the evil that we all do edition

the banality of evil is laid out perfectly in this newly discovered set of photos taken at Auschwitz by an SS Officer in 1944.

http://www.ushmm.org/research/collections/highlights/auschwitz/?content=2

the banality of evil pt 2:

the war on terror sure breeds hypocrisy at an alarming rate, if you are an exeutive from a large US corporation, you may directly sponsor terrorists and drug dealers, who in turn will guarantee your profits, which you will in turn hand a small percentage over to the US government. The worst that will happen to you is your share price will fall a fraction.

A federal court on Monday accepted a plea agreement between the Justice Department and Chiquita Brands International Inc. that imposes a $25 million fine on the company for payments it made to Colombian narcoterrorist groups.

The Justice Department said in a sentencing memo last week that it had decided against charging 10 company executives involved in the payoffs.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/17/business/main3270398.shtml

compare this "special" brand of justice with these:

24 years in prison in a case that will in future be looked upon with shame.

Hamid Hayat, a hapless young man with a sixth grade education, was convicted of 2 counts of lying to the FBI and one coutn of providing "material support" to Al Qaeda.

http://blog.law.northwestern.edu/bluhm/2006/05/hamid_and_umer_.html

Defense attorney Nancy Hollander said prosecutors built their case on the word of one Israeli official who testified under a false name, and showed the jury only selective evidence.
"Who is it that's being deceptive?" she asked jurors. "Do you really trust the government?"

http://www.courttv.com/news/2007/0918/charity_ap.html

or the almost funny Sears Plot, where a couple of FBI undercover agents managed to "convince" a straggly bunch of semi-christians to support Al Queda. the plot involved blowing up the sears building despite the fact that the only people with access to explosives were the FBI agents, the only people who talked about manufacturing explosives were the FBI agents and the ones who intiated the plot were in fact, you guessed it, the FBI agents. The "plotters" will I estimate get 20 + years.

Defense lawyers and supporters of the so-called ''Liberty City Seven'' say the men never sought to hurt anyone and amassed only one gun and a few knives and machetes. They say the alleged terror conspiracy was driven by a pair of paid FBI informants -- one claiming to be an al-Qaida emissary.
''These guys never left the United States. They never traveled to the Middle East,'' said Albert Levin, attorney for defendant Patrick Abraham. ''They never had any way of carrying out what was discussed. This was pure words.''

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/560718,CST-NWS-terr17.article

or what about

At issue in El-Masri v. U.S. is the government's use of the so-called state-secrets privilege. The judicial doctrine provides that some legal cases must be dismissed if the central evidence in the court battle would require disclosure of national security secrets. The Bush administration is using the same doctrine to block a string of legal challenges to other secret terror-war tactics, including warrantless electronic surveillance in the U.S.
Masri's lawyers say he is not seeking to disclose secrets; he just wants to have U.S. officials held accountable for their alleged treatment of him, which has already been made public.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/09/19/terror/main3274299.shtml

or the Padilla Case

or....it just goes on and on

and if you are an anti castro cuban terrorist, run free little birdie, go bring down another passenger liner.

or If you the pentagons man in Iraq like Illad Allawi, you can plant car bombs in any middle eastern city you like and the worst that will happen is you are made Prime Minister with Bushes full support.

one of the many tragics costs in the Iraqi quagmire, of course if you listen to our leaders its all going so very, very well.

Police efforts to break the power of the looters, now with a well-organised support structure helped by tribal leaders, have proved lethal. In 2005, the Iraqi customs arrested – with the help of Western troops – several antiquities dealers in the town of Al Fajr, near Nasseriyah. They seized hundreds of artefacts and decided to take them to the museum in Baghdad. It was a fatal mistake.
The convoy was stopped a few miles from Baghdad, eight of the customs agents were murdered, and their bodies burnt and left to rot in the desert. The artefacts disappeared. "It was a clear message from the antiquities dealers to the world," Ms Farchakh says.

http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2970762.ece

life in saudi arabia, admittedly, written by an interested ex-pat

http://muttawa.blogspot.com/

In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting. Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39235

my child hood, writ large ayn rand style:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/business/15atlas.html?ei=5087%0A&em=&en=a452c5a143f0a472&ex=1190260800&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1190246987-CG7w2C0ZFNpizve1BF16uQ