This Week In Tyranny
From Nicholas Kristof (via):
The most famous journalist you may never have heard of is Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who is on a hunger strike to protest abuse during more than six years in a Kafkaesque prison system. Mr. Hajj’s fortitude has turned him into a household name in the Arab world, and his story is sowing anger at the authorities holding him without trial. That’s us. Mr. Hajj is one of our forgotten prisoners in Guantánamo Bay.
The story of al-Hajj has a number of noteworthy aspects. First, it’s happening to a Sudanese Muslim which I suspect are strikes one and two against him in many Americans’ eyes. And he’s a journalist (strike three) for a frequently antagonistic media outlet (new sports metaphor now required). All in all his circumstances seem almost perfectly designed to minimize our interest in him. He matters anyway. The fact of his legal limbo has nothing to do with the details of his detainment and everything to do with how we treat people and who we are. It ought to matter to us that we not torture people, even those we suspect of conspiring against us. We should also consider it in our enlightened self interest not to allow our leaders to create elaborate, separate and unaccountable legal structures. Doing so implies a more general contempt for the law that we’ve seen in far too many other places in the administration. And the net is inevitably cast wider and wider if no one objects.
I think National Review Online may be in the midst of a sublime prank. Consider these three posts in just over 24 hours this week. I’m only one man so I can’t fully catalog the complete list of nonsense coming from them, but just consider that the first line of the first link is a lie:
Here is the bottom line: The legal authority for the United States intelligence community to collect foreign intelligence — information that protects Americans from terrorist attacks and that our soldiers in harm’s way rely on to do their duty — will expire at midnight on Friday.
The legal authority did not expire. This level of transparent dishonesty can’t possibly be sincere, right? I think we’re being set up for the biggest April Fool’s surprise ever.
Finally, I’ve given up trying to keep up with all the great work Marcy Wheeler is doing these days, so please just mentally append “P.S. Check emptywheel“ to all of my posts.
Dan
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