It's a beautiful Saturday morning here in the high desert

i got back from scotland and the outer hebrides one week ago today, welcomed by cold, snow flurries and a full week of cloudy, chilly, damp and generally miserable weather... today, finally, the sky is clear, the sun is shining brightly and the temp has jumped from the upper 30s to the mid-50s and it's only 10:30... i'm listening to glorious celtic music with a melancholy tinge, perhaps befitting how i'm feeling about being back in the u.s. and continuing to witness the pathos of the erosion of everything we stand for...

glenn greenwald...

The first paragraph of today's New York Times article by Charlie Savage:

The 48 Guantánamo Bay detainees whom the Obama administration has decided to keep holding without trial include several for whom there is no evidence of involvement in any specific terrorist plot, according to a report disclosed Friday.

The Report itself, in a matter-of-fact-tone, describes the individuals to be kept in a cage indefinitely without charges this way:

They can't even be prosecuted in the due-process-abridging military commissions we invented out of whole cloth for those who can't be convicted in a real court. In other words: of course we'll provide a fair tribunal for proving your guilt -- as long as we're certain we can convict you -- otherwise, we'll just imprison you indefinitely without charges. All this even though 72% of Guantanamo detainees have been found to be wrongfully held since the Supreme Court compelled habeas hearings in 2008. And then there are the numerous Yemeni prisoners who have been cleared for release but who will be kept in a cage anyway because we arbitrarily decreed that we're not going to release even innocent prisoners back to Yemen.

[...]

Yes -- being as sentimental as I am -- I, too, harbor nostalgia for that "older principle of accountability under the law": you know, that idealized time when everyone was entitled to be charged with crimes before being imprisoned forever (rather than only those for whom prosecution was "feasible") and when Presidents weren't actually allowed to target American citizens for murder without at least some due process being granted. Anyway, did Sarah Palin post something to her Facebook page today? And isn't that Glenn Beck crazy?

i never thought i'd come to the day when i'd be embarrassed and ashamed to identify myself as a liberal, democrat and progressive...

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I just heard about "Detention Without Trial of Unprivileged Enemy Belligerents"

there have been a lot of little steps taken toward a military/police state in the u.s. over the 8 years of the bush administration, steps that are being expanded by the obama administration...

and, yes, i was a fool to buy the snake oil sold as "hope" by the obama campaign...

"'brand' obama"...

The election of Barack Obama was yet another triumph of propaganda over substance and a skillful manipulation and betrayal of the public by the mass media. We mistook style and ethnicity – an advertising tactic pioneered by the United Colors of Benetton and Calvin Klein – for progressive politics and genuine change. We confused how we were made to feel with knowledge. But the goal, as with all brands, was to make passive consumers mistake a brand for an experience. Obama, now a global celebrity, is a brand. He had almost no experience besides two years in the senate, lacked any moral core and was sold as all things to all people. The Obama campaign was named Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008 and edged out runners-up Apple and Zappos.com. Take it from the professionals. Brand Obama is a marketer’s dream. President Obama does one thing and Brand Obama gets you to believe another. This is the essence of successful advertising. You buy or do what the advertisers want because of how they can make you feel.

nothing has been done to halt our greased slide into the depths of hell...

torture has, if anything, become acceptable...

extraordinary rendition and indefinite, illegal detention are still on the menu...

our government is privy to every electronic communication and transaction over any network of any sort we choose to use, wherever we are, even outside the u.s., and those, along with our movements, are logged and archived for possible future retrieval...

peremptory, extra-judicial assassinations, even of u.s. citizens, are carried out in presidential-approved black ops...

hundreds, maybe thousands, of drones, flown remotely by pilots sitting behind consoles in nevada and new mexico, strike targets in afghanistan and pakistan daily without the specific knowledge or concurrence of those national governments...

"terrorist" has become the magic word that, once applied, can and will place anyone beyond the reach of the law of any country, possibly for the rest of that person's life...

and the list goes on...

now, here we have what looks like the next big step...

On March 4th, Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman introduced a bill called the "Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010" that, if passed, would set this country on a course to become a military dictatorship.

The bill is only 12 pages long, but that is plenty of room to grant the president the power to order the arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment of anyone -- including a U.S. citizen -- indefinitely, on the sole suspicion that he or she is affiliated with terrorism, and on the president's sole authority as commander in chief.

[...]

[I]f at any point, anywhere in the world, a person is caught who might have done something to suggest that he or she is a terrorist or somehow supporting a terrorist organization against the U.S. or its allies, that person must be imprisoned by the military. [emphasis added]

For how long?

As long as U.S. officials want. A subsequent section, titled "Detention Without Trial of Unprivileged Enemy Belligerents," states that suspects "may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners."

when glenn greenwald sounds the four-alarm fire, i tend to pay attention...

As "war on terror"-era legislation goes, Greenwald calls the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act "probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the Senate in the last several decades, far beyond the horrific, habeas-abolishing Military Commissions Act."

so, here i sit in one of my favorite neighborhood cafes in buenos aires (argentina, the home of la guerra sucia - the dirty war - fomented in large part by my own country), while i expound on the continued degradation of the u.s. constitution as i sip cafe con leche and nibble medialunas... life's little ironies, eh...?

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