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Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn ("In his house at R'lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming."). --HP Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

The stars hath turned in the heavens once more: Mighty Cthulhu stirs. His dreams reacheth forth, communing with those with ears to hear. Iä! Shub-Niggurath! His thoughts trample down along the pathways of thy mind; thou knowest His footprints, each of which is a wound...

Thursday, October 28, 2004





Update: Torture Bill Still Alive and Kicking

Dennis Hastert's (R-Rightard) H.R.10 (Sections 3032 and 3033, pages 254-258 of this large .pdf) is still around, and is holding up House resolution of the National Intelligence Reform Act.

A quick refresher:

... the dense and hastily drafted House version of the bill to implement the September 11 commission recommendations includes a provision widely seen as an attempt to legalize "extraordinary rendition" -- a technical euphemism to describe the practice of sending suspects to the Syrians or Jordanians so we can avoid doing the dirty work of torture ourselves. The Torture Convention naturally bars parties from sending anyone to a country where "there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture." But the House bill would lift this prohibition, enabling the United States to deport (or "render") foreign nationals to countries long condemned by the U.S. State Department for widespread practices of torture and other gross abuse.


A Poison Pill: House Republicans, adhering to their typical herd mentality, have blocked all attempts to strike this language from NIRA. In a typically cynical ploy to gather mud for future election battles, the Rethugs are forcing the Democrats to oppose this bill now so that they can later claim that Democratic politicians "blocked", "delayed", or "voted against" intelligence reform. That the neo-clowns would sink to using torture for political purposes says everything we need to know about their moral compass.

A Partial Victory for Evil: Congress announced that, due to the House impasse, further debate over H.R.10 will be delayed until after the election. Should Kerry win, Hastert's torture amendment will probably die, but only after a major media-driven battle, and at the cost of letting House Rethugs argue that Kerry and the Democrats are weak on the "War on Terriers®": Look for Hastert all over the Sunday morning circuit over the next several months.

Until then, the Rethugs can now blame the Democrats for "blocking" intelligence reform. Nevermind that H.R.10 was never part of the 9/11 Committee's recommendations.

The Media Whores Brush-off Their Knee-pads: As you might expect, the media is already swollowing the Rightards' spin, claiming that the dispute is over budget and turf. They never mention that A) H.R.10 would legalize the outsourcing of torture, or B) that the budget and turf disputes are not in any way related to the 9/11 Committee's recommendations, and that striking H.R.10 would have no overall impact on NIRA. Papers from the NYT to the Seattle Post Intelligencer are falling for this crap, mirroring CNN's typical whoring. As usual, don't look for any help from the mainstream media.

So What Next? This is going to continue to be a grave threat to the moral integrity of the United States regardless of who wins on November 2nd. Unfortunately, with the belly-up approach taken by the mainstream media, we will have to take the initiative to defeat this attrocity ourselves:


We've made a difference before. Hopefully, for the World's sake as well as our own, we can do so once again.



Posted by: Great Cthulhu / <$BlogItemDateTime $>
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