Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil !
Quand les pavés volent, comme de grands oiseaux gris,
en plein dans la gueule des flics au regard surpris.
Quand ça Gay-Lussac, lorsque partout l'on entend
le bruit des matraques sur les cranes intelligents.
Dans la douceur de la nuit, le ciel m'offre son abri,
et je pense à Jésus Christ, celui qu'a dit :
Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil !
Le monde est beau, tout le monde il est gentil (4x)
Quand dans le ciel calme, l'avion par-dessus les toits,
verse son napalm sur le peuple indochinois.
Quand c'est la fringale, lorsqu'en place d'aliment,
les feux du Bengale cuisent les petits enfants.
Dans la tiédeur de la nuit, la prière est mon appui,
car je pense à Jésus Christ, celui qu'a dit :
Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil !
Le monde est beau, tout le monde il est gentil (4x)
Quand ça jordanise, quand le pauvre fedayin
copie par bêtise la prose à monsieur Jourdain.
Quand le mercenaire ne songe qu'a vivre en paix
et se désaltère avec un demi Biafrais.
Dans la fraicheur de la nuit, je me sens tout attendri
en pensant à Jésus Christ, celui qu'a dit :
Tout le monde il est beau, tout le monde il est gentil !
Le monde est beau, tout le monde il est gentil (7x)
El-Masri v. U.S., 06-1613
Supreme Court Refuses Torture Case
Associated Press
October 09, 2007 5:57 PM EDT
WASHINGTON - A German man who says he was abducted and tortured by the CIA as part of the anti-terrorism rendition program lost his final chance Tuesday to persuade U.S. courts to hear his claim.
The Supreme Court rejected without comment an appeal from Khaled el-Masri, effectively endorsing Bush administration arguments that state secrets would be revealed if courts allowed the case to proceed.
El-Masri, 44, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was mistakenly identified as an associate of the Sept. 11 hijackers and was detained while attempting to enter Macedonia on New Year's Eve 2003.
He claims that CIA agents stripped, beat, shackled, diapered, drugged and chained him to the floor of a plane for a flight to Afghanistan. He says he was held for four months in a CIA-run prison known as the "salt pit" in the Afghan capital of Kabul.
After the CIA determined it had the wrong man, el-Masri says, he was dumped on a hilltop in Albania and told to walk down a path without looking back.
The lawsuit against former CIA director George Tenet, unidentified CIA agents and others sought damages of at least $75,000.
"We are very disappointed," Manfred Gnijdic, el-Masri's attorney in Germany, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his office in Ulm.
"It will shatter all trust in the American justice system," Gnijdic said, charging that the United States expects every other nation to act responsibly, but refuses to take responsibility for its own actions.
"That is a disaster," Gnijdic said.
El-Masri's claims, which prompted strong international criticism of the rendition program, were backed by European investigations and U.S. news reports. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that U.S. officials acknowledged that el-Masri's detention was a mistake.
The U.S. government has neither confirmed nor denied el-Masri's account and, in urging the court not to hear the case, said that the facts central to el-Masri's claims "concern the highly classified methods and means of the program."
El-Masri's case centers on the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program, in which terrorism suspects are captured and taken to foreign countries for interrogation. Human rights activists have objected to the program.
President Bush has repeatedly defended the policies in the war on terror, saying as recently as last week that the U.S. does not engage in torture.
El-Masri's lawsuit had been seen as a test of the administration's legal strategy to invoke the doctrine of state secrets and stop national security suits before any evidence is presented in private to a judge. Another lawsuit over the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, also dismissed by a federal court on state secrets grounds, still is pending before the justices.
Conservative legal scholar Douglas Kmiec said the Bush White House uses the doctrine too broadly. "The notion that state secrets can't be preserved by a judge who has taken an oath to protect the Constitution, that a judge cannot examine the strength of the claim is too troubling to be accepted," said Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University.
The court has not examined the state secrets privilege in more than 50 years.
A coalition of groups favoring greater openness in government says the Bush administration has used the state secrets privilege much more often than its predecessors.
At the height of Cold War tensions between the United States and the former Soviet Union, U.S. presidents used the state secrets privilege six times from 1953 to 1976, according to OpenTheGovernment.org. Since 2001, it has been used 39 times, enabling the government to unilaterally withhold documents from the court system, the group said.
The state secrets privilege arose from a 1953 Supreme Court ruling that allowed the executive branch to keep secret, even from the court, details about a military plane's fatal crash.
Three widows sued to get the accident report after their husbands died aboard a B-29 bomber, but the Air Force refused to release it claiming that the plane was on a secret mission to test new equipment. The high court accepted the argument, but when the report was released decades later there was nothing in it about a secret mission or equipment.
The case is El-Masri v. U.S., 06-1613.
Source: Associated Press
October 09, 2007 5:57 PM EDT
The Associated Press is the bastion of the people’s right to know around the world. With a long history of involvement in FOI issues and actions, AP is an industry leader in “open government issues.”
Reference: El-Masri v. U.S., 06-1613
Associated Press
October 09, 2007 5:57 PM EDT
WASHINGTON - A German man who says he was abducted and tortured by the CIA as part of the anti-terrorism rendition program lost his final chance Tuesday to persuade U.S. courts to hear his claim.
The Supreme Court rejected without comment an appeal from Khaled el-Masri, effectively endorsing Bush administration arguments that state secrets would be revealed if courts allowed the case to proceed.
El-Masri, 44, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, says he was mistakenly identified as an associate of the Sept. 11 hijackers and was detained while attempting to enter Macedonia on New Year's Eve 2003.
He claims that CIA agents stripped, beat, shackled, diapered, drugged and chained him to the floor of a plane for a flight to Afghanistan. He says he was held for four months in a CIA-run prison known as the "salt pit" in the Afghan capital of Kabul.
After the CIA determined it had the wrong man, el-Masri says, he was dumped on a hilltop in Albania and told to walk down a path without looking back.
The lawsuit against former CIA director George Tenet, unidentified CIA agents and others sought damages of at least $75,000.
"We are very disappointed," Manfred Gnijdic, el-Masri's attorney in Germany, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from his office in Ulm.
"It will shatter all trust in the American justice system," Gnijdic said, charging that the United States expects every other nation to act responsibly, but refuses to take responsibility for its own actions.
"That is a disaster," Gnijdic said.
El-Masri's claims, which prompted strong international criticism of the rendition program, were backed by European investigations and U.S. news reports. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that U.S. officials acknowledged that el-Masri's detention was a mistake.
The U.S. government has neither confirmed nor denied el-Masri's account and, in urging the court not to hear the case, said that the facts central to el-Masri's claims "concern the highly classified methods and means of the program."
El-Masri's case centers on the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program, in which terrorism suspects are captured and taken to foreign countries for interrogation. Human rights activists have objected to the program.
President Bush has repeatedly defended the policies in the war on terror, saying as recently as last week that the U.S. does not engage in torture.
El-Masri's lawsuit had been seen as a test of the administration's legal strategy to invoke the doctrine of state secrets and stop national security suits before any evidence is presented in private to a judge. Another lawsuit over the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, also dismissed by a federal court on state secrets grounds, still is pending before the justices.
Conservative legal scholar Douglas Kmiec said the Bush White House uses the doctrine too broadly. "The notion that state secrets can't be preserved by a judge who has taken an oath to protect the Constitution, that a judge cannot examine the strength of the claim is too troubling to be accepted," said Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University.
The court has not examined the state secrets privilege in more than 50 years.
A coalition of groups favoring greater openness in government says the Bush administration has used the state secrets privilege much more often than its predecessors.
At the height of Cold War tensions between the United States and the former Soviet Union, U.S. presidents used the state secrets privilege six times from 1953 to 1976, according to OpenTheGovernment.org. Since 2001, it has been used 39 times, enabling the government to unilaterally withhold documents from the court system, the group said.
The state secrets privilege arose from a 1953 Supreme Court ruling that allowed the executive branch to keep secret, even from the court, details about a military plane's fatal crash.
Three widows sued to get the accident report after their husbands died aboard a B-29 bomber, but the Air Force refused to release it claiming that the plane was on a secret mission to test new equipment. The high court accepted the argument, but when the report was released decades later there was nothing in it about a secret mission or equipment.
The case is El-Masri v. U.S., 06-1613.
Source: Associated Press
October 09, 2007 5:57 PM EDT
The Associated Press is the bastion of the people’s right to know around the world. With a long history of involvement in FOI issues and actions, AP is an industry leader in “open government issues.”
Reference: El-Masri v. U.S., 06-1613
Jingoism
Jingoism (Appeal to Patriotism)
Description:
The argument attempts to persuade by calling on ones community spirit, specifically on ones love of country. Alternatively, the argument may attempt to refute a position by calling it treasonous or unpatriotic.
Examples:
"The war in Iraq is clearly justified. Support our troops!"
"Questioning the president's tax cut is tantamount to treason."
Discussion:
The English lexicographer Samuel Johnson once remarked, "Patriotism is the last resort of scoundrels." Indeed, appeals to patriotic pride were used during the 20th century to legitimize some of the most unspeakable crimes in human history. Flag waving and the use of other symbols of national pride in place of reasoning is an old tradition in America as well, and we should not imagine that we are immune to the evil that the appeal to such strong emotions can cause.
Patriotic pride is a powerful and ennobling emotion. Like any emotion rooted fundamentally in love, it takes us outside of ourselves. When moved by such emotions we transcend our narrow personal interests and become part of something large and meaningful. We realize that there are some things worth dying for. What things? Well, perhaps different patriots are moved by different ideals, but modern democracies have in common this ideal (from John Locke), that the legitimate basis of government resides in the consent of the governed. That idea, replacing the old notion of the divine right of kings, is one that American patriots died for in 1776. French patriots died for it a few years later, and around the world that idea has toppled dictators and broken the chains of injustice. No ideal has more profoundly shaped the course of history and made the world a better place to live. When an idea is that important, there is no illogic in asking for some sacrifice - even the ultimate sacrifice - on its behalf. Ideas matter, and the ideas that define our civic identity matter more than most.
But, of course, this creates an opportunity for bad reasoning. An argument commits the fallacy of Jingoism when it makes reference to the noble ideals that define our civic identity, but does so only symbolically, making no real connection between the ideals and the actual actions or opinions defended by appeal to them. For example, the so-called "Patriot Act" is named specifically to evoke feelings of patriotism, which for most Americans is associated with such ideals as "freedom" and "equal protection under the law," yet the content of the act actually increases the power of law enforcement agents to spy on citizens without their knowledge or consent and to engage in discriminatory practices in the treatment of suspects. Some such strengthening of the powers of law enforcement agents may be justified - a debate that must be conducted elsewhere - but should more properly be called the Investigative Powers Act in any case. The disconnect between the name of the law and its actual content is darkly ironic, but it perfectly illustrates the lack of relevant connection that distinguishes genuine patriotic appeals (calling for sacrifice on behalf of noble ideals) from mere jingoism.
Classification: A Fallacy of Irrelevance (a deductive fallacy of soundness with a falsehood in the major premiss) in the Emotional Appeals family.
Source: The term "jingoism" dates from 1878. It was first used to describe the excessive (and misguided) patriotism of British politicians who wanted Britain to enter the Russo-Turkish war (on the side of the Turks). The word comes from a popular song of the time, written by G. H. MacDermott, which included the following chorus:
We don't want to fight but by jingo if we do...
We've got the ships, we've got the men, and got the money too!
This was not, of course, the first time, or the last time, that appeals to patriotic fervor have been used to promote an ill-advised entry into an unnecessary war.
Reference: This entry is an archived copy of an article by Bruce Thompson as retrieved from http://www.cuyamaca.edu on Jul 8, 2007 19:56:33 GMT. The page may have changed since that time. Click here for the current page.
Description:
The argument attempts to persuade by calling on ones community spirit, specifically on ones love of country. Alternatively, the argument may attempt to refute a position by calling it treasonous or unpatriotic.
Examples:
"The war in Iraq is clearly justified. Support our troops!"
"Questioning the president's tax cut is tantamount to treason."
Discussion:
The English lexicographer Samuel Johnson once remarked, "Patriotism is the last resort of scoundrels." Indeed, appeals to patriotic pride were used during the 20th century to legitimize some of the most unspeakable crimes in human history. Flag waving and the use of other symbols of national pride in place of reasoning is an old tradition in America as well, and we should not imagine that we are immune to the evil that the appeal to such strong emotions can cause.
Patriotic pride is a powerful and ennobling emotion. Like any emotion rooted fundamentally in love, it takes us outside of ourselves. When moved by such emotions we transcend our narrow personal interests and become part of something large and meaningful. We realize that there are some things worth dying for. What things? Well, perhaps different patriots are moved by different ideals, but modern democracies have in common this ideal (from John Locke), that the legitimate basis of government resides in the consent of the governed. That idea, replacing the old notion of the divine right of kings, is one that American patriots died for in 1776. French patriots died for it a few years later, and around the world that idea has toppled dictators and broken the chains of injustice. No ideal has more profoundly shaped the course of history and made the world a better place to live. When an idea is that important, there is no illogic in asking for some sacrifice - even the ultimate sacrifice - on its behalf. Ideas matter, and the ideas that define our civic identity matter more than most.
But, of course, this creates an opportunity for bad reasoning. An argument commits the fallacy of Jingoism when it makes reference to the noble ideals that define our civic identity, but does so only symbolically, making no real connection between the ideals and the actual actions or opinions defended by appeal to them. For example, the so-called "Patriot Act" is named specifically to evoke feelings of patriotism, which for most Americans is associated with such ideals as "freedom" and "equal protection under the law," yet the content of the act actually increases the power of law enforcement agents to spy on citizens without their knowledge or consent and to engage in discriminatory practices in the treatment of suspects. Some such strengthening of the powers of law enforcement agents may be justified - a debate that must be conducted elsewhere - but should more properly be called the Investigative Powers Act in any case. The disconnect between the name of the law and its actual content is darkly ironic, but it perfectly illustrates the lack of relevant connection that distinguishes genuine patriotic appeals (calling for sacrifice on behalf of noble ideals) from mere jingoism.
Classification: A Fallacy of Irrelevance (a deductive fallacy of soundness with a falsehood in the major premiss) in the Emotional Appeals family.
Source: The term "jingoism" dates from 1878. It was first used to describe the excessive (and misguided) patriotism of British politicians who wanted Britain to enter the Russo-Turkish war (on the side of the Turks). The word comes from a popular song of the time, written by G. H. MacDermott, which included the following chorus:
We don't want to fight but by jingo if we do...
We've got the ships, we've got the men, and got the money too!
This was not, of course, the first time, or the last time, that appeals to patriotic fervor have been used to promote an ill-advised entry into an unnecessary war.
Reference: This entry is an archived copy of an article by Bruce Thompson as retrieved from http://www.cuyamaca.edu on Jul 8, 2007 19:56:33 GMT. The page may have changed since that time. Click here for the current page.
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