Category Archives: Politics

petard-hoisting in our time: the Yard arrests top gov’t official

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Never forget 

and, apparently, using the post-paranoid age’s patented warrant-less taps and hacking provisions, which Blair‘s own government shoved down the throats of a complacent nation. Whoops, won’t do that again soon, will ya?

The Guardian has a report on the panic at #10:

Yates was the man who authorised the arrest of Ruth Turner, the rather earnest daughter of a theology professor and, more importantly, head of government relations at Number 10, on suspicion of perverting the course of justice. The move has set the government and the Metropolitan Police at war. What began with four police officers banging on the door of Turner‘s flat in Waterloo at dawn now threatens to end in a constitutional standoff, raising fundamental questions about the relationship between politicians and the law.

And more of the same, with bonus “senior government officials interfering with an investigation” here.

Downing street was plunged into a full-scale war with the police yesterday after senior officers hit back at criticism of the way the cash-for-peerages investigation is being handled.

They responded after Cabinet Minister Tessa Jowell expressed bewilderment at the manner in which Ruth Turner, Number 10’s director of devolvement relations, was arrested at home at dawn – while former Home Secretary David Blunkett accused police of ‘theatrics’. Yesterday Scotland Yard made clear its anger at what it sees as undue political pressure. Sir Chris Fox, the former president of the Association of Chief Police Officers who remains close to Scotland Yard, accused political critics of ‘scheming to discredit a very important inquiry’. Chief constables feared a potential threat to police independence, he added.

and, best of all, Iain Dale has the story about how it was the coppers hacking into the computer system at #10 which provided the smoking gun. This would, of course, have been illegal but for the shiny new surveillance measures that have been enacted since The War Against Terror began.

…An independent IT expert was then sent in by detectives, with the permission of Downing Street, to look through communications records, it claimed. But the Sunday Telegraph suggested that detectives had obtained high-level permission to “hack” into the IT system remotely…

Captain KJ on freedom of the press, Iraq, and the value of human life

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Here’s one of my patented I-don’t-agree-with-everything-in-this-post-but-it’s-too-damn-good-to-ignore posts. Captain KJ is an American serving in Iraq, and this is her post about the way the American MSM reports on American deaths, doesn’t report on Iraqi deaths, and gives a bad impression of America to Iraqis in multiple ways.

But where she says that exercising their freedom of speech is one of those ways, that is where she and I diverge. This is an excerpt, of course, but I encourage you to read the whole post, because she makes several complex points.

…What does it say to the Iraqis that we yell and scream (or our visible press does) about 20 American deaths when, in this ongoing conflict, a “light casualty day” for civilians in Baghdad is a day when there are less than 50 deaths? What are we saying about our relative valuing of American and Iraqi lives? Perhaps we should consider the messages that we’re carrying around the world when we have hysterics in the press the way we do. Granted, no nation or people can escape a certain amount of ethnocentrism, but it looks really bad to the people here when we obsess continually about American lives lost (which are, after all, lives lost who had volunteered to put themselves in the path of danger), and remain dismissively mute about the Iraqi lives lost, except as an underscore to continually harping about American deaths…

and my comment:

A good post. Respect for American lives does not require the negation of the personhood of any other nationalities, and I haven’t seen it put as well as it is here. But do you think that anyone Stateside gives a moment’s thought to how the US appears to Iraqis? I don’t: your post is the single most humanistic thing I’ve read about the Iraqis since…yes, since the last time I read Al Jazeera.

I have to strongly disagree, however, that parroting the party line strengthens the country. The Iraqis already know the US is divided: the US really is divided. Opposition and debate are inherent in the democratic process and certainly the Founding Fathers of the United States knew and valued this. It’s messy. It’s complicated. But it is the mark of an advanced nation that it tolerates ambiguity and difference, and venerates freedom of speech. There is no point in your being there, trying to bring democracy to Iraq, if they don’t know that this is how it works; they already know how totalitarianism and government censorship work. They know it all too well.

The Miskatonic Acid Test

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I totally have to see this. It looks awful!

It’s HP Lovecraft a-go-go in “The Miskatonic Acid Test“, the first feature from American Entropy Productions. It’s 1969, and cosmic horror infects a psychedelic rock “happening” in witch-haunted Arkham, Mass. It’s a zonked out brew of poetry, philosophy, cosmic horror, and 60’s-style acid rock; probably the first horror movie that’s more heavily influenced by the Monkees’ “Head” than by George Romero… This is the official trailer.

how to turn a man gay

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I’ve had enough of boring old to-dos. How to wash your hair. How to save money on groceries. How to train a wolverine to fetch. Whatever. This, however, is truly different.

From Shakespeare’s Sister, via Pharyngula. How to use your uterus to turn men gay! Click through to their site to read the whole thing; the only question left unanswered is, does the disco ball also function as an IUD?

“No woman in the history of politics has used her womb like Nancy Pelosi.” — Harvard Law School student and conservative misogynist douchebag Ben Shapiro, who obviously doesn’t understand that use of the womb is an important part of generating the radical gay agenda that is shot out of feminazi cooters, so of course she has to use her womb a lot. Duh.

I’m sort of breaking the Feminazi Cooter League‘s code of secrecy to do this, but let me just illustrate how the process works, to clear up any confusion:

Is the disco ball an IUD too? That would be awesome!

Attorney General told judges not to use judgement

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Gonzales equals torture

Yep, in typical “we know what’s best for you all” fashion, Alberto Gonzalez, Attorney General of the United States, will advise judges Wednesday that they should allow the wishes of the White House cabal to override their judicial independence and oversight when it comes to … basically, anything.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says federal judges are unqualified to make rulings affecting national security policy, ramping up his criticism of how they handle terrorism cases.

In remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday, Gonzales says judges generally should defer to the will of the president and Congress when deciding national security cases. He also raps jurists who “apply an activist philosophy that stretches the law to suit policy preferences.”

Just like he’s asking them to do, to suit White House policy preferences. Let us just hope that he’s restrained by higher-ups who see that the Constitution and the independent Judiciary are not to be trifled with.

Oh, that’s right. He reports to Cheney.