"Perhaps it was the suspicious similarity of the accounts that first caused investigators to pay attention to the program as a whole, but it was the brutality with which individuals had been rendered that caused many to investigate further. The work of the rendition teams seemed to be unusually brutal and, almost always, characterised by excessive force and torture. Although the work didn't seem unusual given the CIA's reputation, it was certainly characterised by a new zeal.
"Toward the end of April of 2004, the men were prepared for transfer to another prison. They described a procedure similar to that of other rendition victims' accounts. They were stripped, put in diapers and overalls, then handcuffed, put in a face mask, had earplugs inserted into their ears, and were hooded with earphones over their hoods. Like the stories recounted by Binyam Mohammed and Swedish airport officials, the whole operation was conducted quickly and professionally by a team of black-clad and masked Americans."
Torture Taxi: On The Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flgihts.
There were beautiful little motifs, tiny archipelagos or riffs of sound and vision, caught in the margins. He was concerned, active of mind and sometimes body, clearing the way for a different time and place. There weren't going to be any immediate answers. He was outmanoeuvred. The government oligarchy, the wall of power that they represented, was impossible to fight. Those lonely images, the whale heading off towards the horizon, breaching occasionally in a glistening world of grey, these things were of little concern when it came to the crunch. No one could take it all in. No one could take them all on. He tried to keep his own counsel.
There was a brave soldier, a life half lived, a commemoration, a slow disintegration of the flesh, there were periodic rallies and a constant consternation, their own diseased lying. To beat the impossible required purity of heart. There couldn't be, at this point, a total change. The world had not allowed the freedom that he sought. Why take it all so personally? Others accepted the controlling blanket of propaganda. Others were granted that there was nothing they could do about it, even if they privately disagreed, or were even outraged, by the rubbish being pushed upon them.
He looks good in a suit, laid out of course by his butler. He photographs well, looking impressive as he shakes the hand of world leaders. The plane had taxied to a halt on the tarmac but was still idling, burning millions in an era of high fuel costs and government promoted hysteria on global warming. They were the ones who peddled a Malthusian theory of population growth, who granted themselves a grand role in history, ignoring the common people who had voted them there.
How naive were these people. He couldn't make head nor tail of a world that had passed him by. Why did the population accept all the rubbish programmes foisted upon them? Why did no one shout out: enough, enough!? Why did our own dreams of quieter places, a world of old fashioned integrates, seem little more than fairy tales? Why couldn't people show just a shred of integrity?
But all was not lost, not if you turned away from railing against the world, and instead cultivated your own gardens. If instead of wasting time and emotional energy railing against the sins of prime ministers past and present, you concentrated on being happy for our self. There wasn't going to be a different way of being. He stumbled out of the party, pushed through the hedge, knocked over a pot plant on the way. He just couldn't stand it any more, the women gloating about their own health, their own concerns, their own triumphs, curling together while the men stood in awkward groups.
He couldn't stand their appalling self confidence, and yet that was what he needed to embrace if indeed he was going to survive. He had made a fool of himself through his unfashionable views, by refusing to run with the pack, by refusing to march in lockstep with all the prevailing orthodoxies. He had always been out on a limb, from the school days when he'd top the class in a suburb and an era where intellectual activity was regarded with deep suspicion. He had lived long enough to have seen a whole series of moral panics, and therefore to have gained an appropriate suspicion.
No one else had. Their naivety continued to be astounding on a number of levels. They adopted what they thought were progressive poses, anything to get a root, men's primal impulses hadn't changed that much, moved that far. People wanted to belong. Even he wanted to belong, although it wasn't likely. They were concentrating on their own dramas, and didn't realise there was a nastier world. They didn't lock them up in this country, but they could be quietly bullied, ostracised, moved out to pasture, excised from the mainstream. It was up to him to make sure that didn't happen, to make sure he lived to fight another day, to tell the truth to another generation, a moss covered beacon blinking feebly in the dark.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2008/06/china-and-the-m.html
China's love affair with media openness in the wake of last month's tragic earthquake seems to have come to an end — unsurprisingly, right around the time that the attention took on a negative hue:
The propaganda ministry and the State Council, China's Cabinet, have issued directives to state-run news media outlining forbidden topics. Among them: questions about school construction, whether government rescue efforts lagged and whether Beijing knew in advance that the earthquake would happen but failed to warn people. Although the latter issue is scientifically questionable, it has nonetheless transfixed millions of Chinese Internet users.
A striking turnaround, given how China threw open its doors, both to media coverage and disaster aid. Of course, there's a good explanation for that initial lapse in judgment:
...the tragedy that struck Monday, and has taken more than 12,000 lives, also has given China an opportunity for a dramatic image makeover. After months of relentless coverage of Tibetan clashes and human rights abuses, the earthquake shows a new China, one that is both compassionate and competent. ...
The coverage strikes a delicate balance between eliciting sympathy and depicting China as a developed country. For the domestic audience, the Chinese media have given extensive coverage to messages of condolence and offers of assistance from President Bush and other world leaders.
But now, bloggers and bereaved parents alike are raising questions about corruption and shoddy school construction. Both, as NPR has pointed out, have been blamed on local governments — which, as Francis Fukuyama observed in an Op-Ed just weeks before the 7.9 temblor hit, operate appallingly free from Beijing's control:
The central government, by all accounts, would like to crack down on these local government bodies but is unable to do so. It both lacks the capacity to do this and depends on local governments and the private sector to produce jobs and revenue.
Nonetheless, even though Chinese citizens have protested against their local governments, it's the central government that's panicking. And with some reason: In a country whose media have historically been tightly controlled, rumor, hearsay and flat-out tall tales become all the more potent:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/08/us/politics/08dems.html?hp
WASHINGTON — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton brought an end to her campaign for the White House on Saturday with a rousing farewell to thousands of supporters here and an emotional and unequivocal call for her voters to get behind Senator Barack Obama, the man who defeated her for the Democratic nomination.
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Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton at her campaign’s final rally on Saturday urged her supporters to back Senator Barack Obama. More Photos »
For 28 minutes, standing alone on a stage in the historic National Building Museum, Mrs. Clinton spoke not only about the importance of electing Mr. Obama, but also the extent to which her campaign was a milestone for women seeking to become president. She urged women who had followed her campaign — who had turned out at her headquarters, flocked to her rallies and poured into the polls to vote for her — not to take the wrong lesson from her loss.
“You can be so proud that, from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories, unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee, unremarkable to think that a woman can be the president of the United States,” she said. “To those who are disappointed that we couldn’t go all of the way, especially the young people who put so much into this campaign, it would break my heart if, in falling short of my goal, I in any way discouraged any of you from pursuing yours.”
At that point the cheers, mostly from women, swelled so loud that Mrs. Clinton’s remaining words could not be heard.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/a-doctor-in-the-house-and-plane-for-rudd/2008/06/07/1212259177590.html
THE Prime Minister will take a doctor aboard his VIP plane on an eight-day trip to Japan and Indonesia, which takes off today.
The decision reverses a controversial exclusion of a medico when Kevin Rudd embarked on his first major international trip in April.
On that gruelling five-country 17-day odyssey, a prime ministerial staffer fell seriously ill, prompting frantic calls back to Australia about how to handle the emergency.
The woman, believed to have been suffering deep vein thrombosis, was evacuated to a London hospital half-way through the trip.
Pictures taken in Redfern, Sydney, Australia.
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