Lunch Break

Great stuff today from Caroline...please read the Greenwald piece even it you don't have time for the other stuff... music below.


Politics and Media Headlines 5/15/09

Moral Kombat (The Daily Show, Comedy Central)
Barack Obama blocks the release of detainee photos, and refuses to intervene in the dismissal of a gay lieutenant.
Why is it okay to torture people, Jon asks, but not okay to take pictures of it. And why are we firing one of the few people who can understand what the prisoners say, just because he has a boyfriend-Caro

Abuse photos put U.S. in 'double Catch-22' (CNN)
Obama said he believed the release of the pictures could put American lives in danger. That is Catch-22 situation...

We wouldn't want to inflame anti-American sentiment (by Glenn Greenwald at Unclaimed Territory, Salon)
We're currently occupying two Muslim countries. We're killing civilians regularly (as usual) with airplanes and unmanned sky robots. We're imprisoning tens of thousands of Muslims with no trial, for years. Our government continues to insist that it has the power to abduct people -virtually all Muslim-ship them to Bagram, put them in cages, and keep them there indefinitely with no charges of any kind. We're denying our torture victims any ability to obtain justice for what was done to them by insisting that the way we tortured them is a "state secret" and that we need to "look to the future." We provide Israel with the arms and money used to do things like devastate Gaza. Independent of whether any or all of these policies are justifiable, the extent to which those actions "inflame anti-American sentiment" is impossible to overstate.

Pull The Other One (by Nell Lancaster, A Tiny Revolution, thanks to Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque)
The Iraqi and Afghan public don't need five-year-old pictures of torture to loathe and wish harm to U.S. troops: they've lived it, they've heard the survivors' accounts, and they're still experiencing massacres by air strikes, house raids, checkpoints, lawless detention, and the multiple humiliations of occupation. The only things that could dampen their anger are the departure of U.S. troops and trials, conviction and long sentences for higher-ups responsible for the crimes committed against their peoples.

If You're Angry About the Torture Photos, You're Being Played By Obama (by John Cook at Gawker)
Obama did not actually decide not to release the photos, despite the way his reversal has been characterized. The decision isn't his to make. The Pentagon is currently compelled by a court order...to turn 22 photos over to the ACLU, which sued the government under the Freedom of Information Act for their release in 2003. The Pentagon lost in district court and lost again on appeal...By trying to take the issue to the Supreme Court, all Obama is doing is delaying the photos' release and earning points as a moderate and loyal Commander in Chief. He knows that the photos will come out before his next election, and any lingering anger from his supporters will have long since dissipated. Bad policy, smart move.

But here's the worst problem with the reversal - it empowers the right wing:
Liz Cheney Claims Victory In Obama Detainee Photo Reversal (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
In Thursday's Washington Post piece on Dick Cheney’s ongoing torture tour...

Click here for more politics and media news headlines.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com


MUSIC:
Hey ex -hippies, stupid college terps, kool aid addled Brentwood morons, smug upper west side brats, David Geffen-esque asswipes, Huffington/Kos sheeple....

Meet the new boss...same as the old boss...