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May 31, 2006

Wednesday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Vice President Dick Cheney is here in California to try and boost the campaigns of several of the Republican candidates out here. Boy, how low are you in the polls when you bring in Cheney to help you get your numbers up? — Jay Leno

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May 30, 2006

No Free Speech Protection For Whistleblowers

Rights, Law

The Supreme Court today ruled 5-4 that public employees do not have free-speech protections when they speak out as whistleblowers. Justice Alito was the deciding vote. AP:

The Supreme Court scaled back protections for government workers who blow the whistle on official misconduct Tuesday, a 5-4 decision in which new Justice Samuel Alito cast the deciding vote.

In a victory for the Bush administration, justices said the 20 million public employees do not have free-speech protections for what they say as part of their jobs.

Critics predicted the impact would be sweeping, from silencing police officers who fear retribution for reporting department corruption, to subduing federal employees who want to reveal problems with government hurricane preparedness or terrorist-related security. [...]

The ruling was perhaps the clearest sign yet of the Supreme Court's shift with the departure of moderate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and the arrival of Alito.

A year ago, O'Connor authored a 5-4 decision that encouraged whistleblowers to report sex discrimination in schools. The current case was argued in October but not resolved before her retirement in late January.

A new argument session was held in March with Alito on the bench. He joined the court's other conservatives in Tuesday's decision, which split along traditional conservative-liberal lines.

Exposing government misconduct is important, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority. "We reject, however, the notion that the First Amendment shields from discipline the expressions employees make pursuant to their professional duties," Kennedy said.

The ruling overturned an appeals court decision that said Los Angeles County prosecutor Richard Ceballos was constitutionally protected when he wrote a memo questioning whether a county sheriff's deputy had lied in a search warrant affidavit. Ceballos had filed a lawsuit claiming he was demoted and denied a promotion for trying to expose the lie.

Kennedy said if the superiors thought the memo was inflammatory, they had the authority to punish him.

"Official communications have official consequences, creating a need for substantive consistency and clarity. Supervisors must ensure that their employees' official communications are accurate, demonstrate sound judgment, and promote the employer's mission," Kennedy wrote.

Stephen Kohn, chairman of the National Whistleblower Center, said: "The ruling is a victory for every crooked politician in the United States." [...]

The ruling upheld the position of the Bush administration, which had joined the district attorney's office in opposing absolute free-speech rights for whistleblowers. President Bush's two nominees, Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts, signed onto Kennedy's opinion but did not write separately.

"It's a very frightening signal of dark times ahead," said Tom Devine, legal director for the Government Accountability Project. [...]

The court's decision immediately prompted calls for Congress to strengthen protections for workers. [Emphasis added]

The Bush court. This is just the beginning.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:45 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Their Inexplicable Wrath

Palestine/Middle East

This is excellent. Don't miss the small print in the bottom right corner.

[Via Xymphora]

Posted by Jonathan at 11:14 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Man Writes Poem

Humor & Fun  Poetry

Another gem from Jay Leeming:

Poem: "Man Writes Poem" by Jay Leeming, from Dynamite on a China Plate. © The Backwaters Press. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Man Writes Poem

This just in a man has begun writing a poem
in a small room in Brooklyn. His curtains
are apparently blowing in the breeze. We go now
to our man Harry on the scene, what's

the story down there Harry? "Well Chuck
he has begun the second stanza and seems
to be doing fine, he's using a blue pen, most
poets these days use blue or black ink so blue

is a fine choice. His curtains are indeed blowing
in a breeze of some kind and what's more his radiator
is 'whistling' somewhat. No metaphors have been written yet,
but I'm sure he's rummaging around down there

in the tin cans of his soul and will turn up something
for us soon. Hang on—just breaking news here Chuck,
there are 'birds singing' outside his window, and a car
with a bad muffler has just gone by. Yes ... definitely

a confirmation on the singing birds." Excuse me Harry
but the poem seems to be taking on a very auditory quality
at this point wouldn't you say? "Yes Chuck, you're right,
but after years of experience I would hesitate to predict

exactly where this poem is going to go. Why I remember
being on the scene with Frost in '47, and with Stevens in '53,
and if there's one thing about poems these days it's that
hang on, something's happening here, he's just compared the curtains

to his mother, and he's described the radiator as 'Roaring deep
with the red walrus of History.' Now that's a key line,
especially appearing here, somewhat late in the poem,
when all of the similes are about to go home. In fact he seems

a bit knocked out with the effort of writing that line,
and who wouldn't be? Looks like ... yes, he's put down his pen
and has gone to brush his teeth. Back to you Chuck." Well
thanks Harry. Wow, the life of the artist. That's it for now,

but we'll keep you informed of more details as they arise.

Meant to be read aloud, for example at breakfast with dear friends on the terrace at Hotel Cheguamegon overlooking Lake Superior. Expect laughter and delight.

[Thanks, Mary and Matt]

Posted by Jonathan at 11:31 AM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

Tuesday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

Graduation Day.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:12 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

First Lady Laura Bush flew from Washington to New York and instead of flying Air Force One, she took the Delta Shuttle. The first lady said she did this because unlike Air Force One, commercial airlines are cheaper, they waste less gas, and she doesn't get stuck sitting next to a dumb guy. — Conan O'Brien

Posted by Jonathan at 10:55 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

May 29, 2006

Ego	Humor & Fun  Poetry

This morning, at breakfast overlooking Lake Superior with my daughter Molly and a collection of my dearest friends, our friend Mary introduced us all to a wonderful young poet named Jay Leeming. A sample:

Getting rid of your ego
is like trying to throw away a garbage can.
No one believes you’re serious,
and the more you yell at the garbage men
the better the neighbors
remember your name.

Thanks, Mary.

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Monday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Even though it's a little bit controversial, President Bush supports the effort to make English our national language. The president says making English our national language is not "discriminatious." — Conan O'Brien

Posted by Jonathan at 03:51 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

May 28, 2006

Liberal Media

Media

This is excellent.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:45 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

The Suburban Fantasy

Peak Oil

James Howard Kunstler on TomPaine.com:

It's actually kind of funny to hear Americans complain these days about the cost of gasoline and how it is affecting their lives. What did they expect after setting up an easy-motoring utopia of suburban metroplexes that make incessant driving inevitable? And how did they fail to register the basic facts of the world oil situation, which have been available to us for decades?

Those facts are as follows: oil fields follow a simple pattern of production and depletion along a bell curve. Universally, when an oil field gets close to half the amount of oil it originally possessed, production peaks and then declines. This is true for all oil fields in the aggregate, for a nation and even the world.

In the United States, oil production peaked in 1970 and has been declining ever since. We extracted about 10 million barrels a day in 1970 and just under 5 million barrels a day now. Because our consumption has only increased steadily, we’ve made up for the shortfall by importing oil from other countries.

There is now powerful evidence in the production figures worldwide that we have reached global peak oil production. The collective nations of the earth will not make up for this by importing oil from other planets.

Contrary to a faction of wishful thinkers, the earth does not have a creamy nougat center of oil. Oil fields do not replenish themselves. Also contrary to the prevailing wish, no combination of alternative fuels will allow us to keep running the interstate highway system, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney World and the other furnishings of what Dick Cheney called our "non-negotiable way of life."

People who refuse to negotiate with the circumstances that the world throws at them automatically get assigned a new negotiating partner: reality. Reality then requires you to change your behavior, whether you like it or not. With global oil production peaking, we are now subject to rising oil prices, as markets are forced to contend with allocating a resource heading in the direction of scarcity. Oil prices are only likely to go higher — though there is apt to be a ratcheting effect as high oil prices depress economic activity and thus dampen demand for oil which will depress prices leading to increased consumption which will then kick prices back up, and so on. The prospects for more geopolitical friction over oil also self-evidently increase, as industrial nations desperately maneuver for supplies.

Mainly though, the danger lies in the resulting instability of the super-sized complex systems that we depend on daily.

Trouble with oil will spell huge problems with how we grow our food, how we conduct trade, how we move around and how we inhabit the terrain of North America. These systems are going to wobble and eventually fail unless some effort is made to reform their scale and their procedures. For example, Wal-Mart's profit margins will disappear as higher diesel fuel prices hit its "warehouse-on-wheels."

Now, in the face of this, you'd think that the national leadership in politics, business and science would prepare the public for substantial necessary changes in the way we do things. What we are seeing across the board, though, is merely a desperate wish to keep the cars running by any conceivable means, at all costs. That is the sole target of our focus. Our leaders don't get it. We citizens have to make other arrangements.

We simply cannot face the fact that time has run out — that our lease is expiring — for the easy-motoring utopia. But we must. We have to live differently. We're going to have to re-inhabit and reconstruct our civic places — especially our small towns — and we're going to have to use the remaining rural places for growing food locally, wherever possible. Our big cities will probably contract, while they densify at their centers and along their waterfronts. Our suburbs will enter a shocking state of economic and practical failure.

We cannot imagine this scenario because we have invested so much of our collective wealth the past 50 years in the infrastructure for a way of life that simply has no future.

We'd better start paying attention to the signals that reality is sending or we will be living in a very violent, impoverished and demoralized nation. And we have to begin somewhere, which is why I suggest we start by rebuilding the national passenger railroad system. It would have a significant impact on our oil use. It would put a lot of people to work on something meaningful and beneficial to all ranks of American society. The equipment is lying out there rusting in the rain, waiting to be fixed. We don't have to re-invent anything to do it.

The fact that we are not even talking about such solutions shows how unserious we are. [Emphasis added]

It really is remarkable how little grownup discussion there is of these issues by our national leadership. Are we a nation of children, after all?

Posted by Jonathan at 11:43 AM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

Sunday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

Posted by Jonathan at 11:11 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

This [FBI raid] has really unified both parties. House Speaker Dennis Hastert...has attacked the FBI for raiding the congressman's office, saying it was an abuse of power. Imagine the nerve of the FBI treating members of Congress like they are regular Americans. Can you imagine? If there's anything that people who make the laws hate is being treated like the people who have to follow the laws. — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 11:08 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

May 27, 2006

Making Us Safer

Afghanistan  Iran  Iraq  War and Peace

The International Institute for Strategic Studies' annual global security assessment says Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea threaten a "perfect storm" of simultaneous crises. Guardian:

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the west's growing confrontation with Iran, and efforts to divest North Korea of its nuclear weapons are all approaching crucial turning points that could combine to create a perfect storm of simultaneous international crises, independent defence experts said yesterday.

Launching the International Institute for Strategic Studies' (IISS) annual assessment of global security threats, John Chipman, its director general, said: "Many parts of the world are engaged in brutal combat ... Overall, the dangerous triptych of Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran continues to dominate the security agenda as do the wider, iconic problems of terrorism and proliferation." [...]

Dr Chipman said the new Iraqi government faced "fundamental challenges" that could quickly overwhelm its attempts to hold the country together and invite regional intervention. "It is doubtful that a collective sense of Iraqi nationalism can survive in a context of increasing sectarian violence and the continuing security vacuum. Democracy has exacerbated Iraq's ethnic and religious tensions, with voters largely dividing along Sunni, Shia and Kurdish lines." [...]

Presenting the report, entitled The Military Balance, Dr Chipman warned of a rising Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan aimed at British and Nato troops who are replacing some US forces. "This year will be crucial for Afghanistan as well as for Nato as it expands its mission into the south," he said. "The Taliban are likely to increase their operational tempo - not least because they know that casualties among European Nato states may mobilise domestic opinion against the war." [...]

The IISS said North Korea had obtained enough plutonium to build between five and 11 nuclear weapons and long-running talks to induce Pyongyang to disarm were at an impasse.

In an implicit criticism of Washington's policy of ostracism and financial sanctions, Dr Chipman said North Korea had concluded that "the Bush administration is not serious about negotiations and [has] hostile intent". [...]

The report also highlighted growing US concerns about China's military build-up and intentions, quoting the findings of the recent US Quadrennial Defence Review. It said China was "a power at a strategic crossroads that is still pointing largely in the wrong direction and which has the greatest potential to emerge as a military rival to the US". [Emphasis added]

Everything they're doing is making us less safe, not safer. Swat hornets' nests with baseball bats and then wonder why all the stinging: not exactly a sign of intelligence.

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Saturday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

Wallace.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:51 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Has anybody seen the Al Gore movie about global warming and the environment? Well, the Bush administration has seen it and they are very annoyed about the whole thing. As a matter of fact, earlier today, Dick Cheney shot a projectionist. — David Letterman

Posted by Jonathan at 11:49 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

May 26, 2006

Subtropical Warming Leading To Bigger Deserts

Environment

The steady drumbeat of global warming news continues. Reuters:

Earth's atmosphere is warming faster over the subtropics than anywhere else, which could mean bigger deserts and more drought from Africa to Australia to the Middle East, researchers said on Thursday.

The fast-heating area girdles the globe at about 30 degrees north and south latitude, crossing the southern United States, southern China and north Africa in the Northern Hemisphere, and southern Australia, South Africa and southern South America in the Southern Hemisphere.

Based on 25 years of satellite data, researchers at the University of Washington also determined that the jet streams — a pattern of westerly winds that help drive weather in both hemispheres — have shifted about 70 miles toward their respective poles.

This is important because the jet streams mark the northern and southern boundaries of the tropic climate zones, said John Wallace, an atmospheric scientist and co-author of a research paper in this week's Science journal. The jet streams' shift toward the poles means the zones are expanding. [...]

The dry subtropical climate regions, which contain some of the world's major deserts, could encroach into temperate regions, Wallace said. Areas such as the Mediterranean, southern Europe and the northern part of the Middle East could have a tendency toward more drought, Wallace said.

The same might happen in southern Australia and South Africa, he said.

The study does not address whether this warming is due to the greenhouse effect or some other factor. It is different from previous models, which saw the fastest warming in the tropics, rather than the subtropics. [Emphasis added]

We are all participants in an ongoing experiment at planetary scale. It's up to us to help determine the experiment's outcome.

[Thanks, Jeff]

Posted by Jonathan at 12:39 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

African Migratory Birds Dying Off

Environment

Reuters:

Several bird species that make annual migrations between Africa and Europe have experienced drastic population declines and scientists are not exactly sure why, conservationists said on Friday. [...]

"Scientists fear that their dwindling numbers — well over 50 per cent down in some cases — may be a warning of widespread environmental damage, which could soon affect man as well," the RSPB said in a statement.

"Climate change, drought and desertification in Africa, and massive pesticide use on African farmland may all be to blame for the declines of once common UK birds such as the spotted flycatcher, wheatear, wood warbler and turtle dove," it said.

Researchers were looking at factors such as drought and heavy pesticide use in the Sahel region of Africa, which borders the Sahara desert and is a major stopover point for birds that have made the exhausting journey across the unforgiving sands.

The RSPB said the research, to be published in the journal "Biological Conservation", showed that 54 percent of the 121 long-distance migrants studied have declined or become extinct in many parts of Europe since 1970. [...]

"These migrants are highly evolved and some range over a quarter of the planet's land surface. For species like this to be affected so severely suggests that something pretty serious is going wrong somewhere," said the RSPB's Dr Paul Donald, a co-author of the study. [Emphasis added]

The proverbial canaries in the coal mine.

[Thanks, Jeff]

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Friday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

Posted by Jonathan at 12:23 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Well, there's a bright side to this [guilty verdict] for Ken Lay. You know, throughout the years Ken Lay has been a big campaign contributor to the Republican Party. So now, he'll be able to meet with those same people when he goes to prison. — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 12:20 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

May 25, 2006

Ethnic Cleansing On A Massive Scale

Iraq

To hear Bush and Blair tell it, Iraq has turned some kind of corner. Patrick Cockburn, one of the most courageous Western journalists covering the Iraq war, begs to differ. Independent (via CommonDreams):

Across central Iraq, there is an exodus of people fleeing for their lives as sectarian assassins and death squads hunt them down. At ground level, Iraq is disintegrating as ethnic cleansing takes hold on a massive scale.

The state of Iraq now resembles Bosnia at the height of the fighting in the 1990s when each community fled to places where its members were a majority and were able to defend themselves. "Be gone by evening prayers or we will kill you," warned one of four men who called at the house of Leila Mohammed, a pregnant mother of three children in the city of Baquba, in Diyala province north-east of Baghdad. He offered chocolate to one of her children to try to find out the names of the men in the family. [...]

The same pattern of intimidation, flight and death is being repeated in mixed provinces all over Iraq. By now Iraqis do not have to be reminded of the consequences of ignoring threats.

In Baquba, with a population of 350,000, gunmen last week ordered people off a bus, separated the men from the women and shot dead 11 of them. Not far away police found the mutilated body of a kidnapped six-year-old boy for whom a ransom had already been paid.

The sectarian warfare in Baghdad is sparsely reported but the provinces around the capital are now so dangerous for reporters that they seldom, if ever, go there, except as embeds with US troops. Two months ago in Mosul, I met an Iraqi army captain from Diyala who said Sunni and Shia were slaughtering each other in his home province. "Whoever is in a minority runs," he said. "If forces are more equal they fight it out." [...]

Salam Hussein Rostam, a police lieutenant in charge of registering and investigating people arriving in terror from all over Iraq, gestured to an enormous file of paper beside him. "I've received 200 families recently, most of them in the last week," he said. This means that about one thousand people have sought refuge in one small town. Lt Rostam said that the refugees were coming from all over Iraq. [...]

The flight of the middle class started about six months after the invasion in 2003 as it became clear Iraq was becoming more, not less, violent. They moved to Jordan, Syria and Egypt. The suicide bombing campaign was largely directed against Shias who only began to retaliate after they had taken over the government in May last year. Interior Ministry forces arrested, tortured and killed Sunnis.

But a decisive step towards sectarian civil war took place when the Shia Al-Askari shrine in Samarra was blown up on 22 February this year. Some 1,300 Sunni were killed in retaliation. [...]

Every community has its atrocity stories. The cousin of a friend was a Sunni Arab who worked in the wholly Shia district of Qadamiyah in west Baghdad. One day last month he disappeared. Three days later his body was discovered on a rubbish dump in another Shia district. "His face was so badly mutilated," said my friend, that "we only knew it was him from a wart on his arm."

Since the destruction of the mosque in Samarra sectarian warfare has broken out in every Iraqi city where there is a mixed population. In many cases the minority is too small to stand and fight. Sunnis have been fleeing Basra after a series of killings. Christians are being eliminated in Mosul in the north. Shias are being killed or driven out of cities and towns north of Baghdad such as Baquba or Samarra itself.

Dujail, 40 miles north of Baghdad, is the Shia village where Saddam Hussein carrying out a judicial massacre, killing 148 people after an attempt to assassinate him in 1982. He is on trial for the killings. The villagers are now paying a terrible price for giving evidence at his trial.

In the past few months Sunni insurgents have been stopping them at an improvised checkpoint on the road to Baghdad. Masked gunmen glance at their identity cards and if under place of birth is written "Dujail" they kill them. So far 20 villagers have been murdered and 20 have disappeared. [Emphasis added]

If Iraq has turned a corner, it's a corner in Hell.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:37 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

If You've Used A Telephone In The Last Five Years...

Rights, Law

If you've used a telephone in the last five years, the ACLU wants you to file a complaint.

They've got a point.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:04 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Thursday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

Posted by Jonathan at 09:44 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Today the Republicans said this [FBI] raid [on Congressman Jefferson's office] may have violated protections for congressmen that are spelled out in the Constitution. The Constitution? All of a sudden they found a copy? Where was it when they were spying on our phone calls? — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 09:42 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

May 24, 2006

Earth To Tom DeLay: Comedy Central Is, Uh, Comedy

This really is too bizarre. Tom DeLay's legal defense web site is featuring a video clip from Stephen Colbert's show on Comedy Central. They seem to be a little confused. Colbert, you see, is not actually a conservative, Mr. DeLay. He only pretends to be. It's what people sometimes refer to as a joke.

Go check it out quick before they remove it.

[Via ThinkProgress]

Posted by Jonathan at 09:57 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

James Yee On Democracy Now

9/11, "War On Terror"

James Yee, West Point graduate, the former Muslim military chaplain at Guantanamo who was supposed to have been guilty of espionage and other crimes but was ultimately exonerated, gave a lengthy interview Monday to Amy Goodman at Democracy Now. It's worth reading at length, but here are a few excerpts:

I can go on with things that happened in Guantanamo, like the ages of some of the prisoners down there, as young as 12 to 14 years old. Prisoners as young as 12 to 14 years old were being held down in Guantanamo when I was there. I had access to them on a weekly basis, and I recall distinctly meeting with these youngsters and my conversations with the guards who oversaw the detention of these youngsters. I recall how sometimes — or once a guard said, "Chaplain, these youngsters, these preteens, sometimes they do get out of hand, and they're like any other preteens. They gang up on each other, they make fun of each other. And sometimes they do have to be disciplined." Well I said, "Well, what do you do?" He said, "Chaplain, we give them a time-out."

A time-out. Now what's a time-out? A time-out is something I use with my own 6-year-old daughter when she's naughty, or when she's had too much chocolate. I give her a time-out to have her calm down and go to her room and be silent. This is what was being used on these youngsters, who senior military officials said of them, “They're not individuals on a little league team. These are individuals on a major league team called 'terrorism.'” Now, I questioned the logic on whether or not a time-out would be effective on a hardcore terrorist. Would a time-out be effective on someone like Osama bin Laden? The reality is, these individuals, these youngsters, these 12-year-olds, were not hardcore terrorists. They were there for over a year, and they've been, I believe, subsequently released. [...]

I had received a stellar officer evaluation report, the best that I had ever received, dated two days before I would be arrested and then charged and accused of things like spying, espionage, aiding the enemy. And I want to talk to you about that. [...]

I was thrown in jail for which it ultimately would be for 76 days in isolation.

I was arrested in secret, held incommunicado. I never showed up at the airport in Seattle like I was supposed to have, where my wife and daughter were waiting. They didn't know what happened to me. My parents in New Jersey had no idea what had happened. I essentially disappeared from society, from the face of the earth. But my family would learn of what happened to me ten days later, when government leaks to the media were then reported, first by the Washington Times, that I was now arrested and charged with these heinous crimes of spying, espionage, aiding the enemy, and mutiny and sedition, which is like trying to overthrow the government. All of these capital crimes, and, yes, I was threatened with the death penalty days after my arrest by a military prosecutor. [...]

I was taken from Jacksonville, shackled like prisoners are shackled down in Guantanamo, at the wrist and at the waist and at the ankles in what we call in the military, a three-piece suit, not a three-piece suit like you buy at the mall, made by Armani, a three-piece suit of chains. This is how I was shackled and then thrown in the back of a truck next to an armed guard, two other armed guards in the front. And down on the way, on this trip to Charleston, the guard pulls out of this bag these goggles — they're blackened out, opaque — puts them on my eyes so now I can't see a thing. He takes out these heavy industrial type ear muffs, the likes that you might see a construction worker wearing when he's jack hammering in the middle of the street, puts them on my ears, and now I can't hear a thing. We call this tactic "sensory deprivation." Sensory deprivation, it's something that I recently read that the American Psychiatric Association has included in a draft of their definition of torture.

Sensory deprivation. I was subjected to sensory deprivation, but I knew about this tactic, because that's, of course, how I saw prisoners being treated and subjected to when they are in-processed into Guantanamo when they are flown in from Afghanistan under this very same tactic of sensory deprivation; its purpose, which is meant to instill fear and intimidation. You, yourselves, maybe have seen the pictures with the prisoners wearing the hoods on their head. Well, I feared also that a hood would be then thrown on my head, but fortunately for me, that practice of hooding had just been stopped months before my arrest. I also feared of being kicked and beaten violently, especially after hearing some of the prisoners when I spoke with them down in Guantanamo, how they were kicked and beaten during their transport down to Guantanamo. [...]

[Eventually] I was returned to full duty back at Fort Lewis, reinstated as a Muslim chaplain. My record was wiped clear, after which I, of course, tendered my resignation, received an honorable discharge in January of 2005, and upon separation, I would receive another, a second Army commendation medal for exceptional meritorious service.

I didn't receive an apology. Yes, I am an eternal optimist, and I hope one day that I will receive an official apology, and I believe that by speaking out, speaking the truth, and making people aware of what's going on in Guantanamo and letting others know what happened to me, as a U.S. citizen held in this so-called war on terrorism, that one day all of this will lead to a well-deserved apology. Thank you. [Emphasis added]

12- to 14-year-olds held for more than a year in that hellhole. Will we ever wake up from this nightmare?

[Thanks, Mark]

Posted by Jonathan at 09:31 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

Congress Discovers Civil Liberties

Politics  Rights, Law

Congress is all upset because the FBI, who had a search warrant, raided the office of Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson. Funny how they suddenly become champions of civil liberties when they're the ones in the crosshairs. CNN's Jack Cafferty says it well (video):

Congress seems to think it's fine for the NSA to spy on all of us without any sort of a warrant whatsoever. But it's not OK for the FBI to conduct a raid on Congressman William Jefferson's office with a warrant after finding 90 grand in his freezer and after waiting weeks for him to comply with a subpoena to turn over evidence in an ongoing corruption investigation, evidence which he has refused so far to turn over.

Now, members of both parties are all worked up about this. They positively have their shorts in a knot over this. You see, they want the Capitol police to handle their stuff, you know, the same ones who failed to give Congressman Patrick Kennedy a breathalyzer after Kennedy crashed his car into a stationary barrier a couple of weeks ago. Instead, they just drove Kennedy home and said, "Good night, Congressman, and have a nice evening." You see, the Capitol police answer to Congress. The speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert even complained personally to President Bush about the raid on Congressman Jefferson's office. It's believed this was the first raid of a congressman's office in 219 years. Well, judging by the reaction on Capitol Hill, maybe the FBI ought to raid their offices more often. What is it do you suppose they're hiding in those offices?

Once again, Congress is demanding a different set of standards for themselves. [Emphasis added]

Seems they're learning the hard way the lesson of Pastor Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

Congress has spent the last five years letting the Executive Branch trample on the Constitution and basic civil liberties, with scarcely a peep of protest. What did they think was going to happen?

Hey, Congress: welcome to our world.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:09 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this  

Wednesday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

Posted by Jonathan at 11:16 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

President Bush said today he has nothing but respect for Mexico and its people and he will always speak the truth to them. Here's my question: When can we get that deal? — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 11:09 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

May 23, 2006

Justice As Fairness

Essays  Ethics  Musings

At the time of the first Gulf War, I called into a local left-wing radio show to voice my oppostion to the impending war, and I was taken by surprise when the host asked me if war is ever morally justified. I didn't have a satisfactory answer at the time, but it's a question that has stayed with me ever since.

The standard I've come to is the following. It is (barely) possible to imagine a war fought to advance a cause so overwhelmingly important, so critically urgent, that I would support it even knowing that one of my own daughters might be killed — indeed, that I would still support it even if I knew one of my own daughters would be killed. Then, and only then, I think, could I say the war is justified. After all, every war means the death of someone's children. If I am not willing to accept that the child might be my own, I don't see any possible moral basis for supporting a war.

That's what makes the following story so distasteful (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette of last August):

Staff Sgt. Jason Rivera, 26, a Marine recruiter in Pittsburgh, went to the home of a high school student who had expressed interest in joining the Marine Reserve to talk to his parents.

It was a large home in a well-to-do suburb north of the city. Two American flags adorned the yard. The prospect's mom greeted him wearing an American flag T-shirt.

"I want you to know we support you," she gushed.

Rivera soon reached the limits of her support.

"Military service isn't for our son. It isn't for our kind of people," she told him. [Emphasis added]

We recoil instinctively at the hypocrisy of the mother in the story. It is all too clear that the mother is able to "support" the war because she knows up front that no child of hers is at risk. It is that knowledge that makes her stance an empty one. Put her son at risk and watch how quickly her "support" will evaporate.

Some time after arriving at my standard for a just war, I happened across the work of American philosopher John Rawls, who worked out a beautiful generalization of what is at bottom the same idea, except that Rawls extended it to cover issues of justice generally, not only the issue of just war.

Rawls asks the question, what constitutes a just set of relationships in society? To answer, he suggests the following thought experiment. Imagine a hypothetical situation in which no one knows where he/she fits in the overall pecking order in terms of class or social status. No one knows whether he/she is more or less intelligent, talented, attractive, or capable than anyone else. No one knows if he/she is better educated or better connected than anyone else. No one even knows his/her conceptions of what is good and fair. Everyone is, as Rawls puts it, situated behind a "veil of ignorance". Under those (hypothetical) conditions, the relationships and rules that one would accept as fair are those that are truly fair.

For if there is anything human beings are good at, it's rationalizing their own self-interest. Wealthy people support tax cuts for the rich. Poor people favor welfare. Smart, well-educated people say let's abolish the social safety net and have a straight meritocracy. Healthy people see no reason why they should have to contribute to universal health care. Well-off people have no problem supporting a war poor people are going to have to fight.

Ah, but suppose for all you knew you were one of the poor, one of the infirm, one of the untalented. Surely, then, you would insist on a conception of justice as fairness, where society cares for all its members, rich or poor, healthy or sick, talented or not, equitably balancing their interests.

Rawls' standard is a hypothetical one, but I think it's an excellent yardstick to use when mentally evaluating the morality of a social arrangement: is it an arrangement you'd agree to even if you didn't know up front whether you were one of the lucky ones. Which is another way of asking, is it fair.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:41 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this  

Jessie Macbeth

Iraq

Last night, I posted a link to a video interview with Jessie Macbeth, regarding atrocities he says he participated in while serving in Iraq. It appears, however, that there are a number of reasons to question his veracity, so I've pulled the post. I should have been more skeptical. My apologies.

[Thanks, Jason]

Posted by Jonathan at 11:09 AM | Comments (10) | Link to this  

Tuesday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

Posted by Jonathan at 10:56 AM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

As you know, the National Guard stands by, ready to go into action any time the president of the United States feels there's a big enough of a disaster, like a major earthquake, a huge flood, a 29% approval rating. Any one of those things could trigger movement. — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 10:52 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

May 22, 2006

AT&T Whistleblower: NSA Taps Internet Trunk Lines At Telecom Sites

Politics  Rights, Law

As I've been saying here for a while, the little that we've been told about NSA snooping on electronic communications inside the US is just the tip of a very large iceberg. It's axiomatic: what gets released publicly is always just a small glimpse of the whole ugly reality. We will likely never know the full extent of what they've been up to, but every new story enlarges the scope.

Now, from Wired, here's an affadavit by former AT&T technician Mark Klein, who says the NSA is tapped into the main trunk lines of the Internet, from where they can monitor literally everything that goes over the Net: email, IM, chat, web site usage, file uploads and downloads, you name it. Excerpt:

In 2003 AT&T built "secret rooms" hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company's popular WorldNet service and the entire internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardware installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities. [...]

The essential hardware elements of a TIA [Total Information Awareness]-type spy program are being surreptitiously slipped into "real world" telecommunications offices.

In San Francisco the "secret room" is Room 641A at 611 Folsom Street, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors of which are occupied by AT&T. High-speed fiber-optic circuits come in on the 8th floor and run down to the 7th floor where they connect to routers for AT&T's WorldNet service, part of the latter's vital "Common Backbone." In order to snoop on these circuits, a special cabinet was installed and cabled to the "secret room" on the 6th floor to monitor the information going through the circuits. (The location code of the cabinet is 070177.04, which denotes the 7th floor, aisle 177 and bay 04.) The "secret room" itself is roughly 24-by-48 feet, containing perhaps a dozen cabinets including such equipment as Sun servers and two Juniper routers, plus an industrial-size air conditioner.

The normal work force of unionized technicians in the office are forbidden to enter the "secret room," which has a special combination lock on the main door. The telltale sign of an illicit government spy operation is the fact that only people with security clearance from the National Security Agency can enter this room. In practice this has meant that only one management-level technician works in there. Ironically, the one who set up the room was laid off in late 2003 in one of the company's endless "downsizings," but he was quickly replaced by another.

Plans for the "secret room" were fully drawn up by December 2002, curiously only four months after Darpa started awarding contracts for TIA. One 60-page document, identified as coming from "AT&T Labs Connectivity & Net Services" and authored by the labs' consultant Mathew F. Casamassima, is titled Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco and dated 12/10/02. This document addresses the special problem of trying to spy on fiber-optic circuits. Unlike copper wire circuits which emit electromagnetic fields that can be tapped into without disturbing the circuits, fiber-optic circuits do not "leak" their light signals. In order to monitor such communications, one has to physically cut into the fiber somehow and divert a portion of the light signal to see the information.

This problem is solved with "splitters" which literally split off a percentage of the light signal so it can be examined. This is the purpose of the special cabinet referred to above: Circuits are connected into it, the light signal is split into two signals, one of which is diverted to the "secret room." The cabinet is totally unnecessary for the circuit to perform — in fact it introduces problems since the signal level is reduced by the splitter — its only purpose is to enable a third party to examine the data flowing between sender and recipient on the internet. [Emphasis added]

Wired has the full statement here (pdf). We don't have to just take Klein's word for it, he's got supporting technical documentation and wiring diagrams, all available via links in his affadavit.

On the one hand, it's not surprising. One always assumed they were listening in. But on the other hand, it's outrageous. Treasonous, in fact. They've crumpled the Constitution into a little ball and tossed it out the window. If laws don't apply to the government, all bets are off.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:27 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this  

Monday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

Posted by Jonathan at 10:02 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Conservative Republicans are very worried that there's no way to keep track of these illegal aliens. Yeah, we can't keep track of them unless they start making phone calls. — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 10:01 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

May 21, 2006

The Big Chill

Politics  Rights, Law

The shredding of the Constitution — what's left of it — continues. Attorney-General Gonzales now says journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, and he won't hesitate to track their phone calls in leak investigations. AP:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Sunday he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security.

The nation's top law enforcer also said the government will not hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation, but officials would not do so routinely and randomly.

"There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Gonzales said, referring to prosecutions. "We have an obligation to enforce those laws. We have an obligation to ensure that our national security is protected." [...]

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said she presumed that Gonzales was referring to the 1917 Espionage Act, which she said has never been interpreted to prosecute journalists who were providing information to the public.

"I can't imagine a bigger chill on free speech and the public's right to know what it's government is up to — both hallmarks of a democracy — than prosecuting reporters," Dalglish said.

Gonzales said he would not comment specifically on whether The New York Times should be prosecuted for disclosing the NSA program last year based on classified information. [...]

But he added that the First Amendment right of a free press should not be absolute when it comes to national security. If the government's probe into the NSA leak turns up criminal activity, prosecutors have an "obligation to enforce the law."

"It can't be the case that that right [the First Amendment] trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity," Gonzales told ABC's "This Week." [Emphasis added]

How's that for legal reasoning: the Constitution does not trump what "Americans would like to see." It's embarrassing.

Whether they prosecute or not, whether they track reporter's phone calls or not, the purpose of these kinds of pronouncements is clear: to create a chill that will keep sources from talking to reporters and keep reporters from publishing what the White House doesn't want published. It's disgusting what they're doing to this country.

Posted by Jonathan at 09:10 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Sunday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

© Kent Tenney

Posted by Jonathan at 12:24 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Remember the president of the Teamsters, Jimmy Hoffa? Well, he vanished and there were all these rumors and stories and myths about where he may be buried. It turns out now that the FBI got a tip and now they're looking everywhere for Jimmy Hoffa. Everywhere. The FBI is looking everywhere. And I'm thinking, "That's great, but what about Osama bin Laden?" — David Letterman

Posted by Jonathan at 12:22 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this  

May 20, 2006

Peak Food

Environment  Future  Peak Oil

The world is eating grains faster than farmers can grow them, and the problem is only going to get worse, with rising oil prices and global climate change both playing a significant part. CommonDreams:

The world is now eating more food than farmers grow, pushing global grain stocks to their lowest level in 30 years. Rising population, water shortages, climate change, and the growing costs of fossil fuel-based fertilisers point to a calamitous shortfall in the world's grain supplies in the near future, according to Canada's National Farmers Union (NFU).

Thirty years ago, the oceans were teeming with fish, but today more people rely on farmers to produce their food than ever before, says Stewart Wells, NFU's president.

In five of the last six years, global population ate significantly more grains than farmers produced.

And with the world's farmers unable to increase food production, policymakers must address the "massive challenges to the ability of humanity to continue to feed its growing numbers", Wells said in a statement.

There isn't much land left on the planet that can be converted into new food-producing areas, notes Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based non-governmental organisation. And what is left is of generally poor quality or likely to turn into dust bowls if heavily exploited, Brown told IPS.

Unlike the Green Revolution in the 1960s, when improved strains of wheat, rice, maize and other cereals dramatically boosted global food production, there are no technological magic bullets waiting in the wings.

"Biotechnology has made little difference so far," he said.

Even if the long-promised biotech advances in drought, cold, and disease-resistance come about in the next decade, they will boost yields little more than five percent globally, Brown said.

"There's not nearly enough discussion about how people will be fed 20 years from now," he said.

Hunger is already a stark and painful reality for more than 850 million people, including 300 million children. How can the number of hungry not explode when one, two and possibly three billion more people are added to the global populat