Quote of the day

“Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”

--Mark Twain

Quote of the day--on war and peace

"Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out...and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. ..And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man"--with his mouth." --Mark Twain

People being held accountable

An advertisement RootsAction, an American Human Rights group, placed in a Spanish newspaper:


A Spanish judge, acting under international law, will soon decide whether to investigate US officials' roles in authorizing torture. We hope you agree that such cases must go forward, despite pressure from the Obama administration to drop them.  The organizations sponsoring this advertisement represent hundreds of thousands in the American public who believe the US government must be held to the same rule of law as other countries. We thank the people of Spain for your courage, and ask for your support as your courts consider bringing American officials to justice for the crime of torture.


From their website:


Despite earlier assertions by President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder that waterboarding is torture, former President George W. Bush publicly stated three times last year that he authorized waterboarding and added proudly that he would do it again. In a TV interview aired on November 8, Bush said he considered waterboarding legal "because the lawyer said it was legal." Waterboarding and other forms of torture were banned by the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified by the United States in 1994. 


Maybe people will be held accountable one day after all.  


I doubt it seriously but it would be nice.


Links:  http://warisacrime.org/content/american-human-rights-groups-place-ad-spanish-newspaper-encouraging-prosecution-us-war-crimi
http://rootsaction.org/

Life imitating art; humor imitating life

An actual headline I ran across today:

Judge Throws Out Suit By Torture Victim on Grounds It Would Inconvenience Important People

I tell you, there are many times anymore where I have to look twice to see if it's an actual headline or something written by and for "The Onion".  This, obviously, is one of those.

Sometimes it's funny.

Too many times, it's sad.


Have a great weekend, y'all.

Quote of the day--on the US and war today

WAR! (don't look!)

Nov 2, 2010 - A new isolationism is metastasizing in the American body politic. At its heart lies not an urge to avoid war, but an urge to avoid contemplating the costs and realities of war. It sees war as having analgesic qualities - as lessening a collective feeling of impotence, a collective sense of fear and terror. Making war in the name of reducing terror serves this state of mind and helps to preserve it. Marked by a calculated estrangement from war's horrific realities and mercenary purposes, the new isolationism magically turns an historic term on its head, for it keeps us in wars, rather than out of them.
Old-style American isolationism had everything to do with avoiding "entangling alliances" and conflicts abroad. It was tied to America's historic tradition of rejecting a large standing army - a tradition in which many Americans took pride. Yes, we signed on to World War I in 1917, but only after we had been "too proud to fight".
Even when we joined, we did so as a non-aligned power with the goal of ending major wars altogether. Before Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Americans again resisted the call to arms, looking on Adolf Hitler's rise and other unnerving events in Europe and Asia with alarm, but with little eagerness to send American boys into yet another global bloodbath.
In the decades since World War II, however, "isolationism" has been turned inside-out and upside-down. Instead of seeking eternal peace, Washington elites have, by now, plunged the country into a state of eternal war, and they've done so, in part, by isolating ordinary Americans from war's brutal realities.

Links:  http://warisacrime.org/content/war-dont-look;  http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LK02Ak01.html