I’m pretty sure all the American presidential candidates are on this stuff. Yet another reason to draft Gore!
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Category Archives: Crime
Jack Bauer has his day in court
Imagine if you will 
Jack Bauer, the Dark Knight of the Sunny City, Abyss-staring, Monster-becoming, West Point lunatic-inspiring protagonist of the terrist-huntin’ television hit 24…
Hmmm. Messy.
There’s all the torture. All the dead people. There’s the gratuitous gunplay, quite palpably not followed up with proper paperwork. I’m even pretty sure there’s a bit on YouTube where you can see him change lanes without signalling.
Background from the Globe and Mail:
Justice Antonin Scalia is one of the most powerful judges on the planet.
The job of the veteran U.S. Supreme Court judge is to ensure that the superpower lives up to its Constitution. But in his free time, he is a fan of 24, the popular TV drama where the maverick federal agent Jack Bauer routinely tortures terrorists to save American lives. This much was made clear at a legal conference in Ottawa this week.
Senior judges from North America and Europe were in the midst of a panel discussion about torture and terrorism law, when a Canadian judge’s passing remark – “Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra ‘What would Jack Bauer do?‘ ” – got the legal bulldog in Judge Scalia barking.
The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent’s rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.
“Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. “Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so.
“So the question is really whether we believe in these absolutes. And ought we believe in these absolutes.”
What happened next was like watching the National Security Judges International All-Star Team set into a high-minded version of a conversation that has raged across countless bars and dinner tables, ever since 24 began broadcasting six seasons ago.
Jack Bauer, played by Canadian Kiefer Sutherland, gets meaner as he lurches from crisis to crisis, acting under few legal constraints. “You are going to tell me what I want to know, it’s just a matter of how much you want it to hurt,” is one of his catchphrases. Every episode poses an implicit question to its viewers: Does the end justify the means if national security is at stake? On 24, the answer is, invariably, yes.
Because God loves karma just as much as any Hindu, Maer Arar‘s lawyer was also present, and presented his own rather pointed, and highly effective argument: against torture, for trying Bauer.
Practially speaking, over three-quarters of the information gathered through torture is found to be inaccurate or plain lies. It isn’t efficient; it does. not. work. But it’s great television.
When I was studying political philosophy, we got the torture-the-terrorist question on our final exam (hey, some things never go out of style), and oh, how I wish I had that paper with me today, because it was the first perfect paper they’d ever seen in that course. My basic point was that you cannot break moral rules for practical reasons, because you have no control over the outcome (like, if he lies to you), no control over anything whatsoever in this world except one thing: your own actions. If what you actually DO is wrong, then you are wrong. And you must stop.
Can Bauer save your life? Not really; he might be able to postpone your death, but you’re going to die anyway, therefore preventing that through means that might or might not work anyway isn’t a realistic objective. If he gets the right information out of the terrorist, does that guarantee him the time or the ability to do anything about it? Of course not. He can’t control time any more than he can assure immortality.
But seriously, I said it way better, with quotations and everything. The only one I can remember is the most embarassing one, the one I used to conclude the paper, the Chris de Burgh one:
Sweet Liberty is in our hands. It’s part of the plan. Or is it a state of mind?
Those absolutes that Scalia dismisses, I remind you, include the Constitution of the United States of America as well as the Bill of Rights, both of which he is sworn not only to obey, but to uphold in his work on the Supreme Court.
Subverting the Constitution is not the job of the Supreme Court; it is, quite obviously, the job of the White House. Is Scalia thinking of tossing his powdered wig into the ’08 Presidential race? He’s clearly got what it takes.
And don’t you forget it.
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V for Vendetta: The translation!
For those of you who, unlike me, do not speak Alliteration, here is the great alliteration speech from the film V for Vendetta, where V introduces himself to Evey, SUBTITLED!
my mother, the CIA agent, the Filipino forger, and the meaning of Christmas presents
I’m kind of disappointed my blogging diploma isn’t from Miskatonic, but that’s nothing a little hacking won’t fix.
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Blogging Degree
From Go-Quiz.com
And this reminds me, it does, of the time my mother wanted to buy me a Doctorate from Harvard.
She was living in Saudi Arabia, as one does, shacked up with a CIA agent whose job it was to teach battlefield communications to the Saudis. As one does.
Islam was the bane of his existence, as five times a day no matter what they’d all pull out their rugs and face mecca and present a nice, juicy target to the Israelis. No indeed, this did not take him to his happy place, for yea, he was a very conscientious battlefield communications instructor. Over and over he lectured them, over and over he proved that the Israelis could wipe them all out at any of those five, widely known and unvarying times of day. And over and over they happily replied “if the Israelis kill us we will go straight to Paradise as martyrs,” and I believe one of them even made a reference to that bugger, I can’t kill him when he’s praying scene in Hamlet, obviously stretching to try to find some common ground with Jerry the Baptist, out in the wild Arabian desert.
As a sideline, Jerry ran the local casino and house of ill repute, which brought in several times his salary, and which he was allowed to keep because what his bosses were truly interested in was the blackmail material gathered by the tiny cameras placed strategically around the premises. He also had the local distribution rights for Johnny Walker, which was as the mines of King Solomon in terms of putting out the gelt.
Where was I? Oh yes, about to get to the religious police.
Naturally, Jerry was quite conscious of the activities of the religious police. The main trouble with the religious police was, as you can imagine, that they tended to be quite…well, there’s really no way around this, I’m just going to have to come out and say it… quite religious.
And the whole living-in-sin-with-a-Canadian-and-a-socialist-at-that thing was exactly the sort of thing with which they were Not Cool.
At. All.
Now, Jerry and my mother were by no means originals in their living arrangements, which did tend to give a rather louche reputation to even the primmest Mormon that the Yanks sent over, and so, as always happens where there are problems and lots of money around, a man materialized with a solution.
He materialized at the same time every year, swinging through the Middle East like an olden days tinker would swing through, say, Simcoe County, offering his wares.
He was a Filipino forger, and he was a very busy man.
They took one of the American marriage licenses for $250, which is really cheap for a piece of paper that you show the religious police and they don’t have you stoned, when you think about it, really, and my mother pondered long over the very tempting Harvard Doctorate, but decided that even she was not overpaid enough to spend $500 and besides, what would she get my sister, eh? Answer me that!
That year she got a camel saddle and I got a silver veil. Gee, I guess Mom DID love me best, even if she thought I was ugly.
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Just exactly why the Batmobile sucks
There is nothing that cannot be redeemed by the love of a true fan; nothing, that is, except, apparently, the Batmobile!
And we’re not even talking about the penile one from those gay movies with the molded rubber nipple suits. Even the classic Batmobile sucked ass, apparently.
And here’s why:
What a fucking hassle it must be for Batman to get around.
He has two primary modes of transportation: swinging from gothic clock towers on his Batline, and cruising around Gotham in the Batmobile. Sure, he’s got a Batwing and a Batjet and a Batcopter and even a Bat-Segway, but mostly Batman relies on his ride to get from point A to point B.
Now, the Batmobile is a seriously tricked-out car, and you can’t blame the guy for wanting to drive it, but it must be a serious pain in the ass dealing with the Batmobile every night.
As anyone who lives in or near a big North American city knows, urban driving can be a maddening experience. Heavy traffic, one-way streets, swerving buses, crazy-ass taxi drivers, potholes, inadequate signage, kamikaze bike messengers, oblivious pedestrians – don’t even get me going about parking. The shit is hard enough to deal with in a normal city in a normal car. Now just imagine trying to navigate Gotham City’s rat nest of streets and alleys in an extra-wide custom hot rod with a wonky torque converter and limited visibility.
——”If Batman wants to change lanes, you will let him into your lane.”——
Okay, the actual driving itself would probably not be an issue, as Batman probably has advanced defensive driving skills and an intimate knowledge of the street layout of Gotham. Plus, people would get the hell out of the Batmobile’s way. If Batman wants to change lanes, you will let him into your lane.
But what about parking? Can that thing even fit into a standard parking spot? Have you ever tried to parallel park a car that has huge scalloped bat wings on the back while wearing a rubber cowl that prevents you from moving your neck more than five degrees in any direction? I want to see a director’s cut of Tim Burton’s Batman where Michael Keaton tries to slide that beast into a parking spot without scraping the curb or bumping into another car. Now that would be some amazing shit.
and so on, at length. My theory is that he just tucks Alfred in the trunk (it has one, right? or else where do the badguys stuff Robin when they kidnap him and steal the car?) and lets him out when he starts hoofing it, “Here’s the keys Alfred, I’ll be back in twenty minutes, have the Chardonnay chilled,” or whatever.
That makes total sense to me.
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raincoaster 