Madhavi Bhasin blames Blackwater, and its immunity from Iraqi law, for Maliki’s recent wants:
The demand of Prime Minister Maliki is less reflective of his confidence in the stability of Iraq and more a sign of the growing apprehensions over the privatization of the Iraqi reconstruction efforts.
How fuck-you to McCain-Lieberman is that?
"Who had appointed me the custodian of intellectual standards on the right? I wasn’t sitting in some think tank cogitating policy initiatives for the GOP. I was a commercial book editor, and I did what I had to do to remain competitive in a highly challenging environment. I couldn’t afford to be squeamish… I reserve the right to stoop and pander when it suits me," – Adam Bellow, defending himself for publishing the recent tomes of Dinesh "The Enemy At Home" D’Souza and Jonah "Liberal Fascism" Goldberg. My review of D’Souza is here. I made a good faith effort to read Jonah’s book. Couldn’t make it through.
Another tracking shot classic:
The reader who sent it in writes:
As a long time political junkie and film major, your recent string of postings on the greatest tracking shots has been a joy for me. I just wanted to recommend to you the traffic jam tracking shot in Jean-Luc Godard’s "Weekend" Godard’s last film before he descended into ten years of marxist "film-essays." The most striking part of these long tracking shots is how the keep an integrated physical reality without compromising space for the sake of the cut. The cut is a kind of artifice by its very nature, and our breath can be taken away by these long shots so easily simply because of how magical our own physical reality seems when reflected back to us. It is a kind of religious feeling to be awed by a reflection of the intact physical world, with only the subjectivity of the moving camera.
According to PEW, one percent of Americans think Obama is Jewish. Oy.
Little Walsingham, Norfolk, England, 9 am.
Wilkinson doesn’t "give a fig":
People complain about bikers breaking traffic laws. Well, I’m guilty, and I’m damn well going to keep doing it. A lot of traffic regulations make sense for cars, but just don’t for bikes. For example, I ride home almost every day the wrong way up a one way street, and nobody coming the other way gives a damn. Why should they? I honestly don’t give a fig about my carbon footprint (and anyway, since I’m not a breeder, I really should get carbon carte blanche). But I like biking because it’s faster than driving — because I blow through stop signs, go the wrong way on one-ways, etc. Were I suddenly to become fastidious about heeding traffic laws intended to regulate cars, one of the main advantages of biking over driving would evaporate. So I think people who do give figs about carbon really ought to encourage bikers to break traffic laws, or at least promote EXTRA traffic laws for drivers, in order to increase the relative benefit of biking. How about intersections where four-way purple means you’ve got to stop unless you’re on a bike? That would be pretty sweet.
I’m with Will. It reminds me of a day I spent a long time ago in Berlin. I rented a bike and merrily explored as much of the city as I could. At one point, I was riding down a side-street, and two police cars came screeching down the road toward me. I looked behind to see who they were chasing. Then they rammed on the brakes and burst out their cars and ran up to … me. I was riding my bike the wrong way down a one-way street. Yes: Germany.
Orin Kerr is puzzled by the media coverage of FISA:
As I see it, the new law takes the basic approach of the Protect America Act of 2007 and adds privacy protections and bolsters the scope of judicial review. On the whole, the new law strikes me as pretty good legislation: It nicely responds to the widely expressed fears last year about how the Protect America Act could be implemented. and it ensures that the FISA Court will play a major role in reviewing surveillance of individuals located outside the U.S. Indeed, it seems to me that the new rules create pretty much the regime that critics of the Protect America Act wanted back in 2007.
That’s the Red Cross’ analysis of what Bush and Cheney sanctioned in Gitmo, according to Jane Mayer’s new book. I’ve read some summaries of the book’s key points but haven’t gotten a hold of the galleys yet. But suffice to say: it’s as bad as we feared:
The book says Abu Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he had been waterboarded at least 10 times in a single week and as many as three times in a day.
The book also reports that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, told the Red Cross that he had been kept naked for more than a month and claimed that he had been “kept alternately in suffocating heat and in a painfully cold room.”
The report says the prisoners considered the “most excruciating” of the methods being shackled to the ceiling and being forced to stand for as long as eight hours. Eleven of the 14 prisoners reported prolonged sleep deprivation, the book says, including “bright lights and eardrum-shattering sounds 24 hours a day.”
This is what we know from the history of torture. Some of the least superficially awful techniques – such as the Gestapo-perfected "stress positions" and "hypothermia" – can actually be the worst in terms of suffering. There is no doubt at this point that the president of the United States is a war criminal. The only question is whether he will ever be brought to justice. I’ll be blogging the book in detail as soon as I get my hands on it.
The Dish 