The Unjust abroad and at home

While writing about social and political issues during my second sailing in Taos from 1998 to 2009, I discovered that the stimulus for scribbling, as George Orwell says, “is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice.” —Bad Gringo

“Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.” — Declaration of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal:

The Torture Guys: When did they figure it out?

In Andrew Rosenthal‘s NYT post, 12 Dec. 2014, the pundit quotes Dick Cheney: “What I keep hearing out there is they portray this as a rogue operation, and the agency was way out of bounds and then they lied about it,” Mr. Cheney said in a telephone interview.

“I think that’s all a bunch of hooey. The program was authorized. The agency did not want to proceed without authorization, and it was also reviewed legally by the Justice Department before they undertook the program.”

“This program was morally, legally and administratively misguided,” Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said Tuesday morning during an open session of Congress.

So Cheney basically confesses that he was in the know, like George Bush, President Obama, etc. The Obama administration is fighting the release of videotapes portraying force-feeding at Gitmo today. Such are the squishy ethics of this administration.

CIA Director John Brennan, depicted here, lied to the Senate Foreign Intelligence Committee about, well, just about everything. As many pundits, who have read the report say, “The CIA lied to itself.” But then Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld lied to the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq. Another hall of fame bureaucrat, James Clapper, pictured below, Director of the National Security Agency, lied to Congress about “spying” on the American people: listening to phone calls, monitoring email, you name it. 

Vietnam War Hero and U.S. Senator John McCain praised the release of the U.S. torture report. Torture, he said, “damaged our security interests as well as a reputation as a force for good in the world. The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. The American people are entitled to it nonetheless. They must be able to make judgments about whether these policies and personnel who supported them were justified in compromising our values.”

Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, according to the Guardian said, “In my view, the Panetta (former CIA director) review is a smoking gun,” Udall said, saying it “directly refutes” information in the CIA’s formal response to the Senate torture report and is “refreshingly free of excuses, qualifications, or caveats”.

Contradicting a central point of the CIA’s response, according to Udall, the Panetta Review unequivocally said the CIA misrepresented the efficacy of torture to the Bush administration, Congress and the public.

Apparently, CIA operatives are now learning that torture violates human rights and is ineffective. Waterboarding, coffin cells, sleep deprivation, and rectal re-hydration (shoving it up someone’s ass) don’t produce actionable information, much like grand juries don’t produce indictments of cops who kill unarmed black people. Chokeholds and water boarding suffocate the victims but, apparently, give the perpetrators some sort of perverse feeling of gratification. One can only think that those who engage in torture or killing the black man do so because it appeals to their own sado-masochistic pleasurable urges.

Local Justice

Here in Taos a local DA or DDA will be at a hearing for Oriana Farrell, Dec. 16, at 9 am in Judge Backus’s court despite the dark cloud hanging over his license and authority. The DA and DDA are charging Ms. Farrell, a black woman, for fleeing the white cop, who screamed at her and beat upon the windows of her van with his “baton.”

What did he want to do with his stick?

Our old friend, the state cop, Elias Montoya, aimed his gun down and shot at the tires and missed the rubber, though his bullets probably penetrated the first layer of topsoil because he was shooting at the ground. Elias was fired while the white cop, baton in hand, continues using his stick to enforce the law.

Why was Elias thrown under the “bus” by his buddies at the local cop shop? Somebody released the Van video to a nationwide audience. Who else had control of the taped evidence? Eh?

The Hometown Subpoena duo, the DA, and DDA, are throwing down when not throwing each other under the bus in Taos, according to responses issued to the D’board. In Raton, a reader writes that on a local radio station, the DA blamed subordinates for dropping what? 400 cases in our sister city in the 8th Judicial District? Donald (above) has problems everywhere.

But why not blame the black woman, who was just passing through town? Now thanks to Ferguson and Staten Island, we understand why Ms. Farrell might be expected to look at local coppers with a jaundiced eye. The DA is here to protect the locals against prosecution even if they, La Buena Gente, run down and kill two Vietnam vets on motorcycles and maim their passengers for life: see the 2004 Red River Memorial Biker Ride and Massacre.

Oh yes, the Taos DA has much in common with the dark princes of justice in Ferguson and on Staten Island.

But the D’board is coming. They say passing bad subpoenas, like passing bad checks, is against the law. Judge Paternoster quashed the misbegotten evidence in the Kit Carson robbery case, due to the “hometown subpoenas” issue.  He rubbed out the subpoenas under the heel of the justice system like so many pesky insects.

Now we need a new DA.

By the way, Paternoster, who looks like the white guys above can laugh and possesses a sense of humor about himself. That makes all the difference. Cheney, Clapper, and Brennan are grotesque caricatures, who appear to have grown into their own internal misbegotten motivations just like the self-righteous  Donald DA and Emilio DDA. As my old buddy Saki used to say, “What a tangled web we weave when we conspire to deceive.”