KIM JONG-IL: SMASHING BLOKE, USED TO SEND HIS MOTHER FLOWERS

In case you were wondering how The China Daily – the official state-run English-language newspaper of the People’s Republic Of China – reported the death of Kim Jong-Il:



Yes. Well. There you go.

DISCLAIMER: They give away copies of China Daily for free in the lobby of our apartment building in a cardboard display stand. Which is very handy for me because it means plenty of free liner for our dog’s toilet. So if the thought of a Maltese dog taking a dump on Kim Jong-Il’s face pleases you, then, hey, yr welcome.

That’s what friends are for,

This is dF

IF YOU LIKED GITMO, YOU’LL LOVE AMERICA

There’s been plenty of a-dithering on my various friends pages about the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual US defense budget that, this year, includes some fun new provisions that – by the wildest coincidence – makes it legal for the military to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone that the US govt says are terrorists with no due process at all – not even if yr a US citizen.

Put another way, it’s the Gitmo frontier-justice system enshrined into law and applied to pretty much everyone.

I’ve been holding off on posting anything about it – partly because I’ve been busy and partly because the people freaking out about it weren’t offering much in the way of proof that the bill does what they say it does. Some people claimed it makes torture totally legal again (it doesn’t – a proposed amendment would make it so, but that amendment didn’t make it into the bill that was passed, as far as I can tell), and cited Sec. 1031 and 1032 as proof that all this applies to US citizens, except Sec. 1032 specifically (and clearly) exempts US citizens.

So I’ve been waiting for someone to either explain that, or find me a current copy of the bill (as the NDAA has gone through five metric buttloads of revisions and amendments).

Glenn Greenwald has done just that, and he makes a good case that the NDAA is as bad as people have been making it sound. Which saves me a lot of time.

Greenwald also makes another important point – namely, that Presidente Obama can’t wait to sign this thing, and only ever threatened to veto it because some provisions encroached on his own power. Which should surprise no one because he’s been as gung-ho as any Republican in pushing the “Whatever It Takes” mentality to fighting The Terrorz, to include the grand fantasy that terrorism is somehow literally a war (and therefore requires a military solution, not a criminal justice solution).

Which is worth emphasizing, because we have things like the Patriot Act, enhanced interrogations, renditions, warrantless wiretaps, govt-sanctioned assassination and increasingly militarized police forces precisely because enough of the country has bought into the same mentality. Enough people are afeared of Muslims that they rationalize the entire debate by saying the govt needs this power, that it will only apply to terrorists they know are guilty, that terrorists don’t deserve due process or human rights, and anyway, people against the bill are exaggerating/lying about the risks.

To be fair, that last one is probably true to an extent. It’s a stretch to say the NDAA amounts to declaring martial law in a literal sense (see: Burma). The NDAA detention provisions will almost certainly be abused, but probably not to the point of deploying the National Guard to arresting people who occasionally watch Al Jazeera or, say, protest the govt.

Still, that doesn’t make it okay. America’s Constitution has a Bill Of Rights and due process provisions for a reason – it wasn’t something the Founding Fathers put it in because it sounded cool and would annoy the King. So passing a law making it possible to circumvent those provisions in the name of political expedience is arguably a fundamentally bad idea.

The good news, such as it is, is that the NDAA is getting far more public debate than the Patriot Act ever did, which does make it harder (albeit not impossible) to get away with this.

However, the real takeaway here is that both Obama and Congress would very much like to get away with this, and are actively trying to do so. They want to live in a country where the military can detain “suspects” indefinitely, and where the President can order them killed, and where the police have the power to monitor yr communications and secretly stick GPS trackers on yr car.

Or is that too paranoid?

Probably. But so what? It doesn’t really matter to me if they’re motivated by malicious evil or political theater or a genuinely naïve belief that all this will make America safe and the US govt can be trusted to use these powers responsibly (at least until the other party is in charge). What matters is the results.

Res ipsa loquitur, as they say.

Still, it's always possible the NDAA detention provisions will never hold up in court. And it's not like anyone proposing to arrest judges who declare any of this unconstitutional or make any ruling the President disagrees with –

Oh. 

Everything is under control,

This is dF

DEF XMAS 2011: HIS BIG NORTH POLE CAN SURE GET COLD

It’s always interested me that one of the persistent memes of the post-war Santa Claus mythos is Chick Magnet Santa.

You know, where Santa does more than just deliver presents when he visits the homes of single women and desperate housewives in the middle of the night when they’re in bed.

Ho ho ho.

Playboy used to do lots of cartoons dedicated to the concept of Santa getting some. And of course there are a number of songs about women who want to lavish Santa with physical affection in exchange for loot – some innocent, some coy, some a little more direct.

Like this little number.

Indeed.

Naughty and nice,

This is dF