My Tinfoil Hat
posted by Susan Stark

Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s that time again.

It’s now time for another episode of (drum roll) . . . The Osama Show!!

Yes, Osama has taken time off from dragging his kidney dialysis machine from cave to cave to grace us with his presence again.

All of that dragging is making him a little worse for wear, because he has far more wrinkled skin under that false beard he’s wearing just for this occasion.

I must admit, though, he packed more of a punch in his 2004 “October Surprise” episode, repeating without a hitch, all of the concerns of leftists in this country: the stolen presidential election, occupation of Iraq and Palestine, the grotesque power of Halliburton and other corporate gangs. Thus, securing the election for George Bush.

Oh, boy.

Ms. Stark is a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy nutbag, to think that Osama would give an election to George. Well, there are plenty of tinfoil hat wearers, including Craig Unger, who wrote House of Bush, House of Saud, which details the relationship between the Bush family and Saudi Arabia, with a special emphasis on the warm relationship with the Bin Laden family. Both Craig Unger and Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 detail how members of the Bin Laden family were hurried out of the country after September Eleventh, when no one else was allowed to fly. Under normal, rational circumstances, this family would’ve be held for questioning. What other conclusion can you come up with except that the Bushes and Bin Ladens are in cahoots with each other, if the Bin Ladens are allowed a free pass outta Dodge?

Ah, but, Osama is the black sheep of the family. The rest of the Bin Ladens are good little pro-Westerners and capitalists. Not according to BBC reporter Greg Palast in this article here and here. And to think they were let go when we had them cornered.

As for Osama being a leftist? a socialist? Back in 1996, Osama stated quite clearly what his goals are, and they are far from anything that I or any other leftist cares about.

The conclusion? For those of you familiar with the book 1984, Osama is playing Emmanuel Goldstein to George’s Big Brother. For those of you who haven’t read that book, he is playing “bad cop” to Bush’s “good cop”, reinforcing Bush by pretending to espouse liberal and leftist ideals, thus making it appear that leftists are on “Osama’s side”. True liberals and leftists (and their concerns) are effectively marginalized.

Those who believe that 9/11 was perpetrated by the Bush Regime are probably the true tinfoil hat-wearers, but their arguments are becoming more and more palatable to me each and every time we are subjected to one more of these lame-ass Two Minutes Hate videos from Osama, which strangely enough only seem to help his supposed enemy, George Bush.

I’ll gladly wear my tinfoil hat, if only out of spite.

This Week’s Column: GONZALES V. UNITED STATES

Here’s this week’s column. Comments may be posted here.

A Torturer Takes a Victory Lap
NEW YORK–Al Capone served six years at Alcatraz–for tax evasion. The true Original Gangsta was never held to account for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre that left seven men cut in half by machine gun fire. Or the two disloyal wiseguys he ordered beaten to death with baseball bats. Or the corruption and mayhem his gangsters inflicted during the years he terrorized Chicago. Eliot Ness was cute, but the justice system failed. Capone won in the end.

Like Capone, Alberto Gonzales has gone down for a mere misdemeanor: firing U.S. attorneys for investigating Republican politicians. What led to his resignation as attorney general was his smearing them as incompetent. Hell hath no fury as a man fired without a positive recommendation. (Gonzales, a buffoon on his best day, perjured himself in spectacularly inept style in testimony about domestic wiretapping before Congress–an outfit that has forgotten more about lying than lesser lights will ever know.)

Gonzales’ crime was a doozy: He created the legal framework for American fascism. No punishment could suffice for America’s Eichmann, author of infamous pseudolegal rationales for torture and the end of habeas corpus. And none will he face.

“Fredo” (Bush’s nickname for him) quit over a procedural personnel matter. If he ultimately faces justice, it will be for mere perjury. Even his critics don’t care about his monstrous role as the legal architect of our post-9/11 gulags–proof positive that the master corrupter of democracy has triumphed, that we Americans are not a decent people.

“Are we being forward-leaning enough?” Gonzales used to ask his colleagues. “Forward-leaning” was Bush Administration jargon for toughness in the war on terror. It didn’t mean bending the rules. The Bushies were radicals. Trashing centuries-old constitutional protections–the right to an attorney, to face your accuser in a court of law, not to be tortured–wasn’t enough for our suburban Robespierres. They longed for an American Rome ruled by a harsh, omnipotent emperor over legions of troops standing ready to destroy all who challenged them, foreigners and Americans alike. They said 9/11 had changed everything. The new order required new laws.

One of the first steps down the road to perdition was a January 25, 2002 legal memorandum advising Bush to deny legal rights to Afghan POWs. “There are reasonable grounds for you to conclude that [the Geneva P.O.W. Convention] does not apply…to the conflict with the Taliban,” wrote Gonzales, then working as White House counsel. Deploying his characteristic blend of ignorance, arrogance and illogic, he called the Geneva Conventions–which have saved the lives of thousands of captured American soldiers–“quaint.” He then argued “that the Taliban and its forces were, in fact, not a government but a militant, terrorist-like group.” Actually, the Clinton and Bush Administrations had treated the Taliban regime as a government, negotiating with its leaders over oil-pipeline transit fees and subsidizing it with millions of U.S. taxdollars. U.S. allies, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, had embassies in Kabul. History was collateral damage in the war of terror.

Having denied captured Afghan soldiers POW status–“detainees,” newspapers began calling them–the Bush Administration looked for “forward-leaning” ways to abuse them. Children as young as 12 were beaten, shipped in shackles, their heads shaved and covered with gunny sacks, to Guantánamo Bay. Years have passed; they’ve grown up in Camp Delta. These kids–rural conscripts who couldn’t have attacked the U.S. even if they’d thought of it–still haven’t been allowed to see a lawyer or their parents.

Worried that the American people might someday return to its senses and prosecute them for their monstrous crimes against humanity, the Bushies again turned to their affirmative-action poster child–this time for a C.Y.A. memo validating torture. The CIA wanted permission to use six “pressure techniques” against prisoners. Mock burial, Gonzales and his legal staff thought, was a mite “too harsh.” The medieval practice of waterboarding, on the other hand, was OK. Another practice, “open-handed slapping of suspects, drew much discussion,” reported Newsweek. The idea was “just to shock someone with the physical impact,” one of Gonzales’ staffers said, with “little chance of bone damage or tissue damage.” Gonzales approved it.

The discussion resulted in an August 1, 2002 memo to Gonzales, which he passed on to Bush. The CIA and U.S. soldiers were free to subject prisoners to “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment. All they needed was permission from the Emperor. “Those committing torture with express presidential authority,” The Washington Post reported about the memo, “were probably immune from prosecution.” Abu Ghraib followed.

Slippery slopes are usually cited as cautionary tales. Gonzales saw post-9/11 fear as an opportunity to be exploited. He pushed for the USA Patriot Act. Foreign detainees, he decided, would get military kangaroo courts. Using Gonzales’ advice as back-up, Bush signed an executive order authorizing himself to declare any U.S. citizen an “enemy combatant” and have him assassinated. Next came the terrifying Military Commissions Act, which allows a president to declare martial law, seize control of the National Guard from the states, and throw U.S. citizens into concentration camps for the rest of their lives.

But no one objected to any of these attacks on our freedom. Not the news media. Not the Democrats–they voted for them.

After Torturer-in-Chief Gonzales announced his departure, Ted Kennedy slammed him–for perjury. “He has exhibited a lack of candor with Congress and the American people and a disdain for the rule of law and our constitutional system,” said the liberal stalwart. “The rampant politicization of federal law enforcement that occurred under his tenure seriously eroded public confidence in our justice system,” added House speaker Nancy Pelosi, focusing, like everybody else, on the fired U.S. attorneys. The word “torture” didn’t come up.

Gonzales will be remembered as corrupt and intellectually deficient. Nevertheless, his legal legacy will likely remain in place for the foreseeable future. Torture isn’t in the news because it isn’t news. It’s normal.

The monster dragged the rest of us down to his level. We are all Alberto Gonzales.

COPYRIGHT 2007 TED RALL

We Will Bury You!
posted by Susan Stark

An urban legend has it that Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev pounded his shoe on a table and said those four words to the West, indicating that Communism will bury Capitalism.

We chuckle at that now, because after all, we won, didn’t we? We buried communism.

Well, yes, we did, after a fashion.

Unfortunately, though, it’s rearing it’s ugly head again. No, I’m not talking about Hugo Chavez with his Bolivarianism, or Putin with his resurgent Mafia-socialism. What I’m talking about is popping up in the good old U S of A.

Comrades, let me introduce you to Chairman Rupert Murdoch. He is doing what Khrushchev wanted to do but didn’t live to do: He is burying us.

If we are all eventually forced into reading or listening or watching HIS media for our information, it would certainly be the equivalent of reading Pravda.

Just as much as if the Walton family owned every means of buying stuff, as they are trying to do right now. Imagine long lines at Wal-mart snaking around the block, parallel to the Soviet lines to buy clothing or toilet paper.

Because, that’s the irony. The greater the corporate and individual concentration of ownership in our society, the closer we come to Soviet-style economy, where everything is owned and distributed by a single entity (in their case, it was the State).

When Chairman Murdoch gains control of a newspaper, for instance, he “promises” not to change the content. But he turned the New York Post from a mainstream liberal paper into a tabloid/fascist rag that hasn’t made a profit since he acquired it. But profit isn’t nearly as important as dominance, when you’re trying to manipulate public opinion.

Fortunately, we have an alternative to this corporate-communism, if we are willing to make the effort. There is a little-known news network that aims to become an alternative to not only to Fox News, but also to CNN and the rest of the cookie-cutter networks.

It’s called the REAL NEWS!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAXtLgMedyI

“Silk Road to Ruin” Review

A Central Asia-knowledgeable blogger reviews “Silk Road to Ruin.” I think he does a good job.

Column: IT DID HAPPEN HERE

Here’s this week’s column, available for comment:

American Citizen Tortured, Convicted of Thought Crime

NEW YORK–“Just about everyone agrees that the recent conviction of Abdullah al-Muhajir, a.k.a. Jose Padilla, is a good thing,” wrote right-wing pundit Neil Kressel in The New York Post. Indeed, just about everyone did. “It is hard to disagree with the jury’s guilty verdict against Jose Padilla, the accused, but never formally charged, dirty bomber,” opined the liberal editorial board of The New York Times. (They went on to criticize the way the Bush Administration denied Padilla due process.)

Meet Mr. Not Everyone.

Padilla, a 36-year-old American citizen born in Brooklyn who converted to Islam, was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare airport in May 2002. Using the bombastic “1984”-style rhetoric of the post-9/11 era, then-attorney general John Ashcroft announced that Padilla had participated in an “unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb.” Padilla’s arrest, Ashcroft ranted, would have caused “mass death and injury” in an American city.

But there wasn’t any evidence. Or there wasn’t enough to convict him in court. Which was, under the system of justice citizens of Western countries have lived under for eight centuries, the same thing.

Before 9/11 and “preventative detention” and legal torture and scary new laws like the USA-Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act eliminated habeas corpus, Padilla would have sat in jail a day or two. He might have gotten roughed up. Then he’d have walked.

That was under democracy. In Bush’s neofascist security state, Padilla rotted in solitary confinement–in a military brig–for three and a half years. (Read Henry Charriere’s classic prison memoir “Papillon” if you doubt that solitary confinement is a form of torture.) No family visits. No lawyer. They subjected him to sensory deprivation, covering his eyes and ears to make him lose his mind.

And still no trial. Because the government knew Padilla was innocent.

By 2006 Bush was unpopular. Federal judges had begun to regrow their ‘nads, ruling that the Administration had to charge Padilla or release him. So the Bushies came up with a clever dodge whose narrow legalism was worthy of depends-on-the-meaning-of-is: they transferred Padilla to the civilian justice system and charged him with something else.

Or, to be specific, something less. They added Padilla to a case against two Middle Eastern men on trial for “conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people in a foreign country” and “material support” for Islamic terrorism. Padilla had met the two in Florida and, prosecutors say, traveled to Afghanistan in 2000 to join Al Qaeda. The key evidence presented was Padilla’s supposed Al Qaeda application form, which fingerprints proved he had handled.

Padilla’s public defenders claimed that their client was forced to pick up the “Al Qaeda form” in the brig. Who knows what happened while he was “disappeared” during those three and a half years?

“There is no need to show any particular violent crime [in a conspiracy trial],” said law professor Robert Chesney, of Wake Forest University. “You don’t have to specify the particular means used to carry out the crime.” Nevertheless, Padilla faces the possibility of life in prison.

Of course, the United States wasn’t at war with Afghanistan in 2000. Before 9/11 the Clinton and Bush Administrations both sent millions of dollars to the Taliban. The vast majority of Muslims who trained at Al Qaeda camps never plotted against the U.S. They planned to fight in places like Chechnya, Kosovo and Xinjiang. Padilla’s membership in Al Qaeda, even if proven, doesn’t prove anti-Americanism.

Post-9/11 conspiracy prosecutions are de facto attempts to make anti-Americanism–the mere thought, not any action–illegal.

“It is a pretty big leap between a mere indication of desire to attend a camp and a crystallized desire to kill, maim and kidnap,” said Peter Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University. The conspiracy count against Padilla, Margulies continued, “is highly amorphous, and it basically allows someone to be found guilty for something that is one step away from a thought crime.”

The charge was laughable and the standard of proof rock-bottom. But the masters of Padilla’s show trial didn’t miss a chance to cheese up the proceedings.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier never presented evidence that Padilla actually joined or was accepted by Al Qaeda. Nevertheless, reported the Associated Press, he “mentioned Al Qaeda 91 times in his opening statement and more than 100 times in his closing, according to court transcripts.” Padilla had nothing to do with 9/11. To link him to the attacks in jurors’ minds, Frazier had them watch a seven-minute video clip of Osama bin Laden. (There’s no evidence that Padilla ever watched the 1997 CNN interview.)

Padilla’s lawyers asked the judge in the case to dismiss the case because he had been denied a speedy trial. Marcia Cooke said no–and ordered them not to talk to the jury about the three and a half years the defendant had spent being tortured and deprived of his rights.

Reporters’ eyes rolled as Frazier said that government wiretappers heard Padilla and his two co-defendents use code words like “football” to mean jihad and “eggplant” and “zucchini” for weapons. “They wanted to recruit, fund and train fighters,” he told the jury. “Playing this kind of football was more important than anything else to these men. What they were doing was no game.” But, reported the AP, Padilla’s “voice was only picked up on seven of the FBI intercepts, [and] he never talked in code.” He shouldn’t have been convicted–even on those lame-ass conspiracy charges.

Osama bin Laden is an ends-justifies-the-means kind of guy. So, apparently, is Uncle Sam. Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University, said after the verdict: “It’s kind of a dirty victory because of the way the case came about, but still it’s a victory nonetheless.” Yeah. But for whom?

(Ted Rall is the author of the new book “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?,” an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America’s next big foreign policy challenge.)
COPYRIGHT 2007 TED RALL

This Week’s Column

Here’s this week’s column. Feel free to post comments here.

SHAME: CHINA’S MOST VALUABLE EXPORT

Zhang Shuhong was a nice boss to the end. On the last day of his life the fiftyish entrepreneur greeted his employees as they arrived at his factory and wished them a good shift. Then he went to the company warehouse and hanged himself.

Zhang was co-owner of the Lee Der Industrial Company, the Chinese company that made toys for Mattel using toxic levels of lead paint. Mattel issued a recall expected to cost the company in the neighborhood of $30 million.
Poor guy–he probably didn’t even know the paint his workers were slathering on nearly a million toys for preschoolers was dangerous. “The boss and the company were harmed by the paint supplier, the closest friend of our boss,” reported the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper.

“It is not uncommon for Chinese executives to commit suicide after suffering damage to their reputation,” noted the UK Telegraph.

Zhang’s death followed the July execution of Zheng Xiaoyu, 62, head of China’s State Food and Drug Administration from 1994 to 2005. Zheng was convicted of accepting $850,000 in bribes from eight pharmaceutical companies in exchange for approving fake and substandard drugs. An antibiotic involved in the case killed at least 10 people.

The Xinhua news agency didn’t say how Zheng was killed, but most Chinese executions are carried out with a single gunshot to the back of the head. Shortly afterward a policeman notifies the condemned man’s family by presenting them with a bill for the cost of the bullet.

Now that’s accountability. Can we import some of that too?

The late Mssrs. Zhang and Zheng oversaw corruption and incompetence that pales next to catastrophes for which no American has yet been held to account. Thousands died in hurricane Katrina because officials all the way up to George “Heckuva job, Brownie!” Bush made a conscious decision not to help. Two years later, what’s left of New Orleans is dying, murdered by an appalling political calculus: It is (was) black. It was Democratic. Shouldn’t government officials face a firing squad for killing a major city?

What about Iraq? It wouldn’t bring back the million dead civilians or the thousands of dead soldiers, but watching Wolfy and Rummy and Cheney hold hands as they leapt off the tallest building in D.C. might brighten the day of their grieving relatives.

The same goes for the war against Afghanistan, which state-controlled media has finally conceded is a lost cause. (Lead story in the August 12th New York Times: “How the ‘Good War’ in Afghanistan Went Bad.”) Save some rope for the Democratic politicians and the phony journalists who insisted that Bush had “taken his eye off the ball in Afghanistan” to invade Iraq. The blood splattered by every errant Hellfire missile, every blown-up wedding party and the bullet wounds in Pat Tillman’s body are their responsibility.

If execution is good enough for Cao Wenzhuang, a Chinese FDA official accused of taking $307,000 in bribes, how about his American counterparts? As cancer patients drop like flies, U.S. FDA bureaucrats delay approval of drugs that could have saved their lives.

Eloxatin, a drug used to treat advanced colorectal cancer, has been approved in at least 29 countries–but the FDA rejected it anyway. Under pressure from terminally ill patients, the agency then approved it. But they dragged their feet for more than two years. Some 40,000 Americans died during the delay.

“Twelve drugs–had they been available to people denied entry to clinical trials–might have helped more than one million mothers, fathers, sons and daughters live longer, better lives,” say the founders of the Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs.

I’m not sure I’d want to live somewhere as uptight as China. At its border with Tajikistan recently, a white-gloved policeman stood ramrod straight, sweating under a blazing sun, waiting to direct traffic. Because the border was closed for lunch, however, there was no traffic. Even when vehicles began moving, he had no traffic to direct–it was a straight road, not an intersection. Some official thought the border needed a traffic cop, so there he was.

Still, the Chinese get some things right. “Corruption in the food and drug authority has brought shame to the nation,” says Yan Jiangying, deputy policy director of China’s FDA. We could use some shame here in America.

(Ted Rall is the author of the new book “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?,” an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America’s next big foreign policy challenge.)
COPYRIGHT 2007 TED RALL

Lambda Legal

The gay-rights advocacy group Lambda Legal has awarded me second prize in its Life Without Fair Courts cartoon contest. Also worth noting: fellow CWA (Cartoonists With Attitude) member Matt Bors took third place.

First place went to Greg Fox.

Cartoon Comments on Double Secret Probation

If the low volume of commentary about the cartoons posted here continues through next week, I will likely stop posting them here in the . You will, of course, be able to continue reading them in their usual spot in the cartoon section.