Comments on: "A piece of furniture"

"A piece of furniture"

homunculus — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 12:42:56 -0800

Window Into a Terror Suspect's Isolation. American citizen and enemy combatant Jose Padilla gets a root canal. [Via Hullabaloo.]

By: matteo

matteo — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 12:47:55 -0800

government-funded health care is clearly a bad idea. expensive, too

By: homunculus

homunculus — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 12:49:22 -0800

Glenn Greenwald: The ongoing national disgrace of lawless indefinite detentions

By: homunculus

homunculus — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 13:00:11 -0800

In other, easy to miss news: McKenzie man gets 30 years for bomb plotting

By: homunculus

homunculus — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 13:26:25 -0800

That should say 'former enemy combatant' actually, since his status was changed. If I made this sound comic, I apologize. The article is quite disturbing.

By: rdone

rdone — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 13:27:03 -0800

Somewhere Philip K. Dick is laughing at us.

By: Burhanistan

Burhanistan — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 13:35:41 -0800

Man. He may or may not have been up to something no good, but would the US gov't treat Osama Bin Laden that extremely (if they ever get him)? Seems like Padilla is getting some kind of weird, undeserved pile-on.

By: hal9k

hal9k — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 13:36:14 -0800

I thought he was British.

By: Citizen Premier

Citizen Premier — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 14:12:32 -0800

I get the feeling God just isn't blessing America anymore.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 14:28:27 -0800

No, You've got 'em mixed up

By: amberglow

amberglow — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 14:57:19 -0800

i could just cry for all of us for allowing this

By: amberglow

amberglow — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 15:08:08 -0800

"The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil."--Hannah Arendt (it's the anniv of her death today)

By: tehloki

tehloki — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 15:18:06 -0800

Wow. It's like they not only forgot about the bill of rights, but physically shat upon it.

By: econous

econous — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 15:38:41 -0800

His treatment in the 'Brig' is standard at a SuperMax prison. Bright lights 23 hours a day. No outside windows. No communication with officers, other than food trays. Simply extreme isolation. Very expensive, and unashamedly perverse in its extraordinary cruelty. So we choose, what offends us more? Simple illegality, or legal niceties?

By: matteo

matteo — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 16:56:23 -0800

that's a trick question, isn't it

By: sourwookie

sourwookie — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:12:29 -0800

I'm just here to even up the post count. Should be 15/15 now. Carry on.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:22:28 -0800

Is the FBI doing its best to combat terrorism? Highest-ranking Arab-American agent says no, sues for discrimination.

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 17:38:08 -0800

Still violently pisses me off every time I think about it. I don't know how anyone can willfully participate in this. It takes an odd sort of mindset to be a prison guard. I'm not denegrating, just something I don't get. Like being an offensive (American football) lineman. But then there's doing this. I can't imagine anyone enjoys the blurring of the lines between police and military by the executive branch. Reading the Greenwald piece, I know how at least one cop feels (and I couldn't agree more), but from the (ex)military perspective, I get that odd sorta defensive lineman trying to be a center - you keep wanting to tackle the linebacker instead of protect anything. Not really something you want inside your own boarders. So, sorta what amberglow (quoting Arendt) said. But I understand the fact of it, I just don't get why. Perhaps simply being alive or avoiding pain is enough for some people. But that can't be an ethos. Just live to live, no purpose to it but continuing to exist? Hell, just stay home and jack off all the time, why be a guard, prosecutor or any such damn thing?

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 18:26:13 -0800

What the hell is the point of the goggles and the sound-proof earmuffs? Why isn't there a "this is completely pointless and dumb" prohibition?

By: wrapper

wrapper — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 18:26:29 -0800

"i could just cry for all of us for allowing this" Me too.

By: spiderskull

spiderskull — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 19:42:15 -0800

The guy is completely docile, according to the article, so a lot of their rituals seem pointless. I realize he wanted to kill many, many people, but can we figure out exactly why people such as he are taking up arms against the "Crusader-Zionist conspiracy" and solve the problem instead of slowly torturing him? It just seems like we're breeding more anti-American sentiment this way. This man is probably one of the many examples they use at terrorist training camps to justify their reasoning that the US is aggressing a war against Islam.

By: altman

altman — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 00:55:34 -0800

"I realize he wanted to kill many, many people, but ..." among other points, it has never been shown that he wanted to do anything at all. so, in that respect, he is no different from you or i. what freedom are we defending? when will the jack boots come pounding down your hall at 3 am? aren't you proud to have defeated the 'evil empire' and created a 'peace dividend'? i am ashamed to carry a US passport, although the rest of the world has, so far, been understanding.

By: jettloe

jettloe — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 03:13:57 -0800

This is obscene. It's the film Brazil made real.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:38:43 -0800

and don't forget--there are thousands of people still somewhere being held by us--not in Gitmo.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:57:28 -0800

A reading from George Orwell's classic novel, Furniture.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:58:47 -0800

How many inmates are being held in the Bush gulag at Stare Kiejkuty, Poland? If the answer is "thousands," then the question becomes: Are they being tortured, too? And if the answer is "zero," then the question becomes: Where did they go? ...

By: j-urb

j-urb — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 10:44:44 -0800

What the hell is the point of the goggles and the sound-proof earmuffs? To make him appear dangerous and evil before justice has its say.

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 12:59:17 -0800

j-urb; I'm not even understanding how it accomplishes that, though. "He's so dangerous, he can kill us by seeing and hearing. It's ludicrous and insulting.

By: j-urb

j-urb — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 14:00:30 -0800

What part of "appear" don't you understand? On a subconsious level we all have biases. Showing someone who is wearing goggles and sound-proof earmuffs implies that this person is dangerous. You mock this idea in saying that "He's so dangerous, he can kill us by seeing and hearing" but if he can't in fact harm us by seeing and hearing then why does he have these apparatuses attached to him? What I am suggesting is that the government wanted a photo opt, not that he actually is dangerous. I think we both agree that it is ludicrous and insulting.

By: j-urb

j-urb — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 14:05:48 -0800

The government likes to do these kinds of things, remember the effort that was made to demonize Saddam when he was captured? I'm not saying that anyone is good or bad, but rather that unflattering images have been disseminated to the public to sway opinion before that very public has any facts. I think we all know that images carry some power.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 16:26:47 -0800

"Perhaps there is a fear that he will communicate in code by blinking."

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 17:28:39 -0800

... at this point, Padilla has been destroyed. His case will be written into textbooks in a decade's time, and hopefully students will learn from it. Practically speaking, any hope Jose Padilla had for due process (Fifth Amendment), a fair and speedy trial or adequate legal representation (Sixth Amendment), or freedom from cruel or unusual punishment (Eighth Amendment) disappeared a long time ago. Whatever the outcome of his situation is--and I do hope that ultimately the man regains his freedom, given that the government has not charged him with anything they supposedly retained him for--effectively the only hope left is that we'll learn something from having literally used all the power of the government to ruin a man without so much as charging him with a crime. Padilla, if anyone needs reminding, is an American citizen. He has not been convicted of anything. ...

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 20:09:50 -0800

j-urb; please don't mistake my confusion for hostility towards you. The part I'm not understanding is why this is supposed to make him appear more dangerous. It just makes no sense. If you had charged me with coming up with some props for making someone look dangerous, given a prison setting, I would come up with something along the lines of what's shown in Silence of the Lambs. In that case, the writers took what they knew to be dangerous about the man - that he kills people with his bare hands, and often bites people - and translated that into the security measures which included chains to greatly restrict limb movement, and the face mask to shield people from biting. If, however, you had also seen him wearing silencing earmuffs - you'd say to yourself "Wha?" It is bad theater - and therefore makes no sense. It is for that reason that it's insulting to people watching.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 20:12:36 -0800

At Least We Aren't Nazis!

By: amberglow

amberglow — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 17:41:47 -0800

wtf is wrong with the people in this country? ...the most vile, stinking, contemptible, debased, and humiliating fact about the whole episode is that yesterday, when Padilla's condition was reported on AOL, 75% of AOL's poll responders voted FOR the government's treatment of Padilla. ...