Pruning Shears

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Work occupied my normal weekend blogging time, so here it is a day late.

Documents from the Bush administration (curiously “there is no information on when the stress-position document was written or which government agency authored it”) show that the decision to violate the Convention Against Torture came from the top. In a separate document dump it turns out the FBI investigated the CIA’s interrogation methods and warned the agency repeatedly about it.

Since we are still in the rendition business it’s noteworthy when our kidnapping plane is spotted. It isn’t like it’s taking tourists to Disney World.

Daphne Eviatar reported that a former Bush administration official is now in favor (the presumed opposite of “not opposed”) to a criminal investigation into torture. Also, former CIA officer Sabrina deSousa admitted we broke the law in our Marquis de Carré adventures abroad. Not that anyone will pay a price here in America, of course

Cory Doctorow had some details on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. In brief: Every stupid, short sighted, unworkable, stifling, sclerotic, hidebound and confused understanding of the internet is being assembled in one neat package for the entire globe to adopt. It will only encourage piracy and make people contemptuous of the law.

The government introduced the worst idea since Total Information Awareness.

Wouldn’t it be nice to see how much we are spending on our military as easily as we do the social safety net?

Brad Jacobson had the latest in the Pentagon’s investigation of the retired general’s program. Raw Story does some outstanding investigative work and it doesn’t seem to get much credit.

I’m beginning to think the Federal Reserve needs to be put under direct Congressional control. Oh, and Tim Geithner is still a tool.

I had an actual Laugh Out Loud moment when I saw John Cole’s quip on the NJ governor’s race: “In other news, a Goldman employee has finally lost a job” (which actually is terribly unjust considering how fabulously Goldman is performing these days).

Prairie Weather tipped me to this article by Petra Bartosiewicz (sub. req’d.) detailing how America makes its enemies disappear. It’s a long article and the story is convoluted, but the way it outlines how America treats those it suspects of ill intent towards it is illuminating. For instance:

Missing-person reports filed in Pakistan rarely claim that the detained individual was picked up by the CIA or the FBI. Instead, the detainee is almost always arrested by “city police” or “civilian clothed men” or unidentified “secret agency personnel” who arrive in “unmarked vehicles.” The secretary-general of the Pakistani NGO Human Rights Commission, Ibn Abdur Rehman, described the process. “A man is picked up at his house, brought to the police station,” he said. “The family comes with him and are told, ‘He’ll be released in an hour, go home.’ They come back in an hour and are told, ‘Sorry, he’s been handed off to the intelligence people and taken to Islamabad.’ After that, the individual is never heard from again. When the family tries to file a missing-person report, the police won’t take it, and no one admits to having custody of the person.” Some of the disappeared pass directly to U.S. custody and reappear months or years later at Guantánamo or Bagram air base. Others remain captives of Pakistan’s multiple intelligence agencies or are shipped to places like Uzbekistan, whose torture policies are well known. Others simply vanish, their fate revealed only by clerical errors, or when they turn up dead.