EDIT 2014 :Funny thing about the internet things you write, even things you write years ago stick around.  Today I got the following email from Google adsense:

I checked your account and the page that was in violation. It appears that the two images at the bottom of the article violate our policies, as well as some of the profanity in the article itself. Please refer to: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/1261929?hl=en and https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/1348688?hl=en&ref_topic=1271507#Violent_content for more information.

I’d suggest taking out the swear words in the article and the images at the bottom of the page, as the policy team will review your page again in the next 3 days to see if you’ve made adequate changes. Let me know if you still have questions on this!

Best,
 
Kelly
The Google AdSense Team

I wrote them back the following:

Hi Kelly

You do realize that those images were published in the new york times and almost every other major newspaper/news show/tv show on the planet right?  Almost all of which ran along side google ads.  Did you have a problem in 2006 when that happened on most of the internet?

I feel the swear words are a completely appropriate response to our government using violence against others in this way, and is therefore not excessive,  If you can’t swear when talking about such a violation of human rights, when is swearing appropriate?  I also do not degrade any protected group (getting angry at politicians is still ok isn’t it?) and don’t call for violence, or incite violence towards any group.

Can you have the page reviewed by someone higher up?

Thanks

to which they responded:

I understand your point of view and frustration, and would like to help you resolve this issue as quickly as possible to ensure that you are compliant with AdSense policies.
The following response comes from the policy team who will be reviewing your site:

– You can leave the content as is, but remove the ad code from this page, OR
– To ensure continued ad-serving per our AdSense policies on this page, you should remove the images and profanity as mentioned before.

Hope that clarifies the situation.

 

Well so many options, I think that translates to  “take it leave it” Since I need Google ad revenue in order to pay for the hosting costs of this site I have removed the “bad words” that Google didn’t like, and replaced the images with something they would find less “objectionable.”  Considering the original topic of the post, the irony here is thick.  I wonder if Google can see the inherent conflict of its “don’t be evil” motto and this sort of heavy handed censorship.

The original post is here, free from all links to ads’ so if you want to see what all the fuss was about click here.

what follows is the edited version of my original post.

———————————————————

Well they have finally gone and done it. Our president now has the right to declare anyone, anyplace, at anytime an enemy combatant (even U.S. Citizens in America) and detain them indefinitely without trial. I wonder if we will all get used to living in a dictatorship. Simply put our President is now able to do whatever the HECK he pleases and its legal legal legal, thanks to the stupid POOP-Y HEADS that we call our representatives. Nothing like throwing away a couple hundred years of civil/legal/human rights so that you can fight your war on terror without any niggling legal battles.

THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE TO TELL YOU WHAT YOU DID! They can just pick you up and you vanish.

from here

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws” while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

…

These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

from here

The White House is further rewriting the torture and self-absolution legislation that is currently sailing through congress.

Now the real targets turn out to be you and me. The new version of the law would allow the CIA and the U.S. military:

indefinite detention of anyone who, as the bill states, “has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States” or its military allies.

With a bit of phantasy, and this administration will come up with a lot of such, one can read quite some doings falling under this wording.

* A gift to Hizbullah to rebuild a hospital in south Lebanon? – Material support to hostilities …
* Donation of drugs to Iraqi hospitals under al-Sadr control? – Material support to hostilities …
* Writing a book arguing against the Worldbank? – Material support to hostilities …
* Commenting in a blog against the Saudi regime? – Material support to hostilities …

Also notice how the tense of the laws wording reaches into the past.

How about people who have acted in support of North Vietnam? Jane Fonda, welcome to Gitmo!

We further learn:

The definition applies to foreigners living inside or outside the United States and does not rule out the possibility of designating a U.S. citizen as an unlawful combatant.

So this will apply to every human being. And, of course, no complaining will be allowed:

Under a separate provision, those held by the CIA or the U.S. military as an unlawful enemy combatant would be barred from challenging their detention or the conditions of their treatment in U.S. courts unless they were first tried, convicted and appealed their conviction.

The White House frames this into the “terrorism” junk:

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said: “We are satisfied with the definition because it will allow us to prosecute the terrorists, and it also has important limitations that say a terrorist must have purposefully and materially supported terrorism.”

But that is not what the law says. The law is about “hostilities against the United States and it military allies”, not about “terrorism”.

With this, the legal fishing net just got a lot larger and the meshes became smaller. Even us small fish may be caught in it.

(Bonus bullshit quote:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) defended the provision, saying alien enemy combatants are not “entitled to rights under the United States Constitution similar to those accorded to a defendant in a criminal lawsuit.”

Mr. Cornyn, maybe not to similar rights, but doesn´t this still apply: We hold these Truths to be self-evident …)

from here

Yesterday I explained that the definition of “unlawful enemy combatant” (UEC) in the latest draft of the detainee bill was so ridiculously broad and open-ended that it could not possibly be intended to establish the authority of the Executive to militarily detain all persons so defined.

But it appears I underestimated the gall and recklessness of the Administration and Congress, because there seems to be a fairly widespread understanding that the definition would do just that. Even Human Rights First seems to agree that “unlawful enemy combatants” would be subject to indefinite detention.

Most of the attention in the press has focused on subsection (i) of the definition, which would designate as an UEC any “person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces).” And that subsection is, indeed, broad, and fairly indeterminate, depending on how “materially supported hostilities” is interpreted (something that the Administration apparently could do without much or any judicial review).

from here

BURIED IN THE complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops “during an armed conflict,” it also allows him to seize anybody who has “purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.” This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison.

 

Not to worry though our government would never actually detain and torture people…that’s just silly.