Justice For The Shallow.

Conditions: Sunny.


Justice Served?

A few months ago Muntadher al-Zaidi threw his shoes at President Bush during a press conference to express his anger at what Bush and his administration had done to the people of Iraq. It was a moment that perfectly summed up President Bush and the Iraqi legacy. And the result:

The man seen as a hero in some circles for throwing his shoes at then-U.S. President George W. Bush, was sentenced to three years in prison Thursday in an Iraqi court.
[...]

Family members and journalists were cleared from the courtroom before Thursday's verdict. After news of the verdict reached family members, al-Zaidi's brother appeared close to fainting.

Other family members were seen crying and shouting curses about al-Maliki and Bush.

Al-Zaidi was a journalist who worked for the television network al-Baghdadia. The network also called for his release shortly after the incident.

Al-Zaidi explained his actions during an hourlong appearance in February in the Central Criminal Court of Iraq. Asked whether anyone pushed or motivated him, al-Zaidi said he was spurred by the "violations that are committed against the Iraqi people."
[...]

Al-Zaidi's lawyers had told CNN that he could face as many as 15 years in prison. It was unclear why he received three years.

- truthout.org/

Yes it is unclear, isn't it. Unclear why he's facing any jail time at all. Unclear as to why the fates decided to not let either shoe hit President Bush. Unclear as to why any other kind of public justice hasn't been 'aimed' at the Bush administration.

Meanwhile, in another kind of public gallery, the entrepreneur Bernard Madoff stood before a judge accused of stealing over Sixty billion dollars worth of money. The outcome:

New York - An "ashamed" Bernard L. Madoff pleaded guilty Thursday morning to bilking investors out of billions of dollars in savings in the biggest fraud in Wall Street history, and a judge ordered him jailed immediately to await a June 16 sentencing date.

The 70-year-old disgraced financier, who had been confined to his Upper East Side penthouse under a $10 million bail agreement since his Dec. 11 arrest, admitted running an extensive Ponzi scheme that wiped out charitable endowments and cost thousands of people their life savings.

The 11 felony charges carry a maximum sentence of 150 years in prison. The actual sentence is likely to be much shorter, but given Madoff's age would likely still amount to a life sentence.

Madoff pleaded guilty to securities fraud, investment advisory fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, false statements, perjury, false filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission and theft from an employee benefit plan.

- truthout.org/

Sending one man to jail in response to a roughly 20-year long giant pyramid scheme that's ripped off god knows how many people of about 60 billion dollars kinda seems like finger-in-the-dike sort of stuff. That's it? One guy sent to jail? That's all there is to it? One would hope this is more the opening act in investigations into this scheme and the people behind it, but the 150 years thing looks quite impressive on paper.

So then we come to another dark scheme that was carried out by ruthless men over a long period of time. What justice in the cold light of dawn awaits them?

At a "Great Conversations" event at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an "executive assassination ring."
[...]

"After 9/11, I haven't written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven't been called on it yet. That does happen.

"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command -- JSOC it's called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

"Congress has no oversight of it. It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us.

"It's complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It's a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you've heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized.

"In many cases, they were the best and the brightest. Really, no exaggerations. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America. And then they find themselves torturing people.

"I've had people say to me -- five years ago, I had one say: 'What do you call it when you interrogate somebody and you leave them bleeding and they don't get any medical committee and two days later he dies. Is that murder? What happens if I get before a committee?'

"But they're not gonna get before a committee."

...Whuh?

"Under the Bush Administration's interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressional interference."

- truthout.org/

Well, seems to me the cold light of dawn looks a lot like the half-dark of evening.

So let this be a lesson: Justice only applies to the small fish, close enough to the surface to get caught to the indifferent fishermen, but every now and then we get a glimpse of huge, shadowy things, far beneath us, contemptuous of the puny fishing poles we hold.




Film Review: Watchmen.

Watchmen is a very ambitious project. A comic book written back in the eighties, it's set in a world in which things are somewhat the same, and yet slightly not. America won the Vietnam war through the use of a nuclear "weapon". Nixon avoided Watergate and was reelected multiple times. But oddest of all is that superheros exist in the world, but are basically just costumed vigilantes and daredevils rather than the moral do-gooders we're used to. Some are inherently good, most are a little nuts, and a few are legitimately bad. They have been forced to retire, and a few have gone public with their real identities, and a few still work on a mysterious government project. By far the oddest of these characters is Dr Manhattan, a nuclear scientist who was caught up in a terrible accident and developed the power of basically a god. Obviously this has made him a little 'distanced' in the dealings of the human race, the Americans, and things in general, which I guess is yet another side effect of being a god, especially one who can teleport himself to any point he wants, to take things apart with his mind, to grow in size, to be completely impervious to anything, and to not wear any clothes at all.

Believe it or not, but this last point brings the whole enterprise down. Watchmen seems like a very serious film. America and Russia are poised on the brink of Nuclear Armageddon. Someone is killing off old costumed superheros. There's a whole gritty detective whodunit story that's ticking away here in order to link everything together, but the simple fact is that every time Dr Manhattan is on screen, one cannot but notice his lack of clothing. Despite the drama of what's going on, the audience laughs and fidgets, and it's not hard to see why. This film, for all it's attempts at earnestness and seriousness, is stupid. And it's moments where Dr Manhattan is swinging across the screen that that stupidness is most apparent.

There's just something about the film that undermines itself, almost as if no one in it can quite take it seriously enough. Setting it in the eighties when the comic was written is another odd choice, the world is a much different place now. Nuclear brinkmanship with Russia dates this film quite badly. And it also pales in the face of the more gritty comic book films we have today, and it particularly pales in the wake of the likes of V For Vendetta, or The Dark Knight. Hell, I think the Incredibles did basically the same thing but with more character. It's not that Watchmen is bad, parts of it are quite entertaining, director Zack Snyder's made good use of his actors and settings, The stuff with Rorschach was actually pretty good. But ultimately the lesson is that we can only get along if we're all threatened by something. I don't think that lesson makes sense anymore. We seem willing to fight each other regardless whether we're all threatened or not. Perhaps Watchmen simply missed it's timeframe of relevance. Three Ooofs out of Five.


- Peace out