The Ultraviolet Garden

In December ’08 I posted a video about Bugliosi’s book “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder” here. (Truly awesome.)

I bought Dad the audio version (failing vision) and he sent it to me after he “read” it. I’d read Helter Skelter and Outrage years ago, so I was already aware of how awesome Bugliosi is.

Today I learned that his “Prosecution of George W. Bush…” has been made into a movie! It’s due out February of next year. I’m happy as hell.

Here’s a trailer:

Hot damn. I hope Vincent gets the support he needs for this endeavor. If I were rich I’d be his benefactor.

War is now a permanent export of the USA. So are the attendant war crimes.

And anyone who thinks US security interests are being improved by those ghastly facts on the ground is a damned fool. —jk

Read more here.

From The Star:

Benamar Benatta, a Canadian… like… me… recounts how his country turned a blind, cowardly and disgraced eye when the U.S. unlawfully imprisoned and tortured him for five years. All he wants now is an apology. Canada won’t apologize, so I will. Mr. Benatta, I’m sorry that you were let down by a country that prides itself on a reputation of upholding human rights. —Jeff Green, Toronto

I’m a 10th grade student at Bayview Secondary School and I find it appalling that our politicians have allowed themselves to be blinded by their prejudice. …Benatta has obviously faced traumatizing experiences and needs professional help that the government should provide. Aside from financial compensation for detaining him without evidence in a U.S. jail, an official apology should also be made. Without a full apology, Benatta cannot move on with his life.

If we pride ourselves as a country that upholds the rights and freedoms of all, and values the lives of everybody equally, we cannot allow cases like Benatta’s to be ignored. —Jessica Chan, Richmond Hill

Good people. If only the likes of Stephen Harper had such decency.

The Star has just published the following article about Benamar’s case.

Shrugging Off Torture

He’s the only known case of Extraordinary Rendition in Canada. What I’m mad about is that they still have not apologized for what they put him through. Stephen Harper came back saying that after they investigated themselves they found themselves to be innocent of all wrongdoing. (I will believe an investigation took place when I see proof of it, I don’t know if they had an investigation or an “investigation”. Or if they skipped the whole kerfuffle entirely and said, “Let’s don’t and say we did”.)

But it seems to me that they still have to explain HOW—and via WHOSE authorization—did he end up being delivered in the middle of the night in the back seat of a car and into the hands of his torturers in a Brooklyn jail in the first place! Don’t you guys know we torture people here?

Not only have they deeply affected Ben’s life forever, but we may not know how many other cases of Extraordinary Rendition there might have been. And why the fuck am I capitalizing that euphemism? Somebody please, slap the shit out of me. It’s kidnapping! Oh, excuse me: Kidnapping. (The truth is always worth capitalizing.)

Anyway, I’m very glad that the Star published the article. The story needs to be kept alive. When all the proceedings are done and the crowds go home, he still has to live with what they put him through.

How very dare you, Canada.

The house feels empty as hell without Lucky. We’ll always remember her sweetness. She came with her own sound effects. Sometimes she sounded like General Cornrow Wallace! She’d roll up on you like that.

Ptttttttdddddddddrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

That’s when she felt playful.

*sigh*

Onward.

I’ve been piddling around with wordpress themes. I’m using “LightWord” now.

I modified it slightly. I’m actually quite satisfied with it. It meets all of my requirements now. I still don’t understand why so many ppl place the comment section in the byline area.

In this case the theme didn’t even have a byline; it was easy enough to add.

I’ve also added a “like/dislike” plugin but only the comments are showing the rating. I need to figure out how to make it work on posts. If you use wordpress, maybe you’ll find these useful:

Like/Dislike Comment Rating worked for me.

Like/Dislike Post Rating didn’t work for me. I’ll figure it out eventually. Probably something minor.

I never know which plugins I’ll end up keeping. Usually I just play with things, if they are useful they’ll be kept. I liked “The Wall” plugin, but since it had to keep refreshing to load the most recent wall items it made my logs practically useless.

Although a simple filter would fix that problem. I’m just too lazy to do that. Maybe later.

Right now I’m working on the RWA Scale (see “Altemeyer’s Authoritarians“). I can’t use his questions. But if I come up with my own questions it should be fine. Check out his book if you haven’t. (It’s free. Also he prefers that ppl be introduced to his RWA Scale via the book. In this way, they learn that it may—or may not—be useful for individuals; it’s more geared toward getting average trends in groups of persons.)

When he asked me to remove the RWA survey, of course I complied. Nothing to do with copyright it’s just general courtesy. But, as his own survey predicted in my case, I have my own opinion on this.

Given that, do I even really need to take the survey myself? (Of course, I did. I scored very low, obviously.)

I’m also interested in doing an equivalent of the Social Dominance Scale as well. I can’t use his exact questions, but again you can’t copyright an idea, only the expression of it. And as long as I’m not using his questions, I should be okay. I’ve actually got a good idea about this but we’ll see. What I’d like to do is use actual things authoritarians or their followers have said—quotations, in other words—as the items on the survey. Looking at many of these, I could easily come up with quotations from “The Georges”. (Of the Bush persuasion, of course.)

There’s not exactly a shortage of folks who are quotable in this respect.

Have a good day all.

Vincent Bugliosi on his book, “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder”.

I don’t think it’s too much to ask.