Things that caught my eye today...

[elfs]

In the wake of Theo van Gogh's murdeer, Piet-Hein Donner, the minister of Justice in Holland, is looking to reinstate a nation-wide "ban on religious insults." This is apparently an attempt to prevent more murders by religious fanatics by, basically, not encouraging them in the first place.

Afshin Elian, an Iranian refugee, has condemned the move. "What Mr. Donner has said is that the fundamentalists have a point when they kill people. Donner should have said: keep your hands off our freedom to express ourselves. Terrorists, and not writers, should be afraid of the minister of justice." Right on.

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Bwahahaha. Long after every possible book on the subject has been written, members of the Golden Dawn, just like members of the Masons, continue to swear absurd blood oaths about not revealing already public secrets to the outside world. The Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn rightly calls this humbug and promises to improve magick™ the way programmers improved code: by letting the public debug it.

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Purge. It's an ugly word, in a political context. It means to get rid of your enemies. Does this mean that Bush has an enemies list, like Nixon?

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Apparently, the citizens of North Korea are not as passive as we've been told to believe. There have been coup attempts, industrial and military uprisings, and assassination attempts. Let's hope that, when the moment comes, that it doesn't come with nuclear weapons.

Comments

Blood oaths

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Speaking as an active Mason, I don't know that Masons really think of those as "blood oaths" -- it's more on the level of "cross my heart and hope to die". The only real penalty a Lodge can impose is suspension or expulsion.

And, indeed, most of the "secrets" have already been published in one place or another. :-)

[fallenpegasus]

How is W's "purge" of the intelligence apparatus "ugly", as compared to Clinton's nearly identical one?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Was Clinton's "identical?" I would be surprised to find out that it happened at the start of his second term; an initial replacement of appointments at the beginning of a president's career is pretty commonplace. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that many of those being "purged" came in during the Clinton years; what I would find surprising is if the Bush "cleaning team" dismissed a lot of the smaller underling types.

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

Here's the respected blog Talking Points Memo on why this purge is different from others:
We will continue to cover and discuss the particulars. But the larger point is simple and clear. On every significant point of conflict between the Bush administration and the country's cadre of intelligence professionals, the Bush political appointees turned out to be wrong. Often very wrong, and with disastrous consequences. Sometimes the intel folks were wrong too; but when that was so, the appointees were always more wrong.

This is not argumentative or hyperbole or even up for much serious dispute.

And the upshot of all that we've seen, the result of all those struggles over the last three years is that the 'appointees' are purging the 'professionals'. Another way to put it is that the folks who were always wrong and often catastrophically wrong are rooting out the folks who were often right and sometimes somewhat wrong. The answer to politicized intelligence, it turns out, is a more thorough politicization of intelligence and the elimination of those who resisted political pressure.

If you think this is just a Washington squabble or political debating point you'd be mistaken. Because your lives, and those of your families and friends, may very well be on the line.

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

My father was on Nixon's enemies list. Can I be on Bush's? :-)