“And still my karma turns out so tragic
But the magician just says, oh boy, oh boy…”
- Judee Sill

Mr. Randi:

Since you write so eloquently on the dangers of religion (”…the attitude that superstitious beliefs such as religion are harmless is quite wrong” you inform us), I am curious to hear your position on the Chinese Communist persecution of the followers of the “Falun Gong” faith. You seem to believe that persecution and violent suppression are bad things (I note your disapproving reference to the “Catholic Inquisition”) and yet you seem curiously silent on the PRC’s campaign of censorship, suppression and persecution.

I refer you to this report from Amnesty International:

Here are some excerpts from that report:

China: Falun Gong deaths in custody continue to rise as crackdown worsens

“While China claims it is committed to promoting and protecting human rights, the crackdown on the Falun Gong and other ‘heretical’ groups is being stepped up and the number of victims is growing daily,” Amnesty International said today…At least 77 Falun Gong followers are reported to have died in custody, or shortly after release, in suspicious circumstances since the crackdown began in July 1999. It appears that many of them died as a result of torture or after force-feeding while they were on a hunger strike…Apart from the high number of deaths in custody, numerous other cases of torture or ill-treatment by police, arbitrary detentions and unfair trials are regularly reported. Reports indicate that in some areas all identified Falun Gong practitioners are being systematically detained in special “reform centres”. Those who don’t renounce their beliefs are kept in jail…In November, Zhang Kunlun, a 59 year-old practitioner with dual Chinese and Canadian citizenship, was sentenced without trial to three years’ detention in a forced labour camp. This was the first time a foreign-based Falun Gong practitioner was sentenced rather than deported…In December, US-based member Teng Chunyan (f) was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment on a charge of “providing secret information to foreigners and people across the border”. Teng Chunyan collected evidence of the detention of Falun Gong members in a Beijing mental hospital and passed it on to foreign media in Beijing and contacts in the USA. Her trial was reportedly held behind closed doors…Since September 1999, at least 77 Falun Gong practitioners (42 women) are reported to have died in official custody, or shortly after release on medical parole, in circumstances that remain unclear and following reports of torture and ill-treatment. Seventeen people died in Shandong province alone, and 14 in Heilongjiang province…Of these 77, 12 (four women) according to official reports ‘’jumped'’ to their deaths whilst being transported or interrogated by police; and eight (four women) ‘’fell'’ whilst in detention, the majority in provincial representative offices in Beijing…Eighteen (13 women) of those who died had reportedly engaged in hunger strikes during their detention, with seven (five women) allegedly dying after attempts to force-feed them. Several reports indicate that force feeding was carried out by people with no medical training or experience, resulting in damage to the windpipe and other reportedly fatal complications. In addition to the 77, six practitioners (four women) are confirmed to have committed suicide whilst at liberty, although several were reportedly still under police surveillance.

Perhaps you have condemned this vicious campaign elsewhere.If so,my sincere apologies. But if you have issued any such condemnation, it does not seem to be on your website, and a Google search turned up nothing as well.

In fact you seem to have (obliquely) lent a certain degree of support to this campaign. You write:

“The Chinese government’s concern with the popularity of Falun Gong is much more than political, I believe. Being very realistic, it’s a fact that any pseudoscience, any superstition, any cult action, is a negative element in any society.”

Does this “negative element” justify the horrific acts described in the Amnesty International report?

Is atheist persecution somehow less obnoxious or more moral than theist persecution?

Please explain - if you can.

It is true that you also write in another article:

“Asked my opinion on how the group should be treated, and knowing that the government had pursued and jailed some of the more active members, I said that I much preferred education over legislation.”

A stirring defence of individual conscience, indeed! (One notes that you seem to leave open the possibility that if “education” fails, legislation can’t be ruled out.) You go on to explain that “It was a difficult situation to be in, since I could not take a political stance on behalf of JREF, and in any case would not do so lest I offend my hosts. “

But now, of course, you are safely back in the US and you are presumably free to speak for yourself, instead of the “James Randi Educational Foundation” - well away from your so-easily offended Communist hosts. You are free to condemn the campaign of murder, torture and persecution being carried out against the Falun Gong movement - and yet you somehow have failed to do so. Perhaps it just slipped your mind. You seem to be a busy, busy man, after all.

I feel it only fair to mention that I intend to post this as an open letter on the libertarian website No Treason (www.no-treason.com) along with your answer - if any. I am sure you will be glad to take this opportunity to clarify your position on this issue.

Incidentally, I am not a member of either Falun Gong or any group connected to it; in this matter I am acting and speaking solely for myself.

Yours,
John Sabotta
Seattle, Washington

I am still awaiting Mr. Amazing’s reply, and will keep my loyal No Treason readership appraised of any new developments! Surely such a rational and moral figure as James “The Amazing” Randi, - fearless opponent of such menaces to civilization as pathetic fake spiritualists and rural dowsers - cannot fail to respond promptly. Surely someone who bravely faces down Uri Geller and the Psychic Friends Network every day can’t be worried about what the Chinese Communists may think of him! Stay tuned!

(for Sister Lynette trapped in Trinity Tribal Stomp Hippie Hell)

Morcheeba - Trigger Hippie

Tune in, drop out of love,
Pull the trigger, I’m a hippie,
So said a truth, and blood,
Alive and well,
You push the buttons.

Zoom in, cut out at sound,
Make it feel so trippy
Hung up, let down to ground,
Forget the kill it’s far to sticky

Love love love, i’m a trigger hippie, yeah
Love love love, we’re trigger hippies, yeah.

Love love love, i’m a trigger hippie, yeah
Love love love, we’re trigger hippies, yeah.

(Morcheeba rules!)

It’s creepiness at a magnitude upon which I don’t even care to ponder, but my only hope is to survive it. How would you deal with being cast into such an undulating, leprous mass?

Hayfork is where I’ll be encamped Sept. 5 - 7. It’s a done deal. Three solid days of commie cacophony, insufferable naked toddlers, and nothing on the menu but hippie food.

My body will be in Humboldt County, but my heart will be in glorious Deseret.

I have started a new e-mail list for libertarian supporters of the War on Terror, called “Fight for Liberty!” Here is an excerpt from my welcome message:

I created this e-mail list because I see a need for a place for those of my fellow libertarian comrades around the world who generally agree with me that:

• Liberty is worth fighting for;
• That it is sometimes necessary to fight for Liberty;
• That Al Qaeda and the remnants of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein dictatorships are among the enemies of Liberty we must fight;
• That we must minimize the cost of this fight in blood, treasure, and civil liberties, but that it will be impossible to fight the enemies of Liberty without paying any price at all.

I know there is a good deal of libertarian support for the War on Terror, because I’ve read about it on libertarian e-mail lists, on libertarian web sites, blogs, and I’ve spoken about it with some of you in person. What I have not seen is any forum focused on the War on Terror where its libertarian supporters can share information about it and discuss it. Nor have I seen any organized representation for libertarian supporters of the War on Terror, online or off. I would like this e-mail list to be the beginning of such an organization.

Please feel free to join, and to spread the word!

Basically, incidents like this are why I don’t play poker.

As it happens, Henry Mark Holzer wrote a refutation of the piece by Judge Napolitano that was just quoted below by Lynette. Since my Esteemed Editor complained about the length of my previous quote, I won’t quote this one at all. I will merely summarize it by saying that Napolitano doesn’t seem to understand Ex Parte Quirin at all, which is surprising for an expert like him. Perhaps it would help if he read the recent history book about it, “Shadow Enemies: Hitler’s Secret Terrorist Plot Against the United States,” by Alex Abella and Scott Gordon. I have, and found it quite illuminating.

‘Enemy Combatants’ Cast Into
a Constitutional Hell
by Andrew P. Napolitano
June 27, 2003 Los Angeles Times

And that is terrifying.

Well, whaddaya know, former Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork agrees with me about the lawfulness of detaining enemy combatants. I’m not used to agreeing with Bork, given that he’s a majoritarian conservative & I’m a libertarian (see Stephen Macedo’s “The New Right vs. the Constitution” for a good critique of Bork’s school of jurisprudence). Still, even a stopped clock is right twice a day:

According to critics, by depriving certain captured individuals of access to lawyers, and by holding them without filing charges, the government is violating the Geneva Convention’s protections of lawful combatants or prisoners of war. This is nonsense.

Four criteria must be met to qualify a person as a lawful combatant. He must be under the command of a person responsible for his subordinates; wear a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance; carry arms openly; and conduct operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. The men the United States has captured and detained so far do not meet these criteria.

The government’s policy is as follows: if a captured unlawful enemy combatant is believed to have further information about terrorism, he can be held without access to legal counsel and without charges being filed. Once the government is satisfied that it has all the relevant information it can obtain, the captive can be held until the end of hostilities, or be released, or be brought up on charges before a criminal court.

The government chose one of these options when it charged John Lindh, an American citizen who fought with the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Zacarias Moussaoui, who is thought to have been involved in the planning for September 11, with crimes. Lindh entered into a plea agreement under which he was sentenced to twenty years in prison. Moussaoui’s case has proved more complicated. The government proposes to use only unclassified materials in its prosecution, but Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan heritage who has admitted in open court to belonging to al Qaeda and swearing allegiance to Osama bin Laden, has demanded to see classified materials and to have access to other captured terrorists for the preparation of his defense.

For obvious reasons, Moussaoui’s demands are unacceptable to the government, which does not want to divulge classified information or allow terrorists to communicate with each other. But the prosecutors’ offer of an alternative procedure was rejected by the presiding judge. If the government continues to be unsuccessful in its determination to protect classified information, it may decide to prosecute Moussaoui in special military tribunals created for trying terrorists. That would surely trigger the outrage of civil libertarians, even though it is plainly arguable that Moussaoui could and perhaps should have been prosecuted there in the first place. I will return to this issue below.

In a somewhat separate category from Lindh and Moussaoui, both of whom have been charged with actual crimes, are the cases of two American citizens who have been detained rather than brought to trial because the government believes they possess undivulged valuable information. Yaser Esam Hamdi remains confined to the Norfolk Naval Brig, and José Padilla is confined at the Consolidated Naval Brig in Charleston. Neither man has yet been charged.

Hamdi filed a petition for habeas corpus challenging the legality of his detention. Although he was captured in Afghanistan, where he was carrying an AK-47 during a time of active military hostilities, and although he was classified by the executive branch as an unlawful enemy combatant, Hamdi claimed the full protections of the Constitution as an American citizen. He argued that his detention without charge and without access to a judicial tribunal or the right to counsel was in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

The Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held otherwise. Although the detention of U.S. citizens is subject to judicial review, that review must be “deferential.” The Constitution explicitly confers war powers on the political branches; in going to war in Afghanistan, the President had relied both on those powers and on Congress’s authorization of “all necessary and appropriate force” against nations, organizations, or persons he determined to be involved in terrorist attacks. Hamdi, the court said, was indeed an enemy combatant subject to detention. It elaborated its rationale:

The detention of enemy combatants serves at least two vital purposes. First, detention prevents enemy combatants from rejoining the enemy and continuing to fight against America and its allies. . . . In this respect, “captivity is neither a punishment nor an act of vengeance,” but rather “a simple war measure.”

Second, detention in lieu of prosecution may relieve the burden on military commanders of litigating the circumstances of a capture halfway around the globe. . . . As the Supreme Court has recognized [in Johnson v. Eisentrager (1950)], “it would be difficult to devise more effective fettering of a field commander than to allow the very enemies he is ordered to reduce to submission to call him to account in his own civil courts and divert his efforts and attention from the military offensive abroad to the legal defense at home.”

Hamdi’s petition was denied, as was his right of access to an attorney or to seeing government documents.

Padilla was arrested upon his arrival at Chicago’s O’Hare airport from Pakistan. The government indicted him, claiming he planned acts of terrorism, including the explosion of a radioactive “dirty bomb.” When, like Hamdi, he petitioned for habeas corpus, the court held similarly that “the President is authorized under the Constitution and by law to direct the military to detain enemy combatants.” Nevertheless, and over the government’s objection, the court said it would allow Padilla the assistance of counsel to litigate the facts surrounding his capture and detention. (The government is now appealing this.) At the same time, the court disallowed the presence of counsel at Padilla’s interrogations, and averred that the government need only show “some evidence” to prevail.

Anthony Lewis went ballistic. It is, he wrote, a “fundamental truth” that an individual cannot get justice against the state without the effective help of a lawyer, and this truth was “being challenged in a way that I did not believe was possible in our country.” But Lewis was completely wrong. Despite his attempt to conflate the two categories, detention is not punishment; its purpose, rather, is to prevent members of enemy forces from causing harm while hostilities are in progress. Nor is Padilla the subject of a criminal proceeding; criminal law rules do not apply when detention of an enemy is ordered by the President under his war powers. Hundreds of thousands of lawful prisoners of war have been held by the United States without the right to a lawyer, and unlawful enemy combatants are entitled to even fewer rights.

This makes perfect sense. A judicial system with rights of due process is crucial to a free society, but it is not designed for the protection of enemies engaged in armed conflict against us. Nor can we divert resources from the conduct of a war to the trial of every POW or unlawful combatant who wants to litigate. Besides, giving someone like Padilla a lawyer would frustrate the very purpose of his detention, and place American lives in danger. A lawyer’s duty, acting within the bounds of ethical behavior, is to create delay and confusion, keeping alive his client’s hopes of going free. Armed with such hopes, Padilla would be all the less likely to divulge what he knew, and plans for future terrorist attacks might thereby go undetected.

It might be argued that Padilla is not like other unlawful enemy combatants because he is a U.S. citizen taken on American soil. But the Supreme Court disposed of that distinction as long ago as 1942 in Ex parte Quirin. In that case, German would-be saboteurs had entered the U.S. illegally with the intention of attacking war industries and facilities. Upon capture, they sought habeas corpus, claiming a right to trial before a regular court rather than a military tribunal. In denying the petition, the Court deemed it irrelevant that one of the captives claimed U.S. citizenship and was on U.S. soil when apprehended.

Everybody (ad nauseum) keeps wondering what the casting of an Atlas Shrugged movie would be like - I am wondering what a possible FANTOMAS VS. JOHN GALT film (about as likely to be made as an ATLAS SHRUGGED movie) would be like. (For those with very short memories of tiny browsers who don’t know who Fantômas is, check out my last post)

A few musings:

1. Fantômas would be a lot tougher opponent for Galt and the Gulchites because he doesn’t have a social agenda, but basically just wants to make trouble. (or possibly “do” Dagny - see below)

2. Dr. Ferris would imagine that he is manipulating Fantômas, but eventually would end up as Fantômas’ hypnotised slave. At some point Fantômas steals the Xylophone.

4. Fantômas should disguise himself as John Galt at least once. On the other hand, I imagine Ragnar Danneskjold is also a master of disguise.

5. Fantômas is, if anything, harder on the Looters and the Moochers than he is on the Strikers - on the other hand, his ultimate motivations are enigmatic. Sometimes he saves Galt, but often only to doom him to an even more horrible fate. (from which Galt barely escapes, time and again.)

6. Possibly Fantômas is after Dagny Taggert, who, of course, indignantly rejects him. Fantômas responds by trying to win Dagny’s affections in the only way he knows how - hypnotic drugs, chloroform, horrific bondage-style deathtraps, lurid bloody murders and other displays of Gallic charm. (Gifts such as James Taggert’s severed head in a stylish gift-wrapped box accompanied by flowers only move Dagny slightly.)

7. Lillian Reardon falls in love with Fantômas and pursues him hopelessly, eventually going insane and committing quite a few bloody deeds of her own. Lillian ends up sporting a form-fitting red rubber catsuit with see-through clear vinyl panels, lots of big knives, and her own twisted plans to rule the world, born of frustrated lust and revenge. This puts her on a collision course with Fantômas, as Lillian intends to dispose of Dagny Taggert - her hated “rival” for the affections of Fantômas - in some excruciating way.

For instance, as we see later, it is Lillian Rearden who replaces the water in Dagny’s hot water heater with fuming nitric acid just before Dagny is about to take a shower. Luckily Dagny changes her mind or something at the last moment. Much later, Philip Rearden uses the shower and meets a hideous fate. (What Philip Rearden is doing using Dagny’s shower is another interesting question which deserves further development.)

Lillian Rearden perishes at the hands of Fantômas just as she is about to lower the massive spiked lid of an Iron Maiden onto a helpless bound and naked Dagny Taggert. (The descending needle sharp spikes are halted just centimeters away from Dagny’s bare skin.) As Fantômas holds Lillian’s broken body, Lillian can only murmur “Fantômas” for the last time before she dies in his arms - her dark unrequited love for the master-criminal fulfilled in death.

8. lung should appear as a lung ex machina now and then to rescue the “nice people” from some especially fiendish Fantômas death-trap or some Looter-related disaster. Her appearences should be random and unexplained, and she should not offer any explanations beyond a request for pastry goods. lung can (of course) deflect sound rays and foils Fantômas’ plan to melt Galt’s Gulch with the Xylophone.

9.There should be a big final confrontation between Fantômas and Galt. Both characters have long speeches explaining their respective philosophical positions. (However, Fantômas should deliver his speech in Basque, which nobody else understands, thus leaving his philosophical position a complete mystery.) After the speechifying, there should be a big fight, and Fantômas appears to perish in a white-hot bubbling cauldron of molten Rearden Metal - or does he?

Further suggestions, complaints, etc are solicited -please make use of the handy Comments link, open to all! (Yes, Kennedy, I already know about that Hong Kong SHRUGGED page)

(For more ATLAS SHRUGGED alter-fun, check out this. “The GURPS rules system includes a system of technical levels, or TLs, in which the post-World War II era is TL7, while stone age tribes are TL0. I decided that the residents of Galt’s Gulch were at a variant TL7, which lacked computers and nuclear reactors but had Rearden Metal and Galt motors.”)

In Jose Padilla: No Charges and No Trial, Just Jail, Robert A. Levy, senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, wrongly criticizes the detention of suspected unlawful combatant Jose Padilla:

Consider this specious logic, endorsed by the Bush administration: Under the Sixth Amendment, the right to counsel does not apply until charges are filed. The government has not charged Padilla. Ordinarily, U.S. citizens cannot be detained without charge. But the administration has avoided that technicality by designating Padilla as an “enemy combatant,” then proclaiming that the court may not second-guess his designation.

Essentially, on orders of the executive branch, anyone could wind up imprisoned by the military with no way to assert his innocence.

Except that those detained as enemy combatants do have a way to assert their innocence, as in the very case Levy goes on to cite next, the Hamdi case:

That frightening prospect was echoed by J. Harvie Wilkinson, the respected and steadfastly conservative chief judge of the Fourth Circuit. In a case involving another U.S. citizen, Yaser Hamdi, Wilkinson warned, “With no meaningful judicial review, any American citizen alleged to be an enemy combatant could be detained indefinitely without charges or counsel.” Judge Wilkinson upheld Hamdi’s detention but pointedly noted that Hamdi’s battlefield capture was like “apples and oranges” compared to Padilla’s arrest in Chicago. “We aren’t placing our imprimatur upon a new day of executive detentions,” Wilkinson cautioned.

While Levy inexplicably fails to mention it, Hamdi’s right to a habeas corpus hearing was upheld by the courts. So, even though the Bush administration may try “proclaiming that the court may not second-guess his [Padilla’s] designation,” the courts have disagreed, making it so that those detained as enemy combatants can assert their innocence in their habeas corpus hearings. If they can show that they are not enemy combatants, then they can get out of military detention and either be turned over to the criminal justice system or be freed entirely if there are no criminal charges against them.

An unambiguous federal statute and the U.S. Constitution both prohibit the executive branch from doing to Padilla what it is now doing. More than three decades ago, Congress passed Title 18, section 4001(a) of the U.S. Code. It states, “No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.” Today, we have not had from Congress any statute that authorizes Padilla’s detention.

I’m surprised that such an eminent legal authority as Mr. Levy has never heard of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), enacted by Congress back in the 1950s, which authorizes the detention and trial by military tribunal of those suspected of war crimes (like unlawful belligerency), such as Padilla.

Yes, Congress enacted the PATRIOT Act, which says that non-citizens suspected of terrorism can be detained, but only for seven days. After that, they have to be released or charged, unless the attorney general certifies every six months that they present a security risk.

In other words, the PATRIOT Act authorizes the indefinite detention of non-citizens suspected of terrorism as long as the attorney general certifies every six months that they present a security risk.

Two months earlier, Congress had passed a resolution empowering the president to use all necessary force against the 9/11 terrorists. But that resolution surely did not give the administration unfettered discretion to detain citizens without charge.

Why not? There isn’t any exception made in that Congressional Resolution saying that all necessary force may be used against the terrorists who made the 9/11 attacks, except when it comes to unlawful combatants who happen to be U.S. citizens.

If it had, then the ensuing PATRIOT Act would have afforded more protection to aliens than to citizens. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, that proposition is incredible.

Perhaps the PATRIOT Act itself doesn’t give more protection to foreigners than citizens, but the Executive Order authorizing military tribunals for captured terrorists does. Only non-citizens may be tried by military tribunal under that Executive Order, despite both case law (Quirin) and statute law (the UCMJ) saying that citizens may be tried by military tribunal. In combination with the executive detention policy, the result is that both foreigners and citizens may be indefinitely detained as enemy combatants, but citizen unlawful combatants may not be tried by military tribunal, they must be tried in the U.S. criminal courts.

Reasonably construed, Congress’ resolution on the use of military force triggered the president’s commander-in-chief authority. He could then order seizure of enemy soldiers and detention of persons found in a zone of active combat. But he could not order the imprisonment, without charge, of an unarmed non-soldier far from active combat, especially a U.S. citizen on our own soil.

Why can’t enemy combatants be detained outside “a zone of active combat”? Where, exactly, are these zones, anyway? Where are their borders? If an enemy combatant starts out in such a zone, then gets out of one in the process of fleeing from those who are chasing him in the attempt to capture him, does that mean he gets away, as far as executive detention is concerned? That would be contrary to the international laws of war as codified in the Geneva Convention, to which the US is signatory.

Levy’s portrayal of Padilla, as “an unarmed non-soldier,” and “a U.S. citizen on our own soil” (soil he loves so much that he stands accused of conspiring with Al Qaeda to detonate a radiological bomb on it) is touching, but it is a war crime for enemy combatants not to bear arms openly, as well as for them to operate out of uniform. Levy seems to take Padilla’s unarmed, un-uniformed status as evidence that he deserves to be treated better than a POW, but it is actually evidence that he deserves worse.

Nor is the administration justified in its reliance on Ex parte Quirin, the Supreme Court case involving eight Nazi saboteurs, one of whom was an American citizen. The executive branch acted in Quirin in accordance with congressional authorization.

Padilla has also been detained in accordance with congressional authorization - the Congressional Resolution, and the UCMJ.

The eight Nazis were represented by counsel, charged, tried, and convicted.

As I’m sure Padilla will be, once his detention is over and he’s turned over to the civil courts to be tried, hopefully, for treason.

Here, by contrast, Padilla has been denied any chance to defend himself. He has seen no lawyer; he has not been charged, much less tried and convicted.

Yeah, funny thing, the Bill of Rights only guarantees the right to a lawyer to those who are being criminally charged. Padilla’s not, so he has no such right until he’s charged.

And he has been imprisoned notwithstanding a 30-year-old statute that expressly forbids the unauthorized detention of U.S. citizens.

Yes, because the UCMJ authorizes the detention of U.S. citizens, including those suspected of committing the war crime of unlawful belligerency.

Padilla may deserve the treatment he is receiving — perhaps worse. That is not the point. When Americans are taken into custody, they have the right to retain an attorney.

Yes, when and if they are charged.

Congress must first set the rules.

As was done in the UCMJ.

Then an impartial judge, not the president, should make the ultimate decision as to whether the arrest and imprisonment comport with the Constitution.

Padilla still has a right to a habeas corpus hearing in which he can challenge the constitutionality of his arrest and imprisonment, just as did Hamdi.

The French supercriminal Fantomas first appeared in pulpnovels and silent films over ninety years ago. Here are a few excerpts from the Fantomas Lives! website:

(What all this says about the French is anybody’s guess.)

“If these books had a common trait, it was the supremacy of the episode over the whole. Where British crime writers like Freeman and Crofts sought a purposely dull surface in order to achieve credibility, their French counterparts valued a flow of lurid tableaux united by the flimsiest logic. A typical Crofts novel like The Cask consists of one violent incident and several hundred pages of laborious deduction therefrom; Fantômas offers a steady supply of disturbing images. An old woman is hacked to death in a sedate manor house, a corpse tumbles from a suitcase, a sleeping passenger is hurled from an express train. Immediate gratification supplants the delayed pleasures of scientific detection…This formal difference is also a moral difference. While the classic British whodunit affirms rational order through the intervention of saintly detectives like Inspector French and Miss Marple, Fantômas tends to undermine any notion of stability or ultimate purpose….The novels which chart his mythos are themselves amoral: there is no pretense of edification, but rather a frankly perverse fascination with terror and death-dealing. Any possible ethical concerns are further distorted by ambiguity. Both Fantômas and his nemesis, Inspector Juve, spend most of their time in disguise, so that it’s hard to tell who anyone is. The only certainty is that fairly soon another body will fall.“
- A article about the first Fantômas novel by Geoffrey O’Brien, from the Village Voice, August 18, 1986

“In a fit of anger, Nini flung herself upon the child, seized him, and in a frightful move drove the dagger into his chest.
Before baby Daniel drew another breath, a torrent of bright blood spewed from his wound. Immediately, his lips went pale.
‘There!’ shrieked Nini Guinon, ‘You wouldn’t let me to have him! Now, neither will you…’
Nini Guinon said no more.
A gunshot rang out. Uttering a cry, the unfortunate Nini collapsed upon the floor.
The blasts from Lady Beltham’s revolver continued, until it was emptied…
Within the space of a few seconds, two beings met death. Abruptly, this delicate, charming, tastefully furnished little apartment had been transformed into a horrific theater of blood…”
- Excerpted from Le Pendu de Londres (The hanged man of London) by Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain,1920

“But [for Hunebelle] to show so little imagination in bringing Fantômas up to date seems to me a crime for which the real Fantômas should take stern revenge. For the truly contemporary equivalents of his crimes would be fun. If I were Fantômas, I should run a mental home in which drug-bewildered patients are subtly driven madder. I wouldn’t just put guards and models to sleep; I’d slip LSD into their champagne, and what a psychedelic orgy those beautiful, blind, helpless people would be reduced to. I’d stage atrocities in Africa so as to sell photographs of them to the magazines. I wouldn’t brand my helpless slaves with an F certificate on their chests, I’d implant a capsule in their brains which would give them psychopathic guilt feelings if they didn’t carry out my commands. I’d pose as a Maharishi, though my real intention would be to get the entire youth of the free world addicted to Speed. I’d stir up race riots by getting men dressed as cops to rape coloured girls., and setting girls posing as Black Pantheresses to castrate cops. I’d help the Welsh National Army to kidnap the Royal Family. I’d run an organ supply service for ailing millionaires who needed a new heart in a hurry. Oh, there’s all sorts of lovely delicious topical mischief a modern Fantômas could get up to.”
—Raymond Durgnat, Films & Filming, Vol. 15, no. 4, January 1964, expressing disapproval of the tame 1960’s film revival.

Tee-hee, I haven’t had this much fun since Stephen Schwartz last flamed Justin Raimondo: Ilana Mercer’s been giving Raimondo & Sheldon Richman a richly-deserved torching over their demonization of Israel as the aggressor in the Wars Against Israel. Thus far, in the two-against-one no-holds-barred grudge match, I score Mercer the winner, despite the fact that her opponents have fought dirty.

Mercer has always struck me as having a healthy immunity to the bad memes about Israeli aggression, perhaps because she’s an Israeli emigre herself. Unfortunately, she seems to have succumbed to bad memes about the War On Terror and the neoconservative conspiracy. Still, it’s nice to see that she thinks for herself, rather than slavishly toeing the paleocon party line.