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Archive for December, 2007
New Photos Uploaded
Since I’ve been a little (i.e. very) lax in updating the seephotos section of the site, I wanted to give a general heads up that I have uploaded three new galleries, the last three of my digital photograph class. Please head on over and check them, and the rest of my photos, out!
U.S. Media Says Torture is OK
Whenever anyone from the Bush Administration says anything, regardless of whether they have the evidence to back it up, they can take comfort knowing that their trusted lapdogs in the U.S. media will report it as the whole, unadulterated truth. Yesterday, ABC News reported that John Kiriakou, leader of a CIA team that captured and waterboarded a crazy, schizophrenic al-Qaeda operative named Abu Zubaydah, revealed that he believes waterboarding to be torture, but necessary:
A leader of the CIA team that captured the first major al Qaeda figure, Abu Zubaydah, says subjecting him to waterboarding was torture but necessary.
In the first public comment by any CIA officer involved in handling high-value al Qaeda targets, John Kiriakou, now retired, said the technique broke Zubaydah in less than 35 seconds.
“The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate,” said Kiriakou in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC News’ “World News With Charles Gibson” and “Nightline.”
“Well,” I said to myself, “we are a nation of laws, and the law says that torture is illegal.” And I went to bed thinking that I would wake up to see the traditional media finally ripping apart the Bush Administration. “Bush Administration Tortures” the papers would say, “Ex-CIA Agent admits government broke federal and international law.”
But those weren’t the headlines I saw this morning. No, the U.S. traditional media has accepted Kiriakou’s assertion that waterboarding provided valuable information on face value, and has given George Bush and his cronies a free pass to continue doing whatever they please–laws be damned!–for the next year.
MSNBC: Waterboarding ‘probably saved lives’
The Day: Ex-agent: Waterboarding got results
Dallas-Fort Worth Star-Telegram: Waterboarding is torture but worked, ex-agent says
USA Today: Ex-spy describes waterboarding as torture, says it broke al-Qaeda figure in seconds
Bloomberg: Ex-CIA Agent Says Waterboarding May Be Torture, Yields Results
FOXNews: Report: CIA Agent Says Waterboarding is ‘Torture, But Necessary’
Baltimore Sun: Waterboarding worked wonders, ex-agent says
In every instance, the American media has pounced on the “success” of waterboarding without stopping to ask for any evidence of success other than the word of one former CIA agent. And the fact that it’s torture? Apparently that doesn’t matter to the U.S. traditional media as long as the Bush Administration says that it’s working.
For contrast, let’s look at some of this morning headlines from foreign media:
Sydney Morning Herald: Suspect was tortured, former CIA man says
Philippines Inquirer: Ex-CIA agent admits waterboarding, but calls it torture
Press TV: Ex-CIA agent admits waterboarding
The Australian: Ex-CIA agent admits suspect was tortured
The Daily Telegraph: Ex-CIA agent: We used torture and it worked
Outside of the U.S., the big news story of the day is that the government of the United States officially sanctions torture. Only the Daily Telegraph even mentions Kiriakou’s claims of success, and even then the connotation is drastically different. Compare “We used torture and it worked” with “We used torture but it worked.” Which of those sounds like reporting and which sounds like a pitiful defense?
It looks like most of the media outlets, domestic and foreign, and using the same text from a Washington Post/AFP story, but the similarities in the text only exaggerate the differences in the headlines. The media of this country are being put to shame by their foreign counterparts. Only the foreign press has the stones to report facts–that the the CIA admits to torture–in big, bold letters and leave the Administration’s unsubstantiated claims of success for the fine print. That’s real journalism, and it’s the biggest difference between the traditional media here and the traditional media abroad.
(Cross-posted at DailyKos)
One Weekend of Success in Iraq
Last week, Vice President Cheney predicted that:
Iraqis will have become “self-governing” and “capable for the most part of defending themselves, a democracy in the heart of the Middle East” by January 2009.
Defense Secretary Gates said that recent events:
“have given him hope, including the lowest levels of violence since early 2006, a substantial increase in the number of displaced Iraqis returning to their homeland, rising international investments and the willingness of more than 70,000 Iraqis to volunteer to protect their neighborhoods.”
And Deputy Secretary of State Negroponte commented that:
“in Baghdad, I think the sectarian violence has subsided dramatically. And I think that’s an important development with political consequences. These neighborhoods are more peaceful today than they were six or eight months ago. … There has been a movement on the legislative front.”
According to the Bush Administration, Iraq is a great success. Really? I briefly scanned this weekend’s headlines from Iraq. Let’s see what one weekend of Bush Administration “success” in Iraq looks like.
Washington Post: Suicide Bombing Kills 8 In Northern Iraq Oil Town
A suicide bomber driving an explosives-laden truck attacked a police station north of Baghdad on Saturday, the latest in a week of bombings that have left 80 people dead.
…
The blast, which damaged nearby homes and sent shards of glass flying, killed eight people and wounded 16, police said.
AP: Bomb Kills Iraq Police Chief
A roadside bomb struck a convoy carrying the police chief of a predominantly Shiite province south of Baghdad on Sunday, killing him and two of his bodyguards, authorities said.
…
The explosion Sunday in Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, struck a convoy carrying the police chief of Babil province, Brig. Gen. Qais al-Maamouri, and two guards, officials said. Fearing more violence, police imposed an indefinite curfew and the streets quickly emptied.
AP: Vigilantes Kill 40 Women in Iraq’s South
Religious vigilantes have killed at least 40 women this year in the southern Iraqi city of Basra because of how they dressed, their mutilated bodies found with notes warning against “violating Islamic teachings,” the police chief said Sunday.
…
[Maj. Gen. Jalil] Khalaf said bodies have been found in garbage dumps with bullet holes, decapitated or otherwise mutilated with a sheet of paper nearby saying, “she was killed for adultery,” or “she was killed for violating Islamic teachings.” In September, the headless bodies of a woman and her 6-year-old son were among those found, he said. A total of 40 deaths were reported this year.
Kansas City Star: Roundup of violence in Iraq
BAGHDAD
- Around 6:15 p.m. Sunday, two mortar shells slammed into the Karrada neighborhood, injuring two residents. Only one shell exploded.
- Around 6:30 p.m. Sunday, a mortar shell slammed into the Bob al-Sham area in Rashidiyah, killing one resident and injuring two.
- Police found five unidentified bodies in Baghdad Sunday: one in al-Shaab, one in Sadr, one in Amil, one in Saidiyah, and one in Hurriyah.
This is success? Success is when only a dozen people die each weekend? And let’s not forget the total human costs of the war so far:
Hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and over 4,000 coalition deaths. And those figures are already a month outdated. How much more “success” in Iraq do we need to see before we realize that we need a change of course? How many more people must die in the name of “success” before our leaders recognize that we need to leave Iraq? The death toll of one weekend of success in Iraq is already far too high. Will we stand for another 55 weekends of Bush’s success, or will we do something to redefine success as saving lives?
The Problem with Creationism
Man, finals are killing me this semester. In the interest of giving you something to read, though, I’d like to share with you Zach Weiner’s (creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) take on the problem with creationism.
Head on over to SMBC when you get a chance, will you?
Huckabee: AIDS is a Gay Disease
It should come as a surprise to no one that former nobody and now serious presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is no friend of homosexuals. He is a Southern Baptist minister and his ridiculous anti-gay rhetoric is a huge turn-on for the fundamentalist right-wing. We also know that Huckabee is a lover of rapists, so long as the rape victim is related to Bill Clinton. Today’s Mike Huckabee news, though, defies all rational comprehension.
Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could “pose a dangerous public health risk.”
…
“If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague,” Huckabee wrote.“It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.”
Yes, the best way to deal with AIDS is to just lock up anyone who has it. And by “anyone who has it,” of course, we mean homosexuals. That is, after all, what they get for choosing to be gay.
Huckabee wrote this in 1992 while running for U.S. Senate, so it is possible that he just didn’t know the facts about AIDS. There was a time when people actually thought that you could get HIV just by breathing the same air as someone with AIDS. Can’t hold him responsible for something he couldn’t have known, now can we?
When Huckabee wrote his answers in 1992, it was common knowledge that AIDS could not be spread by casual contact.
Oh… Well. Never mind then. If Huckabee knew the ways that AIDS could be transmitted, why didn’t he suggest a permanent quarantine of all known drug users? Or doctors and nurses, who handle needles and blood on a regular basis? He could have closed the nation’s blood banks and banned transfusions–there’s lots of infected blood there. I heard in my sixth grade health class that nicotine is a “gateway drug” to stronger drugs like heroine. Maybe Mike Huckabee should lock up all smokers. Who knows how long it will be until they start sharing needles? No, Huckabee was more interested in his vendetta against those “dangerous” homosexuals.
Now, don’t be mistaken and think that Mike Huckabee is a cold, heartless bastard. Remember, he did want to continue the search for a cure:
When asked about AIDS research in 1992, Huckabee complained that AIDS research received an unfair share of federal dollars when compared to cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
“In light of the extraordinary funds already being given for AIDS research, it does not seem that additional federal spending can be justified,” Huckabee wrote. “An alternative would be to request that multimillionaire celebrities, such as Elizabeth Taylor (,) Madonna and others who are pushing for more AIDS funding be encouraged to give out of their own personal treasuries increased amounts for AIDS research.”
So after all that time Mike Huckabee spends reminding us of the dangers of gays… er, I mean, AIDS, he doesn’t think that the taxpayers should be footing the bill for trying to cure it. It’s not like the federal government has any obligation to respond to “a dangerous public health risk.” And if those queer-lovers in Hollywood think that AIDS is should be cured, then they can fund AIDS research themselves.
It’s inconceivable that a serious presidential candidate can have these views about a deadly disease. Of course, that was the old Mike Huckabee. The new Mike Huckabee says:
“My administration will be the first to have an overarching strategy for dealing with HIV and AIDS here in the United States, with a partnership between the public and private sectors that will provide necessary financing and a realistic path toward our goals,” Huckabee said in a statement posted on his campaign Web site last month.
Oh, so now that we know that AIDS affects heterosexuals too, it’s okay for the federal government to fund research to cure it? Now that we know it’s not really a “plague” designed to cleanse the earth of the homosexual scourge but a real, serious killer syndrome?
Forgive me, Governor Huckabee, if I have some trouble taking you at your word.
Data Stolen from Military and Nuclear Research Labs
You can take “protecting Americans from identity theft” and “keeping us safe from terrorism” off of the short list of things that the Bush Administration does right. Some of our veterans learned that the hard way when a VA subcontractor lost a laptop containing veterans’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and insurance information last August. As a rational person, you might expect that since then, the government has learned to do a better job protecting personal information,
But no. The U.S. government did it again. And this time it wasn’t a subcontractor with butterfingers who lost the data. This time, someone stole personal information from two supposedly secure U.S. science facilities.
Hackers have succeeded in breaking into the computer systems of two of the U.S.’ most important science labs, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
In what a spokesperson for the Oak Ridge facility described as a “sophisticated cyber attack,” it appears that intruders accessed a database of visitors to the Tennessee lab between 1990 and 2004, which included their social security numbers and dates of birth. Three thousand researchers reportedly visit the lab each year, a who’s who of the science establishment in the U.S.
All the visitor data from 14 years at just one of the two attacked labs is gone. That’s forty-two thousand Social Security numbers out in the open. Forty-two thousand identities ready to be sold on the black market to the highest bidder. And this is from visitors, not even lab personnel. How could something like that be so insecure?
You also might be wondering what kind of experiments are being done at these labs. You probably assumed that, since they’re so insecure, the work being done there can’t be that important, right?
Wrong.
The ORNL is a multipurpose science lab, a site of technological expertise used in homeland security and military research, and also the site of one of the world’s fastest supercomputers. Los Alamos operates a similar multi-disciplinary approach, but specializes in nuclear weapons research, one of only two such sites doing such top-secret work in the U.S.
Oh, so the same people who just stole thousands of American (and maybe even security-cleared) identities also might have accessed our homeland security, military, and nuclear weapons research? HOLY FUCKING FUCK! Why are any of these computer systems even accessible from the internet in the first place? Our nuclear weapons research lab must have some sort of data safeguards in place, right?
Wrong again.
Los Alamos has a checkered security history, having suffered a sequence of embarrassing breaches in recent years. In August of this year, it was revealed that the lab had released sensitive nuclear research data by email, while in 2006 a drug dealer was allegedly found with a USB stick containing data on nuclear weapons tests.
“This appears to be a new low, even drug dealers can get classified information out of Los Alamos,” Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), said at the time. Two years earlier, the lab was accused of having lost hard disks
If a drug dealer can get his hands on nuclear weapons data, who’s to say al-Qaeda can’t? The one thing that the Bush Administration has consistently pledged to do is “keep American safe from terrorism.” Apparently, they can’t even do that right anymore.
Protect Your Privacy on Facebook by Disabling Beacon
If you or your friends have visited Fandango, Overstock, Kongregate, or dozens of other sites recently while logged into Facebook, you may have noticed what you or your friends do or buy showing up your Facebook news feed. That’s because of Beacon, Facebook’s new social advertising system, which collects what you do on participating websites and sends it to Facebook for public posting. The first time you visit a participating website, a small notice will appear in the bottom-right corner of your browser asking if you want to opt-out of sending Beacon notifications for that website. If you don’t click opt-out before the message disappears… that’s it. Facebook interprets that as permission to send Beacon notifications to anyone who can read your news feed and mini feed (and anyone who can read them) and sends your personal information to its partner websites..
Not surprisingly, Beacon has come under a lot of criticism, including in the form of a petition started by MoveOn.org. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has responded with an emotional mea culpa, but, more importantly, you now have the option of disabling Beacon completely and globally, for all of Facebook’s partner sites.
To disable Beacon, log in to your Facebook account and go to your privacy settings. Click on External Applications to see the privacy settings for Beacon. You’ll see a list of any Beacon-affiliated websites that you’ve visited, and you can adjust privacy settings for individual sites there. To disable Beacon completely, check the box for “Don’t allow any websites to send stories to my profile.”
A commenter on the NYT’s “Bits” blog says:
Well, just tried to use the new opt-out feature and guess what, I can’t find it on my privacy settings page. Apparently it doesn’t show up as an option for me to select until an external website has sent me stories.
If you are unable to find the External Applications page on your privacy settings, try visiting a time-waster website like Kongregate or College Humor.
Shame on the State Department
Today was a shameful day for the Department of State, Secretary Rice, and the Bush Administration. Today, former ambassador Michael Guest, an openly gay man, was forced to leave the job he loved at the State Department because departmental policies prevented him from fulfilling his obligations to his family.
Most departing ambassadors use these events to talk about their successes . . . But I want to talk about my signal failure, the failure that in fact is causing me to leave the career that I love,” said Mr. Guest, 50, whose most recent assignment was dean of the leadership and management school at the Foreign Service Institute, the government’s school for diplomats.
For the past three years, I’ve urged the Secretary and her senior management team to redress policies that discriminate against gay and lesbian employees. Absolutely nothing has resulted from this. And so I’ve felt compelled to choose between obligations to my partner — who is my family — and service to my country. That anyone should have to make that choice is a stain on the Secretary’s leadership and a shame for this institution and our country,” he said.
Unlike heterosexual spouses, gay partners are not entitled to State Department-provided security training, free medical care at overseas posts, guaranteed evacuation in case of a medical emergency, transportation to overseas posts, or special living allowances when foreign service officers are assigned to places like Iraq, where diplomatic families are not permitted.
The New York Times summarizes the case of Michael Guest exactly correctly:
Treating gay public servants by different standards than apply to everyone else is unacceptable, especially at a time when all American diplomats and military personnel are being called on to serve — sometimes repeatedly — in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan.
It’s also foolhardy since the two conflicts have put such strain on American resources that personnel shortages are commonplace. The government should be doing everything in its power to retain its best and brightest, beginning with treating them equally.
How can George Bush and the Republicans even utter the phrase “family values” when employees of the Bush administration have to choose between their families and their jobs? It’s one shameful thing for this country to refuse an entire group of people their rights because of who they are, but the fact that George W. Bush’s government is willing to prohibit or make it difficult for gay people to lay down their lives for their countries as soldiers, translate terrorist communications and analye intelligence, or train America’s next generation of diplomats is incredibly negligent of the needs of the country and represents a dereliction of President Bush’s duty to uphold the Constitution and protect the United States.
Missouri Law Recognizes Gay Couples?
Missouri, though trending blue in recent elections, is in no way a bastion of liberalism. Last year, in fact, Missouri legislators introduced a bill that would make Christianity the state’s official religion (it failed), and Missouri law allows LGBT people to be fired, evicted, and even cut off from statewide public services because of their sexual orientation. That’s why I was surprised to hear a story from Kansas City where Missouri may have legally recognized a lesbian couple.
A lovers’ quarrel between two women got out of hand, police said, and one found herself nearly set on fire. She said it was the first time in their 10-month relationship that she had seen her girlfriend get violent.
…
The victim said [ex-girlfriend Nicole P.] Selectman called her several times and asked her not to pursue charges, but prosecutors charged Selectman with unlawful use of a weapon, second-degree domestic assault and tampering with a motor vehicle.
Let me perfectly clear: this–and every case of domestic violence–is a terrible crime that should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and I’m in no way trying to suggest that assaulting your partner is an appropriate way to gain recognition for your (soon-to-be over) relationship. But I found it interesting that Selectman was charged with domestic assault. Under Missouri law,
A person commits the crime of domestic assault in the second degree if the act involves a family or household member or an adult who is or has been in a continuing social relationship of a romantic or intimate nature with the actor
In this case, the law apparently includes homosexual partnerships in the same category as heterosexual relationships (and for good reason, because domestic abuse is not a specifically homo- or heterosexual crime). I wonder, though, if this law could be used to argue that homosexual relationships should be given that same equivalence when it comes to adoption, or parenting rights, or hospital visitation rights, or joint banking, or tax dependency, or other benefits that are currently only available to heterosexuals. In a very morbid sort of way, could this domestic violence law be the first step to LGBT rights in Missouri?
Iraq & the Environment: Bush’s Single Policy
The failures of the Bush Administration are innumerable, but, of those that impact the global community, two of the greatest failures are the Iraq War and his response to global climate change. How could these two major policies become so screwed up? Because his response to both problems is the same.
Over the next two weeks, thousands of government officials from around the world will descend upon the Indonesian island of Bali to address the world’s global climate problem. Their mission is to rework current global climate treaties and formulate long-term policy. Their problem is the United States of America.
By far, the biggest obstacle to forging a new accord by 2009 is the United States, analysts say. Senior Bush administration officials say the administration will not agree to a new treaty with binding limits on emissions.
Instead, President Bush recently proposed that the world’s biggest countries work toward a common, long-term goal set decades in the future, without specific targets or limits, and more immediate goals set by individual nations using whatever means they choose.
No binding limits. No specific targets. Doesn’t that sound familiar?
Congress and the White House are locked in a dispute over Mr Bush’s request for $196bn in emergency funding for the wars. Democrats, who control both houses, want the legislation to include a goal to withdraw US troops from Iraq by the end of next year. But Mr Bush has threatened to veto any bill that includes such restrictions.
Bush’s attitude toward both problems is the same: “I get what I want the way I want it.” A corrupt executive branch and effectively powerless Congress have allowed President Bush to institute policies that have divided the country, wrecked the economy, and destroyed our credibility, but the effects of our Iraq and environment policies–or, I should say, Iraq and environment policy–transcend our borders and impact the whole world. Can we do nothing to stop this madness?