have come and gone by then.

Cutting and Running to Victory

Germany-Sweden – 2:0. Nice game, though ASKOD’s milage will probably vary.

I was watching the game at home with open windows. There were two other groups nearby glued to their TV screens, one in a neighbours garden and one on a balkony some fifty yards away.

We all were watching the game "live", but when the first goal did occure, there was a funny effect. About three second after I shouted YEAH!, the neighbour’s garden crowd responded with their war cry. Two additional seconds later, the folks on that balkoney started to cheer.

These delayed reactions repeated themselfs with the second goal and with some following near misses.

The delays, I assume, are based on different TV signal we are catching. I am watching on analog cable, the three second delay would be the neighbours digital broadcast receiver, which needs some time to decrypt and decode the digital signal. The additional two second delay for the balkony could be caused by receiving the game through a satellite receiver. They do have a sat-antenna up, so I guess their TV signal took the long space relay way from source to drain.

Funny to see "live" delayed.

News & views …

Billmon quotes Lind:

"Should be in Berlin by September, old chap."

Kabul Follies