Month: October 2007

Yes, I saw that Stephen Colbert is “running” for president.

No, I don’t think it’s funny.

Jon Stewart and Colbert are both hillarious and smart, and I love the satire…..but I really I think they’ve become part of the problem overall.

For a certain age group, they’ve both become a surrogate for actually engaging at a political level more deeply, or treating it all as anything other than a cynical joke. That, to me, is just another form of self-involved, intellectual laziness: “Politics is ridiculous, Politicians are damaged liars, so let’s just treat it all like a big joke.”

The problem with that is that it breeds complacency. Cynical, I-really-know-better-and-aren’t-I-therefore-clever Complacency, but complacency nonetheless. We *have* to engage ourselves politically. If the Bush Administration has taught us nothing, its that the complacency of the public is what allows outrages to occur. Snarky comments and hi-minded chuckling makes us feel smarter, but it doesn’t improve our political process, nor does it have a hope for saving this country from the ignorant.

Because believe me, while you’re laughing, and trading video clips, and quoting zingers….. they’re organizing.

Do you remember the “terrorist” that they told us they captured in a NY Hotel after 9/11, who supposedly had a radio transmitter and was directing the hijackers on the planes?

An Egpytian citizen, Abdallah Higazy, was staying in NYC on 9/11 and his hotel was evacuated when the planes hit the towers. The hotel later found in the closet of his room a device that allows you to communicate with airline pilots. Investigators thought this guy had something to do with 9/11 so they questioned him.

According to Higazi, the investigators coerced him into confessing to a role in 9/11. Higazi first denied any involvement with 9/11….and then the coercsion started. The investigator said that they would make sure his family would go through hell in Egypt, where the security services torture people. Higazy then realized he had a choice: he could continue denying the radio was his and his family suffers ungodly torture in Egypt or he confesses and his family is spared.

The story didn’t end there, though — if it had, we’d have heard nothing about it. Higazy “confesses” and he’s processed by the criminal justice system. Meanwhile, an airline pilot who had been sharing Higazy’s room later shows up at the hotel and asks for his radio back. After a while, Higazy is released, and sues the hotel and the FBI. Recently, The Court of Appeals released an opinion, stating that he has a case and may proceed.

Here’s were it gets even more interesting. The opinion was linked to and posted in PDF form on several blogs. Suddenly, The Court of Appeals removed the PDF from their site, and then actually phoned and emailed several bloggers to request the removal of the opinion since it contained “classified information.” The Court said that a revised opinion would come out the next day without the classified information.

A legal blog site called How Appealing refused.

The next day, the Court of Appeals reissued the Higazy opinion. With a redaction — the only thing missing were the facts about how the FBI agent extracted the false confession from Higazy. For some reason, this information is “Classified.”

It’s too late now, though. The PDF has spread to dozens of other sites on the Internet. How Appealing’s original version of the PDF can be found here.

Spread it around. Let everyone you know find out how the Bush administration handles “intelligence” and what they choose to make Classified.

Bush says “we don’t torture.” Which, of course, is bullshit — we do the same “enhanced interrogation” techniques that we prosecuted the Germans for after WWII (they called them “enhanced interrogation” too, in fact). But even in cases where we didn’t use torture, we used the threat of torture committed by our allies — against innocents. Even if Higazy had turned out to be The Devil Himself, his family was not…..and it would have been his family that was tortured, to insure his cooperation.

And all of this is being done in our names. If we do nothing to stop it, we condone it.