text:
Zhuang-zi quote
This is one of my favorite quotes from Zhuang-zi (Chuang-tsu), the most famous Taoist philosopher after Lao-tzu
"Do not be an embodier of fame; do not be a storehouse of schemes; do not be an undertaker of projects; do not be a proprietor of wisdom. Embody to the fullest what has no end and wander where there is no trail. Hold on to all that you have received from Heaven but do not think you have gotten anything. Be empty, that is all. The Perfect Man uses his mind like a mirror -- going after nothing, welcoming nothing, responding but not storing. Therefore he can win out over things and not bring harm upon himself."
Get out of jail card
Following a fine Clintonian tradition, Shrub is handing out pardons to those who have paid the piper. It now evidently costs around half a million to obtain a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card:
One of those pardoned, Wendy St. Charles, is a lawyer for a Denver homebuilder, MDC Holdings, parent of Richmond American Homes, The Denver Post reported. St. Charles was convicted on drug charges in 1984 and sentenced to four years in prison. MDC's chairman, Larry Mizel, has contributed more than half a million dollars to Republican campaigns along with his wife, Carol, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The ability of the president to pardon people strikes me as an anachronistic practice from the divine right of kings. I say we do away with it. Either that or we should all get the right to grant clemency to a dozen or so people during our lives.
Daschle: Congress Denied Bush War Powers in U.S
Does this surprise anyone? We now learn that Congress explicitly rejected the very powers that Bush claims were implicit in the agreement to go to war!
The Bush administration requested, and Congress rejected, war-making authority "in the United States" in negotiations over the joint resolution passed days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to an opinion article by former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) in today's Washington Post.
Those damn Democrats! Trying to prevent Shrub's cabal from making war on the citizenry! How unpatriotic of them!
Daschle's disclosure challenges a central legal argument offered by the White House in defense of the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. It suggests that Congress refused explicitly to grant authority that the Bush administration now asserts is implicit in the resolution.
The Justice Department acknowledged yesterday, in a letter to Congress, that the president's October 2001 eavesdropping order did not comply with "the 'procedures' of" the law that has regulated domestic espionage since 1978. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, established a secret intelligence court and made it a criminal offense to conduct electronic surveillance without a warrant from that court, "except as authorized by statute."
In other words, Bush broke the law and is a criminal. (Add this to the growing tally of unprosecuted crimes.)
There is one other statutory authority for wiretapping, which covers conventional criminal cases. That law describes itself, along with FISA, as "the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . may be conducted."
Yesterday's letter, signed by Assistant Attorney General William Moschella, asserted that Congress implicitly created an exception to FISA's warrant requirement by authorizing President Bush to use military force in response to the destruction of the World Trade Center and a wing of the Pentagon. The congressional resolution of Sept. 18, 2001, formally titled "Authorization for the Use of Military Force," made no reference to surveillance or to the president's intelligence-gathering powers, and the Bush administration made no public claim of new authority until news accounts disclosed the secret NSA operation.
Funny thing about crime--it's all just dandy until people find out about it. I guess we need to go arrest the reporter or snitch who told the public about it lest people feel emboldened to uncover even greater administration crimes.
But Moschella argued yesterday that espionage is "a fundamental incident to the use of military force" and that its absence from the resolution "cannot be read to exclude this long-recognized and essential authority to conduct communications intelligence targeted at the enemy." Such eavesdropping, he wrote, necessarily included conversations in which one party is in the United States.
Daschle's article reveals an important new episode in the resolution's legislative history. As drafted, and as finally passed, the resolution authorized the president "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons" who "planned, authorized, committed or aided" the Sept. 11 attacks.
Our poor left-behind president evidently missed the word "appropriate" when reading this resolution.
"Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words 'in the United States and' after 'appropriate force' in the agreed-upon text," Daschle wrote. "This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused."
And limit the war that is to be carried out everywhere against everyone until we've created Heaven on Earth?
Daschle wrote that Congress also rejected draft language from the White House that would have authorized the use of force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States," not only against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. Republican legislators involved in the negotiations could not be reached for comment last night.
Alito: Like Bush, not fit to defend the Constitution
This alone is reason enough to oppose the Alito nomination:
Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito defended the right of government officials to order domestic wiretaps for national security when he worked at the Reagan Justice Department, an echo of President Bush's rationale for spying on U.S. residents in the war on terror.
Shrub's remark based on urban legend
Thanks to The Daily Curmudgeon, we now learn that Shrub's recent comment that Bin Laden was tipped off by the media that the U.S. was listening in to his cell phone communication was an urban myth. The article published by the ultra-conservative Washington Times (Aug. 21, 1998) appeared two years after Time magazine gave Bin Laden this startling information (that U.S. intel might be trying to listen to his calls!) Of course, how this justifies listening in on virtually any call by American citizens without a warrant (even a secret one by a rubber-stamp court) is beyond me. I guess I need to watch Fox News more often.
King Shrub's war on America's privacy continues...
Impeach efforts continue
Congressman John Conyers has introduced three new pieces of legislation aimed at censuring President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and at creating a fact-finding committee that could be a first step toward impeachment.
Ask your Congress Member to support these efforts!
For more information on these bills, visit http://www.CensureBush.org
Federal Judge John Robertson resigns
The fall-out continues:
A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases in protest of President Bush's secret authorization of a domestic spying program, according to two sources. U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation.
More on the outrageous power grab
Attorney General Gonzales now claims (with a twinkle in his eye) that Congress essentially gave Shrub the authority for domestic surveillance after the Sept. 11 attacks. Or to translate this into non-legalese for the proles living outside of the inner sanctum of DC--"What in the hell did you think this slimy dirtball mis-president of ours would do if we took him off his leash." Gonzales evidently believes that going through the normal channels would have tied the administration's hands, but we all know that the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was in charge of these things back in the days when we used to have a Constitution, was pretty much a rubber-stamp organization anyway.
Senator Feingold has rightly describes this as an "outrageous power grab" stating that "Nobody, nobody thought when we passed a resolution to invade Afghanistan and to fight the war on terror ... that this was an authorization to allow a wiretapping against the law of the United States." So now there will be an investigation . . . and another attempt to sweep the latest corruption of power under the carpet.
Big brother: Making sure we don't read the wrong things
It's been discovered that the following story was a hoax perpetrated by the Dartmouth senior:
Agents' visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior
By AARON NICODEMUS, Standard-Times staff writer NEW BEDFORD
A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book." Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program. The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said. The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further. "I tell my students to go to the direct source, and so he asked for the official Peking version of the book," Professor Pontbriand said. "Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring inter-library loans, because that's what triggered the visit, as I understand it." Although The Standard-Times knows the name of the student, he is not coming forward because he fears repercussions should his name become public. He has not spoken to The Standard-Times. The professors had been asked to comment on a report that President Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to spy on as many as 500 people at any given time since 2002 in this country. The eavesdropping was apparently done without warrants. The Little Red Book, is a collection of quotations and speech excerpts from Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung. In the 1950s and '60s, during the Cultural Revolution in China, it was required reading. Although there are abridged versions available, the student asked for a version translated directly from the original book. The student told Professor Pontbriand and Dr. Williams that the Homeland Security agents told him the book was on a "watch list." They brought the book with them, but did not leave it with the student, the professors said. Dr. Williams said in his research, he regularly contacts people in Afghanistan, Chechnya and other Muslim hot spots, and suspects that some of his calls are monitored. "My instinct is that there is a lot more monitoring than we think," he said. Dr. Williams said he had been planning to offer a course on terrorism next semester, but is reconsidering, because it might put his students at risk. "I shudder to think of all the students I've had monitoring al-Qaeda Web sites, what the government must think of that," he said. "Mao Tse-Tung is completely harmless."
Lest anyone on the right feel compelled to comment that they think Mao is harmless, I'd just like to add that it's a sad sad day when people feel they have to defend their choice to read a book. My guess is that part of the true intent of the Patriot Act and audacious violations of the Constitution such as the Padilla incarceration is to simply get the public to cower, to think that the government has some God-given authority to intervene in every aspect of their lives. They don't. I'd like to remind you all--we hire them. They work for us. We shouldn't be defending our reading choices to them. Quite the contrary. They should be up in front of us explaining what in the hell they were thinking. And instead of spending our tax dollars investigating college students and protesting grandmothers, more money and tax-paid labor should go to uncovering the seemingly endless crimes of this administration. Bush shouldn't simply be fired. He should be in prison.
We don't pay YOU to spy on US
Some Democrats in the Senate have evidently figured out that they're supposed to serve some other function besides presidential lap-dog. Yesterday they blocked passage of the new Patriot Act, rightly claiming that the measure is a threat to the constitutional liberties of innocent Americans. Reading through other bloggers' comments, I came across the following well-written post by Library Bitch:
The way I've always understood this particular piece of legislation, it seems that essentially the document says, 'give us your liberties, trust us to protect them for you, even though you will no longer have them yourself.' Whenever I think of that, I always picture the greasy parking garage attendant in Ferris Buehler's Day Off, who of course drives off in the Corvette the moment he's handed the keys.That said, I am a librarian, so you can rest assured I'm just a tad biased on this one to begin with.But at least I'm not alone in my concerns.
Ten Billion Butterfly Sneezes had this to add:
So round one goes to the small government side. I don't think we've heard the end of this. I shake my head at the thought that someone who went to flight training, and didn't care to learn takeoffs and landings, but wanted only to learn to steer a plane, raised no suspicions. And since the Feds screwed that up so royally, they feel a need to examine library records, etc, on what amount to whims. And it got passed to begin with. Under the guise of "intelligence gathering".
The government needs to get the message loud and clear. We don't pay you people our hard-earned tax dollars to spy on us. According to Political Briefs, the two Democrats who broke ranks to oppose the filibuster were Senators Tim Johnson of South Dakota and Ben Nelson of Nebraska (two idiots we need to fire during the next elections). The four Republicans with a conscience who supported the filibuster were Senators John Sununu of New Hampshire, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Larry Craig of Idaho and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
Other blogments can be found a Sil's Babbling and Boing Boing.
Hotdog power!
Now here's a wierd and possibly brilliant idea:
Norwegians, Dutch mix sea and river to make power
By Anna Mudeva
More than a century later in a world seeking clean alternatives to fossil fuels, Dutch and Norwegian scientists believe they can help turn Verne's dream into reality. The Dutch Center for Sustainable Water Technology or Wetsus, and Norway's independent research organization SINTEF, working with power company Statkraft, have invented devices that generate electricity by mixing sea and river water.
It might seem like an exercise in scientific theory destined only for high-tech laboratories, but the process' creators and the European Union, which funds the Norwegian research, believe the idea's time might have come. "There is huge potential in Europe to use this new way of producing electricity," Philippe Schild, scientific officer at the European Commission's energy directorate, told Reuters.
"It's a renewable source which does not cause any environmental damage and we think it can play a big role in helping meet our target to increase renewable energy," he said.
Global warming and high oil prices have renewed interest in sustainable energy, with solar, wind, biomass, hydrogen fuel cells, tidal and wave power getting most attention.
But researchers in Norway and the Netherlands, known for their water technology know-how, say there is room for other alternatives given the world's ever-growing appetite for energy.
WATER BATTERY AND HOTDOGS
The new devices are based on a natural process -- when a river runs into the ocean, a huge amount of energy is unleashed because of the difference in salt concentration.
"It's basically harvesting the energy that comes free from a natural process," Wetsus managing director Johannes Boonstra said in his agency's laboratory in the Dutch town of Leeuwarden.
"You have the fuel for free and it's very sustainable -- no greenhouse gas emissions."
The two projects use different methods to harness the electricity -- the Dutch apply something called reverse electrodialysis while the Norwegians use a kind of osmosis. Both methods rely on membranes or thin films made of special material used for chemical separation. In the Dutch project, separation is done by membranes using an electrical current. "It works like a water battery," Wetsus project manager Sybrand Metz said. The Norwegian device applies pressure to force the water through membranes. Its inventors liken the process to putting a hot dog in hot water. The skin of the hotdog acts as a membrane, allowing more water in than the amount of salty water it lets out. This increases the pressure inside and the hotdog bursts.
I predict that by 2020, we'll be able to produce energy in hotdogs and that baseball games will light up entire cities.
The principle behind the Norwegian device is that fresh water and salt water are channeled into a membrane module. The fresh water is transported through the membranes and over into the pressurized sea water. The pressurized mixture of sea water and fresh water flows out of the module and into a hydropower turbine that generates electricity. The two inventions, however, have still a long way to go before they can be applied commercially. The Wetsus project, supported by a consortium of Dutch companies, has yet to be tested in a pilot plant. The Norwegian project is more advanced. It started in the 1990s and its creators have already installed two small-scale plants, but have yet to build a bigger demonstration plant to boost production.
Like other alternative energy technologies, cost is the biggest hurdle. Power produced by mixing sea with river water is several times more expensive than wind or solar energy.
The idea of producing electricity from salt and fresh water was first explored during the energy crisis of the 1970s, but membrane technology was not sufficiently advanced and scientists dismissed the process as hopelessly expensive.
The membrane industry has matured since then and is now widely used in water and pollution treatment, power generation, production of medical, biotech and electronics devices.
The main challenge is finding membranes that are efficient and robust enough to boost production, but also cheap.
"We have to be competitive with electricity from coal or gas," Boonstra said. The scientists believe it will take at least 5 years to develop cheaper membranes, test them and be able to put the project on the market. Norwegian project manager Rolf Jarle Aaberg believes power-from-water will be ready to seriously challenge other renewable energy technologies between 2010 and 2015. The new power plants can be built wherever fresh water meets salt water, such as the outlets from existing hydroelectric power stations, and could even be placed underground.
Statkraft and the European Commission put the production potential in Europe at 200 terawatt hours a year, or nearly twice the electricity consumption of a country like Norway.
The potential in Norway alone is estimated at 10 percent of its annual power needs. The river Rhine, for instance, could deliver 3,000 megawatts of power where it flows into the sea in the Netherlands -- the equivalent of five big coal-fired plants.
The new technique has attracted some skepticism, the scientists say, but they find comfort in history. "When the first wind energy turbine was installed in Germany in 1985, the whole industry laughed," said Frank Neumann of the International Energy Agency's ocean energy program.
A few Cromagnons in this country still laugh...
"It was a big failure then and millions were lost. But look at it now and how fast wind energy is expanding."
Bob Barr says military dictatorship close
by Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones, prisonplanet.com (my bolding)
Former Republican Congressman and CIA official Bob Barr says that there is a danger recent developments describe a trend of America slipping into a totalitarian society and that the Bush administration are doing everything in their power to see that this happens.
During a radio interview with host Alex Jones, Barr outlined where the country is heading.
"Basically, as long as you smile when you demand to see somebody's ID at gunpoint sitting on a bus I guess it's OK for the government, that's sort of the way they operate. It can be a totalitarian type regime."
"I think it's a real danger where we have the military becoming involved in all sorts of domestic matters and we have the government being able to seize very private personal records on people without any suspicion that they've done anything wrong. This is a dramatic turn of events that has accelerated greatly since 9/11."
Barr made comments very similar to those of current Republican Congressman Ron Paul in stating that natural disasters could be used by the government as a pretext to abolish posse comitatus.
"If we have the military involved whenever there's a windstorm, rain or tornado then what we are doing is that we are undermining the entire basis on what our constitutional representative democratic form of government was founded."
Barr said that legislation like the Patriot Act and its imminent re-authorization and expansion were more of a threat to the American way of life than any terrorist attack.
"Even when the leaders in Washington say we're not going to let the terrorists change our way of life, they are implementing policies that do precisely that."
Barr elaborated that the manipulation of fear was a key cornerstone in the government's coup de 'tat on constitutional liberties.
"They're using people's fear of another terrorist attack to move forward with various government programs that the government has wanted to gather and put in place for many many years. They're using the fear which is now driving public policy in this country which is very unfortunate and very un-American. Our leaders are shamelessly playing on that fear to implement and grab power."
Speaking on the topic of the second amendment, Barr said that his position as a board member on the NRA enabled him to judge the difference between how the Clinton and Bush administration's approached the issue. Barr echoed the sentiments of many other prominent conservatives in expressing his frustration about how the Bush administration was even more anti-second amendment than the Clinton office.
"It's my impression to be honest with you, and this is confirmed by a lot of folks who are involved very heavily in regulatory matters involving firearms, that it is more difficult dealing with this administration than it was dealing with the prior administration."
Barr is currently working with the ACLU and others in trying to prevent the sunset clauses of the Patriot Act from being renewed, which could happens as early as this week.
Click here for an interview of Barr on The Al Franken Show.
An insulting picture
I saw this picture over on Le Revue Gauche. Now I consider myself to be a leftist and I like to think that I've got a sense of humor and all but there's something about this picture that I find completely insulting. I mean think about it for a second--the way some people on the left, just to get a cheap laugh, stoop so low as to insult our innocent simian cousins.
Around the internets
Just a few posts I came across worth taking a look at:
Nashville Truth, a conservative blogger, has a post titled " I hope we lose in 2006" criticizing the Bush administration's conservative credentials.
Blog of the Grateful Bear asks "Where would Jesus Shop?"
On Braveneworld, Lansohn rightfully expresses concern over the Kingdom of Bush where the sovereign has granted himself the "authority to imprison anyone on the face of the earth, without bringing charges, without an indictment, without a trial, without evidence."
At the Kitchen Sink Collective, Sarah dismantles Shrub's latest mea culpa.
And last but not least, The Barking Dingo analyzes some of that "left-behind-children" math being used in the meme about Iraq being safer than California. (Starting next year, we're going to require all rightwing bloggers to take a course in statistics before they pick up a mouse and start unaccompanied blogging.)
Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, is one of the more radical experiments in the use of broad horizontal networks to share knowledge. Of course, this open-access model has led many people to question the accuracy of the encyclopaedia's entries. Yet a recent investigation carried out by Nature, while finding errors in both Wikipedia and commercial encyclopedias, discovered that the difference in accuracy was not particularly great with the average science entry in Wikipedia containing around four inaccuracies whereas Britannica contained about three.
So much for fundamentalism
Religious Left has put together a good side-by-side comparison of Bush's statements and actions with those of Jesus.
Boycott swiss cheese!
Can you believe this?! Swiss Senator Dick Marty has asked the U.S. to confirm or deny the allegations that it illegally transported abducted suspects:
"The elements we have gathered so far tend to reinforce the credibility of the allegations concerning the transport and temporary detention of detainees - outside all judicial procedure - in European countries," he said. . . . He went on: "Legal proceedings in progress in certain countries seemed to indicate that individuals had been abducted and transferred to other countries without respect for any legal standards."
How audacious! I can't believe a European diplomat actually expects the U.S. to follow trite conventions such as "laws" or "regulations"! Where's Senator Marty been the last few years? Doesn't he realize that the American people have handed over sovereignty to King Bush, who is perfectly able (with some heavy coaching by Rove and Cheney) of determining the right thing to do with all those crazy brown people over there who are trying to get us. What's this Marty character trying to say, anyway? That we actually hold people accountable for their actions in accordance with our Constitution and laws? That we actually be engaged in the political process? What nonsense! The only thing that can possibly save us people living in the heartland of the world's only superpower is to give a small clique of individuals with strong corporate ties the ability to arrest and incarcerate anyone anywhere at will. Laws are for wimpy European bureaucrats who aren't men enough to blindly follow leaders.
Choice blindness: Does this explain die-hard Bush supporters?
This following experiment shows that we often justify our preferences after the fact, even when we don't really get what we want. I think we've perhaps finally found a reason why a few people can maintain their support for the mis-President Bush, in denial of the fact that his administration has been a disaster.
Duped and Clueless: How Easily We Fool Ourselves
By Ker Than LiveScience Staff Writerposted: 06 October 2005
Do you always get what you ask for? A new study finds that when you don't, you might not even notice the difference. Swedish researchers showed a pair of female faces to 120 volunteers for 2 seconds and then asked them to choose which one they thought was more attractive. The researchers then asked the volunteers to explain their choice. The trial was repeated 15 times for each volunteer, using different pairs of faces. but in three of the trials the faces were secretly switched after a decision had been made.
Surprisingly, not only were a large number of the volunteers oblivious to the switch when ultimately allowed to take a longer look at their choice, they were actually able to gave detailed explanations for why they preferred the face that, indeed, they had actually rejected. It would be asking for an apple and then explaining exactly why you wanted the banana you got instead.
'She's radiant'
The researchers call the phenomenon "choice blindness." "She's radiant," gushed one male volunteer about a face he didn't choose. "I would rather have approached her at a bar than the other one. I like earrings!" Another female volunteer said that the face she chose (which in fact she hadn't) looked nicer than the other. Lars Hall, a researcher from Lund University, thinks the volunteers were sincere when giving their reports and somehow failed to notice the switch. "'Confabulation' is perhaps a safe term to use," Hall said in an email interview. "That is, the [false] reports were constructed after the fact.'" After the experiment, the volunteers were presented with a "hypothetical" scenario: Suppose they were involved in an experiment where the faces you chose were switched. Would they notice?
Doubly blind
Eighty-four percent of the volunteers said they would. The researchers called this "choice blindness blindness." When the volunteers were told the truth about how they had been duped, many expressed surprise and even disbelief. The researchers don't yet know how or why choice blindness occurs, but they think it gets to the very heart of how we make decisions. Some of the most popular theories about decision-making assume that people will notice when their choices and the outcomes of those choices don't line up. "But as our experiment shows, this is not always the case," Hall told LiveScience. "Therefore the concept of 'intention' needs to be reevaluated and scrutinized more closely."
Choice blindness experiments may also provide a way to study subjectivity and introspection, topics once considered by many scientists to be extremely difficult or even impossible to evaluate scientifically. "If someone insists on knowing their own mind, it is very difficult to progress beyond this point," Hall said. "[But] by using choice blindness we can create a very particular—and very strange—situation in which we actually can say that someone is wrong despite the fact that they might vehemently claim to know their own mind."
Tags: science, politics, humor
The history no one wants to talk about
This article brings up a central question we should all be asking now that Saddam is on trial--"Who in the U.S. brought Saddam to power and kept him there, in spite of the atrocities?" [My comments in red. My bolding for emphasis.]
Rumsfeld's Handshake Deal with Saddam: History out of Media Bounds by Norman Solomon
Christmas came 11 days early for Donald Rumsfeld two years ago, when the news broke that American forces had pulled Saddam Hussein from a spidery hole. During interviews about the capture, on CBS and ABC, the Pentagon's top man was upbeat. And he didn't have to deal with a question that Lesley Stahl or Peter Jennings could have logically chosen to ask: "Secretary Rumsfeld, you met with Saddam almost exactly 20 years ago and shook his hand. What kind of guy was he?"
Now, Saddam Hussein has gone on trial, but such questions remain unasked by mainstream US journalists. Rumsfeld met with Hussein in Baghdad on behalf of the Reagan administration, opening up strong diplomatic and military ties that lasted through six more years of Saddam's murderous brutality.
As it happens, the initial trial of Saddam and co-defendants is focusing on grisly crimes that occurred the year before Rumsfeld gripped his hand. "The first witness, Ahmad Hassan Muhammad, 38, riveted the courtroom with the scenes of torture he witnessed after his arrest in 1982, including a meat grinder with human hair and blood under it," the New York Times reported Tuesday. And: "At one point, Mr. Muhammad briefly broke down in tears as he recalled how his brother was tortured with electrical shocks in front of their 77-year-old father."
The victims were Shiites - 143 men and adolescent boys, according to the charges - tortured and killed in the Iraqi town of Dujail after an assassination attempt against Saddam in early July of 1982. Donald Rumsfeld became the Reagan administration's Middle East special envoy 15 months later.
On December 20, 1983, the Washington Post reported that Rumsfeld "visited Iraq in what US officials said was an attempt to bolster the already improving US relations with that country." A couple of days later, the New York Times cited a "senior American official" who "said that the United States remained ready to establish full diplomatic relations with Iraq and that it was up to the Iraqis."
On March 29, 1984, the Times reported: "American diplomats pronounce themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the United States and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name." Washington had some goodies for Saddam's regime, the Times account noted, including "agricultural-commodity credits totaling $840 million." And while "no results of the talks have been announced" after the Rumsfeld visit to Baghdad three months earlier, "Western European diplomats assume that the United States now exchanges some intelligence on Iran with Iraq."
A few months later, on July 17, 1984, a Times article with a Baghdad dateline sketchily filled in a bit more information, saying that the US government "granted Iraq about $2 billion in commodity credits to buy food over the last two years." The story recalled that "Donald Rumsfeld, the former Middle East special envoy, held two private meetings with the Iraqi president here," and the dispatch mentioned in passing that "State Department human rights reports have been uniformly critical of the Iraqi President, contending that he ran a police state."
So Rummy was cozying up to Saddam at the same time that the U.S. government was telling him that Iraq was a brutal police state. So much for the argument that he didn't know what was going on.
Full diplomatic relations between Washington and Baghdad were restored 11 months after Rumsfeld's December 1983 visit with Saddam. He went on to use poison gas later in the decade, actions which scarcely harmed relations with the Reagan administration.
As the most senior US official to visit Iraq in six years, Rumsfeld had served as Reagan's point man for warming relations with Saddam. In 1984, the administration engineered the sale to Baghdad of 45 ostensibly civilian-use Bell 214ST helicopters. Saddam's military found them quite useful for attacking Kurdish civilians with poison gas in 1988, according to US intelligence sources. "In response to the gassing," journalist Jeremy Scahill has pointed out, "sweeping sanctions were unanimously passed by the US Senate that would have denied Iraq access to most US technology. The measure was killed by the White House."
The USA's big media institutions did little to illuminate how Washington and business interests combined to strengthen and arm Saddam Hussein during many of his worst crimes. "In the 1980s and afterward, the United States underwrote 24 American corporations so they could sell to Saddam Hussein weapons of mass destruction, which he used against Iran, at that time the prime Middle Eastern enemy of the United States," writes Ben Bagdikian, a former assistant managing editor of the Washington Post, in his book The New Media Monopoly. "Hussein used US-supplied poison gas" against Iranians and Kurds "while the United States looked the other way."
Of course the crimes of the Saddam Hussein regime were not just in the future when Rumsfeld came bearing gifts in 1983. Saddam's large-scale atrocities had been going on for a long time. Among them were the methodical torture and murders in Dujail that have been front-paged this week in coverage of the former dictator's trial; they occurred 17 months before Rumsfeld arrived in Baghdad.
Today, inside the corporate media frame, history can be supremely relevant when it focuses on Hussein's torture and genocide. But the historic assistance of the US government and American firms is largely off the subject and beside the point.
A photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand on December 20, 1983, is easily available. (It takes a few seconds to find via Google.) But the picture has been notably absent from the array of historic images that US media outlets are providing to viewers and readers in coverage of the Saddam Hussein trial. And journalistic mention of Rumsfeld's key role in aiding the Iraqi tyrant has been similarly absent. Apparently, in the world according to US mass media, some history matters profoundly and some doesn't matter at all.
This concluding sentence really sums it all up. Why bother discussing history at all if we're going to just cherry-pick the facts we want? And without a fundamental change in the way the U.S. does things, how can we be sure that Saddam's replacement will be any better? It's ironic, isn't it? We're trusting Rummy, the same person who helped keep Saddam in power (while he committed terrible atrocities) to create a democratic government in Iraq!
Russia kidnapped U.S. citizen!
Wow! This is amazing news!
Yesterday it was discovered that the Russian government recently kidnapped David Johnson, an American citizen, and flew him to Cuba where he was held in a prison for five months and tortured. Johnson was brought back to the U.S. when it was discovered that his arrest was actually due to confusion with someone with a similar name. Olga Rizonivich, the head of Russia's Department of State, recently visited the U.S. where she was questioned by reporters about how such a mistake could be made. Olga insisted that such actions were necessary in this new era of international terrorism and assured everyone that "we were all in this together." David Johnson's family could not be reached for comment.
Towards a more balanced reaction
A recent discussion with Glen over at Nashville Truth has gotten me thinking about the recent debate over America's use of torture and secret kidnappings. One common conservative meme I keep running across is that extreme actions are all justified by the extreme evil of the enemy. Conservatives frequently imagine a good-intentioned young American soldier somewhere dealing with an evil terrorist hell-bent on blowing up the civilized world, and the soldier being constrained by softy liberals who have no stomach for the realities of war.
There are some fundamental problems with this meme. I won't debate that evil people exist, or that war involves some unavoidable degree of moral ambiguity. But the fact remains that democratic civilized societies always strive to maintain a balance between the degree of threat and the willingness to give up freedoms to deal with the threat. Despite all the rhetoric, terrorism is NOT a significant threat to our lives right now. Terrorism is inherently a tactic of the weak. People who control the U.S. government, on the other hand, have real power. I see no reason why someone would want to give these people, or the CIA, a free hand to do as they wish without public oversight. In addition to terrorists, Americans working for the government are always a threat. Why should we always assume that these people can be trusted?
I've mentioned this before, but the Iraqi who is in the famous picture with a hood on and electrodes attached was arrested for being at a political rally and on suspicion that he may have stolen a car. Yet someone somewhere decided to torture this man. (He was even tortured in other ways before the photo was taken.) There's little chance that he was a terrorist but I can almost guarantee that his family is now sympathetic with those who kill U.S. troops. So balance is required. I suggest that we be very careful about handing over the keys to power.
Off the deep end
A tragic flood this morning destroyed the personal library of President George W. Bush. The flood began in the presidential bathroom where both of the books were kept. According to on-the-scene reporters, both of his books have been irretrievably damaged. A presidential spokesman said the president was devastated, as he had almost finished coloring the second one. The White House tried to call FEMA but there was no answer.
This would almost be funny if it didn't hit so close to home.
Doubted for why he would fight
A Pakistani English textbook has been withdrawn. The book contains a poem praising the virtues of an unnamed political leader, but it just so happens that the lines contain an acrostic that spells out President George W. Bush. Musharraf's critics have criticized it, saying that this proves the Pakistani regime is a U.S. puppet. Some lines from this great work:
Bracing for war, yet praying for peace
Using his power so evil will cease.
Going forward and knowing he's right
Even when doubted for why he would fight
Easy in manner, solid as steel
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real.
Personally, I doubt for why this would be included in an English textbook.
What's happening out West
Talk about a tale of the bizarre. Spokane Mayor James E. West is being tossed out of office this month after voters recalled him in a special election. He allegedly used a city computer to woo gay men over gay chatrooms. West, a former Boy Scout executive and sheriff's deputy, was elected mayor in 2003. He had served more than two decades as a conservative Republican in the state Legislature, where he voted against gay-friendly bills.
As hypocritical as all of this sounds, I must say that I find it strange that people would actually kick this fellow out of office in the middle of his term. How many of us can honestly say we haven't used a work computer for personal correspondance at some point in our lives? People in the U.S. need to heed the Biblical warning and not toss too many rocks unless they themselves are free of vice. This sentiment is frequently expressed in other religions too. Buddhists, for example, are always advised to concern themselves with their own ignorance and delusion instead of self-righteously attacking the shortcomings of others. In the current era of corruption, when we have people like the Republicon Cunningham in Congress taking massive bribes (2.4 million!) from defense contractors, we should be patient enough to wait a year or two to kick people like West out of office.
Bush: Truly a uniter, not a divider
It's so rare for the country to have a president with such a knack for uniting the country--against him! With this thought in mind, I quote an excerpt from a post by The Left Coaster:
Historians are starting to believe that Bush will prove capable of outdoing James Buchanan as America's worst.president.ever.
[James Buchanan] was the guy who in 1861 passed on the mess to the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. Buchanan set the standard, a tough record to beat. But there are serious people who believe that George W. Bush will prove to do that, be worse than Buchanan. I have talked with three significant historians in the past few months who would not say it in public, but who are saying privately that Bush will be remembered as the worst of the presidents.
Out of 415 historians polled by the History News Network, 388 believe Bush is failing, 77 thought he was succeeding, and a total of 50 felt that he was clearly in the lead for worse president ever. Even conservative historians are impressed with his ability to screw up. Here's the criteria that is brought up by historians as why Bush is so high in these rankings:
He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;
He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;
He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;
He has repeatedly "misled," to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;
He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign (Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);
He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;
He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;
He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.
Two centuries later . . .
All those who applaud Shrub's attempts to throw open every wild area to fly-by-night mining operations should consider a recent study reported in the November 17th issue of Environmental Science & Technology. The study found that the mercury used by gold miners from 1850 to 1900 is still leeching into SF Bay, ultimately finding its way into fish and airborne mercury concentrations. The good news (if it can be called that) is that the bay is getting cleaner and if taken care of, might reach a new equilibrium in about 50 years.
Why is our government hiding information?
We recently learned that the CIA has, on numerous occasions, kidnapped innocent people in foreign countries and then has moved them to other countries where it held them secretly. For example, there's the case discussed in a recent BBC news article:
The CIA kidnapped him [Khaled Masri] in Macedonia on Dec 31 2003, and flew him to Afghanistan, where he spent five months in appalling conditions. After realising its mistake, the administration debated whether to inform "the Germans" of the blunder, eventually dispatching the US ambassador to Germany, Daniel Coats, to tell the government, the paper said.
The kidnapping of innocent foreigners is bad enough. But then the CIA and U.S. government did everything they could to prevent both the German and U.S. public from learning about this. So the burning question I have for all of you who pretend to believe in Democratic government is how in the hell the U.S. government can justify not telling us?
Think about this for a moment. The person taken was found to be completely innocent. So any information about him isn't a secret. So the only justification for keeping this whole episode a secret is that there was a mistake (or perhaps, that it was illegal). Since when is the government allowed to prevent public access to information solely on the grounds that the information is embarrassing? This is complete nonsense! If certain people in the government (e.g., Bush) or if entire government institutions (e.g., the CIA) make a regular practice of unnecessarily hiding information from the public, we need to get rid of these people and these institutions. They don't belong in a Democratic society.
Posted by Karlo at 1:35 pm 11 comments
Who's leading? Who's being mis-led?
I keep thinking that Shrub is going to tell the truth about something at some point just to keep us off guard, but I may be mistaken. Think Progress had the following on one of those gaping holes in the latest propaganda blitz:
Yesterday, President Bush claimed that Iraqi security forces "primarily led" the assault on the city of Tal Afar. Bush highlighted it as an "especially clear" sign of the progress Iraq security forces were making in Iraq.
The progress of the Iraqi forces is especially clear when the recent anti-terrorist operations in Tal Afar are compared with last year's assault in Fallujah. In Fallujah, the assault was led by nine coalition battalions made up primarily of United States Marines and Army — with six Iraqi battalions supporting them…This year in Tal Afar, it was a very different story. The assault was primarily led by Iraqi security forces — 11 Iraqi battalions, backed by five coalition battalions providing support.
TIME Magazine reporter Michael Ware, who is embedded with the U.S. troops in Iraq who participated in the Tal Afar battle, appeared on Anderson Cooper yesterday. He said Bush's description was completely untrue:
I was in that battle from the very beginning to the very end. I was with Iraqi units right there on the front line as they were battling with al Qaeda. They were not leading. They were being led by the U.S. green beret special forces with them.
Video Clip: (Quicktime Streaming)
Outlaw Christmas? How American!
I'm a bit of a scrooge when it comes to Christmas. I've even been known to take off on a winter hike rather than face the yuletide clamor. Don't get me wrong--families and friends finding an excuse to get together is great, but all this pressure to buy, buy, buy, buy gets old fast. So I was pleased to come across this interesting piece of historical trivia from The History News Channel (via Corrente):
The pilgrims, English separatists that came to America in 1620, were even more orthodox in their Puritan beliefs than Cromwell. As a result, Christmas was not a holiday in early America. From 1659 to 1681, the celebration of Christmas was actually outlawed in Boston. … After the American Revolution, English customs fell out of favor, including Christmas. In fact, Congress was in session on December 25, 1789, the first Christmas under America's new constitution. Christmas wasn't declared a federal holiday until June 26, 1870.
Squirrels kill dog!
The next time you decide to go out into the woods and toss rocks at squirrels, you might want to consider this story:
Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report. Passers-by were too late to stop the attack by the black squirrels in a village in the far east, which reportedly lasted about a minute.
I don't blame them. Who'd want to get in the middle of a full-on squirrel assault.
They are said to have scampered off at the sight of humans, some carrying pieces of flesh. A pine cone shortage may have led the squirrels to seek other food sources, although scientists are sceptical. The attack was reported in parkland in the centre of Lazo, a village in the Maritime Territory, and was witnessed by three local people. A "big" stray dog was nosing about the trees and barking at squirrels hiding in branches overhead when a number of them suddenly descended and attacked, reports say.
"They literally gutted the dog," local journalist Anastasia Trubitsina told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. "When they saw the men, they scattered in different directions, taking pieces of their kill away with them."
See what capitalism does to a nation? A few years and Chip and Dale are tearing up Lassie.
Mikhail Tiyunov, a scientist in the region, said it was the first he had ever heard of such an attack. While squirrels without sources of protein might attack birds' nests, he said, the idea of them chewing a dog to death was "absurd". "If it really happened, things must be pretty bad in our forests," he added.
Hopefully the experimental rats in U.S. laboratories (especially the genetically enhanced ones) won't get any ideas from this story. There's only so much room up here at the top of the food chain.
Komosmolskaya Pravda notes that in a previous incident this autumn chipmunks terrorised cats in a part of the territory. A Lazo man who called himself only Mikhalich said there had been "no pine cones at all" in the local forests this year. "The little beasts are agitated because they have nothing to eat," he added.
Ten dead
Days after hearing how the suicide bombings are quieting down, we hear this grim news:
A roadside bomb killed 10 Marines and wounded 11 others on a foot patrol near Fallujah, the U.S. military said Friday. It was the deadliest attack against American troops in four months.
America's bringin' democracy to the Middle East?
Hmmmmm. I wonder what's happening in that Middle Eastern nation that has traditionally been the second greatest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel. (Egypt has received 50 Billion U.S. dollars in the last 3 decades.) After 30 years of America's friendly hand, I'm sure Democracy must have taken wing. So with elections being held, let's take a look and see how effective the U.S. has been in promoting democracy in this country . . .
. . . police interference has intensified in the later rounds, after the Brotherhood scored unexpectedly large gains, increasing its representation in parliament more than fivefold.
You have to hand it to the Egyptians. Not only do they import democracy but they improve on it. Now, the government even sends police to help the people not vote for the wrong party. (We need to send these people some Diebold voting machines.)
In some towns, such as the Delta city of Zagazig, where a Brotherhood candidate was favored, voting proceeded without violence or intimidation. But in several constituencies, The Associated Press saw that voters had been barred.
In Balteem, supporters of the Nasserite candidate Hamdeen Sabahi began pushing and shoving riot police who blocked them from the polling station. The police tried to disperse the crowd with night sticks and tear gas, but voters responded by hurling stones, el-Ashqar said. Finally, the police fired into the crowd, killing el-Zeftawi.
Damn insurgents, trying to infiltrate a polling station. We need to send the Egyptian military more money so they can guard against these unruly voters trying to vote.
Earlier Thursday, the Interior Ministry accused the Brotherhood of inciting violence and attacking judges in polling stations. It said heightened security measures were taken to prevent Brotherhood supporters from "terrorizing" voters for other candidates.
Hundreds of people lined up in front of a school used as a polling station in Sandoub, 75 miles north of Cairo - the hometown of Brotherhood candidate Saber Zakher - but they were prevented from approaching by lines of riot police, armed with sticks, rifles and tear gas.
A police lieutenant said "I don't know" when asked why both polling stations in the village had been cordoned off. An AP reporter was barred from entering to ask the judges in the polling stations.
So 30 years and 50 billion in aid pays for cordoned off polling stations. So how about those countries without America's moral guidance? If we look over at Iran, we have a country that has had U.S. sanctions instead of aid, yet in spite of considerable flaws in its electoral system, it's more democratic than virtually every state in the region.
And we're supposed to believe that the U.S. is seriously trying to bring democracy to Iraq? The U.S. has failed to do so in Egypt. And in Kuwait, the U.S. restored the monarchy. What makes people think Iraq, with its Chalabis and Allawis, will be any different?
Summer ski trips to Europe, anyone?
If this turns out to be something other than a temporary anomoly, it could be the news of the century. To see why, look at where Northern Europe sits on a globe. Then look at the areas that lie at the same latitude in North America:
The Atlantic Conveyor, a life-giving ocean current that keeps northern Europe warm, is slowing down, scientists said on Wednesday.
If the 30 percent slowdown seen over the past 12 years is not just a blip, temperatures in northern Europe could drop significantly, despite global warming, they added.
Scientists have long forecast that the Atlantic Conveyor that carries warm surface water north and cold deep water back to the equator could break down because of global warming.
Do as we say, not as we do.
It's always fascinating to hear where our tax dollars are going. According to a recent FT article, the U.S. is secretly paying the Iraqi press to run favourable stories about the U.S. mission in Iraq. The articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor. Many of these articles are then presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The entire operation has been designed to mask any connection with the U.S. military.
We learn this as the State Department is training Iraqi reporters in basic journalism skills and Western media ethics, including one workshop titled "The Role of Press in a Democratic Society." In fact, Rumsfeld, that tireless protector of democracy and freedom, recently cited the proliferation of news organizations in Iraq as one of the country's great successes since the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
To the defense establishment's credit, some notice the glaring hypocrisy. A senior Pentagon official, commenting on the practice, point out:
"Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we're breaking all the first principles of democracy when we're doing it."
New Orleans offers free wireless
This is exciting news:
To help boost its stalled economy, hurricane-ravaged New Orleans is offering the nation's first free wireless Internet network owned and run by a major city.
It ain't cool to be cruel
Hiram Hover has a hilarious post on one of those poor abused conservatives on a college campus. Perhaps with a few more cream pies tossed in the faces of our foes (or a few more Xs over their visage on TV) we'll be able to take this country over.
Classical 80s nerd
I just took the Nerd/Geek/Dork test. Fortunately, my nerdiness still dominates my dorkiness.
Tri-Lamb Material
69 % Nerd, 17% Geek, 60% Dork
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd and Dork, earning you the coveted title of: Tri-Lamb Material.
The classic, "80's" nerd, you are what most people think of when they think "nerd," largely due to 80's movies like Revenge of the Nerds and TV shows like Head of the Class. You're exceptionally bright and smart, and partly because of that have never quite fit in with your peers or social groups. Perhaps you're realized, or will someday, that it is possible to retain all of the things that you like about being brilliant and still make peace with the social cliques around you. Or maybe you won't--it's really not necessary. As the brothers of Lambda Lambda Lambda discovered, you're fine just the way you are and can take pride in that. I mean, who wants to be like Ogre, right!?
X-rated comments? Again?
The internets are abuzz with condemnation of the X that appeared over Cheney's face as he was addressing the nation. Personally, I don't see what all the hullabaloo is about. It's obvious as can be that CNN was simply trying to follow the law. Taking into account Cheney's penchant for shouting lewd remarks in public, the network was trying its darn best to comply with the stricter laws that have been passed regarding decency on TV. It's a relief to know that CNN execs are on the ball and will flash a rating as soon as the political discourse starts to get raunchy. That way we can tell our young school-aged children to run into the other room before Dick's four-letter lexicon appears. Evidently, it was a pretty good night for CNN. (At least they didn't have to flash the triple-X rating). But I still can't figure out why they don't just put these people on late at night after the kids are all in bed.
Tags: News and politics, Current Affairs, Television
Holographic disks
The technological leaps in computer technology are truly amazing. Holographic disks are aparently just a year away from commercial production:
InPhase Technologies, based in Colorado, has developed a commercially viable version of a holographic disc which can hold 300 gigabytes of data and can be used to read and write data 10 times faster than a normal DVD.
Stay to support our ally, you say?
When Your Ostensible Ally Says That Blowing Up Your Troops Shouldn't Be Called Terrorism, It's Time to Head Home by Dave Lindorff
If anything should have Americans of all political stripes calling for an immediate return of all US troops from Iraq, it would be the Iraqi summit conference in Egypt earlier this week, hosted by Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak, at which it was decided that attacking and blowing up US, British and other occupation troops should not be called "terrorism," but rather "acts of resistance."
That's pretty shocking, wouldn't you say?
And yet, there has been nothing but silence from the right-wing yak shows, little in the mainstream media, and nothing from the White House.
And how about the "support our troops" crowd? So far, not a word.
And what about the "noble mission" for which over 2100 American soldiers have so far died--the one Bush keeps citing as a reason to keep on sending more soldiers over to die?
Turns out our troops aren't being killed by terrorists, as President Bush and Vice President Cheney have been saying, but by noble Iraqi resistance fighters. Take it from the Iraqi leaders who we have installed as Iraq's puppet government.
According to them, it's only terrorism if you blow up other Iraqi citizens. Blowing up Americans or Brits is okay. It's even patriotic, apparently.
Man, if I was an American soldier in Iraq right now, I'd be ready to pack it up. I mean, doing your duty is understandable to a point, but this is getting ridiculous.
What I want to know is, where's the outrage?
I want to hear now from some of the parents of active-duty troops in Iraq who were trashing Cindy Sheehan for saying not one more mother's son should die in Iraq, now that they know how much the Iraqis want their sons and daughters over there.
Don't follow misleaders, watch your parking meters
Check out the latest Slate article (the Misleaders) that chronicles the long list of lies leading up to Shrub's War. (Hat-tip to ISOU.)
Hypocrisy on High
I saw this post at Redwood Dragon. My own additions are in red:
Via Balkinization, an important story from ABC News: the details of the interrogation techniques the Bush Administration does not consider torture, describing them instead as "enhanced interrogation techniques":
1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him. (Perhaps someone can try this one out on Bush during the next press conference.)
2. The Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear. (Hmm. The UN defines torture as: "an act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person" to gain a confession, etc.)
3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions. (The Answers.com definition of torture: "Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion." Are we to believe that these 40 hour standing marathons aren't coerced.)
5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.
6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
Number 6 is especially violent: "According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess." As a human rights activist said, this amounts to a mock execution.
So I have a question for President Bush, and even more so for Vice President Cheney: if this is not, as you insist, torture, is it then OK for the enemy to subject American POWs to the same six techniques? If not, why not? (Because these people are busy fullfilling America's Manifest Destiny! How dare you weak-willed liberal imply that America need to base its actions on principles! America's righteousness is axiomatic!)
Of course, as Larry Beinhart points out (via Body and Soul), what's sauce for Al Qaeda is definitely not sauce for Americans: On Sunday, March 23, 2003, captured US pilots were shown on Iraqi TV. They didn't have hoods over the heads. They were completely dressed. None of them wore leashes. Neither then, nor afterward, were they threatened with sodomy.
American reaction was instantaneous.
Donald Rumsfeld got on CBS and said to the world, "The Geneva Convention indicates that it's not permitted to photograph and embarrass or humiliate prisoners of war. And if they do happen to be American or coalition ground forces that have been captured, the Geneva Convention indicates how they should be treated."
President George. W Bush, in a press conference said, "I expect them to be treated, the POWs I expect to be treated humanely. And -- just like we're treating the prisoners that we have captured humanely. If not, the people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals."
From this, we at least know that the president and the secretary of defense know what the Geneva Conventions are. Indeed, Mr. Rumsfeld seems to have a very fine appreciation of the niceties and the details, an understanding that even embarrassment and humiliation are wrong, even in such a seemingly innocuous way as photographing them. Both the president and the secretary expected the rules to be observed. In the spirit and in the letter. The president clearly understood that people who violate the Geneva Conventions could be tried for war crimes and was announcing his intention to do exactly that.Although, at the moment that they made those statements, they were running a war in the country next door and they had decided that over there the Geneva Conventions did not apply.
So tell me why Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and various of their minions shouldn't have to go in fear of the Hague for the rest of their lives? They make me ashamed to be an American.
Shrub's visit to Korea
The U.S. media's telling us that Shrub's Asian visit met the exceedingly low expectations that preceded it. My Korean friends says that the visit was met with massive anti-American protests in South Korea. Judging from the lack of such coverage in the Western press, no Western reporters based in Seoul ventured outside of the bars.
Dirty Bomb Suspect Jose Padilla Indicted
Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who was kidnapped by U.S. government personnel while in the U.S. and then held on a Navy brig without trial or representation for more than three years, has now been charged with being part of a North American terror cell that sent money and recruits overseas to "murder, maim and kidnap." Somehow absent from the indictment were the sensational allegations made earlier by top Justice Department officials: that Padilla sought to blow up U.S. hotels and apartment buildings and planned an attack on America with a "dirty bomb."
How the government's kidnapping of a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil is deemed legal according to the Constitution is completely beyond me. I always thought that quaint statement about citizens having a right to a trial by their peers meant something. Evidently such rights can all be nullified by means of a circular argument claiming that the kidnapee is simply too evil to be considered a U.S. citizen.
Are we recreating the two-tiered justice system--one for brown people and another for suburban whites? We have the case of John Walker Lyndh who was arrested in Afghanistan fighting with the Taliban. The government evidently felt that he had a right to a trial. (As do serial killers and cannibals). But not Padilla? I don't get it. Someone help me out here. Is my copy of the Constitution missing a footnote or something? This is the way my copy reads:
U.S. Constitution: Article III
And from the Sixth Amendment
Can one of you rightwing wiz-kid sacred protectors of the Constitution explain to me how in the hell Padilla's criminal prosecution somehow doesn't fit within the scope of "all"?
Other blogments about the Padilla case can be found on Scott's Shots, Room 88, and I'm Waiting for the Robot Invasion.
Tags: News and politics, Current Affairs, and War.
Ray McGovern on the cooked intel
Ray McGovern, a former high-ranking CIA agent, recently appeared on C-Span and discussed the cooked intel leading up to the war. Anyone buying into Cheney's assertion that Shrub's War was justified should watch this (available at this site, third link down).
Was Bush mis-elected?
Having just watched Bush's Brain (the documentary on Karl Rove), little can surprise me anymore about the Shrub Misadministration's dirty tricks. In particular, Rove's use of friends within the FBI to carry out political assassinations is quite chilling.
So any more, the idea of a fixed election in 2004 strikes me as completely plausible. After all, if it were at all possible, Bush and Rove would be precisely the people who would try it. Along these lines, Where We're Bound recently linked to a GAO report. The report is discussed elsewhere, inlcuding in the ever-reliable Consortium News. The findings are startling to say the least:
The GAO report confirms that:
Some electronic voting machines "did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected." In other words, the GAO now confirms that electronic voting machines provided an open door to flip an entire vote count. More than 800,000 votes were cast in Ohio on electronic voting machines, some seven times Bush's official margin of victory. "It was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate." Numerous sworn statements and affidavits assert that this did happen in Ohio 2004.
"Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level."
Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards can easily be done, according to the GAO.
The GAO also confirms that access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network. This critical finding confirms that rigging the 2004 vote did not require a "widespread conspiracy" but rather the cooperation of a very small number of operatives with the power to tap into the networked machines and thus change large numbers of votes at will. With 800,000 votes cast on electronic machines in Ohio, flipping the number needed to give Bush 118,775 could be easily done by just one programmer. Access to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords. So even relatively amateur hackers could have gained access to and altered the Ohio vote tallies.
The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy, meaning, again, getting into the system was an easy matter.
One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail, re-emphasizing the fragility of the system on which the Presidency of the United States was decided.
GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel, confirming still more easy access to the system. In essence, the GAO study makes it clear that no bank, grocery store or mom & pop chop shop would dare operate its business on a computer system as flimsy, fragile and easily manipulated as the one on which the 2004 election turned.
The GAO findings are particularly damning when set in the context of an election run in Ohio by a Secretary of State simultaneously working as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. Far from what election theft skeptics have long asserted, the GAO findings confirm that the electronic network on which 800,000 Ohio votes were cast was vulnerable enough to allow a a tiny handful of operatives -- or less -- to turn the whole vote count using personal computers operating on relatively simple software. The GAO documentation flows alongside other crucial realities surrounding the 2004 vote count.
The exit polls showed Kerry winning in Ohio, until an unexplained last minute shift gave the election to Bush. Similar definitive shifts also occurred in Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico, a virtual statistical impossibility.
A few weeks prior to the election, an unauthorized former ES&S voting machine company employee, was caught on the ballot-making machine in Auglaize County
Election officials in Mahoning County now concede that at least 18 machines visibly transferred votes for Kerry to Bush. Voters who pushed Kerry's name saw Bush's name light up, again and again, all day long. Officials claim the problems were quickly solved, but sworn statements and affidavits say otherwise. They confirm similar problems in Franklin County (Columbus). Kerry's margins in both counties were suspiciously low.
A voting machine in Mahoning County recorded a negative 25 million votes for Kerry. The problem was allegedly fixed.
In Gahanna Ward 1B, at a fundamentalist church, a so-called "electronic transfer glitch" gave Bush nearly 4000 extra votes when only 638 people voted at that polling place. The tally was allegedly corrected, but remains infamous as the "loaves and fishes" vote count.
In Franklin County, dozens of voters swore under oath that their vote for Kerry faded away on the DRE without a paper trail.
In Miami County, at 1:43am after Election Day, with the county's central tabulator reporting 100% of the vote - 19,000 more votes mysteriously arrived; 13,000 were for Bush at the same percentage as prior to the additional votes, a virtual statistical impossibility.
In Cleveland, large, entirely implausible vote totals turned up for obscure third party candidates in traditional Democratic African-American wards. Vote counts in neighboring wards showed virtually no votes for those candidates, with 90% going instead for Kerry.
Prior to one of Blackwell's illegitimate "show recounts," technicians from Triad voting machine company showed up unannounced at the Hocking County Board of Elections and removed the computer hard drive.
In response to official information requests, Shelby and other counties admit to having discarded key records and equipment before any recount could take place.
In a conference call with Rev. Jackson, Attorney Cliff Arnebeck, Attorney Bob Fitrakis and others, John Kerry confirmed that he lost every precinct in New Mexico that had a touchscreen voting machine. The losses had no correlation with ethnicity, social class or traditional party affiliation---only with the fact that touchscreen machines were used.
In a public letter, Rep. Conyers has stated that "by and large, when it comes to a voting machine, the average voter is getting a lemon - the Ford Pinto of voting technology. We must demand better." But the GAO report now confirms that electronic voting machines as deployed in 2004 were in fact perfectly engineered to allow a very small number of partisans with minimal computer skills and equipment to shift enough votes to put George W. Bush back in the White House.
Personally, I find the statistical discrepancies particularly odd. Having studied statistics, I know that the chance of large bodies of data running completely against statistical probabilities for no apparent reason is virtually impossible. (In a technical sense of course, it's always "possible" but so is someone's statistical ability to walk through a brick wall according to quantum physics.)
Worst album covers
On Tangled Up in Blue, John has a hilarious post on the worst album covers ever.
A suicide bomber detonated his car in a crowd of Shiite mourners north of Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 36 people and raising the death toll in two days of attacks against Shiites to more than 120. Five American soldiers died in roadside bombings.
And we're supposed to believe that things are improving in Iraq?
Sympathy for the devils
About a week back, I remember running across something (via PSOTD) complaining about the French police picking up bloggers who were publicly calling for people to take to the streets and kill police. This sort of uncritical sympathy for the underdogs (with emphasis on the dogs) is an example of the bone-headed analysis haunting much of liberal politics. There are countless people in the world who are innocent and oppressed--countless people worthy and deserving of our sympathy, yet some people choose to defend someone calling for the murder of the police!
The left, when it chooses to support a cause (and particularly when it elevates such a cause to a cause célèbre) should ensure that the object of its righteous concern is fully worthy of support. We should never make the mistake (which is a hallmark of the right) of thinking that the enemy of our enemy is our friend.
Wal-Mart Diagnosis
I like to give the management at Walmart a bad time. But I must say I was impressed by this new technology they're introducing to their stores:
One day, in line at a company cafeteria, Joe said to Stan behind him, "My elbow hurts. I guess I better see a doctor."
"Listen, you don't have to spend that kind of money," Stan replied. "There's a diagnostic computer down at Wal-Mart. Just give it a urine sample and the computer will tell you what's wrong and what to do about it. It takes ten seconds and costs ten dollars... a lot cheaper than a doctor."
So Joe put a urine sample in a small jar and took it to Wal-Mart. He deposited ten dollars, and the computer lit up and asked for the urine sample. He poured the sample into the slot and waited. Ten seconds later, the computer printed out the following message: You have tennis elbow. Soak it in warm water and avoid heavy activity. It will improve in two weeks. Thank you for shopping @ Wal-Mart.
That afternoon, while thinking how amazing this new technology was, Joe began wondering if the computer could be fooled. So when he got home, he mixed some tap water, a stool sample from his dog, urine samplesfrom his wife and daughter and his own sperm sample for good measure, and hurried to Wal-Mart, eager to check the results. He deposited ten dollars, poured in his concoction, and awaited the results.
The computer lit up, and ten seconds later printed the following:
1. Your tap water is too hard. Get a water softener kit. (Aisle 9)
2. Your dog has ringworm. Bathe him with anti-fungal shampoo. (Aisle7)
3. Your daughter has a cocaine habit. Get her into rehab.
4. Your wife is pregnant, twins. They aren't yours. Get a lawyer.
5. If you don't stop playing with yourself, your elbow will never get better.
Thank you for shopping @ Wal-Mart
X does not equal X
The convoluted logic of recent political squabbling between the Democrits and Republicons is producing even more grist for the comedic mills of late-night television. We, the Sheeple, are supposed to seriously ponder whether it was Shrub who misled or the Dems who misfollowed.
The fracas over torture is equally bizzare. When we find out (over and over) that torture is common practice among both the U.S. troops and the Shiites they've installed in power, we're told to turn a blind eye. When U.S forces engage in this sort of thing, after all, it really isn't torture. (And then with a wink), even if it were, we're surely torturing people for a good purpose--to maintain order in a country ready to fall into civil war. (Wait a minute . . . Isn't this the same reason that Saddam was using torture?)
It's taken two and a half millennia but the Orwellian forces of spin and obfuscation have finally overturned Aristotle's basic rule of logic--the idea that something is identical to itself. In the current version of NewSpeak, torture isn't torture and leaders can somehow all escape guilt by blaming each other. Within this verbal and conceptual morass, the sheeple can hardly be blamed if they feel misenfranchised.
Counter-attack dog mode
Bush is now moving into a cornered dog's counter-attack mode:
"They spoke the truth then and they're speaking politics now," Bush charged. Bush went on the attack after Democrats accused the president of manipulating and withholding some pre-war intelligence and misleading Americans about the rationale for war. "Some Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force are now rewriting the past," Bush said. "They're playing politics with this issue and they are sending mixed signals to our troops and the enemy. That is irresponsible."
The problem with this, is it's true. When Shrub was calling for war using intel that we all knew was bogus, and when we on the left were protesting in the streets against this war--full knowing that it was an idiotic idea, the Dems were following behind the "war" president like a bunch of well-trained puppies. So we're now left with a choice between the Republicons (the party of bad schemes) and the Dems (the party that has decided to tag along for the ride and see how things turn out before making a decision.) But ultimately the power rests with We the People. And the people who created this mess through deception should have to face us and tell us the truth. (The calls for Blair's impeachment--essentially for the high crime of following Shrub--should inspire us to put our house in order.) To Shrub's recent ranting, all I can say is "Yes, we realize the Dems are idiots. But the reason we think they're idiots is because they sided with you."
Posted by Karlo at 12:14 am 11 comments
Hadley: The latest laughing-stock
Stephen Hadley, Shrub's National Security Advisor, now says that while "we were wrong," there was no attempt to manipulate intelligence going into Shrub's War. This must be getting hard to say with a straight face. There is, at this point, an entire army of ex-CIA types, diplomats, and top military brass who were directly involved with the war who say that Hadley's statement holds about as much water as Shrub's shot glass. If there's anyone out there who has been lost in the Alaskan wilderness for the last 3 or 4 years and hasn't had to listen to expert after expert, and read document after document, attesting to Shrub's lies leading up to war, I'd suggest that they get the documentary Uncovered: The War on Iraq. And then try to explain how we lefties somehow managed to convince virtually everyone who was in a place to know anything about the lead up to the war (people who are probably 99% Republican conservatives) to "lie" about the lead-up to the war and repeat our "vicious unpatriotic Islamo-fascist-commie propaganda." You can't figure it out can you? We actually hypnotized them with our demonic lefty-ray. (The whole plot can be "uncovered" if you look at some old episodes of Get Smart.) Waa-haa-haaaaa.
The (cough cough) Beijing Games
The 2008 Chinese Olympics is set to break a record--it will be the most polluted Games in history! This hardly surprises me. I've been to Beijing several times, and everytime have contracted an odd cold that persisted until I left the city. I'm convinced now that it was simply a reaction to the pollution. And this was years ago, prior to China's current love affair with the automobile.
There's no denying that China, through rapid industrialization, has achieved an economic miracle of sorts or that capitalist economies have successfully created massive amounts of small plastic trinkets and gizmos to fill Walmart stores. But there appears to be something out of kilter about the current system--it seems to be inherently antithetical to long-term, rational thinking about the impact of externalities such as pollution. Since we know how to switch to alternative energy sources, I can't understand why we don't. I fully realize that wind and other alternative energy sources are currently more expensive (in other words, require more human man-hours to produce), but who cares. There are probably a billion or so people on the planet who are unemployed or under-employed. So why not create the infrastructure now. A massive building project focused on alternative sources could effect a huge transfer of wealth from oil-rich regions and the small groups that monopolize these resources to the large numbers of hard-working people who would create and maintain alternative sources of energy.
For anyone who thinks such concerns are overblown, check out the following stat. Experts estimate that "improving air quality in 210 medium and large cities across China from "polluted" to "good" levels could save 178,000 lives a year" (Mercury News). About 300,000 Chinese citizens are thought to die annually from outdoor pollution.
The Australian has a good article on the Games and Beijing's pollution.
Tags: Energy, Environment, Health, East Asia.
Labels: China
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3/19 6:43 P.M. UPDATE: A woman is facing multiple charges for her part in a crash that sent four people to the hospital.
Police say Carrie Oliver, 39, was driving drunk when she drove through a red light and turned into a pick up truck.
That pick up truck t-boned another car. The trailer the truck was pulling unhitched and slide into a motocyclist.
Four people, including Oliver, were transported to two different hospitals.
Blood tests showed Oliver's BAC was .218. That's nearly triple the legal limit.
Oliver was taken to the Jackson County Jail after being released from the hospital.
She's facing DUII, reckless driving, reckless endangering of a person, and assault in the third degree charges.
3/18 9:16 p.m. UPDATE: Oregon 62/140 intersection: all lanes open. We reached out to Oregon State Police for more information, and will update this article once we hear back.
A crash is blocking the intersection of Oregon 62 and Oregon 140.
Initial reports said several vehicles were involved. The Oregon Department of Transportation said the victims had major injuries.
Expect delays. Vehicles are being detoured onto Mary Lane just prior to the 62/140 intersection.


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