AMERICA’S HITLERIAN NIGHTMARE OF TORTURE

Look—it’s become routine for neocons to claim that it is unfair of us more moral Americans to compare them to Hitlers, Stalins or Maos or to any of the dictators of any regime that, in the past, used torture and which many good American’s, some modern Americans notwithstanding, have always been hateful of, but the facts continue to speak for themselves. It’s not only I or any other living, good American who condemns them, it is our entire American history of the past 100 years and all its greatest spokesmen that condemns torturers and dictators. So, if they can support torturing any enemy that they decide to call an enemy, then, I suppose there is nothing protecting me from their torture, or you yourself when the time comes, that protects all of us from their torture except a common and widespread respect for the laws of humanity that defend anyone the next Bush regime decides to call a criminal.

The following is from a Newsweek article (May 5, 2008) written by Dahlia Lithwick, and as a good humanist might say, may the humane laws of America protect her. Or as one of the torturers might say, may God preserve her soul.

[SNIP]
Full and fair trials might have happened for enemy combatants, but missteps have led to a legal process that now exists solely to prove the detentions were justified; that the captives are-as former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld once called them—"the worst of the worst." That's a political conclusion, not a legal one, and it's why Col. Morris Davis—former chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo—resigned last fall, claiming political interference had created the impression of a "rigged process stacked against the accused." Davis later told The Nation that in a conversation with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes in 2005, Haynes told him flatly, "we can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We've got to have convictions."

If prisoners were illegally tortured at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, who was responsible? A memo written by John Yoo, a deputy at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel from 2002 to 2003, was declassified this month. He argued that military interrogators could subject suspected terrorists to harsh treatment as long as it didn't cause "death, organ failure or permanent damage."

Yoo's a possible contributions to torture at Guantanamo almost pale in comparison with ABC News's revelations that administration officials, including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, George Tenet, Colin Powell and Don Rumsfeld, met several times in the White House to discuss torture techniques for Al Qaeda suspects. The group signed off on slapping, pushing and waterboarding, in a manner "so detailed ... some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed." Days later, President George W. Bush confirmed he "approved" of these tactics.

Yet despite the fact that senior members of the Bush administration may have violated the War Crimes Act of 1996, the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, there is scant serious talk of legal accountability.
[PASTE]


Here's a haiku with a spring kigo (seasonal reference):

Winter trucks labor
in the slushy mall streets
with Spring fashions.

HEY! IT'S EARTH DAY!

I've been driving 4 and sometimes 3 cylinder cars since 1964 when I bought my first VW new for about 1,650 dollars. Is that price right? If my memory is not betraying me? Sometimes I even drove a 3 cylinder car that was designed to function on 3 cylinders. . . . Not! Actually, Mertie owned a Chevy Geo when we got together which I often drove. That was a 3 cylinder car that got up to 50 mpg on the highway and 40 in the city. It also only cost her about 5,000 dollars new. Where are those cars in this new array of fuel efficient autos that cost more than 20,000 dollars to own? See, the auto boys in Detroit made sure they got rid of all those inexpensive fuel efficient cars before they made driving a fuel efficient car a task only the rich can afford. As far as I'm concerned, Detroit has always been about selling cars to the upper-middle class and the rich. They've never made cars for the poor and lower-middle class to own. That's why I eventually abandoned those who had abandoned me and switched to foreign autos. Currently, I'm driving a Kia Rio which I paid cash for, 8,600 dollars new, but it only gets about 33 mpg on the highway and 25 mpg in the city. That's really bad compared to what I got in my Ford Aspire, the last American car I owned. I'm amazed when Detroit brags about the fuel efficiency of autos that get only what I get with my fuel-inefficient Kia Rio. We are going to have to do much better than that if we are to climb out of the pockets of the American corporations and the Arab oil cartels. But, I've noticed something also tricky-Dick about fuel efficient foreign autos. Have you noticed that when foreign automakers are trying to break into the American market, they offer autos under 10,000 dollars, but after they get into the market, they suddenly can't seem to make those autos anymore? Something about profit margins, I think.

MORAL LOGIC

One of the interesting things about classes in morality or ethics are the hypothetical situations teachers come up with to demonstrate just how complicated ethical decisions can be. You know the ones: a bus full of 30 students is driving down a steep mountain on a narrow road when suddenly they come upon a baby, crawling in the middle of the road. What should the bus driver do? Should he run over the baby, saving his 30 children? Or should he drive off the cliff and save the baby? By the way, most humans would purposefully drive off the cliff, hoping for a good result, rather than to purposefully choose to run over a single baby. Seriously—in the second case, most humans feel that they've avoiding purposely killing a child while casting their lot with fate as to the outcome. Well, anyway, something like that. Let's not niggle about the details.

To return to my point. When Bush was given this ethical test (only instead of a bus full of students, he had all the citizens of the world in his bus, and he was hypothetically driving at full speed into a brick wall, plus on both sides of the wall he had adequate room to avoid the collision), he is said to have chosen to floor the accelerator, lock the steering wheel straight ahead, and give the finger to alternate drivers running beside the bus, hoping to take over the bus driver's job. Of course, we would only expect such behavior from a young Arab terrorist, a religious fundamentalist, neither of which George Bush . . . . Well, anyway. . . .

THE RICH GET RICHER AND…

The following, below, is from the London Telegraph. All I can see is that this proposed exclusive golf camp for millionaires just goes to demonstrate how, as they used to say, “filthy rich” the filthy rich are getting. This would be a place only the very very very, yes, very, rich could afford to go as they trot about the world, living high off the labor of the laboring folk. The laboring people of the world create all this wealth for these people whose only contribution is the capital. All the real creative work is done by the hourly wage earners. These displays of wealth are disgusting in a time when much of the world’s population lives in poverty, without potable water, in conditions unfitting for a pig. Read it and gnash your teeth!

[SNIP]
Donald Trump's Controversial $2.1B Scottish Golf Resort Proposal Is Rejected

London Telegraph | Auslan Cramb | November 29, 2007 11:17 PM

Donald Trump's controversial plans to build a £1billion golf resort along a stretch of unspoilt coastline have been dealt a fatal blow.

Councillors have rejected the proposals for two links courses, a five-star hotel, a golf academy, nearly 1,000 holiday homes and 500 private houses in one of the biggest single property developments seen in Scotland.
[PASTIE]

CURRENT READING

Nine Stories by Salinger, The Singularity Is Near by Ray Kurzweil, and some Marvin Bell poetry. It occurred to me recently that all I want to do in the near future is read popular science and the world's best literature while working algebra problems to exercise my logical brain. Keep my nose out of politics and pop culture. I'll bet my resolve lasts until, maybe, a minute from now.

SMIRKY AND SON


Doesn't that smirk just say it all. It says, I'm a rich, connected SOB, and you fools that support me as I grow rich at your expense are truly fools and idiots, and don't I know it. All the way to the bank, I laugh.
I
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THE PRES. WHO WOULD BE KING AND ONE OF HIS BEMEDALED HENCHMEN


This is an entry which has lying around the computer for quite some time, but when I looked into this more recent medal business, I thought some more kingly stuff ought to be mentioned. PS: Guess which man on the right is not the bemedaled Bushite fool? What is the thing with these modern military men and their medals? With our chief political figures having such problems with arrogance, could we expect less from our modern generals?

The following passages show how we're messing it up around the world because we got a bullheaded Texan in the White House. From Newsweek, Dec. 19, 2005 p. 40:

[OPEN QUOTE] Most leaders who are consulted are simply informed of U.S. policy. Senior American officials live in their own bubbles, rarely having any genuine interaction with their overseas counterparts, let alone other foreigners. "When we meet with American officials, they talk and we listen—we rarely disagree or speak frankly because they simply can't take it in," explained one senior foreign official who requested anonymity for fear of angering his U.S. counterparts. . . .

"Attending any conference abroad," Patten continues, "American cabinet officers arrive with the sort of entourage that would have done Darius proud. Hotels are commandeered; cities brought to a halt; innocent bystanders are barged into corners by thick-necked men with bits of plastic hanging out of their ears. It is not a spectacle that wins hearts and minds."

. . . . To foreigners, American officials increasingly seem clueless about the world they are supposed to be running. "There are two sets of conversations, one with Americans in the room and one without," says Kishore Mahbubani, formerly a senior diplomat for Singapore and now dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Because Americans live in a "cocoon," Mahbubani fears that they don't see the "sea change in attitudes towards America throughout the world." [CLOSE QUOTE]

AIN'T IT OBVIOUS?

[SNIP]
In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that", the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

That extraordinarily contentious start of Fallon's mission to Baghdad led to more meetings marked by acute tension between the two commanders. Fallon went on develop his own alternative to Petraeus's recommendation for continued high levels of U.S. troops in Iraq during the summer.
[PASTIE]

A DYLAN MOVIE BY DIRECTOR OF "FAR FROM HEAVEN" AND "SAFE"

The movie "Safe" has long been one of my favorite movies. Now Todd Haynes is making a movie about Bob Dylan. When Haynes makes a film, it's always interesting and challenging. His films aren't gimmicky or surreal but the feel of them is always a little off center. Go watch one if you don't believe me.

[NIPPLE]
TORONTO (AP) - Bob Dylan is not at the Toronto International Film Festival. But six shades of Dylan are present with "I'm Not There," a swirling, shifting ramble through the many lives of one of the most enigmatic figures in music history.

Different actors—including Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett—play incarnations of Dylan at various phases of his public and private life.
[PASTIE]

Preceeding is by DAVID GERMAIN

That's right—that's Kate as Dylan in his early days.



(AP Photo/The Weinstein Co., Jonathan Wenk)

“GRAFT AND LOOTING” (i.e. Bushillvania Land)

For an excellent exposé of Bush’s wonderful capacity to reward business in his maniacal drive to privatize everything, read the article, “The Great Iraq Swindle” in the September 6, 2007 Rolling Stone. Below is a small piece of the whole article to wet your whistle with.

[SNIPPER]
The Bush administration's lack of interest in recovering stolen funds is one of the great scandals of the war. The White House has failed to litigate a single case against a contractor under the False Claims Act and has not sued anybody for breach of contract. It even declined to join in a lawsuit filed by whistle-blowers who are accusing KBR of improper invoicing in Fallujah. "For all the Bush administration claims to do in the war against terrorism," Grayson said in congressional testimony, "it is a no-show in the war against war profiteers." In nearly five years of some of the worst graft and looting in American history, the administration has recovered less than $6 million.

What's more, when anyone in the government tried to question what contractors were up to with taxpayer money, they were immediately blackballed and treated like an enemy. Take the case of Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse, an outspoken and energetic woman of sixty-three who served as the chief procurement executive for the Army Corps of Engineers. In her position, Greenhouse was responsible for signing off on sole-source contracts—those awarded without competitive bids and thus most prone to corruption. Long before Iraq, she had begun to notice favoritism in the awarding of contracts to KBR, which was careful to recruit executives who had served in the military. "That was why I joined the corps: to stop this kind of clubby contracting," she says.

A few weeks before the Iraq War—started, Greenhouse was asked to sign off on the contract to restore Iraqi oil. The deal, she noticed, was suspicious on a number of fronts. For one thing, the company that had designed the project, KBR, was the same company that was being awarded the contract—a highly unusual and improper situation. For another, the corps wanted to award a massive "emergency" contract to KBR with no competition for up to five years, which Greenhouse thought was crazy. Who ever heard of a five-year emergency? After auditing the deal, the Pentagon found that KBR had overcharged the government $61 million for fuel. "The abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR," Greenhouse testified before the Senate, "represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career."

And how did her superiors in the Pentagon respond to the wrongdoing highlighted by their own chief procurement officer? First they gave KBR a waiver for the overbilling, blaming the problem on an Iraqi subcontractor. Then they dealt with Greenhouse by demoting her and cutting her salary, citing a negative performance review. The retaliation sent a clear message to any would-be whistle-blowers. "It puts a chill on you," Greenhouse says. "People are scared stiff."

They were scared stiff in Iraq, too, and for good reason. When civilian employees complained about looting or other improprieties, contractors sometimes threatened to throw them outside the gates of their bases—a life-threatening situation for any American. Robert Isakson, a former FBI agent who worked for Custer Battles, says that when he refused to go along with one scam involving a dummy company in Lebanon, he was detained by company security guards, who seized his ID badge and barred him from the base in Baghdad. He eventually had to make a hazardous, Papillon-esque journey across hostile Iraq to Jordan just to survive. (Custer Battles denies the charge.)
[PASTIE]

R.E. THE PHOTO ABOVE

Caption should read "The Wife Is Always The Last To Know"

WHY BUSH SHOULD BE IMPEACHED or
AT LEAST BE CHARGED AS A WAR CRIMINAL


Read the accumulating evidence documented in the “Investigative Status Report of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff”.

The evidence of the wrong-doing, cruelty and un-Constitutional behavior of the Bush cadre is slowly accumulating. Never before have I witnessed (since Nixon?) an administration so full of liars and slanderers. Again, I want to point out that fundamentalist, Christian churches behave exactly like what is disclosed in the following report toward people who don’t agree with them or who commit “sins”. Unforgiving, closed-minded, savage and revengeful—that’s typical fundamentalist behavior, and, now, it’s infected the White House through Bush and company.

Read about it here.

MOUNT HOOD BUDDHA

The picture is of my third walk along the Vancouver waterfront. I come around a bend onto the Columbia River after emerging from a more wooded walk, and there he is in the distance—BuddhaHood. A friend, Geoff H. of Spokane, told me that Kerouac liked to say the mountains rising up in this regions were all Buddhas. This very much impressed me the next time I came upon this scene. Frequently, on morning walks, the Buddha is not visible, hidden in the river fogs, mysteriously awaiting more fortuitous signs.

[28] Struggle

What is this fog that licks against old gray walls and hides
The sun? My wildflowers shrivel in a killing frost,
Cold drizzle falls on October streets, walking makes me shiver.
Some New Age thinkers believe weather can affect our moods,
Some say we are the pawns of planetary alignments. Ha!
If only my fate were that easy to unravel, gladly
I'd reach up and shift the orbits of the earth and sun,
But this drizzly mist just swallows up my flailing fists.

That's in case you think only the BuddhaHood struggles with fog!!

MINDFULNESS

Neuroscience is still trying to unravel the nature of consciousness and the origin of mind in the human animal. Here are some more theories.

[OPEN QUOTE]
This also led to speculation as to which species did or did not have theory of mind and at what point in evolution it appeared in humans (Povinelli & Preuss, 1995).

There are two distinct origin scenarios for our capacity to understand intentional agency, to create representations of other agents' behavior, beliefs, and intentions. A widely accepted social intelligence scenario is that higher primates evolved more and more complex intentional-psychology systems to deal with social interaction. Having larger groups, more stable interaction, and more efficient coordination with other agents all bring out, given the right circumstances, significant adaptive benefits for the individual. But they all require finer and finer grained descriptions of other agents' behaviors. Social intelligence triggers an arms race resulting from higher capacity to manipulate others and a higher capacity to resist such manipulation (Whiten, 1991). It also allows the development of coalitional alliance, based on a computation of other agents' commitments to a particular purpose (hunting, warfare; Kurzban & Leary, 2001), as well as the development of friendship as an insurance policy against variance in resources (Tooby & Cosmides, 1996).


Another possible account is that (at least some aspects of) theory of mind evolved in the context of predator-prey interaction (Barrett, 1999, this volume). A heightened capacity to remain undetected by either predator or prey, as well as a better sense of how these "other" animals detect us, are of obvious adaptive significance for survival problems such as eating and avoiding being eaten. Indeed, some primatologists have speculated that detection of predators may have been the primary context for the evolution of agency concepts (van Schaik & Van Hooff, 1983). In the archaeological record, changes toward more flexible hunting patterns in modern humans suggest a richer, more intentional representation of the hunted animal (Mithen, 1996). Hunting and predator avoidance become much better when they are more flexible, that is, informed by contingent details about the situation at hand, so that the human does not react to all predators or prey in the same way. [CLOSE QUOTE]

—H. Clark Barrett, “Adaptations to Predators and Prey” in Handbook Of Evolutionary Psychology, pp. 105-106

Re. the photo: Some species still don’t have a conscious mind. Think of the most illustrious of Crawford, Texas’s citizens.

COULD WE REALLY GET TO BE THIS GROWN UP? HA!

“Logocentric thinking is also associated with efforts to subsume diversity under identity, to reduce the other to the same. Jim Cheney, in his postmodern critique of radical environmentalism, argues that there are strong authoritarian tendencies in environmentalist thought due to this refusal to acknowledge difference. He argues against the claim that all knowers are essentially alike, and hence are able to resolve differences by appeal to objective standards of reason. Each person's history and place in the world is distinct, and their perspectives incommensurable with all others. The thesis of the sameness of all knowers can only be an ideological tool designed to coerce agreement, to socialize people to a particular conception of reality. There are potentially an infinite number of truths corresponding to the equally infinite number of different places that people inhabit in the world, and to claim that any position has priority over other positions is to be engaged in a rhetorical exercise in order to justify and enforce domination. Cheney calls for respect for otherness, letting differences exist without any pressure to compromise so that each entity is given full latitude to develop the way that best expresses its own individual existence.” —Arran E. Gare in Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis, pp. 92-93, Routledge, New York (1996)

PS: I don’t think that the unfortunately named J. Cheney’s position is the position that Gare would accept. I’ve included it in my blog as an interesting take on objectivity. Frankly, I think if we all were more objective, we would have fewer conflicts, even though we disagree, because scientific objectivity usually comes to pretty factual conclusions. Right? Objectivity is a method for arriving at factual data and has nothing to do with leaving one’s opinions out of it until, that is, the facts are established. Now—as to opinions about non-factual, therefore unreal and nonsensical, matters, like how close one’s nose must come to the ground while bowing to Mecca or what a god’s asshole looks like, there are no facts involved. It’s pure opinion and therefore entirely relatively, and we should never dispute these matters one with another. Eh?


NEW DENSE ELEMENT DISCOVERED

A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the densest element yet known to science. The new element has been named "Bushcronium." The symbol for Bushcronium is "W".

Bushcronium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311. These particles are held together by dark forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Bushcronium's mass increases preternaturally over time when morons randomly interact with various elements in the atmosphere and become assistant deputy neutrons in a Bushcronium molecule to form isodopes. This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Bushcronium is formed whenever morons reach a critical density. This hypothetical concentration is referred to as "Critical Morass."

When catalyzed with money, Bushcronium activates Foxnewsium, an element that radiates orders of magnitude more energy than Bushcronium itself, albeit in the form of incoherent noise since Foxnewsium has 1/2 the peons but twice more morons.

Folks, I’m sorry, but I don’t know who to credit this piece of writing too. I believe it’s one of those free-floating internet pieces that I scoop up in my daily ramblings. Now it’s been months since I stored it in my desktop file, Blog/ Future Stuff, and, well, who knows? It’s damn good though.

GEORGE BUSH: THE POLITICALIZATION OF EVERYTHING,
EVEN YOUR HEALTH AND SAFETY

In a compelling article for Rolling Stone Magazine, Tim Dickinson tracks down the lies and obfuscations which George Bush/Cheney and Company have used to make certain that the American public is confused on the issue of global warming. If the American public were not confused on the issue, they certainly would not be giving Georgie an astounding 29% approval rating. How can it be that high after all we now know about the lying, crooked George Bush regime? An intelligent, informed electorate would have him down to 10 or 15% by now. Some people do have IQs less than 70 percent, and they can be forgiven since they are too illiterate to read and understand written, complex reasoning processes—and Fox watchers. Then there all those Republican politicians who have been bought and paid for by the oil lobbyists. Maybe that is 29% of the American public? The administration’s plan is completely political, ignoring science and favoring the corporate polluters, all to the detriment of my, your and our children’s and grandchildren’s health, future and safety. Read the whole thing here.

[SAMPLE SNIP]
Cheney took full advantage of the president's cluelessness, bringing the CEQ into his own portfolio. "The environment and energy issues were really turned over to him from the beginning," Whitman says. The CEQ became Cheney's shadow EPA, with industry calling the shots. To head up the council, Cheney installed James Connaughton, a former lobbyist for industrial polluters, who once worked to help General Electric and ARCO skirt responsibility for their Superfund waste sites.

Industry swiftly took advantage of its new friend in the White House. In a fax sent to the CEQ [White House Council on Environmental Quality] on February 6th, 2001 - two weeks after Bush took office - ExxonMobil's top lobbyist, Randy Randol, demanded a housecleaning of the scientists in charge of studying global warming. Exxon urged CEQ to dump Robert Watson, who chaired the IPCC, along with Rosina Bierbaum and Mike MacCracken, who had coordinated the National Assessment.

Exxon's wish was the CEQ's command. According to an internal e-mail obtained by Rolling Stone, Connaughton's first order of business - even before his nomination was made public - was to write his White House colleagues-to-be from his law firm of Sidley & Austin. He echoed Exxon's call that Bierbaum, the acting director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, be "dealt." In the end, each of the scientists on Exxon's hit list was replaced. "It was clear there was a strong lobby and activity against me by some in the energy industry—especially ExxonMobil," says Watson.
[PASTE]

Photo: Wilson / Getty

SICKO

If you notice that my entries are not as current or as frequent as they have been, it's because I've been recovering from shingles. It's a very debilitating sort of disease, you know—a recurrence of chicken pox, and this old body doesn't bounce back like it did when it carried the consciousness of a ten year old around inside of it. This illness is another reason why this entry is so short.

ON BEING AN ATHEIST

Being an atheist is, if you can picture this, like breaking through the thin layer of an egg shell and crawling out to stand on a pristine, white surface. Here and there, one spots a courageous lad or lassie who has crawled out there with him. Beneath one’s feet, so to speak, trapped within the thinnest of shells, remain the poor, sad lot of his fellows, still trapped in and coated with chicken-yellow goo. The atheist looks up into a black, infinite void and, filled with the most tender sensation of awe, he crows like a rooster to have attained such unlimited freedom.

ON BEING BEN FRANKLIN

“The rapid progress true science now makes, occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon.”—Ben Franklin

If Ben Franklin can say that, imagine how we ought to feel?

DESPOTIC GOVERNMENT AHEAD?

“I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults—if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered; and I believe, farther, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.”—Ben Franklin

If Ben Franklin can say that, imagine how we ought to feel under the boot heels of GWB?