By broadly asserting corporations as “people,” W.M. Romney has publicly defined his active engagement in one of the lowest, most odious, and most near-universally despicable commerces conceivable.

As head of Bain Capital, an enterprise whose raison d’etre is the buying and selling of corporate entities for profit, W.M. Romney was, by his own words, actively dealing in the buying and selling of people.

Buying and selling people is slave-trading.

Applying his self-expressed parameters, W.M. Romney trafficked in (and profited handsomely from) slavery.

So this is how an extended, unwarranted, atrocious, panicked action shambles off the highway of history: Not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with “nostalgia.”

“There was a signing of papers of receivership that gave Iraq custody of the base effective today,” [U.S. military spokesman Col. Barry] Johnson said. “It’s quite nostalgic. It was the center of gravity for what we were doing here for all these years,” he added.  Source

Officially, the second “I” and the “O” in the term IIO used as a title here incessantly over the years here may be retired. The leading “I” can never be expunged.

Update December 19: In on a lie, and out on a lie.

For security reasons, the last soldiers made no time for goodbyes to Iraqis with whom they had become acquainted. To keep details of the final trip secret from insurgents, interpreters for the last unit to leave the base called local tribal sheiks and government leaders on Saturday morning and conveyed that business would go on as usual, not letting on that all the Americans would soon be gone. Citation

Shock and awe that there exists such a thing as a declared end. Dismal, simply dismal.

U.S. Admiral James W. Stavridis, the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, also expressed regrets in a letter read at the ceremony. He “there were hopes to continue the mission beyond 2011 ” and added: “We are concluding earlier than we had hoped.” Source

What have we become?

There you have it — indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial.  Source

Congress, then.

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.  Source

Congress, now.  (More)

•  Replace “support” with “subvert”

•  Replace “defend” with “overturn”

•  Amend “against all enemies” to read “regarding enemies (proven, alleged, suspected or arbitrarily designated)”

•  Replace “true” with “fungible”

•  Amend “to the same” to read “to the same when expedient”

•  Replace “freely” with “lightly”

•  Amend “office on which I am about to enter” to read “office on which I am about to enter, unless inconvenient”

Together in peace.

In the late Senator Teddy’s case, with the solace of readily available government-paid end of life aid and assistance.

Edward Kennedy was a Senator who understood and extolled the service part of the phrase public service and who worked to make conspicuous and to never forgo the concept, responsibility and utilization of benevolence in government.

If directly calling for openly flouting and opposing the Constitution is not anti-American, what is?

From the U.S. Constitution, Article VI (emphasis added):

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

One can stare at that as many times as one likes and parse it ’til the cows come home and it still nowhere says “except Oklahoma.”

Republican mayoral candidate Anna Falling said Tuesday that putting a Christian creationism display in the Tulsa Zoo is No. 1 in importance among city issues that include violent crime, budget woes and bumpy streets.

[snip]

Falling, who has founded several Christian nonprofits and is a former city councilor, also said the next mayor needs to appoint people to city boards, authorities and commissions who will “honor God.”

[snip]

When asked whether she meant she would recruit Christians to serve the city, Falling said she was talking about “people committed to their churches,” and when asked whether she meant Christian churches, she said, “churches, yes.” Source

Fanaticism is a dish best not served at all.

Those who have followed the multiple citings of stories about the MEK, Camp Ashraf and the Bulgarian troops assigned there during the bulk of the occupation will find this of keen interest.

Iraqi forces raided a camp housing members of an Iranian opposition group on Tuesday, sharply escalating tensions that have been on the rise since the U.S. military turned over responsibility for the camp to the Iraqis.

Four people were killed by the Iraqi police and scores more injured…

[snip]

The raid came a day after the Iraqi government, which has maintained a security cordon around the camp’s perimeter, said it would assume complete control of the camp but promised to protect the people inside.

Shortly afterward, the group’s leaders announced they were willing to return to Iran if they were guaranteed immunity from prosecution. They insisted on guarantees in writing from Iran, the United States, the United Nations and Iraq.

A legal counsel at the camp, Behzad Saffari, said the Iraqis also opened fire in Tuesday’s melee. He claimed American troops witnessed the event but did not intervene except to take pictures. Source

A staggering, impressive and laudatory show of defiance and fierce bravery.

[Saeed] Hajarian is confined to a wheelchair and able to speak only with great difficulty, having suffered severe spinal cord damage after being shot in the face by a fundamentalist who, though later convicted, hardly served any jail time. He survives only with the help of daily medication, intensive physiotherapy and regular consultations with a neurosurgeon. He cuts as unthreatening a figure as any government is likely to encounter. But that hasn’t stopped Iran’s intelligence ministry from locking him up in Evin’s Section 209 – reserved for the most potent political suspects – and subjecting him to regular interrogations.

Hajarian’s captors fear his brain. They are trying to force him to sign a confession owning up to plotting a “colourful” or velvet revolution that would have seen the Islamic republic toppled and replaced by a pro-western puppet government, the political bogeyman that keeps Khamenei and his acolytes awake at night. In return, he would be allowed to leave prison – thereby handing the regime a propaganda coup and sparing it the increasing embarrassment of imprisoning a man whom it is already responsible for reducing to a shell.

But Hajarian – himself one of the principal founders and architects of the intelligence ministry in his younger days – has turned the tables by refusing to leave prison. He has refused to give any admission, even when his jailers tried to break his resolve by interrogating his wife and detaining – though later releasing – his son. Effectively, the prisoner is holding his captors hostage, forcing them to provide, and even administer, the treatment needed to keep him alive. His interrogator has been reduced to carrying out his daily physiotherapy sessions. Source

There is more than ample evidence of the immature kindergarten level* to which political discourse has sunk, but this ludicrous stab mines untapped contemptible depths of sheer stupidity:

Dr. Regina M. Benjamin, Obama’s pick for the next surgeon general, was hailed as a MacArthur Grant genius who had championed the poor at a medical clinic she set up in Katrina-ravaged Alabama.

But the full-figured African-American nominee is also under fire for being overweight in a nation where 34 percent of all Americans aged 20 and over are obese.

Critics and supporters across the blogsphere have commented on photos of Benjamin’s round cheeks, saying she sends the wrong message as the public face of America’s health initiatives. Source

* With apologies to actual kindergarteners, who aren’t old enough yet to know any better.

Liz Cheney (more) — an American iteration of Imee Marcos?

M*A*S*H was cute — and fictional. This is neither:

The first full-time female FBI agent to be stationed at Guantanamo says she was made to bunk with vermin that gave her a tropical disease and was ostracized because she refused to join in a “spring break” atmosphere in which agents were encouraged to drink, date, and frolic when not interrogating alleged terrorists.…

[snip]

In her claim against Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice, Foley says she has photographs depicting “personnel at Guantanamo engaged in drunken carousing in a sexually charged atmosphere, day and night,” including shots of “”emale employees in bathing suits or revealing attire sitting on the laps of male employees, and female employees being hugged, kissed and likely groped by male employees.”

Her complaint states: “Other photographs reveal, among other things, what appear to be intoxicated FBI employees wearing some type of mocking imitation of Arab or Afghan attire, and personnel at a Halloween party dressed in orange detainee jumpsuits (apparently as a joke). Still other employees appear to be completely intoxicated and engaged in various activities which indicate both a pervasive discriminatory atmosphere toward women, as well as behavior inappropriate for employees stationed at a detention facility for terrorists. Some of the behavior resembles stereotypical ’spring break’ behavior. This highly inappropriate behavior by FBI personnel and other U.S. Government personnel working at Guantanamo, was known by the FBI, was encouraged by the FBI, and was tolerated by the FBI.” Source

Put as simply (and broadly) as possible, the partisan arguments in Congress regarding emergency funds for the automotive industry boiled down to:

Republicans - The government should maintain a laissez-faire position (while concurrently mandating concessions from labor) and the market should be the determinant of business decisions and viability.

Democrats - Monies for a large and many-tentacled sector of industry as a buffer and stopgap to allow a window of opportunity for major and wrenching labor and management decisions involving a restructured bsuiness model, but avoidance of a direct takeover of operations by the government.

Except for when, in both cases, those loudly proclaimed stances and principles are simultaneously tossed out the window.

A majority of House members have signed onto a bill to reverse the closing of 789 Chrysler dealerships and block General Motors Corp. from closing more than 1,300, while the full House could vote on the bill as early as next week. Source

To paraphrase the anecdote regarding the Model T: You can have a Congress in any color you want, so long as it’s yellow.

Michael Jackson is still expired.

As for Abe Vigoda…

And now for something completely different.

Horrid.

The snippet comes from (and is linked to) a Google translation (slightly modified for clarity) of an article in Le Figaro:

Several stories circulating in the medical [sic], Rasoul Akram Hospital, not far from Tehran University, would have received from the “Black Monday” (June 15), 38 corps[es], including 28 wounded and 10 dead . “We found that the bullets had passed through the torsos to the diagonal, which means they were fired from above - ie [sic] a roof,” says the second doctor.

According to an official review, at least 17 people have been killed since the beginning of the dispute. However, a first quietly made by the nursing staff from different hospitals showed that to date more than 92 people died in Tehran and its environs. A woman eight months pregnant is one of the victims. Shot and killed, near the presidential palace, it was then transported to the hospital. Other disturbing stories are beginning to emerge in broad daylight. As one of the six corpses of young men found last week in Shahriar, on the outskirts of the capital. Their skulls had been smashed and their brains had been opened, presumably to retrieve the ball to clear the trace of the crime,” says the second doctor informed of this terrible massacre by a trusted colleague. Translated Source

Original article in French here.

Citing a philosophy of conscience based on the foundation of a refrigerator magnet, and a strange, tangled thicket of indistinct language slanted to evince personal victimhood (including mention of the voiced “Yes” vote of a one-year-old), Gov. Sarah Palin today announced that she is going Galt (ref.).

Don’t let the door hit ya in the butt on the way out.

As U.S. forces ostensibly “pull back” to the barricaded acreage of 300-plus bases on Iraqi soil:

Al-Maliki’s government has declared Tuesday National Sovereignty Day and decreed a public holiday.

[snip]

Iraqi officials have warned people to stay away from crowded places and al-Maliki appealed for national unity. Source

Hidden in so far as the vast majority of front-page mainstream media is concerned, that is.

The United States has sent a shipment of weapons and ammunition to the government of Somalia, according to a U.S. official who said the move signals the Obama administration’s desire to thwart a takeover of the Horn of Africa nation by Islamist rebels with alleged ties to al-Qaeda.

The shipment arrived in the capital, Mogadishu, this month, according to the official, who is helping craft a new U.S. policy on Somalia and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

“A decision was made at the highest level to ensure the government does not fall and that everything is done to strengthen government security forces to counter the rebels,” the official said.

[snip]

The Obama administration’s approach is different in many respects from that of the Bush administration, which focused almost exclusively on targeting several suspects in the embassy bombings and other rebel leaders with alleged al-Qaeda ties.

The Bush administration paid a group of notorious Somali warlords to hunt terrorism suspects. But the policy backfired, giving rise to a diverse Islamist movement, including al-Shabab, which gained popularity by defeating the hated warlords. The Bush administration then tried backing an Ethiopian invasion in 2006 to overthrow the Islamists and install a transitional government, a move that triggered the al-Shabab rebellion that continues today. The Bush administration conducted airstrikes targeting al-Qaeda suspects, but only one of those targeted was ever confirmed killed.

Meanwhile, the rebels continued to advance across southern Somalia and eventually helped force the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops this year.

To cut off the rebels’ weapons and supplies, the United States has stepped up pressure on Eritrea, and foreign warships patrolling Somali waters to combat piracy have begun blocking cargo ships heading to the rebel-held port of Kismaayo in southern Somalia. Source

After more than 7½ years’ incarceration by the U.S.:

Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al-Janko was tortured by al-Qaeda and imprisoned by the Taliban for 18 months because the groups’ leaders thought he was an American spy.

Abandoned by his captors in late 2001, he was picked up by U.S. authorities, who shipped him to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on suspicion that he was a member of the two groups.

[On Monday], a federal judge ordered Janko’s release, saying the government’s legal rationale for continuing to detain him “defies common sense.”

In a 13-page opinion that he read from the bench, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ordered the government to engage in diplomatic efforts to find a country that would host the 30-year-old detainee.…

[snip]

…al-Qaeda leaders suspected him of spying for the United States and tortured him for three months until he confessed falsely to the charges, Leon said. Janko then spent 18 months in a Taliban prison in Kandahar, the judge said.

The Taliban fled the prison in late 2001, leaving Janko behind, Leon said. U.S. authorities then picked up Janko.…

[snip]

Leon ruled that the government’s case was too weak and illogical to justify the continued detention. He said the government failed to prove that Janko had been a member of the two groups.

[snip]

The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by Janko under the centuries-old legal doctrine of habeas corpus, which allows prisoners to challenge their confinement before independent judges.… Source

Each and every such case serves to further taint the credibility and basis of the prosecution in all cases.

Shorter version of the official British policy regarding atrocities: ‘Avert your eyes.’

Tony Blair was aware of the ­existence of a secret interrogation policy which ­effectively led to British citizens, and others, being ­tortured during ­counter-terrorism investigations, the Guardian can reveal.

The policy, devised in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, offered ­guidance to MI5 and MI6 officers ­questioning detainees in Afghanistan whom they knew were being mistreated by the US military.

British intelligence officers were given written instructions that they could not “be seen to condone” torture and that they must not “engage in any activity yourself that involves inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners”.

But they were also told they were not under any obligation to intervene to prevent detainees from being mistreated.

“Given that they are not within our ­custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this,” the policy said.

The policy almost certainly breaches international human rights law, according to Philippe Sands QC, one of the world’s leading experts in the field, because it takes no account of Britain’s obligations to avoid complicity in torture under the UN convention against torture. Despite this, the secret policy went on to underpin British intelligence’s ­relationships with a number of foreign intelligence agencies which had become the UK’s allies in the “war against terror”.

The policy was set out in written instructions sent to MI5 and MI6 officers in January 2002, which told them they might consider complaining to US officials about the mistreatment of detainees “if circumstances allow”. Source

It naturally follows that, as the policy was developed in response to witnessed torture or other abuse, that those instances — clearly implicating and confirming U.S. personnel as being among those performing such acts — had to occur in 2001, at or near the very beginning of the war in October of that year.

Yet more reason to investigate the still secret Justice Department memos whose existence is known, particularly the one from Nov. 20, 2001, all the more so as so many of the DOJ memos have been demonstrated as being developed to provide cover for circumstances already undertaken.

Winds of hope?

Moderate leaders of the Taliban say they have quietly and steadily made progress in third-party talks between the active Taliban insurgency and representatives of the Afghan and U.S. governments.

Two Taliban leaders — who held high-ranking positions in the now-deposed Taliban government and who are directly involved in the talks — say they’ve recently established a framework of an agreement through the shuttle negotiations. They say the process has included contact with the spiritual leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar.

The talks began last year under the auspices of Saudi Arabia and have involved a series of secret meetings in Mecca, including a gathering several months ago. Observers have for months maintained that the Saudi talks have produced more rumors than real progress.

But now, in extensive interviews with GlobalPost two former Taliban officials directly involved — Abdul Hakim Muhajid and Arsenal Rahmani — said negotiations have gained momentum and laid the groundwork for real movement.

Rahmani went so far as to say a deal could be reached before Afghanistan’s August presidential elections.

[snip]

All sides seem to agree a new diplomatic tone and military strategy set by Washington has contributed to the momentum. President Barack Obama earlier this year called for negotiations with moderate elements of the Taliban. CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus has discussed the need for a more complex approach to dealing with what he calls “reconcilables” within the insurgency. Source

Still far from practicing what we preach.

…”For the DoD to instruct its employees that lawful protest activities should be treated as ‘low-level terrorism’ is deeply disturbing in and of itself. It is an even more egregious insult to constitutional values, however, when viewed in the context of a long-term pattern of domestic security initiatives that have attempted to equate lawful dissent with terrorism.” Source