I am. Perhaps my "politeness" is anchored by deep-seated apoplexy in the face of the strictures of everyday 21st century life? So much for blogging to become a better writer.

A teenage German permanent resident of Turkish origin, living in Bremen, visits Pakistan just after 9/11. On the road near the Afghan border, he is kidnapped by Pakistanis who then "sell" him to US forces. He is incarcerated in Pakistan, Afghanistan, finally in Guantanamo, where he vegetates without real cause for 4 years, often in solitary. Several times German military and State Information Service - the "BND", Germany's CIA - question him and "promise" release or transport to Turkey or even back to Germany. None of this ensues. A German lawyer and some US attorneys bring his case to the Supreme Court, which decides that the US must release material on the reasons for his detention. Bush & Co. simply ignore this for weeks on end; but in September, at the same time as a law passes Congress allowing the States to declare basically any foreigner, even if living legally on US soil, an enemy who no longer may apply for "habeas corpus", Bush releases the Bremen detainee as an act of mercy. The latter returns to Germany and tells of his ordeal, describes Guantanamo's tortureaucracy and in the process causes a special parliamentary committee to form - to look into the doings of German military in Iraq, and the BND. And the German foreign minister, who, when our previous chancellor's chief of staff, denied the Bremen man's extradition to Germany as offered to Germany by the US just after the man's arrival in Guantanamo. Are we not to think that both sides knew then he was - largely - innocent?

I don't know anything glib or rousing to say. I know I'm no longer listening to anything the US have to say about morals, democracy or the reasons for stationing troops in Japan, Korea, Germany, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. (List incomplete!) I want the German people responsible for ignoring this man's plight for years to step down now, move to Bremen and make it up personally to him. And I'm going to see if any of Berlin's old, mostly honourable tradition of anarchism is still alive; true anarchists never trust government, never practise force or violence except in self-defense. Perhaps I can learn something there, if anywhere.