cheese it, the cops!

President Bush today dismissed as "absurd" a charge by Amnesty International that his administration has created "the gulag of our times" at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and he asserted that allegations of mistreatment have originated from detainees who "hate America" and are trained to lie.

hahaha! the charges are absurd . wait till you get a gander.

been watching "heartland" w/john kasich. of course like every pathetic blogger ever he's ragging on timothy shortell, the anti-religious sociology prof at brooklyn college who's a bit of a loose cannon . what i dug about the presentation is that kasich focused on the idea that shortell was "interested" in the work of friedrich nietzsche . then in an irony fit for the american right, he condemned fn for being a philosphical influence on fascism and a - wait for it - sexist. the fact that virtually every western intellectual has had to grapple with the philosophy of nietzsche - the fact that he is certainly one of the deepest and most influential thinkers of the last few centuries - the fact that he's influenced anarchists as well as fascists, and unconsiously anyone whose actually thought about anything since then is lost on john kasich. why? cause he's a lobotomized weasel. truly. to condemn someone for witing about and around nietzsche is simply not to understand what anyone who thinks has been thinking about since 1900. anyway, kasich segued straight from the observation that shortell was interested in nietzsche to the rhetorical question: is this someone we want educating our children? i don't really know, asshole, i only know that we oughtn't to be putting our children or indeed our adults into the hands of someone who last read a book when he took on little black sambo in 1949.

it's bad when you're out jogging and suddenly a middle-aged dude wearing only a condom jumps out of the bushes and starts chasing you. but at least it's completely predictable that the only sort of person who'd do something like that is a vice pres of j.p. morgan chase. anyway, you got to admire guys who practice safe rape.

dead is an extremely stable condition .

"Newsweek's story about Koran desecration is demonstrably false, and there have thus far been no credible allegations of willful Koran desecration, and Newsweek has produced no such evidence," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said today in response to media queries.

perhaps  the folks at the pentagon don't reall have a handle on the term "demonstrably": it would entail that they could prove the story false, which obviously they cannot . similarly logically challenged little green footballs snickers (as did many others) at the claim that newsweek didn't have the story nailed but that it was true anyway. obviously, those things are perfectly compatible with one another, and when it's all said and done they'll both turn out to be true.

the claim that impotence drugs cause blindess is obvious hooey. but impotence drugs cause masturbation, which in turn causes blindness.

i'm in the la times  this morning.

been hanging out the last couple of days with phillip mcreynolds, was a grad studenmt in phil at vanderbilt when i was there in the early nineties. he's shooting a documentary on american philosophy and has been talking to people like the great john mcdermott, my old dissertation advisor richard rorty...and me! who doesn't want to pontificate for a couple of hours while being filmed (well someone, maybe, but not philosophy profs). plus phillip is asking the right questions and stuff. meanwhile the reprehensible adam szczepanski (of malignant blog and a million comments on this very site) is due any minute. i've never actually met him.

the vicious little green footballs calls amnesty international "the voice of the international appeasement left" because it condemns human rights abuses at guantanamo and in israel. the position can only be exactly this: torture an abuse are justified when we do it to you, but not when anyone else does it at all (and that is in fact precisely lgf's position, as frankly inconsistent and brutally stupid as any position can be). now trawl around ai's site a bit and note that they report on human rights abuses in 149 countries, that they are very strong on condemning china, saudi arabia, russia, syria, and so on. they aren't appeasing anyone; they are merely taking a self-evidently consistent position against abusing human beings and they are trying to do something about it. that lgf and others condemn them for this shows you who these people are and what they want to do. is the claim that there have ben no human rights abuses in american detention facilities? or in israeli prisons? obviously, not. so the contention can only be this: such abuses should not be criticized. now i ask you what happens when a state can torture and kill with impunity, answering to no legal standard and undergoing no scrutiny by any outside group. every day in lgf there's the whiff of genocide, justification for dehumanization and torture, and finally for execution.

well i finally filed a column that creators would not run. believe me i'm not bummed or bitter: they and various op-ed editors have let me get away with murder for years, but it's a good argument for blogging.

A Return to Civility
By Crispin Sartwell

Santorum said that Democratic protests over Republican efforts to ensure confirmation votes would be like the Nazi dictator seizing Paris and then saying: "I'm in Paris. How dare you invade me? How dare you bomb my city? It's mine."
Associated Press

Remarks on the floor of the Senate by Senator Crispin Sartwell:

I make a pledge right here, right now, that I will never compare the honorable Rick Santorum to Adolf Hitler, at least not here, in this hallowed chamber.
    Let me be clear: Rick Santorum – whatever his politics or personality may be – conspicuously lacks that little mustache. Until such time as he grows a little mustache, any comparison to Adolf Hitler –plausible though it might otherwise be - must be held in abeyance.
    Besides, comparing people to Hitler has become a boring cliché. It really has very little oomph anymore: it’s what you say when, like Rick Santorum, you are incapable of even rudimentary ratiocination.
   He is, rather, the Jeffrey Dahmer of this, the greatest deliberative body in the history of the world. He has kidnapped, butchered and then devoured our traditions; nay he has kidnapped, butchered and devoured Patrick Leahy himself. He even looks a bit like Jeffrey Dahmer, with that weird little smile so widely and plausibly associated with cannibalism.
    Probably a comparison to John Wayne Gacy, who stuffed the crawlspaces of his Illinois home with the bodies of adolescent boys, would be unfair. Nevertheless, Gacy was known as the “killer clown,” because he performed at children’s parties with a red squeaky nose and huge funny shoes between his homicidal rampages. If I were to refer to my esteemed colleague, the junior senator from Pennsylvania, as a killer clown, I don’t think anyone could really quibble.
   Remember the Manson family, with their weird blank zombie eyes and x’s carved into their foreheads? Now we see the whole thing happening again in the Ronald Reagan office building with the honorable Rick Santorum and his staff. The fact that all his legislative initiatives have been derived from playing Beatles songs backwards as he trips on psychedelic drugs may be a coincidence. Then again, it may not be.
    But these are mere serial killers, and Rick Santorum is more ambitious, more wide-ranging in his goals, more thorough in his methods. In brief, Rick Santorum is a genocidal maniac.
    Don’t get me wrong. Comparisons to Hitler are at best premature. But the parallel to the career of Pol Pot is uncanny: the radical agenda, the re-education camps, the weird murderous psychosis, and the pyramids of skulls stacked up in this very chamber all attest to that. I count myself lucky to have survived. So many – Barbara Boxer, Robert Byrd, John Kerry himself – have fallen before Santorum’s insane machete-wielding minions.
    Blinded by his bizarre suprematist ideology, Rick Santorum’s slavish devotees – once ordinary Americans now converted into killing machines – have swept out across this great land rounding up secular humanists and torturing them to death rhetorically.
   Perhaps most deeply disturbing, however, is the cult of personality. The honorable Rick Santorum has deforested western Pennsylvania and replaced the trees with colossal statues of the honorable Rick Santorum. He has specified that all Pennsylvanians must refer to him as “The Adorable Leader,” even as he becomes ever-more repulsive in his personal grooming habits.
    But try as he might, Rick Santorum will never really measure up to Hitler. Senator, I knew Adolf Hitler, and you’re no Adolf Hitler.

Crispin Sartwell represents the persistent vegetative state in the United States Senate.

like i said, i don't really have strong feelings about the filibuster. but i admire what these people did to reach a compromise. john mccain is easily the most admirable major politician in america: even when i utterly disagree with him i know he's saying what he actually believes. anyway, a lot of people wanted a war, and it may well come to that. meanwhile there seems to be some hope that not everyone is a toe-the-line ideologue. i think it probably especially took guts from the republicans cause they certainly stepped on bush's toes and there may well be a price.

psa: as karzai comes to town, compare this and this , while of course remembering this  (and opium production in afghanistan has increased dramatically since then). and keep in mind that we essentially returned the rule of the country to warlords and narcotics cartels. so remember: if you use heroin, you are supporting america's foreign policy goals. remember, children, a real patriot is a junkie.

interesting . here's one revealing moment:

But two years ago, amid allegations of desecration and hunger strikes by inmates, the Army instituted elaborate procedures for sensitive treatment of the Koran at the prison camp. Once the new procedures were in place, complaints there stopped, said the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors conditions in prisons and detention facilities.

seems rather unlikely that they'd institute such a policy if there were never any problems, no? and it also seems that, if the claims of desecration were made up out of whole cloth they would continue, whatever the policy. one thing i dug about the admin's reaction to the newsweek story. they said it was "demonstrably false." now how would one demonstrate that? and don't you think that if they can demonstrate it they should go right ahead?

the russian press these days is truly charming. it's no more plausible or less idiotic than pravda at the height of, say, the andopov regime. i like the idea that anyone you kill is a "bandit"; it kind of has a retro, wild west feel. i'm sure they intended the term to be translated "terrorist." and the idea that a "news" organization can a priori justify killing anyone - anyone at all - with a mere adjective is one that has a long long past and a long long future. oh yeah, and a long long present.

here's  what every op-ed page really needs: george allen's staff yapping out cliches about education. let me do the boilerplate: is george allen an opinion journalist? a writer? did he write this? does it say anything? let me say it again. if "he" wants to "express" "his" "views," let him have a press conference. if you want to find out his views, send a writer to interview him. and stop occupying your op-ed page with press releases.

yo headin down to the blue ridge for my momma's 80th birthday! meanwhile i want to leave with this wholesome thought: saddam hussein is one sexy man.

i've spent much of the last couple of days watching the senate debate the filibuster. it's been fascinating in a variety of respects, like robert byrd starting his rap with the relation of henry 4 to the house of commons. and even though it's been incredibly repetititive, it's pretty richly engaged the history of the senate and the republic. anyway, i'm no big screaming fan or opponent of the filibuster (we anarchists have the considerable luxury of being indifferent to such things). but one claim of the dems rings true: if we ditch the filibuster for judicial nominees eventually we'll ditch it for legislation. do you think these religious conservatives are less intense about the next piece of pro-life legislation than they are for priscilla owen?

you know the only thing i'm sicker of than comparisons to hitler (a la: just as hitler dragged 10 million helpless people to the gas chamber, my esteemed opponent for zoning commission wants to allow a new mini-mart at 4th and dumbfuck) is condemnations of people for comparing people to hitler. turn on your brains, or at least switch to pol pot or jeffrey dahmer or something. "senator santorum is the jeffrey dahmer of this body: kidnapping, cooking, and devouring our traditions, aye, devouring patrick leahy himself."  how *dare* the junior senator from the state of stupid compare me to jeffrey dahmer??? if i was a serial killer, i'd be john wayne gacy, and he'd  be one of the boys whose corpses jam my crawlspace."

apropos of absolutely nothing, i have been contemplating the abuse value of the erectile disfunction medications. like, i don't have erectile disfunction. but when they start telling one that erections lasting more than four hours require immediate medical attention, it certainly does make one think.

but i don't know whether levitra is yet available in the open-air drug markets i frequent, and i am too embarassed to ask my heroin dealer.

i guess by now it's obvious to all of us: adam rocks.

i am pretty sympathetic with the plight of michael isikoff , and not only because i remember him from when i was a kid at the washington star. actually he was a kid too. but he was an investigative reporter and i was a copy boy. he apparently offered to resign  over the koran-in-the-toilet story. but investigative journalists take risks like this all the time, and isikoff has broken a great many stories over the years. people who think he's a democrat should remember what he did to clinton. anyway, how many of us would have known what sort or reponse that little piece would elicit? really? though that is of course not to say we should publish fairly harmless bullshit. but who knows what bit of the story you're reporting is gonna turn out to be nuclear?

my creators column this week, on journalistic ethics, is in the la times this mornin.

hey! people are hugging . haven't they heard of stds? via eric .

hey my daughter jane (almost 5) is absolutely enraptured by the truly lovely and moving miyazaki animation my neighbor totoro. i don't think she's ever been quite as into a movie, and me too: we watched it maybe five times in the last 2 days. for one thing, it's about spunky-cool girls and their dad. it's whimsical and surreal and smart. the other miyazakis i've seen (spirited away, princess mononoke, etc.) are lovely, but maybe pitched at older kids, though i'm definitely gonna give kiki's delivery service  another try.

He thought behavioral patters would arise if people grew up uncensored. Plato would defiantly think Mills is way too liberal on all his philosophies and would not like all these opinions or information just being thrown around for anyone to digest.

Mill acknowledges that certain aspects of free expression can affect others, like children watching inappopriate television programs, but the need for individuality within a society prevails over the single individual.

the stock market plunged today on news that the rate of increase of methamphetamine use in the workplace is dropping, a trend that is likely to have disastrous results on per-employee productivity, and to drag the economy into recession.

actually, seems like the cole bros animalessness was richly deserved .

i'm a big fan  of circuses. took my 4-year-old to the cole bros in hanover the other day. this is my favorite circus: very classic feel, under the big top. but there was a huge difference since i saw it 5 years ago: no elephants, no lions or togers, not even horses. the only animal act was (get this) house cats. so i'm assuming that the peta types just succeeded in making the rest impossible somehow. of course the tiger and elephant are the very symbols of the circus.

Mr. Karimov, an inaccessible and aloof autocrat, has long been criticized for persecution of opponents, intolerance of freedom of religion and expression, and the use of the police and torture, including the sexual assault and boiling of suspects.

no doubt it sucks to be boiled. but being boiled by someone who is "aloof" is perhaps the ultimate insult.

"I am prepared to rip off the heads of 200 people, to sacrifice their lives, in order to save peace and calm in the republic," he told reporters in 1999, after a bus hijacking ended with a shootout that left nine people dead. "If my child chose such a path, I myself would rip off his head."

There has also been evidence that the United States has used the country for interrogations of terrorist suspects seized elsewhere.