that is how moved I am right now.  I have just finished reading a column that is affirming of life, insistent on moral clarity, and totally appropriate to the incident which occasions its writing, the arrest of Radovan Karadzic.  It is by Roger Cohen of the New York Times, and is entitled Karadzic and War’s Lessons.  

Perhaps it will not move you as it did me.  But you should read it.  It should not be excerpted, which is all I can do without violating copyright.  So I am going to ask a favor.   Please read the column.  If you do nothing else this morning, I think you will find my request reasonable.  After you've done that, if you want, we can talk further.  And anything I have to add will be below the fold.  But don't feel obligated to do anything - except read Cohen's column

Every wonder how evil Bush and/or Cheney could become if it weren't for what's left of our constitutional rights and checks and balances.  Unquestionably they would both become evil despots. Despite everything, they have some constraints.  There is no question in my mind they would both evolve into the the type of evil dictator our nation has taken pride in defeating in past wars.  The question how purely evil would they become(if they are not actually that evil already).

http://www.chuckmccoy.com

Paul Krugman has written another column where he attacks Obama's supporters.  For a man who claims he wants a strong liberal Democratic party in power, why does he continue to demonize those who are working to achieve this end?

What are the differences between McCain, Stalin, and Hitler? Well, there are none when comparing these three men except for the fact that history has already been written about Hitler and Stalin.

Somtimes I just have to go sideways in my political appreciations. There are, after all, limits to the interest of campaign trail 2008. Today I will not be commenting on Chelsea's campaigning for Ma. Nor will I be analyzing the Oprah effect on Obama's behalf. And I definitely will not be discussing Mitt's screed on relgious toleration. However, the long ago Stalinist purge trials, in their own way, probably had more of an impact on the course of history than any of the above-mentioned events is likely to have on that course.

It is normally creative artists--not party hacks or politicians--who can best discern and describe the Zeitgeist.

Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich is considered by many to have been the greatest composer of the Twentieth Century. He died in 1975, but his sardonic observations as an alert, intelligent, naturally skeptical creative artist trying to survive in Stalin's police state seem to offer some startling reflections of our own time and place: "Amerika," 2007.

Below the break are a few still resonating themes from Shostakovich's posthumously published memoir (as told to Solomon Volkov), Testimony (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1979). There may well be as much Volkov as Shostakovich in this Testimony, but many Russians who knew Shostakovich well, including his son Maxim and also noted cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, considered the overall content of Testimony to be authentic.

A little déjà vu with Sunday brunch, anyone?      

I've been reading a book about the history of the KGB, and found a telling quote about how Stalin's Russia extracted confessions from their own "enemy combatants".

This is from the September 11, 2007 entry of my blog, notesfromthehovel.blogspot.com

As many of you know, Paul Wolfowitz is in deep trouble at the World Bank for stipulating lavish concessions for his girlfriend, Libyan-born Shaha Ali Riza. In an extraordinary and explosive article, Salon's Sydney Blumenthal lays out the Wolfowitzian tactics for diverting the lines of control past the professionals (career personnel)via compliant ideologues.  If you're wondering how this fits perfectly with the AG's recent debacle, read on.

The closest I’ve come to trying to understand genocide,

Genocide (Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide New York, 9 December 1948)

The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the term as: Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Sri Lanka 12 Oct 1950 (Accession)

is to imagine the worst, most disgusting, evil, dehumanizing, anti-evolutionary, shameless, insatiable, vile, and uncomprehendible thing imaginable – and try  multiplying that by infinity.

We've all heard the story that the White House is seeking a new "high-powered Czar" to get the war moving in the right direction:

The idea for creating the new position follows concern over longstanding disputes between civilian and military officials in Iraq. The war czar would have the authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, State Department and other agencies.

"It is an undeniable privilege of every man to prove himself right in the thesis that the world is his enemy; for if he reiterates it frequently enough and makes it the background of his conduct he is bound eventually to be right." -George Kennan.

George Kennan wrote the above with reference to Josef Stalin in his Long Telegram of 1946. We can apply it today to George W. Bush and the Islamic world. We can see how this works by quoting a little more Kennan (and remember that this telegram formed the basis for Dean Acheson's Cold War policies of aggressive containment of the Soviet Union).

Actual words, and more cartoons, on the flip.

Nazi Germany had millions of soldiers and during World War II built 50,000 Panzer tanks.

Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them.
-- George W Bush

It's time for the Democrats to speak the truth : a competent American President who really wanted to capture or kill Osama bin Laden could easily have done so with the massive resources of this nation. If Bin Laden really is a threat the size of Hitler and Stalin, then massive resources should have been devoted to his destruction, and we are forced to conclude that he would already have been destroyed.

Bush as a War President(tm) is the very definition of failure.

This is not Russia and she is not Stalin.

It seems that Miss Harris is miffed and is demanding an apology.  

Don't do it, Howard!  

Senators Jon Kyl and Lindsey Graham placed into the Congressonal record an exchange which showed that the intent of the Graham bill governing detentions was meant to apply retroactively to the current Guantanamo detainees and that courts could not have jurisdiction over them. Except, it turns out that the debate in question never happened. The clear intent of the law was that the courts would still retain jurisdiction over the detainees, a fact routinely stated by co-sponsor Levin.