Torture

[Frank S.]

Yeah, I think they are. I tend to believe that their religious police (part of their security apparatus) has been penetrated by Al Qaeda.
The debate currently revolves around AQ's strategy for the region and some facts point at their success.
The US military is out of the country, and with these attacks and kidnappings of foreign workers (on which the kingdom relies heavily), we're seeing a veritable exodus of said workers, leaving the country.
That's an important blow to the House of Saud, from the looks of it.

[asf]

How can a few bursts of small-arms fire be construed as a threat anyway?

Surely it must be possible to tell these days?

If some f****r fires a few bursts of small arms fire in my direction matey you can bet your bottom dollar I'll be threatened. I'll tell you what it'll be possible to tell. It'll be possible to tell that I'll be sending several f*****g bursts of small arms fire back at the t**t.

[Spannerman]

This could be a very interesting day June 28th 2004 in Iraq.

B Liar has today announced that the handover of power has been brought forward from June 30th to today. Well let's just hope that there is some sort of civility throughout Iraq on all sides to give this Interim Government a chance to get the democratic process underway.

I very much doubt that peace will prevail as there are too many rival factions and a lot of axes to grind, still we can live in hope!

[Frank S.]

http://balkin.blogspot.com/

Youngstown and The President's Power to Torture


JB


Yesterday I mentioned that the Supreme Court's 1952 decision in Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer. exploded the arguments made by the OLC (and the Defense Department) that the President of the United States is not bound by laws prohibiting torture. One important criticism of the OLC's Torture Memo is that it does not even mention Youngstown or attempt to distinguish it.


Several people have asked me why Youngstown is so important and whether it is even relevant to foreign affairs, because it concerns the seizure of domestic property. Because people seem unsure about Youngstown and what it means in a post-September 11th world, I thought I would spend a little time talking about Youngstown, its importance as a landmark decision restraining arbitrary power exercised in time of emergency, and why it is so important today as a means of countering Presidential Caesarism.


People who seek to concentrate and maximize Executive power don't much like Youngstown. They much prefer an earlier case from the 1930's, United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation, whose language gives the President broad authority in matters of foreign relations. But the Youngstown decision came later, and it arose in a crucial moment in American history, when a President claimed that war had changed everything and that emergency justified his actions as Commander-in-Chief.


Youngstown involved an Presidential Order by Harry Truman on April 8th, 1952, issued while the United States was fighting the Korean War. Truman ordered that steel mills be seized in order in anticipation of a strike against the nation's steel companies. "The indispensability of steel as a component of substantially all weapons and other war materials," Justice Black later wrote, "led the President to believe that the proposed work stoppage would immediately jeopardize our national defense and that governmental seizure of the steel mills was necessary in order to assure the continued availability of steel."


In fact, the President had authority from Congress under the Taft- Hartley act to order a 60 day cooling off period in order to persuade the striking steel workers to settle with management. Truman, however, had opposed this provision of the Taft-Hartley Act. Instead, he argued that he had inherent power as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces to take over the steel mills in order to keep the supply of steel flowing. Congress had considered giving the President the power to seize property under the Taft-Hartley Act but had rejected it in favor of other procedures, including the cooling off period. As Justice Burton put it in his concurring opinion, "Collective bargaining, rather than governmental seizure, was to be relied upon. Seizure was not to be resorted to without specific congressional authority. Congress reserved to itself the opportunity to authorize seizure to meet particular emergencies."


Thus, the question before the Court was whether the President's powers as Commander-in-Chief gave him authority in an emergency to seize private property. There was some dispute among the Justices whether Congress had effectively prohibited the President from seizing steel mills without its prior authority or whether the Taft-Hartley Act was merely silent on that point.


The Truman Administration did not view its seizure of steel mills as purely a domestic question. Indeed, it thought the stakes for national security were quite high. Chief Justice Vinson's dissent well captured the tenor of the times:


Those who suggest that this is a case involving extraordinary powers should be mindful that these are extraordinary times. A world not yet recovered from the devastation of World War II has been forced to face the threat of another and more terrifying global conflict. . . . For almost two full years, our armed forces have been fighting in Korea, suffering casualties of over 108,000 men. Hostilities have not abated. . . . Congress, recognizing the "grim fact . . . that the United States is now engaged in a struggle for survival" and that "it is imperative that we now take those necessary steps to make our strength equal to the peril of the hour," granted authority to draft men into the armed forces. As a result, we now have over 3,500,000 men in our armed forces.


At oral argument before the Supreme Court, Assistant Attorney General Baldridge, arguing on behalf of the Truman Administration, made arguments about Presidential power that may sound quite familiar to those who have followed the pronouncements of the Bush Administration:


The Court: s it not . . . your view that the powers of the Government are limited by and enumerated in the Constitution of the United States?

Mr. Baldridge: That is true, Your Honor, with respect to legislative powers.
The Court: But it is not true, you say, as to the Executive?


Mr. Baldridge: No. Section 1, of Article II of the Constitution . . . reposes all of the executive power in the Chief Executive. . . . In so far as the Executive is concerned, all executive power is vested in the President. In so far as legislative powers are concerned, the Congress has only those powers that are specifically delegated to it, plus the implied power to carry out the powers specifically enumerated.


The Court: So, when the sovereign people adopted the Constitution, it enumerated the powers set up in the Constitution but limited the powers of the Congress and limited the powers of the judiciary, but it did not limit the powers of the Executive. Is that what you say?


Mr. Baldridge: That is the way we read Article II of the Constitution. . . . It is our position that the President is accountable only to the country, and that the decisions of the President are conclusive. . . . [H]aving a broad grant of power[,] the executive, particularly in times of national emergency, can meet whatever situation endangers the national safety of the country. . . . I want to say that we had an emergency situation here. Somebody had to deal with it. [T]here would have been an indefinite stoppage of steel production. Are we to say, then, that there is no power in Government any place to meet as serious a situation as this, when it confronts the security of this nation? . . . [A]s of midnight on April 8th this seizure procedure appeared to be the only effective way to avoid a strike and to avoid a cessation for an indefinite period of production of steel necessary to national security and national defense.



When the Youngstown opinion came down on June 2nd, 1952, the Supreme Court decisively rejected Truman's assertion of unlimited Executive power, just as it would do in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld in 2004. The majority opinion was written by Justice Hugo Black. Black argued that Truman lacked power as Commander-in-Chief to seize the steel mills:


The order cannot properly be sustained as an exercise of the President's military power as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. The Government attempts to do so by citing a number of cases upholding broad powers in military commanders engaged in day-to-day fighting in a theater of war. Such cases need not concern us here. Even though "theater of war" be an expanding concept, we cannot with faithfulness to our constitutional system hold that the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces has the ultimate power as such to take possession of private property in order to keep labor disputes from stopping production. This is a job for the Nation's lawmakers, not for its military authorities.

Viewed only in the context of the steel seizure dispute, Black's majority opinion might be read very narrowly as a case that says that the Commander-in-Chief power does not apply to domestic questions that are properly the subject of Congressional legislation. But Youngstown has come to mean something more than this, or rather something different from this, and the concurring opinions, particularly the opinion of Justice Jackson, which I will discuss in a moment, have generally been viewed as the most important statements of the law.

That is important because the issue of whether the President may torture people overseas raises a specific problem that Black does not address: What happens when the President wants to do something under the Commander-in-Chief power because he claims there is an emergency and Congress has told him that he cannot do it? Justice Black did not reach this issue in his majority opinion. However, six of the other Justices did.


Justice Jackson's opinion, which my friend and co-author Sanford Levinson has called the greatest single opinion in the history of the Supreme Court, viewed Truman's conflict with Congress as a special case of a more general problem of how to set boundaries on Executive power. He offered a famous delineation of the possible relationships between the President and Congress:


1. When the President acts pursuant to an express or implied authorization of Congress, his authority is at its maximum, for it includes all that he possesses in his own right plus all that Congress can delegate. In these circumstances, and in these only, may he be said (for what it may be worth) to personify the federal sovereignty. If his act is held unconstitutional under these circumstances, it usually means that the Federal Government as an undivided whole lacks power. A seizure executed by the President pursuant to an Act of Congress would be supported by the strongest of presumptions and the widest latitude of judicial interpretation, and the burden of persuasion would rest heavily upon any who might attack it.

2. When the President acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain. Therefore, congressional inertia, indifference or quiescence may sometimes, at least as a practical matter, enable, if not invite, measures on independent presidential responsibility. In this area, any actual test of power is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than on abstract theories of law.


3. When the President takes measures incompatible with the expressed or implied will of Congress, his power is at its lowest ebb, for then he can rely only upon his own constitutional powers minus any constitutional powers of Congress over the matter. Courts can sustain exclusive presidential control in such a case only by disabling the Congress from acting upon the subject. Presidential claim to a power at once so conclusive and preclusive must be scrutinized with caution, for what is at stake is the equilibrium established by our constitutional system.



The OLC Torture memo raises the third case, where Congress has told the President he may not do something and the President insists on doing it anyway. The only defense the President has, Jackson says, is that Congress has no constitutional authority over the subject. In the Steel Seizure Case, that argument was unavailable; Congress clearly had authority to regulate wages and working conditions under the Commerce Clause. It is also unavailable, however, in the case of overseas torture. Although the President is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Congress has power under Article I section 8, to regulate how the Armed Forces can treat enemy combatants or other persons captured in wartime. Here are the sources of Congress's power:



10. To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offences against the law of nations:

11. To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water:


. . .


14. To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces:


We do not, in short, have a situation in which Congress has no power to legislate on the matter of captured soldiers, or on the behavior of the land and naval forces towards them. And because torture is an offense against the law of nations (as recognized by several international agreements to which the United States is a signatory), it also has power to define and punish torture.

Given these facts, Presidential orders to torture individuals clearly fit into situation three. The President cannot reasonably claim that the law against overseas torture is not directed to him. Moreover, he cannot deny that it was passed pursuant to Congressional authority granted by the Constitution and it specifically and directly prohibits him from torturing people. Thus, he cannot simply assert, as the torture memo does, that it is unconstitutional to apply it to him.


But, you may object, my argument is based on Jackson's opinion. Perhaps Jackson's is the most famous, most influential, and most hallowed opinion in the Youngstown case, but does it state the law? Most constitutional scholars agree that Jackson's opinion offers the basic framework for separation of powers disputes, including those in foreign affairs. But more importantly, the Supreme Court itself has said so in its 1981 decision in Dames and Moore v. Regan. While adopting Jackson's basic framework, the Supreme Court cautioned that the three categories Jackson mentioned were not "black and white."


t is doubtless the case that executive action in any particular instance falls, not neatly in one of three pigeonholes, but rather at some point along a spectrum running from explicit congressional authorization to explicit congressional prohibition. This is particularly true as respects cases such as the one before us, involving responses to international crises the nature of which Congress can hardly have been expected to anticipate in any detail.

However, Section 2340A-- the prohibition of torture overseas, does not present the problem the Court was worried about in Dames and Moore v. Regan, for it is an explicit congressional prohibition specifically designed to respond to treaty obligations which ban the use of torture. Congress well understood that people are always tempted to use torture in times of emergency, and always tempted to exaggerate the emergency in order to justify torture. That is why it banned the practice. If you disagree with Congress's decision, you should work to change the law.

Even without Dames and Moore, it is worth noting that six Justices in Youngstown-- Jackson, Frankfurter, Clark, and the three dissenters, Vinson, Reed and Minton-- agreed on a key point: If Congress, acting within its constitutional authority, had prohibited Truman from seizing the steel mills, he would not have power to disobey them even when acting under his powers as Commander-in-Chief. The three dissenters did not dispute this: they merely disagreed with the majority about whether Congress had prohibited seizures of property. Indeed, the dissenters argued, far from disobeying Congress, Truman was only moving to preserve the situation until Congress could act. Of the three remaining Justices, none indicated disagreement with the basic principle that the President's powers are circumscribed when he acts directly contrary to constitutionally authorized Congressional command. Black and Douglas decided the case on other grounds, and Burton specifically refused to address the question as it pertained to activities overseas.


Presidents, like all powerful people, do not like to have their authority or their power limited. And over the years, some scholars, drawn to and perhaps overly enamored of executive power, have sought to downplay or even jettison Youngstown, arguing that the President should be clothed with absolute and unreviewable authority in matters of national security. That was the argument of the Truman Administration in 1952; it was the argument of the Nixon Administration in the 1970's, and it is the argument of the Bush Administration today. But Justice Jackson's wisdom is still sound. Jackson himself had been Attorney General under Franklin Roosevelt, and he had made his share of arguments for a strong executive. But once he became a Justice, charged with defending America's Constitution, he saw things from a different perspective:


That comprehensive and undefined presidential powers hold both practical advantages and grave dangers for the country will impress anyone who has served as legal adviser to a President in time of transition and public anxiety. While an interval of detached reflection may temper teachings of that experience, they probably are a more realistic influence on my views than the conventional materials of judicial decision which seem unduly to accentuate doctrine and legal fiction. But as we approach the question of presidential power, we half overcome mental hazards by recognizing them. The opinions of judges, no less than executives and publicists, often suffer the infirmity of confusing the issue of a power's validity with the cause it is invoked to promote, of confounding the permanent executive office with its temporary occupant. The tendency is strong to emphasize transient results upon policies - such as wages or stabilization - and lose sight of enduring consequences upon the balanced power structure of our Republic.

Jackson was wise enough to understand that every Executive sees himself as the savior of the nation, every Executive believes that the emergency he faces justifies his policies, and every Executive thinks he needs unlimited power in order to preserve the United States from its enemies. Giving the Executive manifold powers, as our Constitution does, only makes the Executive hungry for more. The point of the Constitutional structure, however, is to hold arbitrary power in check.

September 11th changed everything, we are told. But it is important to remember that the Justices who decided Youngstown had also seen war, plenty of war. Pearl Harbor was only a decade previous, and since that day the United States had been twice at war, and had continuously sent its forces around the globe to protect its interests. These Justices well understood the importance of national security to national survival. Indeed, they were all appointees of Roosevelt and Truman, Presidents who had taken the country to war. Yet they saw beyond the urgencies of the moment, and the ubiquitous declarations that war had changed everything. They upheld the principle of checks and balances, and rejected the claim of an unlimited Executive. And they helped preserve our democratic system of government in the process.

[harry hackedoff]

Frank I`m joining this party after it`s had a good run, I know. You make some pertinent points there ref the power of an elected executive and Trueman/ Dubya comparisons.

My contribution concerns the two Australians held at Gitmo and one Mr Habib in particular. Since the deliberate torturing of suspects is streng verboten in the good ole US of A, the CIA have hit on a cunning plan, there Baldrick. Mister Habib has been on something of a world tour of the best places to be incarcerated, for the last two and a half years. Bagrat airbase, Egypt, Syria etc, and finally back to Gitmo. In Egypt, his torturers were guided by two nice young Americans wearing suits. Nice touch. "Say, could y`all increase the voltage to the genital area, slightly? That`d be real neighbourly "
Has the exportation of suspects for torture abroad had any coverage in the land of the free?
Personal view is Mr Habib can swivell on this, btw

Bon soiree, mon ami

[Frank S.]

I couldn't tell you where I'd either heard or read about the CIA Globe Travels service offering Dungeons and Dragons experience to its customers.
I know it's been reported, but only in passing, in the humongous flow of information.
There's way too much redundancy in reporting and virtually zero follow up on significant stories... But anyway that may be besides the point. Seems to me as a nation we have to decide whether to be ruled by laws and system of checks and balances between powers, or entrust everything to the government, specifically the executive.
Otherwise, America's just a big gun, period.
I'm well fed up hearing about "God" from the mouth of politicos. Makes you want to shout "hey a-hole, have a look around and take your cue from us. Keep up this talk of what God wants you to do and you should end up in the padded room! Now, here, have a drink, you know you want it"
Berkowitz (Son of Sam) claimed to take his orders from his neighbor's dog. His dog! Just a wordplay away from what Bush and Ashcroft and Boykin claim....
Now, there's a parallel between torture and secrecy. In how they are applied and to whom.
Rather than hash out the whole Patriot Act again, I'd reiterate that industry segments (chemical manufacturing, energy...) no longer have to report their safety processes and evaluations on the basis that making this information available to the government (i.e. the legislative branch) could cause it to fall into the wrong hands.
The cunning thing about this is that there's truth in this. I'm fairly sure libraries around the country still have copies of the Senate's report on "the vulnerability of the nation's power grid system to terrorist attacks", for instance.
The problem with this is companies running amok with countless, unenforced and unenforceable violations.
Now if you look at the other end of the microscope, the individual citizen's much more scrutinized with programs like CAPS II and others.
I do believe there exists a correlation between this and the epidemic of identity theft: personal information shared between companies, institutions and government agencies has never been less secure.

Interesting dichotomy: industry elements are entrusted with their own 'security' through liberal use of secrecy, yet the individual must reveal more and more of himself in order to access the most basic necessities and simply 'exist'.

Another dichotomy: the government's stance on 'sodomites' (gay marriage and the like), and the systematic application of sodomy on detainees at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. One of the central question being exactly who is getting the S&M treatment?
In truth, this has nothing to do with 'justice' or even revenge, when we grab people off the streets along with actual criminals and their relatives to "make them talk". How about another parallel: Chalabi and Co. sold us information about WMDs etc. and street criminals from Iraq to Afghanistan sell us anyone they can as Taliban or insurgents. We obviously continue to buy into this and bagmen crisscross the globe along with CIA escorts (World Tour! "Sell us your poor, tired huddled masses, we'll buttfcuk them all").

But. Is it working? We're told to take it on faith that it does.
I call BS on that one.

[Frank S.]

A little deeper on privacy invasion. I understand it's off topic but it's at the root of the above.

http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0307.html#1

How to Fight
I landed in Los Angeles at 11:30 PM, and it took me another hour to get to my hotel. The city was booked, and I was lucky to get a reservation where I did. When I checked in, the clerk insisted on making a photocopy of my driver's license. I tried fighting, but it was no use. I needed the hotel room. There was nowhere else I could go. The night clerk didn't really care if he rented the room to me or not. He had rules to follow, and he was going to follow them.

My wife needed a prescription filled. Her doctor called it in to a local pharmacy, and when she went to pick it up the pharmacist refused to fill it unless she disclosed her personal information for his database. The pharmacist even showed my wife the rule book. She found the part where it said that "a reasonable effort must be made by the pharmacy to obtain, record, and maintain at least the following information," and the part where is said: "If a patient does not want a patient profile established, the patient shall state it in writing to the pharmacist. The pharmacist shall not then be required to prepare a profile as otherwise would be required by this part." Despite this, the pharmacist refused. My wife was stuck. She needed the prescription filled. She didn't want to wait the few hours for her doctor to phone the prescription in somewhere else. The pharmacist didn't care; he wasn't going to budge.

I had to travel to Japan last year, and found a company that rented local cell phones to travelers. The form required either a Social Security number or a passport number. When I asked the clerk why, he said the absence of either sent up red flags. I asked how he could tell a real-looking fake number from an actual number. He said that if I didn't care to provide the number as requested, I could rent my cell phone elsewhere, and hung up on me. I went through another company to rent, but it turned out that they contracted through this same company, and the man declined to deal with me, even at a remove. I eventually got the cell phone by going back to the first company and giving a different name (my wife's), a different credit card, and a made-up passport number. Honor satisfied all around, I guess.

It's stupid security season. If you've flown on an airplane, entered a government building, or done any one of dozens of other things, you've encountered security systems that are invasive, counterproductive, egregious, or just plain annoying. You've met people -- guards, officials, minimum-wage workers -- who blindly force you to follow the most inane security rules imaginable.

Is there anything you can do?

In the end, all security is a negotiation among affected players: governments, industries, companies, organizations, individuals, etc. The players get to decide what security they want, and what they're willing to trade off in order to get it. But it sometimes seems that we as individuals are not part of that negotiation. Security is more something that is done to us.

Our security largely depends on the actions of others and the environment we're in. For example, the tamper resistance of food packaging depends more on government packaging regulations than on our purchasing choices. The security of a letter mailed to a friend depends more on the ethics of the workers who handle it than on the brand of envelope we choose to use. How safe an airplane is from being blown up has little to do with our actions at the airport and while on the plane. (Shoe-bomber Richard Reid provided the rare exception to this.) The security of the money in our bank accounts, the crime rate in our neighborhoods, and the honesty and integrity of our police departments are out of our direct control. We simply don't have enough power in the negotiations to make a difference.

I had no leverage when trying to check in without giving up a photocopy of my driver's license. My wife had no leverage when she tried to fill her prescription without divulging a bunch of optional personal information. The only reason I had leverage renting a phone in Japan was because I deliberately sneaked around the system. If I try to protest airline security, I'm definitely going to miss my flight and I might get myself arrested. There's no parity, because those who implement the security have no interest in changing it and no power to do so. They're not the ones who control the security system; it's best to think of them as nearly mindless robots. (The security system relies on them behaving this way, replacing the flexibility and adaptability of human judgment with a three-ring binder of "best practices" and procedures.)

It would be different if the pharmacist were the owner of the pharmacy, or if the person behind the registration desk owned the hotel. Or even if the policeman were a neighborhood beat cop. In those cases, there's more parity. I can negotiate my security, and he can decide whether or not to modify the rules for me. But modern society is more often faceless corporations and mindless governments. It's implemented by people and machines that have enormous power, but only power to implement what they're told to implement. And they have no real interest in negotiating. They don't need to. They don't care.

But there's a paradox. We're not only individuals; we're also consumers, citizens, taxpayers, voters, and -- if things get bad enough -- protestors and sometimes even angry mobs. Only in the aggregate do we have power, and the more we organize, the more power we have.

Even an airline president, while making his way through airport security, has no power to negotiate the level of security he'll receive and the tradeoffs he's willing to make. In an airport and on an airplane, we're all nothing more than passengers: an asset to be protected from a potential attacker. The only way to change security is to step outside the system and negotiate with the people in charge. It's only outside the system that each of us has power: sometimes as an asset owner, but more often as another player. And it is outside the system that we will do our best negotiating.

Outside the system we have power, and outside the system we can negotiate with the people who have power over the security system we want to change. After my hotel stay, I wrote to the hotel management and told them that I was never staying there again. (Unfortunately, I am collecting an ever-longer list of hotels I will never stay in again.) My wife has filed a complaint against that pharmacist with the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy. John Gilmore has gone further: he hasn't flown since 9/11, and is suing the government for the constitutional right to fly within the U.S. without showing a photo ID.

Three points about fighting back. First, one-on-one negotiations -- customer and pharmacy owner, for example -- can be effective, but they also allow all kinds of undesirable factors like class and race to creep in. It's unfortunate but true that I'm a lot more likely to engage in a successful negotiation with a policeman than a black person is. For this reason, more stylized complaints or protests are often more effective than one-on-one negotiations.

Second, naming and shaming doesn't work. Just as it doesn't make sense to negotiate with a clerk, it doesn't make sense to insult him. Instead say: I know you didn't make the rule, but if the people who did ever ask you how it's going, tell them the customers think the rule is stupid and insulting and ineffective." While it's very hard to change one institution's mind when it is in the middle of a fight, it is possible to affect the greater debate. Other companies are making the same security decisions; they need to know that it's not working.

Third, don't forget the political process. Elections matter; political pressure by elected officials on corporations and government agencies has a real impact. One of the most effective forms of protest is to vote for candidates who share your ideals.

The more we band together, the more power we have. A large-scale boycott of businesses that demand photo IDs would bring about a change. (Conference organizers have more leverage with hotels than individuals. The USENIX conferences won't use hotels that demand ID from guests, for example.) A large group of single-issue voters supporting candidates who worked against stupid security would make a difference.

Sadly, I believe things will get much worse before they get better. Many people seem not to be bothered by stupid security; it even makes some feel safer. In the U.S., people are now used to showing their ID everywhere; it's the new security reality post-9/11. They're used to intrusive security, and they believe those who say that it's necessary.

It's important that we pick our battles. My guess is that most of the effort fighting stupid security is wasted. No hotel has changed its practice because of my strongly worded letters or loss of business. Gilmore's suit will, unfortunately, probably lose in court. My wife will probably make that pharmacist's life miserable for a while, but the practice will probably continue at that chain pharmacy. If I need a cell phone in Japan again, I'll use the same workaround. Fighting might brand you as a troublemaker, which might lead to more trouble.

Still, we can make a difference. Gilmore's suit is generating all sorts of press, and raising public awareness. The Boycott Delta campaign had a real impact: passenger profiling is being revised because of public complaints. And due to public outrage, Poindexter's Terrorism (Total) Information Awareness program, while not out of business, is looking shaky.

When you see counterproductive, invasive, or just plain stupid security, don't let it slip by. Write the letter. Create a Web site. File a FOIA request. Make some noise. You don't have to join anything; noise need not be more than individuals standing up for themselves.

You don't win every time. But you do win sometimes.

[harry hackedoff]

Many smiles there Frank, from your last but one. D&D experience indeed
The article you quoted is so full of valid points I don`t know where to start so I’ll give my own example.
The week after 9/11 finds the Hacksters in a bit of a quandary, for about two seconds. We were going to the S of Spain for a week’s sun. Wifey and father-in-law were more than somewhat concerned and wondered if we should cancel. Bollocks, says I, it’s payed for and we’re going. So we went.
All of the petty jobsworths at Gatwick were in a permanent state of ejaculation over 9/11. Checking in was fun, not. All hand baggage was searched at least three times before we`d even made it to the check-in desk, which was helpful . Once we checked in, any sharp objects were placed in plastic carrier bags, fark knows why. At the gate, some fat tosser announces that he’s "In charge" of security. `Course you are mate, says I loud enough for him and most of the queue, to hear. Much laughter. Mrs Aitch and the Outlaw are both insulin dependant diabetics btw, which usually is no prob. When mister important asked what their insulin auto-ject pens were, he almost wet himself with excitement. You can’t take those on my aircraft, he says. By now I`m about ready to knock the cult out, but Mrs Aitch gave me the quiet word. "Why can’t we take them on board" says I. Because they’re sharp he said, folding his arms across his chest at the simple irrefutability of his argument. " That’s more than can be said for you, fatty, get your Supervisor down here because we are not boarding without those pens"
Supervisor rocks up, assesses the situation and says you can’t take those pointy objects on my aircraft. "Oh, so now it’s your aircraft, get the driver mate, because it’s his decision, not either of you two, who boards his aircraft" Pilot was asked to attend and when he turns up, he’s the very picture of someone who’s had about enough of these w4nkers. He turns to me and asks” What can I say?" To Tweedle dum and Tweedle Dee he says" Don`t be so farking pedantic, this man pays your wages"

So, did I feel any safer on that flight? Er, hmm, let me see. As a terrorist suspect, with a three year old in one arm and a slightly pished Mrs Aitch in the other, I`d have had difficulty detonating me suicide vest.
Pointless "security "checks get on my breasts. Not just as in my example above, but when they are masquerading as security checks, but are actually a marketing ploy.

On a lighter note, have you had any coverage ref that nice Mr Allawi (ruler of Iraq and member of the "we`re the allawi tribe")?
Oz hack is punting the tale of Mr Allawi taking part in the execution of six suspected insurgents the week before he became Pres of the raq Just for the craick, obviously
Bet Elmer`s crossing his fingers that it`s all a hoax
Watch this space

[Frank S.]

Re: Allawi, I think there're only three media outlets which picked up on the original report from the Sydney Morning Herald.
The Washington Post, WPMI-TV in Mobile (AL) and the Rush Limbaugh radio show.
Limbaugh's editorial comment was simply: "good. Hubba-hubba".

Now, if we postulate that the facts reported are true, I'd have to object to the term 'execution' because the article says the dead guys were "suspected insurgents".
Key word being suspected.

So again if the report's correct, Allawi is at best a murderer, at worst a 'cowardly murderer'. Takes a real man to shoot six suspects, handcuffed and blindfolded, in the head inside a police station.
An execution is the carrying out of a sentence and this appears to be pretty far from being the case.
Then Juan Cole reports: "Allawi was once a Baathist hit man in London who fell out with Saddam and then directed terrorist operations against Baghdad. Some reports suggest that one of his operations once resulted in the bombing of a schoolbus in which school children died."

Much of this consists of allegations, it bears remembering, but I think we got what we paid for in Allawi.
FUBAR.

[harry hackedoff]

Takes a real man to shoot six suspects, handcuffed and blindfolded, in the head inside a police station.

Kinnel Frank, I`d have real probs shooting six suspects in the head if I was wearing a blindfold, never mind if I was handcuffed, too

Top prog on Oz SBS tv tonight was from France, all about the Christian Right and their support for Israel. Made sense to me, mate. I`ve always thought Cheney was a liar. Oh, and Wolfawich, er Powell, hmm and who else now? Fat Bastard number one, "Dick" Perle
French Diplomat "Joseph" (who`s wife was CIA and had her identity revealed) was quite clear about the nuclear weapons material from African Republic of Niger lie. You know who I mean.

Next was the extent to which the Christian Right supports that abomination, that supreme example of modern day fascism, the State of Israel. It has more importance to them, than any State of the Union.

The whole thing about who really runs the White House scares me. Your country has just invaded and occupied a Sovereign Nation on a pretext that we could all see for what it was, total bollocks. Joseph Goebals was a rank amateur, compared to le Maison Blank spinners. From 9 11 till the start of the ground offensive, Cheney, Bush, Wolfie, Powel and their servants like Tone, kept spouting the same three items. It doesn`t matter in what context, repetition is enough, in itself.
The three items were,
1)that nice Mr Saddam
2)me old mate, Ossie Bin Liner
3) 9/ 11

It matters not, how these items are mentioned, just repeat them over and over again. Don`t mention direct links, because you don`t have to. The audience makes the link for you. Here`s a spurious example,
"Saddam Hussein, whilst being a top bloke and mate of Tony Blair was at a friend`s birthday party hosted by international playboy and Bon Viveur, Ozzie Bin Loader. Date of the party is the ninth of September"
Or,
"Saddam has proven links to Scalextric champion, Ossie Bed Layer and has recently supplied Bed Layer`s team with much more powerfull engines under a deal which begins on nine September"
It really doesn`t matter. Black propaganda has moved on leaps and bounds since "Soldaten Sender Calais" gave cheery "good luck" messages to German Submarine crews(i.e. we know when you left port)

Point is, there is no link. Saddam was a twat, for sure. He had no links with Al Q, had no real "wmd`s"( how I hate that term) and he was not linked in any way with the attack on the WTC. Bush, Cheney, Wolfman et al, knew this on September 11 as people were throwing themselves from the towers. They were not concerned in the slightest, with the fate of those people. They rejoiced because they could use the attacks as justification for the the Iraq invasion.
It`s farking scarry mate
A Bientot, mon brave

[Frank S.]

I sniff more stuff coming out of Abu Ghraib... Seems some US guards (and others whose accent remains undefined - Israelis? -) have been behaving like butt-pirates with kids and teenage detainees. There exists video and photographic evidence, and those few who got to hear just the soundtrack aged a few years it seems.
Interestingly, soon after the New Yorker magazine's Seymour Hersh and more significantly, Sen. John Warner (R), either told or alluded to acts of sodomy on young prisoners, Warner started making noise about Iran providing 'safe passage to Al Qaeda operatives prior to 9/11.
Interesting that CIA is disputing these allegations as well.

Anything to change the subject, then, Warner?

Meanwhile overseas media wonder why US media's basically burying the Allawi killing of prisoners: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.as ... 2004_pg1_2


Harry, you're too right about Goebbels being an amateur compared to Wolfowitz-Perle-Cheney-Feith et al. Way too many Americans still neither understand the deception nor question it to this day.
Yes Virginia, the country is that divided.
They clearly told of the connection between Saddam and AQ, creating the notion for Americans that Iraq was behind 9/11.
Two years later, one side of the administration claims they never said it while another (Cheney) keeps harping on it, yet refuses to provide proof of his statements.
I dunno, but I think dangerous schizophrenics belong in padded cells.
In the end it's American people who end up looking like fools when their government claims it never actually stated linkage between AQ and Iraq.
If this were the case then where did people get the idea from? And having committed troops to this lie, how easily can they reverse their thinking? After all, it cost them a hell of a lot more than it did the administration.

What was it Bush said? "Bring them on"? Obviously he's got no son or daughter over there.
But then politicians would pimp their mothers and daughters to remain in office wouldn't they, so what do they care about ours?