Ebert on Goblet of Fire (no spoilers)

Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) was just turning 13 in the previous movie, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (2004), and the Potter series turns PG-13 with this installment. [...] Is it fair to wonder if the series will continue to grow up with Harry, earning the R rating as he turns 17?
- review

Torture good. S&M bad. Or something.

The FBI has recently shut down some extreme S&M web sites and raided at least one porn studio. The ironic part? According to the Washington Post FBI agents have been advised to target porn that "includes bestiality, urination, defecation, as well as sadistic and masochistic behavior." Does any of that remind you of, say, pictures from Abu Ghraib? Parading prisoners on leashes, turning dogs onto naked & bounded prisoners? Try this:

[A]t the U.S. prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an FBI agent has reported seeing prisoners "chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18 to 24 hours or more."

I had read about the Justice Department's new anti-porn squad, but hadn't realized they were acting so soon or who, specifically, they were targeting. As The Stranger puts it,

[T]he behaviors described as prosecutable and obscene in the FBI memo overlap quite directly with behaviors that FBI agents and others have witnessed at U.S. facilities holding prisoners in the War on Terror.
[...]
"There's the idea of a sort of government monopoly on violence," Russell Harmon complains, trying to figure out the rationale behind the administration's simultaneous defense of torture and prosecution of depictions of consensual rough sex play. "The other idea is, if you have a sexually repressed populace, they're a lot easier to keep frightened. It's important to, in a fascist society, keep people sexually repressed. That makes the politics of control easier."

Dunno about the repression making control easier, but this isn't the first time I've seen a government monopoly on violence. It's the same rationale that leads to making suicide illegal (citizen does not have the right to kill self) but capital punishment hunky-dory (state has the right to kill citizen).

Edit: I also think there's a bit of "The End Justifies The Means" attitude involved. And the assumption that this is a hard thing to do, that most people would shy away from. So if they toughen up and do it in a manly way for The Good Of The USA? Bless 'em! Pin a medal on 'em! They did it for fun? Icky icky ick! They're sick!

All quotes are from The Stranger. The Stranger described Russell as running a "local bondage site www.twobigmeanies.com" with "the help of his wife, his girlfriend, and his wife's girlfriend."