Sunday, 29 November 2009

'Gitmo North': the cash-for-inmates scramble

And so, after years of "extraordinary rendition", false imprisonment, 3rd-party "interrogation" (i.e. mistreatment and torture) by people in countries with no recognisable history or appreciation of Habeas Corpus; and after president Gump Bush spent his entire period in office, and every trick in the book, denying Guantánamo Bay inmates any and all due process, incarcerating them without charge in an off-shore legal limbo, doesn't this news, about how towns with 'empty prisons' on the US mainland are now fighting to "win" the right to house those same Gitmo inmates strike you as ironic?

Before, under Bush, no expense was spared in keeping these inmates out of the clutches of any reasonable legal observation or purview - be that US or international.

Now, although it appears only out of a desire to attract the much needed revenues they will bring in a time of economic recession (sadly not any sense of wanting to do the right thing), the inmates will now end up being housed on US soil proper and, it is to be hoped, accorded all due legal process - no doubt a more straightforward proposition now that the morally bereft and politically dubious Bush-Cheney administration has been put out to grass. Full marks to Obama for wanting to close this outpost of cowboy law and mentality - a place which will forever symbolise the crassness, ineptitude, social autism and functionally illiterate 'two-wrongs-make-a-right' nature which so defined the Bush administration.

And of course, no story about Gitmo's guests would be complete without the comedy of its attendant irrational claims by Republicans, about how this move is a "threat to national security" - although, like most of their utterances since losing to Obama, they don't really amount to much other than their usual incessant partisan whingeing.

Thursday, 26 November 2009

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving: Has Obama pardoned the Turkey yet, or is Sarah Palin still under lock and key?





To all our US friends and readers - have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Much ado about bowing

After his recent Asia trip, there's been a lot made and much brouhaha (at least in the US) about this display of Obama simply following international protocol and offering a formal bow to Japan's Emperor Akihito. Critics claimed the sign of deference went against US State Department protocol, which decrees, somewhat arrogantly, that presidents bow to no one.

I just see it as Obama acknowledging a man wearing a superiorly tailored suit - no doubt Saville Row of London.

Can't anyone at Fox News do percentages?!






Given their recent run of factual faux pas, it would appear that Fox News is collapsing under its inability to deal in anything resembling impartiality or actual facts; either that, or they've finally come clean and just given up trying to present anything which takes effort or non-partisan thought.

But this latest example places them firmly in the unintended self-parody bucket.

The above screen capture comes from a piece they did on Tuesday, 24th November 2009, regarding the 2012 Republican Party presidential candidature - and as you can see, they're struggling with simple maths - specifically percentages.

And so whilst Fox may be "4,000% behind Palin!" for the nomination, someone will simply have to break the news to them (pun intended) that, in total, you can only every have 100% of anything - but as Fox report it above, they managed to poll six thirds of Republicans!

Impressive - that's a 100% margin of error! Way to go Faux!!

Of course none of this can help in their current battle for credibility after being shown, by Jon Stewart on 'The Daily Show', and others, to be fabricating news reportage, and taking a somewhat whimsical approach to using 'actual' film footage of the events they were purportedly covering. Embarrassingly, they managed to do the same thing twice in one week - to the point where the brass at Faux threatened anyone found guilty of any further 'breaches of accuracy' with being fired. Oops...

But, there is an upside here! At least we now know who conducts their polling and then collates Faux's poll statistics for them: Opinions Dynamic - the same guys who provide Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck et al with their teabagging figures...

Sometimes the comedy just writes itself.

The Darvaza natural gas crater



The Darvaza natural gas crater is located in the centre of the Karakum Desert in the central Asian country of Turkmenistan. The crater resulted after a Soviet natural gas exploration accident in the 1950s and has been burning ever since. The crater is approximately 60 meters in diameter and its depth is approximately 20 meters. (Photo and caption by Natalja Silver) Taken from National Geographic’s International Photography Contest 2009

Wednesday, 25 November 2009

"We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term"






You know, given that this this woman, Perino, was White House Press Secretary, under President Gump Bush, you'd perhaps have hoped that she'd at least remembered the one attack on the US which sent Gump Bush into his flat-spin and prompted the worst of his administration's excesses, right? Alas, she appears to have a bad case of selective amnesia, or the attention-span of an absent-minded gnat.



But hey, this is Hannity on Faux Noise - so the people watching will believe it anyway...

A Brief History of Socialist Plots to End the American Way of Life




Related Posts with Thumbnails