I find this article from The Atlantic welcome and bold.

It would be so refreshing to see this argument taken up by the serious people in national media.

unfortunately, most folks I talk to think it is quite alright to torture terrorists and the summary executions that can now quite openly be ordered against US citizens do not cause alarm either.

this childlike behavior in which we place unshakable trust in our authority figures, so sure that they will sort out the really bad guys and never abuse their authority is beyond belief. these are the same people who will tell you government can't do anything right.

irony is dead.

Isn't it a war crime when a nation spends more money on it's military than on it's civilian population?

America has a base problem: http://www.blacklistednews.com/news-7418-0-22-22--.html

Namely too many of the buggers that are costing untold billions of dollars.

America has become a dictator's wet dream... world wide military bases, cops with tasers, the ability of government to murder it's citizens by decree, uninterested and disenfranchised voters – makes me shudder thinking what's next?

DaveS

BTW happy president's day

I'm not sure if any of you are familiar with the political artwork of brazilian artist Carlos Latuff ?He does some really incredible pieces about the plight of Palestinians as well as oppressed peoples everywhere and he's made two of his collections available for anyone to download and use.

http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/a-gift-of-art-from-carlos-latuff/#comments

You should download this, if only for your own collection of interesting political art, or think of it as helping to archive important work that will keep empire's thugs from easily stamping it out.

DaveS

Many Isr. and US bigwigs have avoided or cancelled international travel. I’m sure people know about it, but I enjoy posting this so much I can’t refrain.

Isr., the US and the Sudan have backed off after signing, and thus subsequently not ratifying (though the 3 cases are different, but the details escape me now) so they do not recognize the Rome statute, the International Criminal Court. (Nor do many other countries, like China and India...)

Moshe Ya'alon (also Barak, indirectly) in Oct 09:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6862322.ece

Avigdor Lieberman, the ultra-nationalist Foreign Minister, estimated last week that there could be as many as 1,000 lawsuits worldwide pending against Israeli army officers or members of the security establishment.

Livni in Dec 09:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1134978.html

Rumsfeld in Oct 07:

http://www.alternet.org/story/66425/

Complaint > ICC against Bush, Cheney, Tenet. et al. Jan 2010

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17091

And that is a small selection, no time to look for more.

Rumors had it that Bush was almost arrested when the G8 was in Evian, as he landed in Geneva but was quickly whisked off. That was a fat hope, but that the press wrote about the possibility was a major triumph.

Meanwhile, arresting foreign dignitaries is not going to happen any time soon here, as throwing Kannibal (Hannibal Kadafi) in the clink has thrown a lot of people out of work, frozen CH-Lybia relations, and is now complicating CH-EU relations, thru the Schengen accords - Kadafi, his entourage, family, ‘parliament’ members, security personnel (read army and secret service) have not been granted visas to Europe (signatories of Schengen and Dublin), leaving them sorely travel-challenged and business-restricted. 270 of them!

But Lybia ain’t the US...