Ramzi Yousef, convicted after the 1993 WTC bombing, sues for relief from solitary confinement.

He'll never get out of prison, but — after 15 years — should he get out of solitary confinement? But that's not the question asked in a lawsuit. To win the lawsuit, a court has to deprive government of the choice to treat him like that.

Colin Dayan, a humanities professor at Vanderbilt University who has studied solitary confinement in Arizona, said many prison administrations use isolation without regard to psychological damage to inmates.

"You no longer know what's real," she said. "You can't speak to anyone; you can't touch anyone: your senses no longer have any outlet. You have delusions and become psychotic. Your mind deteriorates."

After his arrest, Yousef — who expected the death penalty — told FBI agents that he had intended "to topple one tower into the other, and cause a total of 250,000 civilian deaths."

"All Hostages Dead/Slaughtered in Sahara."

The Drudge headline hangs over from yesterday, even though Barack Obama will be sworn in to his second term in office later this morning. It will be a quiet little affair — a "bare-bones ceremony" to "satisfy the constitutional requirement that the president’s swearing-in take place by noon on the Jan. 20 after an election."

It's January 20th and also a Sunday, so the festivities are delayed until tomorrow.

A White House statement said the only witnesses to [today's] Blue Room ceremony would be family members of the president, including his wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Sasha and Malia.

I fantasize about a President who pares all ceremony down to the bare-bones, eliminates all extravagance, across the board. Take on the humble servant image, be a tightwad for the taxpayers,  maintain a small carbon footprint, and say — implicitly and continually — the work of the President is gravely serious and never-ending. All Hostages Dead/Slaughtered in Sahara.

"What Hostages in Algeria? Manti Te'o Had a Composite Girlfriend!"

Where's your sense of proportion?

Taliban spokesperson sends email with the bcc addresses on the cc line.

400 addressees revealed:

The list, made up of more than 400 recipients, consists mostly of journalists, but also includes an address appearing to belong to a provincial governor, an Afghan legislator, several academics and activists, an[d] l Afghan consultative committee, and a representative of Gulbuddein Hekmatar, an Afghan warlord whose outlawed group Hezb-i-Islami is believed to be behind several attacks against coalition troops.

"Over the weekend, the newest, and by far the most disturbing, revelations surrounding the Benghazi attack were revealed."

An item at FrontPageMag.com:

Several sources have pointed to the possibility that a major CIA gun-running operation aimed at arming anti-Assad Al-Qaeda-affiliated forces was in danger of being exposed. If true, the information casts an even more devastating pall over the Benghazi terrorist attack and the administration’s botched handling of the region.

The decision to stand down as the Benghazi terrorist attack was underway was met with extreme opposition from the inside. The Washington Times's James Robbins, citing a source inside the military, reveals that General Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command, who got the same emails requesting help received by the White House, put a rapid response team together and notified the Pentagon it was ready to go. He was ordered to stay put. “His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow,” writes Robbins. “Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.”

If true, Ham has apparently decided he wants no part of the responsibility for the decision not to help those in harm’s way. He is not alone. As the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol revealed late Friday, a spokesperson, “presumably at the direction of CIA director David Petraeus,” released the following statement: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.”

It's a problem, making "political or philosophical" art when the market is "about hyper-capitalism" and the art is "poker chips for billionaires."

Nate Lowman is "bummed out" that "other people’s gambling habits change the meaning of paintings." Contemplate the pain of artistic success when the high prices paid "dictate how people perceive art."

Lowman’s work takes the shape of smiley faces, magnetized bullet holes, and Arbre Magique air fresheners. The images he gathers often come from the news cycle or the crime blotter (distressed blondes in general, among them Nicole Brown, murdered former wife of O. J. Simpson; “More or Less,” a 2003 show at Apex Art, featured bearded men such as John Walker Lindh, Jim Morrison, and Che Guevara), and he re-purposes “found” language that lies awkwardly between personal and impersonal, like the bumper sticker Jesus would use the turn signal, asshole.

ADDED: The linked Vanity Fair text is written by Edward Helmore, and he seems unaware of the political (and moral) incorrectness of referring to a murdered woman as a "distressed blonde."

Quazi Mo don't...

But he did. Such a handsome lad too. Why would you throw you're life away? Ah, maybe he's innocent, and it was a big set up.

"I don’t want something that’s like small. I just want something big.... Something very big."

"Very very very very big, that will shake the whole country, that will make America, not one step ahead, change of policy, and make one step ahead, for the Muslims ... that will make us one step closer to run the whole world."

"We targeted her because she would speak against the Taliban while sitting with shameless strangers and idealised the biggest enemy of Islam, Barack Obama."

"We did not attack her for raising voice for education. We targeted her for opposing mujahideen and their war... Sharia says that even a child can be killed if he is propagating against Islam."

"Taliban says it shot ‘infidel’ Pakistani teen for advocating girls’ rights."

"The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on ninth-grader Malala Yousafzai, who officials said was shot in the head by at least one gunman who approached a school bus in Mingora...."

“Two bearded armed men stopped our school van and asked for Malala and opened fire from behind the van,” the girl, named Shazia, said from the hospital where she and Yousafzai were first taken.

Ihsanullah Ihsan, chief spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, said in calls to the media that the militant group targeted Yousafzai because she generated “negative propaganda” about Muslims.

“She considers President Obama as her ideal. Malala is the symbol of the infidels and obscenity,” Ihsan said.

The concern about "negative propaganda" is too disgusting to be funny.

Note: Yousafzai is not dead, at least not according to this report.

"Madonna had the outfit ready to go. She was really proud of it and said it was her 'Terror Bride' costume."

"She had paraded around in it and said she was going to wear it in her next music video. At first when people started telling her it was madness she just brushed it off. But when they mentioned that her actions could put her life at risk she decided to ditch it from her video and certainly won't be wearing it on stage.''

(Via Instapundit.)

"Will Obama Free the Blind Sheik?"

A WSJ op-ed by Michael B. Mukasey, who presided over the trial of Omar Abdel Rahman and sentenced him to life in prison.

Abdel Rahman was convicted in 1995 of participating in a seditious conspiracy that included the [Meir] Kahane murder, the 1993 WTC bombing, and a plot to blow up other landmarks in New York and to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak when he visited the United Nations....

In 1997, members of Abdel Rahman's organization... murdered more than 60 tourists at Luxor, Egypt, and inserted notes in the body cavities of several victims demanding the Blind Sheik's release. Also in the mid-1990s, Abdel Rahman contrived from jail to issue the fatwa that Osama bin Laden cited as authorization to carry out the 9/11 attacks. The sheik's confinement was on bin Laden's list of grievances meant to justify that atrocity.

... Abdel Rahman has been a totemic figure to Islamists since 1981, when his pronouncements gave a group of Egyptian army officers the spiritual justification for assassinating President Anwar Sadat. The officers were hanged, but Abdel Rahman successfully defended himself at trial by arguing that he had simply been opining on issues of Islamic law and should not face censure for that in a Muslim country.

Mukasey reviews the evidence that the Obama administration is contemplating releasing him, including the "excruciatingly lawyered" sounding statement of officials. For example, Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who, before Congress, asked "whether there is an intention 'at any time to release the Blind Sheikh,'" said, "Well, let me just say this. I know of no such intention."

Only 23% of likely voters think the killing of Christopher Stevens was a "spontaneous reactions to an anti-Islamic video."

57% say it was "planned in advance." And 85% "believe it is likely that terrorists were involved."

Younger voters are far less convinced than their elders that the protests at U.S. embassies in the Middle East have been planned in advance. Female voters are not as sure of that as male voters are.

I'm guessing that the more you like President Obama, the more you've been influenced by the administration's propaganda about the "Innocence of Muslims" video.

The government last week spent $70,000 in Pakistan to run a television ad featuring President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denouncing the video in hopes of limiting protests there.

They don't have to run that ad in the United States, where the mainstream media carries their message free of charge. Here's what they showed in Pakistan:



What's that red flag with the pentagram behind her? It seems kind of Satanic. Is it this:



What's going on there? And, more importantly, should we fly into a rage and take to the streets?

"I'm pretty sure Obama owes Nakoula an apology."

Indeed.

We're barraged by new distractions, so let's catch things that are slipping down the memory hole. It's not just Nakoula. It's Chris Stevens. Our ambassador was murdered, and he was murdered after he was targeted and he was not given security.

Shame on those who disrespected Nakoula's freedom of speech. Their faults are apparent and need to be remembered. But what happened to Chris Stevens? I don't trust that we've learned the whole story. Why wasn't he protected? Was he an inconvenient man? We saw such an effort to create static around his death. Look — riots over here, here, and here! Offensive video on the internet! Man with a "towel" around his face! And hey check out the most important thing that happened all week: Romney said "47%" to some people back in May!

The very fact that we're thinking about Nakoula — and futzing with Romney rhetoric — makes me feel that Chris Stevens got stuffed down the memory hole.

Who wanted that forgetting and why?

Sorry I kept missing that blood/stripes Drudgtaposition.

"It was too subtle for me even with multiple emails pointing me to it." (Old post updated with screen grab.)

"Amazed nobody at Obama HQ noticed this, especially with all the hand-stuff."

Yes, but... pointing it out...

Too far?

ADDED: I got a few emails this morning pushing me to do a Drudgtaposition post based on the bloody handmark photograph and the Obama flag graphic. But Drudge didn't put up the handprint photograph next to the flag graphic. Not that I saw. He put up that flag graphic with the text "OBAMA SELLS 'OUR STRIPES' FLAG...", linking to the campaign's merchandise page.

ALSO: It seems to be widely believed that the red stripes on the American flag are red to represent blood (the "blood of patriots"). 

UPDATE: I'm sorry. It was too subtle for me even with multiple emails pointing me to it. Drudge did have the handprint next to the flag. Here's the screen grab:

Salman Rushdie "tried to compromise with a group of Islamic leaders in London by negotiating a statement that... actually reads like something that an inquisition would make you sign.'"

It said "among other things, that he believed there was no god but Allah and that he would not issue a paperback version of The Satanic Verses."

"I think it actually reads like something that an inquisition would make you sign," he says. "And that's more or less what it was. And I immediately — the moment I left that room in which I'd had that meeting — I began to feel physically ill because I understood that I'd in some way betrayed myself. I felt obliged to repudiate that statement and try and regain myself, for myself. It made me understand that this idea of trying to ingratiate oneself with the enemy was not only absurd, but improper. And in a way, now, looking back at it, I can see that it was beneficial to me because it clarified certain things in my head which were confused up to then."

It's just by chance that Salman Rushdie's story is in the news again at the same time as the overblown "rage" over the "Innocence of Muslims" video. Rushdie has a new memoir, "Joseph Anton" — released today.  (Joseph Anton is the pseudonym he chose as he went into hiding. It's a bland combination of the names of the writers Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekov — non-bland would be Conrad Chekov — intended to hide his Indian ethnicity.)

"Here is a lesson in creative writing."

That's the heading for a short bit of text by Kurt Vonnegut in "A Man Without a Country," which I just downloaded in Kindle because we were talking about punctuation in the comments to the "phony balance" post and I half-remembered something he said about semi-colons. The short bit under the heading goes like this:

First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you’ve been to college.

And I realize some of you may be having trouble deciding whether I am kidding or not. So from now on I will tell you when I’m kidding. For instance, join the National Guard or the Marines and teach democracy. I’m kidding.

We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I’m kidding.

If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I’m not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

Is he kidding?

Here a list of worst college majors for making a living.  All the art ones are in there. You don't have to work.

Here's where we were talking the other day about the teacherspeak word "creative."

And here's last night's reminder that Theodore Sturgeon said "90% of everything is crud," which (I say) teaches respect for bad art — even/especially when it stirs al Qaeda attacks (in reality or in the minds of flag wavers).

And here's something about what dancing is doing to us right now.

"So, on a highly symbolic date, mobs storm American diplomatic facilities and drag the corpse of a U.S. ambassador through the streets."

"Then the president flies to Vegas for a fundraiser. No, no, a novelist would say; that's too pat, too neat in its symbolic contrast.... Too crude, too telling, too devastating."

The Invisible Man.

I went looking for the classic Claude Rains depiction of The Invisible Man. (Here's a nice variation, staged by a photographer.) Here's the great old movie.  The Invisible Man wraps himself up like that to get as close as he can to having a human face.



I went looking, because I saw the news today. Oh, boy... an unlucky filmmaker the feds dragged in. And though the news was rather sad, well, I just had to laugh. I saw the photograph.



This was a man who, unlike The Invisible Man, had a face. But we haven't seen his face before, and he's not inclined to let us see it now... now that he's at the center of an international rage-storm, and our government seems to want the maniacs to focus their attention on him.

In the comments at the earlier post, EDH said: "The picture reminds me of the 'Invisible Man.'" And I said I'd thought of that myself. And I wonder whether the filmmaker intended the allusion. He's a man of movies. The movie he's associated with right now is so badly made, but we don't know the story of the man who got caught up in that crude, low-budget production. We don't know that he doesn't know film, that he's incapable of making an allusion to the Hollywood classic.

We'll begin with a reign of terror, a few murders here and there, murders of great men, murders of little men, just to show we make no distinction.