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Miss Universe’s Excellent Adventure
"A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in." That was Frederick the Great of Prussia's take on the pain of being royalty.
Just ask Queen Elizabeth II and Michelle Obama. When they briefly touched one another at Buckingham Palace
Thursday,
a moment of contact that was more gentle pat than hug, you would have
thought the First Lady had challenged Her Royal Highness to pistols at
20 paces. What a breach of protocol!
What a world. Luckily, Buckingham Palace jumped into the breach to announce, "It
was a mutual and spontaneous display of affection and appreciation,"
and besides, the Royal Press Office said, it was at an informal
reception -- thus convincing the media on both sides of the Atlantic to unclutch their smelling salts.
But if you needed
further proof that the Earth is off its axis, spinning toward the sun,
there came the news that another crowned head, Miss Universe, had paid
a visit to Guantanamo Bay. Yes, courtesy of the USO, Venezuela's
Dyanna Mendoza hit the beach for her personal remake of "Baywatch,"
visiting the no doubt startled troops there and touring the Gitmo
facilities.
Because there
apparently is a higher power with a sardonic sense of humor -- thank
you! -- Ms. Mendoza kept an Internet diary in which she told the world
about boat rides and a trip to a beach covered with bits of colored
glass.
"It was a loooot of
fun!" she wrote. "We... met the Military dogs, and they did a very nice
demonstration of their skills... We visited the Detainees camps and we
saw the jails, where they shower, how they recreate themselves with
movies, classes of art, book... I didn't want to leave, it was such a
relaxing place, so calm and beautiful."
OK, Miss Universe, no doubt a more permanent stay could be arranged,
your innocence notwithstanding. But you just might have to give up the
swimwear competition two-piece for something in an orange jumpsuit.
I wish I was making
this up. So does the Miss Universe organization, owned by General
Electric's NBC Universal and Miss Congeniality himself, Donald Trump.
They quickly took down Mendoza's blog entry and replaced it with an official statement supporting our armed forces.
Smooth move, considering the news that keeps breaking about how the detainees at Guantanamo were treated by the Bush-Cheney team.
Mark Danner and The New York Review of Books
recently obtained a confidential report from the International
Committee of the Red Cross describing the treatment of many detainees
as torture. In detail, the report describes how Abu Zubaida, who
President Bush proclaimed was al Qaeda's chief of operations, was
waterboarded and often confined to a coffin-like black box (Of the 92
video tapes the CIA recently admitted they destroyed, all but two were
of Zubaida's detention and interrogation.).
He
told the Red Cross, "I was taken out of my cell and one of the
interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck; they then used it to
swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the
room."
And for what? The front page of last Sunday's Washington Post reports that in all probability Zubaida was not the high powered operative US intelligence thought he was and that, "Not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions."
In the words of the Post's Dan Froomkin, "The
most charitable interpretation at this point of the decision to torture
is that it was a well-intentioned overreaction of people under enormo
us stress whose only interest was in protecting the people of the United States.
But there's always been one big problem with that theory: While torture
works on TV, knowledgeable intelligence professionals and trained
interrogators know that in the real world, it's actually ineffective and even counterproductive. The only thing it's really good as it getting false confessions."
Some speculate that the real motivation is retribution; the irrational lust to get even that drives us to intentional cruelty.
The Obama administration is declassifying memos and other documents
on the detention and interrogation policies adopted after 9/11.
Executive orders from the President suspended military commissions at Guantanamo
and ordered the prison there closed within a year. On Monday, Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton confirmed to reporters that the Obama White
House has dropped the phrase "war on terror."
But despite that semantic sleight-of-hand, the war goes on, and 241 men remain in the cells of Guantanamo, their stories already becoming forgotten in a world where Miss Universe searches the sandy beach for pieces of pretty glass, awestruck by military dogs and the beautiful sea.
- Posted in
13 Comments so far
Show AllWell Michael, I am glad you are associated with Bill Moyers Journal. Perhaps by your arrangement, the interview last night of Goodman and Greenwald elicited, among much else, the statement of Goodman that the public is absolutely dependent on its "alternative" journalism, since the main stream stuff hardly touches what the public really needs to know. The smelling salts brought out by the gaffes of protocol of Miss Universe and Mrs. Obama were what passed for "news" that people saw on their nightly news (at least the illicit "touch" at the palace.) Where in London, besides reporting as almost a sports broadcast on the protests (how many were there, how much property did they destroy?) was there anything substantive at all about precisely WHAT these wild persons in the street were protesting about, or what to suggest that while Michelle was having her moment with the Queen, Barack was busily engaged in trying to get Gordon Brown and other world leaders to sign onto the "American" program of saving the banksters and escalating the conflict in Aghanistan? PBS takes its knocks in the critical press and rightly so, but let us thank whatever Diety still pays any attention our insane doings on earth that NOW and Bill Moyers Journal at least can give us an hour and a half of something approaching sanity every week.
cmon let's be fair
ms universe is known for her big tits not her big brains - as she has so dynamically demonstrated
i have written here for years that the president, when not kissing nwo butt, is like ms america
he gets to wear his prettiest dress and prance around the stage extolling the virtues of corrupt america while promising to dedicate himself to the task of eliminating, in no particular order cause like you know they are all important in a way - kind of - all the blights of humanity
just as soon as he gets the last liquid dollars of the treasury into the drug traffickers hands on wall street he is going to launch yet another war on unhappiness
wow - can hardly wait
Priorities, Priorities, jeez, where would we be without them. Better off in most cases. Aren't the windsors the most visible of the 'elite'? Another bilderberger convention in a couple of months, wonder where and who will be invited and what they will discuss. They have the money and unless a major attack happens the msm will play the faithful dog for them and nary a word will be forth coming about what plans these crooks will cook up at their annual BBQ.
It is at once encouraging and disheartening to see that empty bubble headed beauty queens are not exclusive to the USA.
Miss Universe is a Venezuelan? The same country run by Hugo Chavez who detests the US so?
I suppose that means democracy is alive and well in Venezuela, where prominent figures of that society are free to say whatever they want, despite its immoral relevance.
Of course, when Jane Fonda fraternized with the Vietnamese, she was demonized in the US.
I wonder if the Venezuelans will be so spiteful?
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins - Native American proverb.
My sentiments exactly. No need to comment, except-- when will Fox News report she is a spy for Chavez' secret service?
Torture is about TERROR, and degrading humans, and Street Cred. That's it. That's why people do it. They love the sound of mortal human screams. When your enemy knows you can grab him and not kill him but instead, break his body, his nerves, and his mind, turning him into a twitching sack of incontinent flesh - that's a formidable threat for most people. That kind of stuff grows wood for "real men" in the WH. That's who your leaders are and that's why they torture - because they LIKE IT. Regrettably, this is not their only nasty habit.
Which is why we're all in such wonderful shape right now...
"Some speculate that the real motivation is retribution; the irrational lust to get even that drives us to intentional cruelty."
This is hardly "speculation." There have been volumes written on experiments with humans as the subjects and perpetrators/controllers that have established a strong factual base for human behavior in situations like this and even worse for less of a perceived threat or action.
I doubt if the torture was an act of "retribution" given that elements in the government and military-intelligence network carried out 9/11 themselves.
For the latest evidence the buildings were blown up, see:
http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/openaccess2.htm
Click on 2009 and then download the article, "Active Thermitic Material..."
Pass it on.
You can bet the corporate masters of the Miss Ditzy Contest had orders from their US imperial government cronies to make that visit happen.
They're all in on it and they're all dirty.
"Some speculate that the real motivation is retribution; the irrational lust to get even that drives us to intentional cruelty"
There is a third explanation. The Bullies picked out a few people to make examples of. To let US and everyone else know that we WILL fu(k you up. Including Jose Padilla (we can grab you off the streets of America and fu(k you up), John Lindh (we'll fu(k up white people). Maher Arar (we don't care if you're Canadian and just passing through, we'll fu(k you up anyway).
How many times since 9?11 have you heard someone say, "yeah, but I don't want to end up in an orange jumpsuit" or something along those lines?
It worked didn't it?
***I wish I was making this up. So does the Miss Universe organization, owned by General Electric's NBC Universal and Miss Congeniality himself, Donald Trump. They quickly took down Mendoza's blog entry and replaced it with an official statement supporting our armed forces.***
Good thought. And what was maybe the real reason GE's NBC Universal 'disappeared' her blog on the visit, replacing it with a bunch of corporate doublespeak or quaint vacational tripe?
We are still controlled by those 'too big to be held accountable' giants of repression. And yes, GE, part of the military industrial congressional complex. Makes more sense now, huh? Plus, I still tend to forget that renditions were a good way to 'handle' those that were in charge of placing the thermite and thermate charges in the wtc buildings 1,2 & 7.
Has anyone read the comments of Colonel Larry Wilkerson that early on, Cheney and Rumsfeld realized that almost all the prisoners at Guantanamo were certainly not of any intelligence value or dangerous to the US. Only about 10% had been captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan. He estimates that not more than two dozen men are/ were dangerous or had intelligence value. The kicker is that there are still holdovers of the Bush /Cheney cabal in the DOD that want to try to milk this for as long as possible. We should be asking the question: Is this the same state of affairs in Afghanistan where there are approximately 600 prioners at Bagram and others locked up in Kandahar, not to mention literally thousands held in prison camps in Iraq. It's almost like some idiot at high levels ordered that battalian commanders must apprehend so many dozen persons a month, mostly without justification. As part of the Status Of Forces Agreement in Iraq those prison camps will be TOT Iraqi forces. One of the sychophantic holdover Generals from Bush/Cheney complained that 1/2 of the prisoners were dangerous. Someone needs to ask: then why are you holding all those other thousands of men? We also need to ask most of those folks, including Wilkerson, who are finally speaking up, What the Hell took you so long?