"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both."
"Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his countrymen work for nothing, not paying them for their labor."
-- Jeremiah 22:13
"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."
-- Frederick Douglass
A very popular post from on YouTube is making the rounds. This is a Londoner lashing out at the terrible and senseless violence by his fellow citizens shortly after the riots began. The money quote:
"What's pissing me off more, right, is the way police have to handle this. They have to sit back and watch this so nobody gets hurt. Fuck that. Get in there. I want the police in this nation to be like the Italians and the Americans. They see trouble, their first fall of action isn't "oh, God, don't let me hurt somebody," it should be "let me batter the fuck out of that bloke so he doesn't do it again."
The wounds this destructive anarchy is deepening will not soon be healed.
Joe Conason wrote a splendid piece this weekend regarding Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) spirited and righteous condemnation of the liars and criminals (especially Thiessen and Yoo) from the W administration and their crude attempts to capitalize on the death of Osama Bin Laden.
I have published more than a few pieces (HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE) since lauching this blog about these sick and depraved violations of American principles. Indeed, this issue was the primary catalyst for me starting The Hand in the first place.
I have also lamented Sen. McCain's silence over the last few years. But now he has, at least to a degree, redeemed himself. Seriously, he shut the FOX lie machine down. That's no small thing in this day and age.
"For the longest time, a certain admirable, independent senator from Arizona disappeared from public life, replaced by an irresponsible, opportunistic and occasionally demagogic figure, who seemed to have been warped by his presidential ambitions and his disappointment in losing. But John McCain has now returned, just in time to refute the sinister attempt by his fellow Republicans to justify torture as the instrument of Osama bin Laden's demise.
During the last administration, even as a supporter of the Iraq invasion and the "war on terror," McCain broke ranks with his party to protest the worst excesses of the George W. Bush presidency. In one of the most memorable moments of the otherwise desultory Republican primary debates in 2008, he cited the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions and American military tradition to upbraid Mitt Romney for waffling on the issue of waterboarding. "This is what America is all about," he said indignantly. "This is a defining issue."
With every right-wing enabler from John Yoo to Marc Thiessen to Liz Cheney suddenly stepping forward to suggest that that the death of bin Laden absolves Bush-era criminality, it is refreshing to hear McCain's clear, strong voice of opposition. The torture advocates have claimed that the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a high-ranking leader in al-Qaida and an alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attack, caused him to reveal the identity of a courier whose trail led, almost seven years later, to the hideout in Abbotabad, Pakistan.
