CONTEXT - This Week in Arts and Ideas from The Moscow Times

I really like this one. We are so very much implicated in Bellus Americana that we may have some difficulty woeming our way out of it.
It seems likely the German Government was involved in the snatch of at least one innocent man on their territory.

As I grow older the myth of feedom and dignity of the western way of life seems more and more like an illusion. For some reason the modern west seems to think it can dispense with the pretense, except in the export market.

It will not stop me writing as forcefully as i can about the need to create real freedom and dignity in our world, or there will be no world fit for our children to inhabit.
CONTEXT - This Week in Arts and Ideas from The Moscow Times: "The much-belated, poll-prompted outcry of a few U.S. elected officials against the widespread use of torture by the Bush administration -- following years of silent acquiescence in the face of incontrovertible evidence of deliberate atrocity -- is a welcome development, of course. But it has left an even more sinister aspect of Bushist policy untouched, one that likewise has been hidden in plain sight for years.

On Sept. 17, 2001, President George W. Bush signed an executive order authorizing the use of 'lethal measures' against anyone in the world whom he or his minions designated an 'enemy combatant.' This order remains in force today. No judicial evidence, no hearing, no charges are required for these killings; no law, no border, no oversight restrains them. Bush has also given agents in the field carte blanche to designate 'enemies' on their own initiative and kill them as they see fit.


The existence of this universal death squad -- and the total obliteration of human liberty it represents -- has not provoked so much as a crumb of controversy in the American establishment, although it's no secret."