A Gulag By Any Other Name...

How easy it is to get attention these days. Everywhere you look there is a camera streaming images to somewhere on the cable spectrum. And people watching...for hours on end...watching. (Marx could not have been less prescient about what makes for good opiate.) And all that information. Good clean information. Well-considered and minty fresh. Oh, I know, you can't trust it ALL. I mean there are always a few kooks out there, a few exceptions to the rule of intellectual honesty and fair play. But certainly they get discredited quickly once the media has a chance to debunk. I mean who would risk that priceless jewel of credibility? Well, Amnesty International for one. And the mainstream media for two.

The United States has been charged with running a gulag, with ghost detentions and torture. Charges that one would expect would have to be well-documented to be credible. Or not. Ghost detentions and disappearances refer to summary and secretive executions usually carried out in dictatorships...catch the implication? Amnesty levels this charge without a single victim's name. Torture? Is this a well-defined term in the report that warrants the strong language? No, but there are some examples - like holding one inmate "incommunicado". Loneliness is torture. Thanks Amnesty International for your courageous war on boredom. The charges are laughable, the fact that the media accepted it uncritically is scandalous.

It's a shame. There was a time when a respectable thinker could quote an Amnesty International report to bolster an argument. Unfortunately, now such a quote would only reveal the mistaken use of "respectable".