Lessons from history?

From The Guardian's special investigation into the Guantanamo prison camp.

"Louise Christian, a British lawyer representing three of the Britons held in Guantanamo, said the US today looked more like Britain in the 1970s than in the 1940s. 'It's the same thing that happened in this country when we had mainland bomb attacks from the IRA, that the tremendous panic and fear just replaced everything else. There was no understanding in this country of how we were viewed outside,' she says. 'We locked people up arbitrarily. We ignored the fact that people were being coerced into making confessions. But I think also the daily experience of internment, seeing your best friends and neighbours locked up without cause, led to great bitterness, and the continuing of the conflict in Northern Ireland, because of feelings of injustice. Obviously there were people who did do terrible things. But if the government response is to criminalise a whole category of people, all we do is increase support for people who are guilty.'"

This I liked

I have no time for Bush, I regard him as a mediocre president at best but I admired his ballsy move to go to Baghdad for Thanksgiving. Took a lot of guts and the secrecy involved was amazing. Hilary jumped on the bandwagon afterwards but that'll not be noticed as much as what Dubya did.

Anyway I was amused by this extract from the BBC's US correspondent.

Much has been written about the astonishing secrecy of the mission - the unmarked car, the baseball cap pulled over the president's face, the fact that his security detail was whittled down to a mere 12 (!), the lights out as Air Force One prepared to land in a Baghdad bristling with shoulder-launch missiles.

The one I liked was the British Airways pilot who almost gave the game away somewhere over the Mediterranean when he looked out of the window and saw the president's distinctive plane with its white body and blue bulge whizzing past.

"I say, are you Air Force One?", he radioed with the crackling collegiality of the skies.

Crackly pause. Then "No sir, we are Gulf Stream Four!" came the curt response and blatant lie. "Ohhh," said the man from BA tartly.

When I have something to say, I say it in droves

And hello to my European lurkers.

So I was pondering the US TV shows that be probably shown on satellite and cable TV in January and trying to work out which ones I would like to see.

( My top 12 want to sees? )

And that's it really. This took up a bit of my lunchtime and took my mind off which is always a good thing. I'd be eternally grateful if anyone has anything to say about the 11 shows I wrote about.