In the year of our Lord 2000
I lived with a family of Greek farmers
on the island of Crete.
There are no gentler people
on the face of the earth.

One night my hostess explained an
antique shotgun that hung above the fireplace.
On one side there was a picture of her
great-grandfather who killed a Turk with that gun.
On the other side there was a
picture of the Turk.

This photo appeared without caption or title in a Daily Telegraph report from the Zoom Photo Festival in Chicoutimi, Quebec.

Striking, isn’t it?

Bag of laundry with eyeballs? Penguin in a hijab? Muslim woman reduced to nothing by a hack photographer?

(This thing is attributed to Andrew McConnell.)

So what if the Democrats burn you at the stake?

Republicans would have also cut off your noses and poked out your eyes!

VOTE FOR THE LIBERAL WING OF THE SPANISH INQUISITION!

“As a measure of the pettiness of crowds, he imagined a time when even the craziest sluts reformed, condemned pleasure, and rejected everything except money.”

-Walter Benjamin, Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire

So far, Occupy Whatever has accomplished exactly nothing.

10,000 liberal bloggers blog blog blog about “consciousness raising” or similar New Age crapola, and meanwhile we’re sliding into war with Iran, real unemployment sits at 15%, and millions of homes are in foreclosure.

But there’s just about one last chance to make a difference:

OCCUPY THE IOWA CAUCUSES!

DUMP OBAMA!

NOMINATE ELIZABETH WARREN!

Or you can piss and moan for the next four years, and the rest of your life.

Thanks to the miracle of Facebook, I was able to register again on the Huffington Post, where I was previously banned for nasty radicalism, and better still, I immediately acquired no less than 101 “fans,” in the form of my 101 Facebook friends who post there, but it wasn’t as much fun as I expected, because all my comments immediately disappeared into the moderation queue and never re-appeared.

So is there any possible utterance so politically correct that I could actually post it on the Huffington Post?

Yes! Yes there is!

“Hurrah!”

Hurrah for Occupy Whatever!

Hurrah for Liberal Whatever!

Hurrah for Arianna Huffington and her $315 million pay-off!

Bradley Manning was arrested 560 days ago, on May 26, 2010.

The Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial is applied to military jurisprudence through two separate and distinct provisions– Rule for Court-Martial (R.C.M.) 707 and Article 10 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) (10 U.S.C. § 810). While both provisions seek to protect the same constitutional right, and while there is considerable overlap between the two, each provision has separate rules regarding when the protections attach and when they are breached.

Whether stemming from R.C.M. 707 or from Article 10 UCMJ, a motion to dismiss for lack of a speedy trial must be raised before the court-martial is adjourned, and it is waived by a guilty plea, as provided in R.C.M. 907(b)(2)(A) and 905(e). Once the issue is raised, the burden of persuasion rests with the government. R.C.M. 905(c)(2)(B). Before hearing on the motion, the parties may stipulate as to undisputed facts and dates of relevant pretrial events. The stipulation will provide the court a chronology detailing the processing of the case. R.C.M. 707(c)(2).

R.C.M. 707

R.C.M. 707 provides that charges against an accused must be dismissed if they are not brought to trial within 120 days of the earlier of preferral, pretrial confinement, or recall to active duty under R.C.M. 204. Arraignment equals trial under R.C.M. 904. The date the charge is preferred, pretrial restraint is imposed, or on which the accused is called to active duty does not count toward the 120 days. The date the accused is brought to trial does count. If the accused is released from pretrial confinement for a “significant period,” the time period runs from the earlier of preferral or re-imposition of restraint. United States v. Reynolds, 36 M.J. 1128 (A.C.M.R. 1993). A lesser form of restriction may be considered to be a release from confinement.

If charges are dismissed or a mistrial is granted, the speedy trial clock is reset to begin on; date of dismissal in cases where the accused remains in pretrial restraint; date of mistrial, or; earlier of re-preferral or imposition of restraint for all other cases. R.C.M. 707(b)(3)(A), United States v. Bolado, 34 M.J. 732 (N.M.C.M.R. 1991); aff’d, 36 M.J. 2 (C.M.A. 1992). If there is no re-preferral and the accused remains in pretrial confinement, then the time period starts the date the charges are dismissed or a mistrial is declared. If a rehearing is ordered or authorized by an appellate court, then there is a new 120-day period. See United States v. Becker, 53 M.J. 229 (C.A.A.F. 2000) (applying R.C.M. 707 timing requirements to a sentence rehearing but finding that remedy of dismissal of charges too severe).

A commander can dismiss charges even if there is an intent to re-institute charges at a later date. Dismissal of charges cannot, however, be a subterfuge to avoid the 120 day speedy trial clock. United States v. Robinson, 47 M.J. 506 (N.M.C.C.A. 1997). Factors courts will consider to decide if a dismissal is a subterfuge are: Convening Authority’s intent, notice and documentation of action, restoration of rights and privileges of accused, prejudice to accused, and whether there were any amended or additional charges. See also United States v. Anderson, 50 M.J. 447 (C.A.A.F. 1999), wherein CAAF finds no subterfuge under the facts of the case and declares, contrary to the Government’s concession, that the speedy trial clock was restarted on the date of dismissal. Withdrawal by a commander under R.C.M. 604, however, does not toll running of speedy trial clock. United States v. Weatherspoon, 39 M.J. 762 (A.C.M.R. 1994); See United States v. Tippit, 65 M.J 69 (C.A.A.F. 2007) (based upon the SJA’s advice, the Special Court-Martial Convening Authority (SPCMCA) signed a withdrawal of charges – C.A.A.F. honored the SPCMCA intent to dismiss the charges despite the misnomer and found no violation of R.C.M. 707).

Some delays are excludable from the 120-day limit under R.C.M. 707. All periods of time during which appellate courts have issued stays in the proceedings, or the accused is hospitalized due to incompetence, or is otherwise in the custody of the Attorney General are excluded from the 120-day limit. If after commitment under R.C.M. 909(f), the accused is returned from the custody of the Attorney General to the custody of the general court-martial convening authority, a new 120-day time period begins upon such return.

Any pretrial delays granted by the convening authority before referral or by the military judge after referral are excluded. United States v. Lazauskas, 62 M.J. 39 (C.A.A.F. 2005). The convening authority may delegate the power to grant continuances to an Article 32 investigating officer. The Manual for Courts-Martial (M.C.M.) discussion of R.C.M. 707(c)(1) lists examples of when a pretrial delay might be granted. These include the need for: time to enable counsel to prepare for trial in complex cases; time to allow examination into the mental capacity of the accused; time to process a member of the reserve component to active duty for disciplinary action; time to complete other proceedings related to the case; time requested by the defense; time to secure the availability of the accused, substantial witnesses, or other evidence; time to obtain appropriate security clearances for access to classified information or time to declassify evidence; or additional time for other good cause.

The decision to grant or deny a delay is subject to an abuse of discretion and reasonableness standard. United States v. Sharp, 38 M.J. 33, 37 (C.M.A. 1993). Essentially what this means is that the determination that a delay is necessary is subject to an abuse of discretion standard of review, while the length of the delay and the diligence of the government during the delay is subject to a reasonableness standard. The subject of a reasonable delay often arises when the defense requests a sanity board be conducted. While a delay for this reason is specifically excluded from the time limit by R.C.M. 707(c)(1)(A), the government has an obligation to proceed with diligence. Courts have indicated an unwillingness to hold the government to a strict standard when processing a sanity board due to the complexity and importance of such examinations. See e.g., United States v. Badger, 7 M.J. 838 (A.C.M.R. 1979). There are, however, cases where courts have found that the government’s processing was unreasonably slow or delays were caused by government negligence and have only excluded the amount of time that would have been reasonable. See United States v. Carpenter, 37 M.J. 291 (C.M.A. 1993); see also United States v. McDowell, 19 M.J. 937 (A.C.M.R. 1985)(motion to dismiss brought under Article 10 UCMJ). This standard, of course, applies equally to delays for other reasons. See United States v. Longhofer, 29 M.J. 22 (C.M.A. 1989)(discussed time necessary for processing security clearance).

The sole remedy for a speedy trial violation is dismissal of the affected charges, with or without prejudice.

http://www.bradleymanning.org/

‎

“…the current system has lost its self-evidence, its automatic legitimacy, and now the field is open.”

The field is open, says Zizek, with the almost unnoticeable assumption that some such field exists. The current system goes up in smoke, and can’t we just slip some sort of new system into the same “field,” like a hand in a glove?

Ronald Pires ‎replied…

“Zizek addresses your exact complaint in a much longer talk (1 1/2 hours) here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW1zUh94uMY&feature=related Zizek complains that many groups seeking the reins of power with ideas of change don’t actually have that change laid out in any sort of implementable form. A long talk, but a lot of BINGO! moments if you have the time.”

But I wasn’t exactly making a complaint, and in this case the disorganization of the Left is entirely irrelevant.

I’m not talking about politics. I’m talking about a mud-slide.

From just about any beach in Malibu you can look up the mountain and observe maybe four or five houses precariously holding down little parcels of semi-vertical real estate, and periodically down they come, and their back yards come with them.

At this point it doesn’t really matter if “motivated buyers” appear with detailed plans for every aspect of a new estate, and it doesn’t really matter how much everybody really really wants to build a shiny new house at the same address. There’s nothing to build on.

“But can’t we rebuild the mountain?”

“Of course you can, and all you need is this little plastic bucket that some child left behind on a beach in Malibu.”

Not much progress, and every day they roll the dice against a longer and longer slate of catastrophic possibilities, each one of them very unlikely in itself, but all and any of them could go wrong today, and the wheel has been spinning for 240 days already, and still nothing is really under control at Fukushima Dai-ichi.

From Press TV…

At least 127 people have been killed in separate US assassination drone strikes in Somalia and Pakistan’s northwestern tribal region bordering Afghanistan over the past two days.

And meanwhile US media and the American public could not possibly care less about how many Muslim civilians Obama assassinates in faraway places, and more and more Americans approve of the stinking con-man, coward, and mass-murderer Obama every day.

Why?

From Glenn Greenwald…

The principal reason so little attention is paid to the constant victims of American violence in the Muslim world is because the U.S. Government refuses to disclose anything about these attacks and media outlets virtually never report on those victims.

It’s easy to cheer for a leader who regularly extinguishes the lives of innocent men, women, teeangers and young children when you can remain blissfully free of hearing about the victims. It’s even easier when the victims all have Muslim-ish names and live in the parts of the Muslim world we’ve been taught to view as a cauldron of sub-human demons.